It's incredibly gratifying for my work to be nominated alongside such long running and well established quests, thank you for everyone who nominated MI.
To her credit, Logris does not falter. She does not gasp, or miss a step. She shows no outward sign of acknowedging what you said, save that her face goes immediately and perfectly blank of expression.
She walks carefully around the edges of a puddle. You start to wonder if she actually heard you.
LOGRIS: "But you are a magistrate."
LOGRIS' FACE: ...
"Yeah, apparently so."
LOGRIS: "Could you... elaborate on your position?"
"Yeah, I think it sucks dick."
This makes her face twitch, just a little. You can't quite catch the expression.
LOGRIS: "Yes, thank you. Is there anything specific you dislike about the Dynasty?"
[ ] I just don't like rich people.
[ ] The Dynasty gets too many privileges and doesn't live up to its responsibilities.
[ ] Mostly that it has orchestrated an ongoing worldwide crime wave to steal everyone else's stuff.
[ ] Dynasts own slaves. That's not great.
[ ] I am still formulating my structural critique.
[ ] You know what, never mind, I was joking.
LOGRIS: "Yes! Thank you. Nobody wants to talk about this, like they are trying to ignore it. I have been keeping notes."
"Notes on the island being weird?"
LOGRIS: "Exactly, yes."
LOGRIS' FACE: Good notekeeping is its own reward.
PHYSIQUE: NEEERD
She removes the small black book you saw her reading earlier from her greatcoat's breast pocket and starts flipping through it as you walk together.
LOGRIS: "All local minerals and flora are perfectly monochrome. There is no wildlife, not even insects, and no spirits either, as far as I can tell. Most strangely, the wind direction shifts clockwise by exactly seventy-two degrees every four hours and forty-eight minutes. The strength of the wind is not consistant, but the direction is always in a straight line. This is impossible."
"Someone really messed up this island with sorcery, huh?"
LOGRIS: "It seems likely that whatever happened is linked to Hoxiahn's manses. Whether it was the Seventh Tiger's doing or the arts of a more ancient sorcerer we have no way of knowing."
AWARENESS: DIFFICULT
CHECK PASSED
AWARENESS: Wait. Logris. Yonris. Is that a coincidence?
SAGACITY: It has to be, doesn't it? She's a distinguished Peleps captain, there's no way she has any personal connection to a Shogunate warlord.
[ ] What's causing the wind to change?
[ ] Why is everything grey?
[ ] How can there be no animals?
[ ] What's the deal with the manses?
[ ] Your name is kind of like Yonris.
Awareness, aside from senses, covers investigative knowhow and the lateral rationality required to parse abstracted pieces of information. In this case, Logris didn't actually say the name Yonris, so Vesper had to think of the name and draw the comparison independently, which I rated difficult (+1 over normal).
This was purely a rating of the feat to spot a piece of information that could have been missed, and should not be considered an indication of how valuable that information is. Please remember this next time we pass a legendary check to spot that someone has a weird accent or something.
More generally I have more or less settled on difficult feats as the norm as we continue to overperform on skill checks.
This was purely a rating of the feat to spot a piece of information that could have been missed, and should not be considered an indication of how valuable that information is. Please remember this next time we pass a legendary check to spot that someone has a weird accent or something.
fun math fact! 4 hours and 48 minutes is 288 minutes, which is 4*72 minutes! this is probably a coincidence.
second fun math fact! 72*5 = 360, so every five shifts the wind cyclically returns to it's original direction, and 288*5 minutes is 1440 minutes which is 24 hours. this is probably not a coincidence, something something what is the nature of the five part world.
LOGRIS: "Ah, yes. You have uncovered my secret, magistrate. I am revealed as I am, the Heir of Yonris, here to lead the Raigi to their promised conquest."
LOGRIS' FACE: Finally, someone has discovered the true me.
"Really?"
LOGRIS: "No, not really."
LOGRIS' FACE: Obviously.
"Oh."
LOGRIS: "If you must know, my birth name is Siamur Logris. The Siamur patrician clan is an old Zephyrite family, and we traditionally use the same transliterated Old Realm naming convention that some of the Shogunate families did. It's not popular now, but these traditions endure. The -ris suffix just means 'pillar of.'"
"So Logris means..."
LOGRIS: "Pillar of light. Yonris means pillar of ages, or pillar of epochs."
"I see. Thank you for the linguistics lesson."
LOGRIS: "You are welcome."
LOGRIS' FACE: I enjoy linguistics lessons.
You both arrive next to a large and luxurious looking tent with blue drapes over the entrance. It is right next to an identical one, presumably belonging to Usamir. Logris comes to a halt and turns to face you.
LOGRIS: "You know, you are rather more likely to be an Heir of Yonris than I am, Vesper."
"What do you mean?"
LOGRIS: "You are Bai, are you not?"
"Well, they have to be pretty."
Logris clears her throat.
LOGRIS: "No, I mean a person of the Baihu ethnic group."
LOGRIS' FACE: And not that other thing.
"I really have no idea. Frankly I'm not even sure what I look like."
LOGRIS: "Well, I hope you can work through that. But to me, if you will pardon my saying so, you look like a Baihu woman. Yonris' army was Bai. The Setoris cadet family of Ashglass, also Bai, claims descent from her. And some of the Baihu diaspora after the breaking of the Seven Tigers landed on the Blessed Isle."
"What are you saying?"
LOGRIS: "Nothing of consequence. It just amused me to think of. Outcastes can pick up their inheritance in all sorts of places. It is just remotely possible that you are returning to an ancestral home."
LOGRIS' FACE: Would that not be something worth living for?
[ ] That's a weird thing to be amused by.
[ ] No way, I probably have a way cooler origin story.
[ ] I don't care about that. Why are you a Peleps if you were born in a patrician family?
[ ] Wait, what was that about leading the Raigi to a promised conquest?
[ ] Hear me out, is it possible that I am the sorceress-queen Yonris incongnito?
"Hear me out, is it possible that I am the sorceress-queen Yonris incongnito?"
SAGACITY: No.
LOGRIS: "No."
LOGRIS' FACE: No.
"Why not, though?"
LOGRIS: "Is that a serious question?"
"I just want to know why I couldn't be. I mean, can you prove it?"
Logris stares at you for a moment.
LOGRIS: "Wait here."
She turns and enters the tent. Long moments pass.
PRESENCE: Wait, did she just ditch us?
Just as you are wondering where you should go next, Logris reappears, carrying a scroll case. She unfurls a map and holds it up to you, pointing at the centre.
LOGRIS: "Here."
NAVIGATE: NORMAL
CHECK PASSED
NAVIGATE: This is a map of the isle of Hoxiahn. You can see Ashglass up there at the top, and Thazaniel over on the east coast. The island is the shape of an egg, barring a few dents and craggy outcroppings, tilted slightly off its axis towards north-by-east. In the center there is a lake, almost perfectly circular, like a volcanic caldera. Logris is pointing at that part.
In neat, High Realm characters, the label reads "GRAVE OF YONRIS".
"Oh. What happened to her?"
LOGRIS: "The legend goes that she tried to pronounce a curse on the name that every child in the Realm knows but holds close, and never invokes unwisely. The Empress took notice, and now Hoxiahn has a volcanic lake."
SAGACITY: You have hear similar stories from other disasters. Golden fires from the sky. Waves that swallow island chains. Lightning storms that scour cities to dust. If you speak her name, she will see you, and you had best hope she likes what she sees.
INTEGRITY: You see a blurred face through a haze of blood. A weight in your ruined chest. Worse than disappointment. Indifference.
"Is it true?"
LOGRIS: "Who knows? But whatever the specifics, Yonris is absolutely, spectacularly dead. You are not Yonris. I can only do so much to clear up all of your wild flights of fancy, but please try to put this one out of your mind."
THOUGHT RESOLVED: The New Black Jade.
Logris rolls up her map and slots it back in its case with an air of finality.
LOGRIS: "Now, I should prepare. I will organize a space, and speak to talonlord Fincher about supervising our session. I will send a runner for you in a few hours. Try to stay out of trouble."
She turns to return to her tent.
[ ] Thanks, Logris.
[ ] Wait, what should I do now?
[ ] Can I come in? I want to hide from Mei.
It made me giggle to see this being the vote picked. My thanks!
Edit: I double posted because editing this post to have my vote in it felt like there might be a chance of it looking like I was cheating somehow. Not sure if cheating that way is possible but the thought of trying to figure out if it is possible, and then having to explain how I did not do some sort of unethical edit fuckery just kills me.
Edit Edit: Fun fact! Being dead does not prevent one from posting on SV. Or: There is no escape.
SAGACITY: You have hear similar stories from other disasters. Golden fires from the sky. Waves that swallow island chains. Lightning storms that scour cities to dust. If you speak her name, she will see you, and you had best hope she likes what she sees.
INTEGRITY: You see a blurred face through a haze of blood. A weight in your ruined chest. Worse than disappointment. Indifference.
