Keep her around for long enough, and maybe she'll get a hard enough dose of reality to ease up on some things. Or she might just keep being miserable and idealistic, who can say.
Honestly, going into this I was reasonably certain Star was going to be an antagonist for most of the story, but people kind of went out of their way to vote in a direction that led to befriending her, so here we all are.
You mean this quest was "supposed" to be about getting Ivy's body back from a terrible body-snatcher? At least that seems to be the major plot hook you're implying. Interesting that we've mostly dodged that.
We shouldn't keep her alive because Star is going to insist we don't kill her and there is no good way to resolve the situation without doing that. There is no making friends with this woman. We just killed her friend, she can't be allowed to go back to their camp and rally them against us.
Best case, we manage to lug her along to town and turn her over to the authorities.
do we even have any rope. Star could teach Ivy and Mina how to tie a proper knot
Honestly, going into this I was reasonably certain Star was going to be an antagonist for most of the story, but people kind of went out of their way to vote in a direction that led to befriending her, so here we all are.
When your actively compromising your own defense against a dangerous opponent for no good reason, than it makes you an idiot. Good person or not.
[x] Cast something worse on her -- she just tried to murder you both in your sleep!
Personally, I get that that's a good person thing to do, but.......
Like, yo, they were literally trying to kill us in our sleep. I think going out of our way to spare them is silly. Also, Ivy totally brought up the point that Star has totally killed a lot of people in her days (for her cause*~), and I'm pretty sure she's okay with that.
She's not okay with other things cause she might have been indoctrinated/grown up with that, but we're having some interesting clashes.
[x] Try to put her to sleep.
Cause I want to talk her into opening up her views and join the friendly witch opinion of "murder is okay if they literally tried to kill us just now~" ,( *-*)9 and then maybe the body can be reused or something.
We should kill her honestly. She's a bandit. In a fantasy pseudo-medieval fractured society without the resources to keep a large prisoner base. Taking her to the nearest authority will at best get her a length of hemp after an incredibly quick trial in a day or two, or maybe slavery if they are big enough to have the resources to guard her and the public works to put her to work at. If she's unlucky, the local authority will want to "make an example of her" and give her an incredibly lengthy and painful death. We could just let her live too, but let's be honest about it either, she's not going to cease to be a bandit, and she's clearly not the reluctant "I'm just doing this to feed myself", at least not anymore, even if she started as such. She's the one who'd rather kill the kid to send a message, and she's the one who followed us to kill us in our sleep. Leave her be and she'll continue killing until she's killed herself. Maybe we could put a geas on her or something of the kind to prevent that?
[X] Try to put her to sleep.
For the immediate moment, then we can talk about it with our companions.
Also, @Gazetteer do we have the ability to cast a geas or something like that, a curse that would trigger if she attacks someone, or something of the kind? Or is that outside our field?
Taking her to the nearest authority will at best get her a length of hemp after an incredibly quick trial in a day or two, or maybe slavery if they are big enough to have the resources to guard her and the public works to put her to work at. If she's unlucky, the local authority will want to "make an example of her" and give her an incredibly lengthy and painful death.
This would be an excellent object lesson for Star. Probably the best outcome we're going to get, as far as forming some kind of long-term friendship with her goes.
Assuming she isn't okay with just killing the bandit, that is.
I just realized that we own at least one gun now. Sweet. Wonder how much ammo she had on her.
We should kill her honestly. She's a bandit. In a fantasy pseudo-medieval fractured society without the resources to keep a large prisoner base. Taking her to the nearest authority will at best get her a length of hemp after an incredibly quick trial in a day or two, or maybe slavery if they are big enough to have the resources to guard her and the public works to put her to work at. If she's unlucky, the local authority will want to "make an example of her" and give her an incredibly lengthy and painful death. We could just let her live too, but let's be honest about it either, she's not going to cease to be a bandit, and she's clearly not the reluctant "I'm just doing this to feed myself", at least not anymore, even if she started as such. She's the one who'd rather kill the kid to send a message, and she's the one who followed us to kill us in our sleep. Leave her be and she'll continue killing until she's killed herself. Maybe we could put a geas on her or something of the kind to prevent that?
[X] Try to put her to sleep.
For the immediate moment, then we can talk about it with our companions.
Also, @Gazetteer do we have the ability to cast a geas or something like that, a curse that would trigger if she attacks someone, or something of the kind? Or is that outside our field?
That'd be a Curse, which is Soul magic, which we are bad at. We can try, especially with Ivy helping, but we're not so great at it.
Also, it's useful to remember that this is not a pseudo medieval society, you're just in the middle of nowhere. There are certainly prisons and shit in more prosperous areas (such as the city you are headed to), there's just unlikely to be a good one in tiny villages and not a lot of centralised authority in this particular region.
Cause I want to talk her into opening up her views and join the friendly witch opinion of "murder is okay if they literally tried to kill us just now~" ,( *-*)9 and then maybe the body can be reused or something.
Might be better to keep the bandit woman asleep instead of killing her if we intend to use the body. Star may find a living body more pleasant than an undead body, if there aren't any qualms about stealing the body from its current inhabitant in the first place.
[x] Try to put her to sleep for a day then tie her to a tree. No. of votes: 2 Power, The Laurent
Star does not immediately comply. "You realise that if you shoot one of us--"
"Shut up!" the bandit snaps again, gesturing with her gun, as if to remind Star that she is holding a loaded weapon. "I already told you to shut up!"
This is probably your best chance to do something, you abruptly realise, with the woman's attention so firmly fixed on Star. Raising a hand, you shout out your sleep spell cantrip, channeling magic through your words and your gesture. She jerks around, as if trying to turn the gun on you, and you half expect to hear the loud report of the pistol… but it never happens. Instead, the bandit topples over to the ground, the gun tumbling out of her hand to land nearby.
"That was close," you say, a little faintly.
"Closer than it needed to be," Ivy agrees, her voice a mixture of relief and continued annoyance.
Star doesn't immediately say anything. Apparently recognising your sleep spell for what it is -- she's had rather close experience of it, after all -- Star steps around the woman's slumbering form, and bends down to retrieve the pistol. You have just enough time to think that this is good thinking on her part as she briefly checks that the pistol is loaded and still in good working order. At that point, any such thoughts go out of your head as Star points the gun straight at the sleeping bandit's head, her face taking on a resigned, but not terribly upset expression.
"Wait!" You leap forward, seizing Star's arm with both hands, forcing the gun upward. "What are you doing?"
"What do you mean what am I doing?" she snaps, jerking her arm out of your grip. You notice that she handled the gun in such a way that she never points it at you -- she seems to have some familiarity with the weapon. Which is a commentary on exactly how old the pistol is as much as anything. "This woman just tried to murder us, Mina. She's a brigand, and a thief, and she was perfectly willing to beat that boy to death!" Star seems agitated and annoyed with you, which you think is highly unwarranted, given the circumstances.
You stare at her, momentarily dumbfounded. "Will you make up your mind?" Ivy says, evidently of a similar mind to your own.
You recover your composure enough to speak. "If you wanted to kill her, why did you stop Brute? He was going to kill her!"
Star stars at you, her indignation falling into something closer to confusion. "... there's a difference between shooting her in the head and letting a necrotic monstrosity rip her in two," she says, as if this is the most obvious and natural thing in the world. "A good, clean death like that is probably more than she deserves. But no one deserves what he was going to do. I've seen enough of what creatures like that thing do to people for any two lifetimes." She punctuates 'that thing' by pointing her free hand accusingly in Brute's direction.
"Oh, so it's just more necromancy-specific ridiculousness, not general stupidity," Ivy notes. She seems to think for a moment, muttering: "Still, though… if she's alive..." Ivy trails off without finishing her thought in any way you can hear.
"You're a sorceress, though," you say, frowning. "A sorceress who fought in wars! Wasn't it your job to… burn people alive and things like that? How is that worse?"
Star looks briefly affronted. "It just is!" she says. Then, as if realising how absurd this sounds, her shoulders slump, and she adds: "I couldn't watch it just kill her like that. It's too much… like what happened to the soldiers I was with. I'm sorry, I know it was stupid."
"Well, as long as she knows it was stupid," Ivy comments.
"... and anyway," Star goes on, "if you aim for the head, you can cook the brain almost instantly, and that--" At a look from you, she seems to realise that this is more than a little off topic. She bites her lip for a moment, before venturing: "Well, I am still for shooting her. If the rest of her people back at the bridge were willing to pick a fight with us, they'd be here too. I doubt they'll do anything to retaliate, if we don't stay in the area."
You frown. Shooting a helpless prisoner isn't something that… exactly comes naturally to you. You open your mouth to say so, when Ivy starts talking again:
"Wait. This could be useful. We can take her with us -- you heard what Star said. She's a terrible person, a thief and a murderer. We can just put Star in her body! No need to try and find a fresh one anywhere."
Somewhat doubtfully, you convey this idea to Star. She immediately looks utterly horrified.
"I said we should kill her, not steal her soul!" Star says, taking a step away from you. As if you're something dangerous, and she'd let herself forget that fact. "I told you! No one deserves that! That's the whole reason I'm even helping you help your friend! You told me that we could get an… an empty body!"
"Well, we could," Ivy conceded. "But it's more work. I know she's not the prettiest thing in the world, but she's better than nothing, surely."
Star barely lets you finish telling her Ivy's response before she interjects again "No!" Star says, angrier. "I'm not doing it!" She raises the gun to the woman's head again. "I'd rather just shoot her!"
Is that really the best option?
[x] Let Star shoot the bandit.
[x] Just leave her asleep -- try to tie her up to a tree or something for her friends to find after you're long gone.
[x] Leave her alive, but don't let her get away unpunished -- Attempt to put a curse on her with Ivy's help (Mostly Soul and Entropy).
