Turn 2 Results
New
Morrowlark
You've lost something, haven't you?
19 + 3 (Wisdom) = 22 vs. DC 12; Great Success
It might be time to make some real moves soon, but before you do you want a thorough understanding of your headquarters. You do live here, after all, which is, you know, a whole fucking thing. You don't sleep, eating is...questionable as far as your body's needs go, but a place of power and safety...not to mention that you keep all your subordinates there, and they do live there somewhat more conventionally. It's funny. If you were dealing with your average person from Sigil or some mouthy planeswalker you'd be quick to point out that "afterlife" is a life and you're not, you know, a dead person, you are an exemplar, but around here it's easy to feel like a dead person. Maybe it's the broken despair in every pair of eyes out your window, a failure of Law and Evil to properly instill their ideals and create productive cunning. Maybe it's just that the only company that sort of understands you is the damn imps.
By the Ruby Rod you're getting maudlin. That's not acceptable.
You start from the top down, under the reasoning that your tower study is too ramshackle and thin to have any secret passages. This turns out to be immediately correct; it doesn't even have a dumbwaiter, which may explain why Jesca couldn't be bothered with it. While you're up there you pick up one of the kittens and take it with you; its protests get the mother to follow, yowling at you and hissing, but you'll demonstrate that there's no need to worry soon enough. Indeed, the little one is soon falling asleep against your shoulder, because you are warm and that warmth makes it easier for the beast to believe in your veneer of grace and beauty.
There has to be servant's passages, right? Mortals go mad for that kind of thing, they're always looking to make it easier to deny the existence of their underclass. Yet another annoyance brought on by their inability to properly embrace evil...ah, here it is. The door isn't secret, exactly, but it does kinda look like a closet. You jumpscare the shit out of one of the maids when you slip inside, and absently pat her on the head on your way past, muttering something about looking for a draft.
"...Lady-Captain, there are many drafts," she says, nervous, unsure perhaps in these tales of you looking for help from your slaves.
So you sigh, and it's not hard because you are in fact annoyed, and answer: "I know. I'm taking an inventory of them. I can hardly have you all dying of a chill."
Something about this strikes a chord with your...property, technically, and she starts trailing after you and helping you make note of actual drafts and other damages which could, for instance, let in various mages and clerics and druids (and also actually bring in diseases and poisoned air on the wind, which would be inconvenient for both your staff and your budget). This. Turns into. A bit of a whole affair. Others notice you going about with this maid at your back and when they stop to look away she just. Explains the draft thing to them, and they end up joining in of their own volition. The space between your shoulder blades itches, but as you roll up a metaphorical sticky ball of your slaves it appears that they have no particularly malicious intentions and seem just as confused as you are by what's happening.
One of them picks up the mother cat and keeps her near you, where the creature repeatedly swats at your arm and demands the return of its child. You pet the kitten with one gentle finger expressly to antagonize the cat.
Your ad hoc posse presses the house floor by floor, opening doors, checking in servant's passages, lifting up beds and tapping on floorboards. Someone actually finds a spot in the drawing room where a cavity has been excavated beneath the floorboards there, though nothing more exciting than some fantastically bad yet equally old liquor is concealed within. You pass this to the original maid without a word, and she in turn passes it to someone else. This particular game of Hot Potato will be going on for weeks, you just know it already. Somehow the chef, the fucking chef, is in on this now? He's in on this now. The man is hobbling along on his crutches looking more confused than anyone else as to why he, the chef, is here.
Okay. Cellar. You've made a note of all the other NUMEROUS vulnerabilities in your headquarters which is, admittedly, not a fortress and was never meant to be. Its relative normalcy is its best defense, even if you're anxious without, oh, high iron walls, a massive height advantage, legions dedicated to defending the position, separate legions that go on the attack - but, wishes in one hand, shit in the other, see what fills up first. The cellar is. Well, there's a distinct lack of prison cells, torture implements, or armories, but on the plus side there's also a distinct lack of EVERYTHING ELSE THAT LOGICALLY BELONGS HERE. Where are the root vegetables? Where is the wine? Where is the vaguely processed foodstuffs or whatever mortals call those supplies? Fucksake, where's the floor? Where's the rest of the space -
- Wait a minute.
You ponder before you open your mouth, and then you say, with all the confusion and suspicion you are feeling: "Does anyone else think this room is too small?" Looks are exchanged, and you see your error immediately. "Not aesthetically, there's space missing down here. Look for a switch or a keyhole or something, just don't touch it..."
Did you acquiring the paradoxically volunteer force of, again, your slaves, make no sense to you? Certainly not. Is this whole thing socially awkward and yet filled with an odd, tittering laughter of sheer nervousness? Absolutely. However, it turns out they're super fucking handy right now, and as all of you canvas this room and then the other nearby ones and find -
You pinch the bridge of your nose. "I don't suppose any of you know how this happened?"
No. No. None of them do. And why would they? This building is older than all of them. So you firmly, but not cruelly, order them to the base of the stairs, and pull on the only torch scone in this stupid cellar, and wouldn't you know it, wouldn't you FUCKING GUESS, wouldn't you just DIE OF SHEER SURPRISE, a stone door slides into the nearby floor and admits you into a dark staircase, not that you need light to see. You lean in, and draw your sword before you walk down on your own. The others don't need to be told twice to stay up there...
It's. Hotter, down here? The stairs go deeper than you expected, and turn several times; you realize after a moment that they all turn at the same right angles, so that someone coming down the stairs has to fight left-handed, while a defender from below can use their right. But when you get to the bottom there is no fortress, no dungeon, no great and secret temple. Just a treasure vault, its iron door off the hinges and scored deeply by some manner of claws. A great deal of what must have been here once is gone, the coffers that held it smashed open, and yet what remains catches your eye. Spell-grade diamonds and gemstones, delicate silver figurines and idols, even a gem-encrusted chalice...
These are spell components. Very expensive spell components. And whoever rolled this place didn't think they were worth stealing.
You have discovered a potential shrine location. You gain +2 Supply. "Secure Headquarters" unlocked. "Learn Some Names" unlocked.
You come back up the stairs with just the chalice in your hands. "Good news," you announce. "We can all keep eating for a little while. Try not to touch anything down there, I'll need to check it over for magic. Very slowly! I would like to," you force a laugh, make yourself look chagrined. "...Live. I would prefer to live."
"Is it so horrible?" that first maid, whose name you promise you're going to get again and then memorize, asks with wide, concerned eyes. Which. Wow. Small goblin girl, we know we're ending slavery in favor of brutal meritocracy, but you sure don't, tone your shit down.
"It's a wizard's treasury. Do you wanna roll the dice on that?"
To the surprise of absolutely fucking nobody, this sentiment gets general agreement.
* * * *
11 + 9 = 20 vs. DC 15: Success
It is, technically, the right of all citizens and subjects to visit the necropolis. Still, it's best that you go alone, so you do. The city of the dead is strange. At first you think it's on a hill of some kind, only to remember you're on top of a giant flat rock; they've built the mausoleums and ossuaries atop one another in an imitation of the fortress-city itself, from iron, endless iron, rusting in the moist air and tainted with Bane's power. It's almost like Hell, if Hell was stupid, inefficient, still tainted with mortality, and possibly going to be murdered by you specifically. There is an increasing appeal in that idea. Heading up the project that kills a god...that'll get your name down on a few notable lists. Won't it?
But even if Bane isn't on the chopping block, it will pay to know the ways of his necropolis. And you find something interesting right at the fuckin' front. At first you think it's a human sacrifice, but the tone of the power is wrong; nothing is being stolen here, something is being...laid to rest. A funeral? You get closer and nod to yourself - a funeral. Plate-clad clerics are reaching the end of a rite observed mainly by soldiers, gently lifting the heart of a goblin from its dead chest. The body is bare on an iron altar, with no effort made to clean up or hide the wounds that killed it; from the lines of rust on the altar, this is quite common.
One of the clerics is speaking what you suspect are formal rites, though you're late for them: "...though he is fallen, Tardik's service to the glory of the Conqueror is not ended, and he shall have his hand in his own vengeance. Witness the commitment of his blood, which will quench the blades of our glorious armies!" Here the other cleric gently presses a knife to the heart, and releases a flow of blood into a brass vessel; the one holding it bows her head, and proceeds towards the city with the mourners in tow. Interesting.
Many of these tombs are seemingly not meant to be accessed, and all are sealed. You bow your head and close your eyes as you walk, concentrating, sensing, letting the touch of Mellifleur instruct you. This place is desecrated, blessed by Bane, and that's fine and normal as far as that goes - the dead need their rites, after all. Further, you're not sensing much in the way of necromancy, suggesting that not even the desperate have tried anything here, or at least not recently, though admittedly the solid iron tombs certainly discourage that, and yet there's something nagging at your senses. Something isn't right.
You start noticing a pattern where things don't feel right. Tombs marked with a variation on Bane's symbol; not merely a gauntlet wrapped in chains, but clutching splintered arrows. These tombs are more neglected than the others, have less of the touch of presence and devotion and sacrifice.
And inside them are undead. No touch of necromancy, but undead, and undeath. So, naturally-forming undead, likely mad with hunger. Can't be specters, wraiths, or shadows; it's probably wights or ghouls, at a bet. And all they need is someone to open the box.
Interesting.
Very.
Interesting.
"Operation Hollow Hunger" Unlocked. Your action to file an information request now includes a briefing from the Ministry of Immortal Affairs in general at no extra cost or risk.
* * * *
Natural 20 + 6 = 26 vs. DC 18; Success! Critical bonus!
A classic infernal education is good for many things. One of them is resisting mind-numbing tedium. The review of your properties is a perfunctory sort of affair, and is mainly concerned with extending your soft power; flash a smile here, a nervous laugh there, reassure people that you're not here to cause trouble, you just lost some part of your ledgers to your new cats, they're so precocious...
There's not much. Apartments in the local style, four stories and fitting about nine families at a crunch - you've got two of those. They are not paying rent on time. They are not paying rent at all. The subjects that live in them are haggard things, worn thin; stones you couldn't squeeze blood from if you tried, and you'd be deeply stupid to try. There are the facilities your little waste-disposal business operates out of, one of many, many such facilities from disparate, atomized interests who serve individual neighborhoods. Taking over from the literal shit upwards might not be pretty, but it will be effective. Very, very effective.
There's one on the books, though, that stands out, chiefly because when you look at it the entrance is coated with a competent, if simple, illusion. The building is supposed to be closed up, an underground storage facility for some business or other of Jesca's - her notes on the matter are so damn confused that you very soberly suspect she may have been the victim of mind control. But illusions do not work on an erinyes, and you see past them to the thugs sitting just inside a secretly open doorway, dressed in patchy armor but scrupulously clean. You scan them with your peripheral vision, taking in some of their equipment, and run some mental calculations.
Second-story men. There's a ring of thieves in your territory, and they're supported by a competent - not powerful, but at least competent - illusionist. Further, they just saw you go around all fucking day and be the most active that "Lady-Captain Jesca" has been in possibly years. This is going to be a problem. It's just a question of what kind of problem you'd like to have.
Ignoring this is not an option. Choose your approach:
[ ] Let them come to you. Begin Crisis: Home Invasion with a free Contingency and no surprise
[ ] Pick them off in the streets. Begin Operation: Shoot the Messenger with surprise on your side
[ ] Break into their hideout. Begin Operation: Under New Management with surprise on your side
The damned stand ready.