[X] Sea Witch
-[X] Benevolent
-[X] Benevolent
Dark Lord Accidental Lieutenant Quest
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not dead, just really busy the past week, may be really busy for several more days.
Small Nerd
Meganekko
- Location
- Out There
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X]Sea Witch
-[X]Benevolent
-[X]Benevolent
[X] Sea Witch
-[X] Benevolent
-[X] Benevolent
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Update: mad dash lab work ended for the time being, midterm tomorrow, anime night Friday. ETA on update: Saturday. Will try to make it at least 2.5k words to give everyone a little extra for waiting.
Witch training
- Pronouns
- He/Him
While there is definite appeal to returning to Sarna early, your heart knows what it is that you want quite quickly. You look Az square in the eyes and say, "When I was helping Dagwood's crew, it was exhausting and miserable and it often hurt... but my actions felt meaningful, they felt like I was doing something good in this world. I want to do more of that. So, I'll be your witch, but I want to be helpful."
Az nods and then smiles and says, "Excellent, excellent. I suspect that I can carry enough dread for all of us, and having a carrot as well as a stick helps motivate people so much better. You can only beat or threaten to beat people so much before they go start looking for a reward elsewhere, so it might as well be from the other hand. Now, do not think that your role will be easy, magic is a tricky thing, a tricky thing indeed, and if you rely entirely upon it then when it fails the social snap back can be... considerable. Fortunately, I have known more than one witch in my time, and I can pass along some of the things I learned from them."
Rubbing his chin in consideration, Az then glances sideways at Kattarin and then asks you, "Your 'prior' role was as an educator, right?"
You gulp but nod and say, "Yes."
"Okay, then I need you to actually use that power for practice, to see its limitations, and as a demonstration. Lady d'Jauney, I fear that you are our test subject and your refusal is ill advised," Az says, idly cleaning his nails with a dagger both of you blink at a few times over when exactly he had pulled it out.
You look at Kattarin and say, "I don't think I can hurt you with this power, but I will be extra careful."
Kattarin looks between you and Az with sick worry before she deflates somewhat and says, "I really have no choice, do I?"
"Oh, you always have a choice, its just that many people often are unwilling to accept the consequences of certain decisions. For tomorrow's prosperity, I suggest you acquiesce today," Az says with a shrug.
"Right..." Kattarin says, before turning to face you. After a moment she asks, "So what do we..."
"Just sit down, I think this is going to be tiring for both of us," you state, finding a good place for both of you to be seated.
Raising a finger to signal and interjection, "While the ability to establish the appropriate atmosphere has since passed us by, I suggest in the future that you have a certain script to follow and a certain degree of pageantry. You want people to step outside the mundane when interacting with you, placing them in a position of unease and discomfort. As a benevolent witch, you thus serve as shepherd and guide, and to defy you is to court disaster, not from your actions but from the forces only you understand."
There was a pause, the air only stirred by the sun and sea, before Az shrugged and said, "Eventually after one too many questions one of the better witches just sat me down and explained why my questioning their practices wasn't helpful from a pragmatic viewpoint, at which point I agreed with their assessment and just went along with things."
"Okay, who are-" Kattarin began, before you decided to activate your power and dive in. Her surface thoughts are an obvious ball of anger and fear, but that questioning line carries an obvious streak of curiosity. You know vaguely how this is all supposed to work, so you grab that line and then attach it to a piece of your own mind. Energy surges within you as you copy out a set of memories that you have hooked onto that questing emotion. The amount of energy required to do that drains everything you have in you for the day, but you can feel it mostly take hold just before you collapse from exhaustion.
You wake up tucked into a hammock, the sun setting on the horizon, your head splitting from your usage of that power. You're probably going to need to work on that, since collapsing like that to impart basic skills probably lacks the degree of gravitas that Az appears to want for your role.
Heading back on deck, you find no sign of Az but Kattarin looking out at the sea, pensively.
"Before you did that, I couldn't have told you what a capstan was, not really, but now I can look at all the parts of the ship and give a more or less accurate accounting of what it is, and what it does. I could probably at least help the Sinner's crew along with their tasks as well," she explains, her voice distant. "I... I was trying to ignore them before, but you got all of that from them, didn't you?"
You come up alongside her and consider apologizing for just shoving random information into her soul, but instead you opt to go, "Yes." You glance at her spirit, and notice that the information you put there still seems to be resting on the surface, but that it is also slowly getting integrated in. Constant exposure was probably helping there. Something to remember, and you think that part of what the demon had been doing before involved making room deeper in a person's soul to fit the information it imparted.
Another silence for a time, before Kattarin said, "The current plan is that we're going to sail to New Baraba and pick up an initial crew of buccaneers there. I can write a letter to my father to explain what has happened to his ship and send it off to Zeehum and from there to the Semish homelands. Given Dagwood's antipathy for them and Az's... Az-ness, I've managed to convince him that we should focus our attacks upon the Juntlunders rather than the Semish. We're still working out what the story will be... but I think that's the best course for protecting my family's name."
You nod and stare out at the red waters darkening to black as the sun slips behind the horizon. You need to consult a map, but you're pretty sure that New Baraba is several weeks sailing away still. Sarna was something of a pirate republic, but the former Juntlund and current Fleirlunt island was considered to have none of the civilizing graces of the merchant city.
The trip, especially since the ships needed to remain in close proximity to each other, was indeed several weeks long, and you also were unable to do much more work on the crew of the Sinner as Az is no longer leaving you to your own devices. He has a training regime for both you and Kattarin, who is going to be his figurehead, although whether she will be the 'captain' or the 'voice of the captain' is something still being worked on as Az puts you both through your paces. The lessons are... strange, especially for you.
You wake up around sunrise each day for breakfast and physical training, which comprises you and Kattarin being forced to do various physical tasks around the ship to build up strength and endurance, followed by sparring with Az, which is equal parts terrifying and enlightening. Az's skill with weapons is such that he can adjust how much of a challenge he is to be precisely just out of reach. While sometimes he will abruptly end a spar and leave either one of you with a fresh bruise so as to prevent the development of certain bad habits, more often than not he will allow the spars to go on, to let the person he is fighting with think that maybe, just maybe, they are catching up to him. Outside observation and hindsight always proves this a false hope, but in the heat of the moment he always manages to draw out the best from his student, getting them to learn and innovate and take risks that they wouldn't if Az were going full out all the time. At some point you realize how devastating this could be in an actual battle, in that he could easily lull skilled opponents into thinking that they had a chance and getting them to make a gamble that against someone else would be only a moderate risk, but against Az opens up an easy kill.
You are somewhat grateful that you only have a spar with Az every day or even every other day, whereas Kattarin has multiple spars each day. After your initial bit of combat training, while Az continues to work on Kattarin, you get to have magic training, which for the most part involves spending about a quarter of the daylight hours draining your energy reserves with somewhat random flailings, and then working on replenishing them through meditation and inward focus. That process also has you dredging up other, older memories, but they are jumbled and not necessarily useful. Who you were before the cult abducted you and made you a vessel for the demon remains a mystery, but the fact that you remember how to hunt with a bow and arrow deepens your suspicion that you had lived within the jungles of highland Sarna.
Despite the fact that Az seems unusually delighted to hear of your skill with old weapons, that also doesn't stop the afternoons from involving further training for you and Kattarin, this time with gunpowder weaponry. Despite knowing that he died thousands of years before the introduction of the weaponry, you can't help but remain impressed by Az's capability to pick up and understand them easily enough. You don't get to fire them that often, the supply of powder being limited and no one wanting to waste it, but the practice of maintenance of the muskets and pistols with the occasional firing along with work on the ship's cannon to learn the basics of their operation and maintenance tended to eat up the afternoon.
By evening it was your second round of magic practice and Kattarin got a half session of sparring and a half session of leadership skills, which you often got the periphery of while meditating. As it turned out, Kattarin was quite skilled at legal arguments and rhetoric, but in a very dry way that Az immediately said indicated that she had obviously learned from a book. He spent his time teaching her things like how to actually motivate people and get them to agree with you and your demands, rather than simply argue with them. He has all sorts of advice there, all of it useful, but also strangely unsettling at times. You think you could have lived your whole life without knowing the best way to convince someone to agree to a plan that will get them killed and you know will get them killed. Despite the fact that Az can give demonstrations of charisma that make you glad you're already seated when he does so, he also has such a remarkable capacity for being cold-blooded that you are reminded of just who and what he is.
After the evening meal, when everything is slowed down for the night, is another joint lesson, this time on acting. For you, Az focuses on getting you to take on the role of mysterious benefactor. For the most part it is all about how you hold yourself, and what you don't say. Your job is to be coy and indirect, a mediator between the mundane and the supernatural, and you learn to a degree of surprise that most witches - at least in Az's day - didn't have any powers of their own, but did have pacts with various spirits who would lend assistance. You already mostly knew that most magic comes from various spirits and demons, and a human being with any sort of magic usually indicates some sort of past and deep rooted interaction, the most common being a parent or grandparent being one of the more corporeal sort of spirits. Still, the way Az described it, you were probably one of the stronger direct magic users among the world, even if there were undoubtedly other scholars of the occult with more practical power than you. To a great extent this probably meant that all of his lessons on acting, misdirection, and the presentation of it all was even more important for you. Demonstrating too much power would paint an even bigger target on your head than you already felt. Fortunately your occult knowledge meant that you could perform some of the more standard rituals once you got the right implements and had a steady surface to work from, which meant you would have to wait for land, or at least to be anchored.
The acting lessons among the three of you also allowed you to try out how exactly you would present yourselves to the outside world. Your role was obvious: the advisor and healer of the group, but you were slowly starting to settle on something more specific as Az's 'keeper'. Every night you tried out a couple of variations on a theme, and it was evolving that Az was to be a figure of dread, something to be unleashed upon those that stood in your way. Whether he was to be the captain or the captain's brute remained an open question, but either way you were starting to hammer out a story for the world. Kattarin was the 'reasonable' one, the one who could partly restrain Az, and the face of the organization. The world interacted with her, up until they pressed the point too hard and then got to deal with 'unreasonable' Az in such a way as to beg to have the charming rogue Kattarin back. You meanwhile were the enigmatic one, the one in the background presumably managing the magic that kept Az in check and providing Kattarin advice on the supernatural.
After about two weeks you also realized that Az likely intended for you to serve as a way to accelerate the training of the crew, since you would know all of the basics of what they would need to know, improving their ability to get up to speed in combat or sailing by imparting those basics right away.
This was when you starting performing more practical magic on every couple of nights just before heading off to sleep. Az had you practice implanting skills in her mind, and he also had you practice the most unpleasant skill you had of tearing skills out of other's minds, which you used to tear the basic occult knowledge out of Kattarin's head the night after you first taught it to her. Fortunately it was a poorly integrated skill, both because she was given no time to practice and because you attached it only lightly the first time - you think it might have actually gone away on its own given time and lack of practice - but it did let you learn a bit more about that power. As you suspected, you yourself got little out of the knowledge, but you could feel that in order to learn something by ripping out skills, the original owner probably had to be considerably more skilled than you. Also, from the way that Kattarin seemed to have little slivers of occult knowledge, you also had the feeling that the process wasn't entirely permanent. You would have to do major work on someone else before you could know for sure though.
Somehow plucking the thought from your head, once you entered into the island chain that held New Barabas Az came to you in the evening and asked, "So, we are almost to our destination and thus to our crew. Have you any thoughts as to what sort of person we should recruit?"
Opening an eye from your meditations upon how unpleasant hardtack biscuits were, you replied, "Not particularly, but I take it you have?"
"Astute as ever, Camilla," Az replies with one of his damnable smiles. "There is a question of what sort of characters we might wish to induct into the crew. The best sort are of course those who know how to both sail and fight, but they may prove a problem as we ourselves are only beginner pirates, and their ambitions may overcome them, leading to problems. Skilled mercenaries who can fight but not sail may be in short supply, but your abilities will ensure that they are not dead weight on the ship and can begin contributing to its operation within days of joining, learning from there. Conversely, between the two of us we can quickly transform skilled sailors, of which there is no doubt a much greater supply, into more effective fighters quickly."
"Or we could just grab whoever we can find," you point out, some part of you figuring that that was the typical thing to do, and that the phrase was often considered somewhat literal.
"Ah, but I did say 'character' here, so there is already a degree of discrimination. No, I must consider who I surround myself with, and how they should be treated. Punishment is all well and fine, but mistreating your troops is a fine way to be assassinated on campaign or cause rebellions that damage valuable resources. There are assuredly many fresh-faced, callow youths that we can draw from who would be easy to mould as we see fit, but who would also suffer disproportionately when we first blood them in combat. There are also undoubtedly older veterans who would serve us well, but who would ask for higher wages and be of a greater risk of attempting to usurp our positions - although I suppose callow youths can also more easily have stupid ideas enter their heads. However, your powers also open up an interesting new opportunity - we find the worst scum we can find, the unrepentant thieves, murderers, and rapists, and you tear them apart. You take the parts that make them a threat to everyone around them, and you excise them, you reorder them, and you set them to a better purpose. I know you have objections about such uses of your powers, but surely if we find men who would be hanged for their crimes and simply kill the part of them that causes those crimes, this is a preferable state of affairs?"
Az lapses into silence at that, and you let it continue in discomfort over his proposal. Not because it is bad, per se, but because it is not so bad. He is right that your biggest deficiency is in sailing ability, while your capacity to train for combat is much stronger. That will assuredly mean that the bulk of your initial 'best' hires would be fishermen, either young sons looking for prosperity or old men down on their luck and desperate for work, but there is something that feels intrinsically wrong about that, about turning otherwise peaceful men into pirates and getting a decent number of them killed in the process. And that already successful - or at least mostly successful since they would have to be between crews- pirates, have their own problems. So converting terrible people who deserve to die towards your tasks feels acceptable and yet there is also something slippery about it all. Az said that he liked people with morals because they gave him levers, but you feel that his leverage was the sort to change people.
After allowing the silence to stretch just a little bit longer, just a heartbeat before you yourself answered, Az added on, "Now, we'll probably have to make allowances for what we actually find one way or another, but I ask this because a mixed strategy at this point in time has issues with creating different groups of the crew who are treated differently. One or two veterans mixed in with a fresh crew becomes the petty officers and what have you to pass along their knowledge, while rookies among a veteran crew are just fresh bodies to fill space who can be hammered into shape easily enough, but if we make the crew too varied in skill and character we are likely to stir up unnecessary strife among them as there is widespread resentment. Same with picking up too many particularly unpleasant sorts that we forcibly reform, as there should either be a smattering to serve as an example or the whole crew should be that way so as to not terrify or disgust those we have not changed."
You nod at that, and at the complexity of the problem. You're pretty sure Az is asking this as advice, and to judge how far you are willing to use your powers. He probably already has an initial plan, he just wants your input so as to modify whatever it is he has in mind. As you consider this, you also speak up, "Actually, you've reminded me of another issue that you brought up. When we reach land I'm planning on doing a minor summoning of a sort of spirit. I remember there being books that refers to them as 'demons', but the actual demon in my head used a somewhat different term that is best translated as 'spirit' and seems to indicate some fine distinction between the two. Anyway, I think you mentioned it, but the witches you knew often had pacts with 'teaching demons', right?"
"That is broadly correct, yes," Az says, a slight twinkle in his eyes suggesting that he still remembers what you were talking about before.
"Right, right, but anyway, what sort do you think I should summon as an initial practice? There are all sorts of esoteric skills they might be able to teach that the crew could need," you explain.
Az considered for a moment before he smirked and said, "That depends somewhat on what sort of crew we get, does it not? However, off the top of my head medicine and astrology are always important and will better help you settle into your role as mysterious but benevolent sea witch, and considering the inherent power in magic and the occult I would never begrudge you seeking to expand your knowledge there. Given the role that is developing for you, I might also suggest looking to speak with something truly exotic that might assist you in growing your capacity for magic, although you may wish to expand your occult knowledge there first." He counted off the four things he figured were important, and then shrugged at the end.
Suggested recruitment focus (skill)
[] Pirate
[] Warrior
[] Sailor
[] Indiscriminate
Suggested recruitment focus (attitude)
[] Inexperienced
[] Veteran
[] Scum
[] Indiscriminate
Initial spirit skillset
[] Medicine
[] Astrology
[] Occult
[] Magic
A/N: Had this planned out, but had a headache yesterday so couldn't sit down and write for the life of me. Have a 3.8k update as way of apology for the delay
Az nods and then smiles and says, "Excellent, excellent. I suspect that I can carry enough dread for all of us, and having a carrot as well as a stick helps motivate people so much better. You can only beat or threaten to beat people so much before they go start looking for a reward elsewhere, so it might as well be from the other hand. Now, do not think that your role will be easy, magic is a tricky thing, a tricky thing indeed, and if you rely entirely upon it then when it fails the social snap back can be... considerable. Fortunately, I have known more than one witch in my time, and I can pass along some of the things I learned from them."
Rubbing his chin in consideration, Az then glances sideways at Kattarin and then asks you, "Your 'prior' role was as an educator, right?"
You gulp but nod and say, "Yes."
"Okay, then I need you to actually use that power for practice, to see its limitations, and as a demonstration. Lady d'Jauney, I fear that you are our test subject and your refusal is ill advised," Az says, idly cleaning his nails with a dagger both of you blink at a few times over when exactly he had pulled it out.
You look at Kattarin and say, "I don't think I can hurt you with this power, but I will be extra careful."
Kattarin looks between you and Az with sick worry before she deflates somewhat and says, "I really have no choice, do I?"
"Oh, you always have a choice, its just that many people often are unwilling to accept the consequences of certain decisions. For tomorrow's prosperity, I suggest you acquiesce today," Az says with a shrug.
"Right..." Kattarin says, before turning to face you. After a moment she asks, "So what do we..."
"Just sit down, I think this is going to be tiring for both of us," you state, finding a good place for both of you to be seated.
Raising a finger to signal and interjection, "While the ability to establish the appropriate atmosphere has since passed us by, I suggest in the future that you have a certain script to follow and a certain degree of pageantry. You want people to step outside the mundane when interacting with you, placing them in a position of unease and discomfort. As a benevolent witch, you thus serve as shepherd and guide, and to defy you is to court disaster, not from your actions but from the forces only you understand."
There was a pause, the air only stirred by the sun and sea, before Az shrugged and said, "Eventually after one too many questions one of the better witches just sat me down and explained why my questioning their practices wasn't helpful from a pragmatic viewpoint, at which point I agreed with their assessment and just went along with things."
"Okay, who are-" Kattarin began, before you decided to activate your power and dive in. Her surface thoughts are an obvious ball of anger and fear, but that questioning line carries an obvious streak of curiosity. You know vaguely how this is all supposed to work, so you grab that line and then attach it to a piece of your own mind. Energy surges within you as you copy out a set of memories that you have hooked onto that questing emotion. The amount of energy required to do that drains everything you have in you for the day, but you can feel it mostly take hold just before you collapse from exhaustion.
You wake up tucked into a hammock, the sun setting on the horizon, your head splitting from your usage of that power. You're probably going to need to work on that, since collapsing like that to impart basic skills probably lacks the degree of gravitas that Az appears to want for your role.
Heading back on deck, you find no sign of Az but Kattarin looking out at the sea, pensively.
"Before you did that, I couldn't have told you what a capstan was, not really, but now I can look at all the parts of the ship and give a more or less accurate accounting of what it is, and what it does. I could probably at least help the Sinner's crew along with their tasks as well," she explains, her voice distant. "I... I was trying to ignore them before, but you got all of that from them, didn't you?"
You come up alongside her and consider apologizing for just shoving random information into her soul, but instead you opt to go, "Yes." You glance at her spirit, and notice that the information you put there still seems to be resting on the surface, but that it is also slowly getting integrated in. Constant exposure was probably helping there. Something to remember, and you think that part of what the demon had been doing before involved making room deeper in a person's soul to fit the information it imparted.
Another silence for a time, before Kattarin said, "The current plan is that we're going to sail to New Baraba and pick up an initial crew of buccaneers there. I can write a letter to my father to explain what has happened to his ship and send it off to Zeehum and from there to the Semish homelands. Given Dagwood's antipathy for them and Az's... Az-ness, I've managed to convince him that we should focus our attacks upon the Juntlunders rather than the Semish. We're still working out what the story will be... but I think that's the best course for protecting my family's name."
You nod and stare out at the red waters darkening to black as the sun slips behind the horizon. You need to consult a map, but you're pretty sure that New Baraba is several weeks sailing away still. Sarna was something of a pirate republic, but the former Juntlund and current Fleirlunt island was considered to have none of the civilizing graces of the merchant city.
The trip, especially since the ships needed to remain in close proximity to each other, was indeed several weeks long, and you also were unable to do much more work on the crew of the Sinner as Az is no longer leaving you to your own devices. He has a training regime for both you and Kattarin, who is going to be his figurehead, although whether she will be the 'captain' or the 'voice of the captain' is something still being worked on as Az puts you both through your paces. The lessons are... strange, especially for you.
You wake up around sunrise each day for breakfast and physical training, which comprises you and Kattarin being forced to do various physical tasks around the ship to build up strength and endurance, followed by sparring with Az, which is equal parts terrifying and enlightening. Az's skill with weapons is such that he can adjust how much of a challenge he is to be precisely just out of reach. While sometimes he will abruptly end a spar and leave either one of you with a fresh bruise so as to prevent the development of certain bad habits, more often than not he will allow the spars to go on, to let the person he is fighting with think that maybe, just maybe, they are catching up to him. Outside observation and hindsight always proves this a false hope, but in the heat of the moment he always manages to draw out the best from his student, getting them to learn and innovate and take risks that they wouldn't if Az were going full out all the time. At some point you realize how devastating this could be in an actual battle, in that he could easily lull skilled opponents into thinking that they had a chance and getting them to make a gamble that against someone else would be only a moderate risk, but against Az opens up an easy kill.
You are somewhat grateful that you only have a spar with Az every day or even every other day, whereas Kattarin has multiple spars each day. After your initial bit of combat training, while Az continues to work on Kattarin, you get to have magic training, which for the most part involves spending about a quarter of the daylight hours draining your energy reserves with somewhat random flailings, and then working on replenishing them through meditation and inward focus. That process also has you dredging up other, older memories, but they are jumbled and not necessarily useful. Who you were before the cult abducted you and made you a vessel for the demon remains a mystery, but the fact that you remember how to hunt with a bow and arrow deepens your suspicion that you had lived within the jungles of highland Sarna.
Despite the fact that Az seems unusually delighted to hear of your skill with old weapons, that also doesn't stop the afternoons from involving further training for you and Kattarin, this time with gunpowder weaponry. Despite knowing that he died thousands of years before the introduction of the weaponry, you can't help but remain impressed by Az's capability to pick up and understand them easily enough. You don't get to fire them that often, the supply of powder being limited and no one wanting to waste it, but the practice of maintenance of the muskets and pistols with the occasional firing along with work on the ship's cannon to learn the basics of their operation and maintenance tended to eat up the afternoon.
By evening it was your second round of magic practice and Kattarin got a half session of sparring and a half session of leadership skills, which you often got the periphery of while meditating. As it turned out, Kattarin was quite skilled at legal arguments and rhetoric, but in a very dry way that Az immediately said indicated that she had obviously learned from a book. He spent his time teaching her things like how to actually motivate people and get them to agree with you and your demands, rather than simply argue with them. He has all sorts of advice there, all of it useful, but also strangely unsettling at times. You think you could have lived your whole life without knowing the best way to convince someone to agree to a plan that will get them killed and you know will get them killed. Despite the fact that Az can give demonstrations of charisma that make you glad you're already seated when he does so, he also has such a remarkable capacity for being cold-blooded that you are reminded of just who and what he is.
After the evening meal, when everything is slowed down for the night, is another joint lesson, this time on acting. For you, Az focuses on getting you to take on the role of mysterious benefactor. For the most part it is all about how you hold yourself, and what you don't say. Your job is to be coy and indirect, a mediator between the mundane and the supernatural, and you learn to a degree of surprise that most witches - at least in Az's day - didn't have any powers of their own, but did have pacts with various spirits who would lend assistance. You already mostly knew that most magic comes from various spirits and demons, and a human being with any sort of magic usually indicates some sort of past and deep rooted interaction, the most common being a parent or grandparent being one of the more corporeal sort of spirits. Still, the way Az described it, you were probably one of the stronger direct magic users among the world, even if there were undoubtedly other scholars of the occult with more practical power than you. To a great extent this probably meant that all of his lessons on acting, misdirection, and the presentation of it all was even more important for you. Demonstrating too much power would paint an even bigger target on your head than you already felt. Fortunately your occult knowledge meant that you could perform some of the more standard rituals once you got the right implements and had a steady surface to work from, which meant you would have to wait for land, or at least to be anchored.
The acting lessons among the three of you also allowed you to try out how exactly you would present yourselves to the outside world. Your role was obvious: the advisor and healer of the group, but you were slowly starting to settle on something more specific as Az's 'keeper'. Every night you tried out a couple of variations on a theme, and it was evolving that Az was to be a figure of dread, something to be unleashed upon those that stood in your way. Whether he was to be the captain or the captain's brute remained an open question, but either way you were starting to hammer out a story for the world. Kattarin was the 'reasonable' one, the one who could partly restrain Az, and the face of the organization. The world interacted with her, up until they pressed the point too hard and then got to deal with 'unreasonable' Az in such a way as to beg to have the charming rogue Kattarin back. You meanwhile were the enigmatic one, the one in the background presumably managing the magic that kept Az in check and providing Kattarin advice on the supernatural.
After about two weeks you also realized that Az likely intended for you to serve as a way to accelerate the training of the crew, since you would know all of the basics of what they would need to know, improving their ability to get up to speed in combat or sailing by imparting those basics right away.
This was when you starting performing more practical magic on every couple of nights just before heading off to sleep. Az had you practice implanting skills in her mind, and he also had you practice the most unpleasant skill you had of tearing skills out of other's minds, which you used to tear the basic occult knowledge out of Kattarin's head the night after you first taught it to her. Fortunately it was a poorly integrated skill, both because she was given no time to practice and because you attached it only lightly the first time - you think it might have actually gone away on its own given time and lack of practice - but it did let you learn a bit more about that power. As you suspected, you yourself got little out of the knowledge, but you could feel that in order to learn something by ripping out skills, the original owner probably had to be considerably more skilled than you. Also, from the way that Kattarin seemed to have little slivers of occult knowledge, you also had the feeling that the process wasn't entirely permanent. You would have to do major work on someone else before you could know for sure though.
Somehow plucking the thought from your head, once you entered into the island chain that held New Barabas Az came to you in the evening and asked, "So, we are almost to our destination and thus to our crew. Have you any thoughts as to what sort of person we should recruit?"
Opening an eye from your meditations upon how unpleasant hardtack biscuits were, you replied, "Not particularly, but I take it you have?"
"Astute as ever, Camilla," Az replies with one of his damnable smiles. "There is a question of what sort of characters we might wish to induct into the crew. The best sort are of course those who know how to both sail and fight, but they may prove a problem as we ourselves are only beginner pirates, and their ambitions may overcome them, leading to problems. Skilled mercenaries who can fight but not sail may be in short supply, but your abilities will ensure that they are not dead weight on the ship and can begin contributing to its operation within days of joining, learning from there. Conversely, between the two of us we can quickly transform skilled sailors, of which there is no doubt a much greater supply, into more effective fighters quickly."
"Or we could just grab whoever we can find," you point out, some part of you figuring that that was the typical thing to do, and that the phrase was often considered somewhat literal.
"Ah, but I did say 'character' here, so there is already a degree of discrimination. No, I must consider who I surround myself with, and how they should be treated. Punishment is all well and fine, but mistreating your troops is a fine way to be assassinated on campaign or cause rebellions that damage valuable resources. There are assuredly many fresh-faced, callow youths that we can draw from who would be easy to mould as we see fit, but who would also suffer disproportionately when we first blood them in combat. There are also undoubtedly older veterans who would serve us well, but who would ask for higher wages and be of a greater risk of attempting to usurp our positions - although I suppose callow youths can also more easily have stupid ideas enter their heads. However, your powers also open up an interesting new opportunity - we find the worst scum we can find, the unrepentant thieves, murderers, and rapists, and you tear them apart. You take the parts that make them a threat to everyone around them, and you excise them, you reorder them, and you set them to a better purpose. I know you have objections about such uses of your powers, but surely if we find men who would be hanged for their crimes and simply kill the part of them that causes those crimes, this is a preferable state of affairs?"
Az lapses into silence at that, and you let it continue in discomfort over his proposal. Not because it is bad, per se, but because it is not so bad. He is right that your biggest deficiency is in sailing ability, while your capacity to train for combat is much stronger. That will assuredly mean that the bulk of your initial 'best' hires would be fishermen, either young sons looking for prosperity or old men down on their luck and desperate for work, but there is something that feels intrinsically wrong about that, about turning otherwise peaceful men into pirates and getting a decent number of them killed in the process. And that already successful - or at least mostly successful since they would have to be between crews- pirates, have their own problems. So converting terrible people who deserve to die towards your tasks feels acceptable and yet there is also something slippery about it all. Az said that he liked people with morals because they gave him levers, but you feel that his leverage was the sort to change people.
After allowing the silence to stretch just a little bit longer, just a heartbeat before you yourself answered, Az added on, "Now, we'll probably have to make allowances for what we actually find one way or another, but I ask this because a mixed strategy at this point in time has issues with creating different groups of the crew who are treated differently. One or two veterans mixed in with a fresh crew becomes the petty officers and what have you to pass along their knowledge, while rookies among a veteran crew are just fresh bodies to fill space who can be hammered into shape easily enough, but if we make the crew too varied in skill and character we are likely to stir up unnecessary strife among them as there is widespread resentment. Same with picking up too many particularly unpleasant sorts that we forcibly reform, as there should either be a smattering to serve as an example or the whole crew should be that way so as to not terrify or disgust those we have not changed."
You nod at that, and at the complexity of the problem. You're pretty sure Az is asking this as advice, and to judge how far you are willing to use your powers. He probably already has an initial plan, he just wants your input so as to modify whatever it is he has in mind. As you consider this, you also speak up, "Actually, you've reminded me of another issue that you brought up. When we reach land I'm planning on doing a minor summoning of a sort of spirit. I remember there being books that refers to them as 'demons', but the actual demon in my head used a somewhat different term that is best translated as 'spirit' and seems to indicate some fine distinction between the two. Anyway, I think you mentioned it, but the witches you knew often had pacts with 'teaching demons', right?"
"That is broadly correct, yes," Az says, a slight twinkle in his eyes suggesting that he still remembers what you were talking about before.
"Right, right, but anyway, what sort do you think I should summon as an initial practice? There are all sorts of esoteric skills they might be able to teach that the crew could need," you explain.
Az considered for a moment before he smirked and said, "That depends somewhat on what sort of crew we get, does it not? However, off the top of my head medicine and astrology are always important and will better help you settle into your role as mysterious but benevolent sea witch, and considering the inherent power in magic and the occult I would never begrudge you seeking to expand your knowledge there. Given the role that is developing for you, I might also suggest looking to speak with something truly exotic that might assist you in growing your capacity for magic, although you may wish to expand your occult knowledge there first." He counted off the four things he figured were important, and then shrugged at the end.
Suggested recruitment focus (skill)
[] Pirate
[] Warrior
[] Sailor
[] Indiscriminate
Suggested recruitment focus (attitude)
[] Inexperienced
[] Veteran
[] Scum
[] Indiscriminate
Initial spirit skillset
[] Medicine
[] Astrology
[] Occult
[] Magic
A/N: Had this planned out, but had a headache yesterday so couldn't sit down and write for the life of me. Have a 3.8k update as way of apology for the delay
Small Nerd
Meganekko
- Location
- Out There
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X]Pirate
[X]Veteran
[X]Magic
[X]Veteran
[X]Magic
- Location
- Germany
Suggested recruitment focus (skill)
[X] Warrior
cause Sailor can be taught and pirate skills should come with time
Suggested recruitment focus (attitude)
[X] Inexperienced
cause the Inexperienced can be easier trained and it should be easier to secure their loyality for the long run
Initial spirit skillset
[] Medicine - allows us to heal when people get hurt, which I kinda expect to happen often
[] Astrology - would help with Sailing and might even allow us to 'look in the future'
[] Occult - would resonate with our Occult(Knowledge), might allow us to perform some advanced stuff
[X] Magic - might allow us to upgrade our magic skills even further or unlock new ones
[X] Warrior
cause Sailor can be taught and pirate skills should come with time
Suggested recruitment focus (attitude)
[X] Inexperienced
cause the Inexperienced can be easier trained and it should be easier to secure their loyality for the long run
Initial spirit skillset
[] Medicine - allows us to heal when people get hurt, which I kinda expect to happen often
[] Astrology - would help with Sailing and might even allow us to 'look in the future'
[] Occult - would resonate with our Occult(Knowledge), might allow us to perform some advanced stuff
[X] Magic - might allow us to upgrade our magic skills even further or unlock new ones
Pandemonious Ivy
Panties, Revolution. Big Drawers. Parachute.
[X] Warrior
[X] Inexperienced
[X] Occult
Thought process is simple:
Warriors are people that are willing to/able to/wanting to fight. We pick them up because they're least likely to be squeamish. Plus we can teach them what we know of running a ship and figure out the rest from there.
We get inexperienced warriors who will grow with us and are more likely to end up loyal over time.
Focus on the Occult so we make sure we know what we're doing with the forces we're messing with, then we can move on elsewhere.
[X] Inexperienced
[X] Occult
Thought process is simple:
Warriors are people that are willing to/able to/wanting to fight. We pick them up because they're least likely to be squeamish. Plus we can teach them what we know of running a ship and figure out the rest from there.
We get inexperienced warriors who will grow with us and are more likely to end up loyal over time.
Focus on the Occult so we make sure we know what we're doing with the forces we're messing with, then we can move on elsewhere.
Aoinfinity
Unlimited Blue Works
- Location
- a blue Infinity
[X] Warrior
We've already shown we can teach sailing well enough, and put a pirate crew back together from scratch, so battle skill is the more pressing need.
[X] Inexperienced
With our education magic, we can get significantly more effectiveness out of an inexperienced crew than average. Naturally this doesn't exclude taking a small number as petty officers.
[X] Astrology
I'm quite curious at how astrology would work in practice.
We've already shown we can teach sailing well enough, and put a pirate crew back together from scratch, so battle skill is the more pressing need.
[X] Inexperienced
With our education magic, we can get significantly more effectiveness out of an inexperienced crew than average. Naturally this doesn't exclude taking a small number as petty officers.
[X] Astrology
I'm quite curious at how astrology would work in practice.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In terms of molding efficiency, Scum is probably the higher, actually, since adding stuff takes power, while removing stuff replenishes it. That said, i don't think individual magic expenditure is going to be much of a problem either way.
AZATHOTHoth
༼ つ ☀️_☀️ ༽つ
[X] Warrior
[X] Scum
[x] Medicine
So we'll be able to heal our future crew members when we get into battles.
[X] Scum
[x] Medicine
So we'll be able to heal our future crew members when we get into battles.
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