What Can SV Teach an Evil Sorceress? (abandoned)

[LoserThree]

0

                         NOTICES

Cacophonous Interlude is NOT active
  (the QMPC does NOT hear what you write right now)
Next story update : Sometime in July would be nice
Next vote closing : TBD
Progress toward next update : 3,146 words

Anything I post that's not in text blocks or in spoilers
may be understood to be said by the QMPC, with the
exception of the Collaboration Post
  (see Collaboration Post for details on itself)

Players do not need to use code blocks or spoilers
outside of cacophonous interludes

If you use code blocks, please limit yourself to 32 lines
and your lines to 57 characters, so that people on mobile
can read them without scrolling within the code block

This is not meant to be Plagiarism Quest.

You're not discouraged from using outside reference
material or quoting other sources.  When you do, please
cite your sources in spoilers or a code box.

 I have added some players who contributed a fair amount
the last two times as thread collaborators who can update
   the collaboration post. If you'd like to update the
collaboration post too, contact me by PM and we'll talk
                        about it.

---

Spoiler: All you really need to know to play

Check the Collaboration Post and read the latest story post in the Threadmarks to get a rough idea of where things are at.

If you're not already involved in the game, portions of either of these may be difficult to follow. But you can skip to the line that says "B R E A K" in the latest threadmarked story post and skim from there to get an idea of what's going on.

If there's no corresponding Closing The Vote post in the Informational threadmarks for the latest story post in (normal?) Threadmarks, then the game is in a cacophonous interlude and the QMPC will hear what you post, unless you do so with spoilers or code boxes. The NOTICES portion at the top of this post should also tell you if the game is in a cacophonous interlude.

So you can engage with other players, make suggestions, ask questions, and propose plans and you can compose a message to the QMPC all whether or not the game is in a cacophonous interlude. And once it is, you can vote and/or send a message to the QMPC by creating a post in the thread.

If you want to vote, simply do so as you would in other quests on this board. You may look at other players' votes to see how yours should be formatted. And you may check the tally to see that yours are counted as you intend them.

If you want to send a message to the QMPC, though, keep in mind that they are a creature of their time. They may not understand what you mean if you don't take the time to make it clear. This game rewards and demands work from its players. When a player wants to introduce a concept or tool or technology to the QMPC, that player will probably need to expend effort to explain it carefully, and take into consideration the limits of the QMPC's understanding of the world.

I think this is similar enough to Graeber's 'interpretive labor' that we can use the term colloquially to describe what is being asked of players. Put yourself in the mind of the QMPC and ask yourself how such a person can be made to understand what you want to tell them.

The QMPC has different values than we do. They have different assumptions about the world and objects and forces within it. Their goals may not align directly with number-go-up or color-get-big gaming agendas. But they want something, and will listen most attentively to players that tell them how to get more of or closer to what they want.

                    Collaboration Post!

Spoiler: How the game is meant to work

1. The Quest Master posts story updates that have 3 parts.
   • Quest Master Player Character responses to player posts made during the last cacophonous interlude
   • An update by the QMPC following a break of varying length but usually some number of years, covering what the character believes is worth mentioning
   • Requests by the QMPC for direction on a number of issues, which the players will provide in the form of votes
2. Following each story update, players posts are audible to the QMPC until voting is closed.
   This is the cacophonous interlude.
   • Players may convey any information they can represent in text.
   • No images, sounds, or hyperlinks will get through (this is my limitation, not a limitation of the game, so please do not try to transcend it with clever protocol tricks).
   • Players may use spoilers or code blocks to communicate with each other without doing so in ways the QMPC can hear.
3. When votes are tallied, the QM collects player posts so that it may be known what the QMPC heard.
   • Votes are tallied in the conventional fashion. So only votes in the most recent post by each player are counted. [X] marks what the player is voting. And only identical write-ins accumulate.
   • Some votes are querying the players for their preference, in which case the only suboptimal answer is that which does not accurately reflect the preference of the players who nonetheless chose it (I don't think these kinds of misunderstandings can be helped).
   • Other votes are intended as puzzles where there is a choice the QM believes would best meet what they believe to be the goals of the players.
     • However, in these sorts of votes the QM has in mind a choice that would provide the players with what the QM thinks they most want, but which is not listed in the available votes.
     • In this way, clever write-ins are encouraged.
4. QM reads player posts, researches their suggestions, checks notes for precedent, determines what the QMPC thinks they already know on the topic, what they're right or wrong about, how likely they are to engage with the topic, how likely the QMPC's followers are to follow-through in the matter, and finally what the result is going to be later on.
5. QM composes QMPC's responses to player posts made during the cacophonous interlude and updates their notes.
6. When narrative benefits from uncertainty and chance, QM devises tests for QMPC or other characters and makes those tests using die rolls on a post made just for that purpose.
   • Skill or attribute tests will be made with a largely undocumented homebrew modification of the Burning Wheel system, mangled to suit the format of this game. (The Burning Wheelis a good system and I encourage you to check it out.)
     • Tests may be a contest between two characters or against a static target with tiered results.
     • The rules being used and followed will be described in each post in which tests are made by die rolls.
     • Normal mortals count 7s and better as successes.
     • Heroic characters and characters who are otherwise innately magical count 6s and better as successes.
     • Demigod characters and characters who otherwise possess some spark of divinity count 5s and better as successes.
     • New gods and characters who have otherwise stolen the power of Old Gods count 4s and better as successes.
     • Old Gods count 3s and better as successes.
     • Sorcery and other magic skills lower the threshold of success by 1 to a minimum of 3 only when they are the skill being tested, not when they provide a bonus to other skills. Players may note that Old Gods' threshold of success does not improve when they use magic.
     • Bonus dice provided by Kahl's Warhorses and any incendiary devices more complicated than a burning arrow reroll 9s & 10s and keeps successes. These same bonus dice cancels successes on 1s & 2s, rerolls those, and additional 1s & 2s cancel additional successes. More 1s, 2, 9, or 10s mean more rerolling and more successes or cancelations, but only in the manner of the original die. That is, a 1 or 2 that comes up when a 9 on a bonus die is rerolled don't cancel successes or lead to further rerolling.
   • Research project results are determined by percentile dice with results falling into 5 tiers.
     • Uh oh: something has gone horribly wrong
     • Nuh uh: failure, but the boring kind
     • Huh: partial success
     • Uh huh: full success
     • Whoa: superior special case success
   • When players expect a test to be coming up -- for example if they vote for an invasion or to send a diplomat to manipulate a foreign leader -- they can improve the odds of the test turning out the way they want by providing the QMPC with advice specific to that matter. If the advice is not mistaken or outright bad, there will be at least a chance it will help. That is, decent advice adds dice.
7. QM composes the QMPC's post-break update, player vote questions, and player vote options.
8. GOTO 1

Spoiler: The Quest Master Player Character

The QMPC is intended to be the only character the players will interact with in this game. (It's kind of possible that the players could maneuver the QMPC to surrender control of the Astute Cacophony to another character, but unlikely.)

The QMPC is a small, evil woman who knows magic and has not died, despite looking like she probably should have at some point. She goes by the name Bianca the Undying. Her early life took place in the Paleolithic, in which she has said that she traveled around quite a bit and came to understand the malleable nature of populations of people and animals and even the land itself. At some point she was trapped underground, to her displeasure. She remained trapped for a very long time.

When Bianca got out, she found her way to a community of eight tribes living pastoral and agrarian lifestyles in the local Copper Age. She made these people hers and they relied on her for magically enriching their fields so that they did not need to slash, burn, and move around a bit, unlike their neighbors. Bianca and her followers formalized their relationships into the Eight Ways Pact. Later, another tribe joined Bianca's followers bringing small horses and the Bronze Age and their pact was updated with a ninth directive.

Bianca has an agenda that requires her to have more power than she does right now. She believes that achieving divinity will get her that power.

 

[Ciber]

I've just been doing a re-read, and I think something fucky is going on with old quotes.
Just look at LoserThree's last post above. The quote with my economic plan definitely showed the plan when Iast read it, but now it shows an entirely different part of my vote post.

 

[LoserThree]

Spoiler: Oath Breaker

"That's well done then. And fair is fair, what is it you want now? … My story? You don't want a fruitful bargain with some demon or child-rearing advice or a love potion? … Well, it's a good story at least. You're not cheating yourself too badly.

"I was just past the Rites of Autonomy the first time I saw a demon. It was the slightest little thing, a floating ember trying to be a face. And it had to get right up to my ear before I could hear it. I was astounded by the sight of it, there in my bedding place. But it was just a simple thing, barely suitable for carrying the message it brought me. The only broker I knew of had noticed the way I looked at him and, though his demonic courier, promised me exactly what I was looking for. … What? No, not power. Adventurous sex. We'll get to the power part soon enough.

"Ah. I see your problem. You're thinking like cityfolk. But I grew up with roads and ranges, not streets and high walls. Out in the country we didn't get Rites of Autonomy until four or five harvests past where you cityfolk cut your kids loose. Our thinking meats aren't yet fully formed, then, but we've had a few more years of seasoning. And I was winter born and so had more moons past, anyway.

"No, no. I wasn't that ignorant of such matters. I had a good idea of what I wanted and I wasn't finding it in the local people my own age. And you may be sure it wasn't for any lack of seeking. I wanted a sure-handed lover and even before sweet words had passed from demon lips to my ear, I had an inkling I'd find that and more in the broker. I was also fond of the shape of him and the way his face was more than what his mother had made it to be, that it had a bit of weathering. And when his messenger prattled on about the importance of secrecy for whatever reason, well, that only made it all more exciting. So I told a lie about being somewhere else for a moon or so, snuck off, hid in the broker's tongueless carriage, and waited for him to whisk me away, just as instructed.

"Everything was great for nearly a half-moon. I won't say I didn't have any complaints, but the sex wasn't the problem, not until it was. And by that point, him taking without permission was a capstone on a whole archway of mistreatment. No one's getting all the details, but if you ask the right folk you'll hear that when they found me, all I was wearing was a magical shackle that kept me in the cellar and I hadn't been able to look after myself to my liking.

"No, no heroic warrior or dutiful table-ruler's investigator came for me. My mother's first-wife might not have seen me sneak off, but she'd seen the looks between me and the broker and she wasn't a fool. So when the days of my lie ran out she checked after my story. And then she did the sensible thing, gathered the whole of the marriage together, and came to the broker looking for me.

"I'd put my sigil-name on a few pages in the beginning of my adventure, part of a prelude to some of the more exciting things we did with and to each other. And some of those pages had said some things that were very exciting, until they weren't. So the broker had a page with my sigil-name on it that said he could do what he was doing to me. But -- and this is important -- unlike demons, people aren't made to follow everything they agree to.

"So my mother's marriage pulled me out, against the loud and energetic protests of the broker, and took me away. They cleaned me up and looked after me for a little while before I was pulled into the matter of judgement regarding what the broker had done. I won't tell you I was in the best shape at the time. But I didn't have any trouble meeting anyone's eye, as I expect you're thinking I would.

"Meanwhile, my mother's first-wife called on the village elders to take action against the broker for what he'd done. She wanted his heart cast into the Cursed Woodlands and his body burned, and the elders were largely on her side. The broker not only claimed he was justified in his actions, but that he'd been wronged by them denying me to him. He still had his pages with my sigil-name, and he demanded a justice that aligned with what was on the page he was showing them.

"Though I didn't know it, back then, my village was subject to the Judges of Wreol and the Great School of Table-Rulers there. We weren't near the city, but by whatever arrangement it was that cities acquire what food they need from the land around them in times of lacking, the broker had some right to have any dispute he wanted brought before a proper Judge of Wreol. That hadn't happened in my mother's age, so not many thought about it. But the elders knew. … Eh? … No, this was before the return of the Undying One, so there was no greater authority in that land than the city judges. One was sent for by cote, and came most of a moon later.

"In the meantime, I'd assured my mother's marriage that I had my sense, or close enough, and they'd bullied the village table-ruler into helping me prepare my own claim against the broker. I was full of hatred for him, as you might well imagine. I'd come to fear him, too. And that fear was so great that I couldn't imagine him being done any harm, himself, over what he'd done to me. So I made my claim for what I knew he valued most, his codices of demons and bargains. At first all I hoped was to trouble him, to make him feel his most precious things weren't safely his. Later I hoped to deprive him of at least some of their number in a compromise judgment. But that's not how things went.

"The judge arrived on foot, as lesser giants do. Guards from the city came with him, along with a magician from the Great School. The village hall was prepared for the judge to work in, and the broker, I, my mother's marriage, several village elders, and a few people from a family that didn't care for mine said about what we wanted to say in front of him.

"The people on my side and I got various shades of worried and cross when the judge said he and his staff would speak with the broker without us in the hall. But once the shouting started up, it became clear the judge did not favor the broker's claim. It turned out that there are specific rules for what sort of bargains you can and cannot hold a person to. There are rules against certain imbalances in exchange. And, further, some matters are not allowed in transactions between people, not even when the terms are put so well and tightly that even the wiliest demon cannot escape them.

"The broker crashed through the outside walls of the village hall, wreathed in flames a shade of red fire doesn't get. He saw me and gave me a look that stuck with me for a long time. But he didn't slow down or come my way. The magician and one of the city guards came after him, passing over the ground without touching it. The three of them made a good mess on their way out into the range around the village. And we didn't hear back from them for three days.

"Word of what happened got around to people concerned with brokers, especially brokers not sanctioned by the distant School of the Forsworn. And I mean word of what had happened between the broker and me. So the day after the broker left, burning but not consumed, forsworn arrived at my village in a road-riding wagon at rough speed, with rough-driven horses, and looking rough-traveled.

"The forsworn called the recently absent broker an oathbreaker, as they call anyone who bargains with demons without their sanction regardless of whether they'd sworn any oaths to their Great School or any other body or person. Back then it wasn't uncommon for a village to have one or more brokers. And the dispute between the forsworn and other brokers wasn't a concern of any village folk. But they wanted the broker's codices. And I did, too.

"The forsworn claimed the codices were theirs by right of their ancient assignment to govern all bargains with demons. Now, any place that allowed unsanctioned brokers already didn't recognize that right in the strictest sense. But the judge was inclined to allow them the codices, seeing no harm in depriving the untrained of the sort of lore that wouldn't do them any good. So I made my own arrangement with the judge. I hadn't seen any lesser giant before him, or greater for that matter. And he was broad, unbent, sharp-eyed, and interesting in his face, all of which were what I liked to see in a man. We were both well pleased with that bargain. And after some admonishment of myself -- and more forcefully the village table-ruler -- for irregularities of form and content within my claim, he invited us to amend it. Then he granted my amended claim for all the codices.

"The forsworn were upset. But by that time word had gotten back that the magician had the broker cornered some ways off but wouldn't be able to fully deal with him without more help. So after hurriedly threatening me with the full weight of their disapproval and warning the village elders about what they thought I'd get up to, the forsworn took off as well. I don't remember how I heard, exactly, but it came to be known that the broker died in some fashion. And the forsworn didn't get back before I left with the entourage of the judge, with all the broker's codices firmly in my possession.

"The first demonic bargain I ever made for myself was for a means of finding lovers who would meet my desires without bringing more strength against me than I could deal with. I studied the lore for two years before I made that one and I've never regretted any bargain made with a demon. I do regret not gutting that broker myself and stealing his texts directly."

This is a story I wrote back on 2021-12-26 for this
setting. I'm sharing it because why not.

Also, I'm starting another one of these. The first vote
will be for what era the game takes place in: Stone Age,
Late Classical, or High Fantasy. Come check it out.

 

[Meridian]

FUCK AAAAAAAA My Yearning Fulfilled.
You have no idea how happy I am to see this update. I really need to get caught up and try the new one holy shit.