A Cure for Kit
Jun. 2nd, 2008 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothFriday night we had a session of the shadake game, which I forgot to write about until now for some reason. The party secured some water of corruption and escaped from the temple before it collapsed. Oh, and the temple collapsed.
Mira and Leen, having freed all the insane monstrous cultists whose transformations had failed, fled from the basement, grabbing Cho in passing as the high priest headed down to fight... but they couldn't flee the temple entirely because of the crowd harrassing Kit. Kit didn't really want to run off and abandon his friends, so he made a vow to the crowd that if they didn't lock him up and let him see his friends, he'd stay in the temple until he knew what the water had done to him. Since he *did* know what the water had done (nothing), he figured it would be an easy vow to keep.
So back in the common room, he met up with the others, included Bob -- back in the feriphal body -- who was badly mentally scarred from something he didn't want to talk about. Kit siphoned off enough of his insanity that he was feeling normal again, but in the process managed to seriously freak himself out -- Bob had suffered lasting sanity damage by trying to possess the high priest, who wasn't... human. Maybe he was a dragon, maybe he was something else, but he was definately something really freaking creepy. And he'd been running the cult under false pretenses -- he was really searching for a way to remove a curse from himself.
The quality of the damage meant that Kit couldn't regenerate it in a few minutes like he'd hoped. And that he really, really wanted to be out of the building. Luckily, the building was now on fire. There was a panic, and a riot, and Kit's spell to Suggest that people leave in a calm orderly manner was phrased badly ('calm down and leave in an orderly manner') making it easy to resist, since calming down wasn't reasonable.
But a lot of people got outside, including the party, since most of the people who resisted either went to fight the fire (elemental) or loot the gift shop. While proper kitsune in fox form started nuzzling up to people to make them feel better (one of them kept insistantly bugging Kit, because he couldn't be healed in that fashion), Kit had the worshippers build an army of snowmen for him to animate and send into the fire to rescue people. Leen contributed some more durable ice sculptures, and a nice big freezing breath to calm the fire momentarily and give the snow army a fighting chance.
So they managed to save most of the cultists, and even took a trip back to the library and fetched a few of the dryad healers since there weren't enough foxes to get everyone, and Kit's healing abilities were pretty pathetic, especially with foxes around making him nervous. Then, after searching the temple in vain for any sign of Tess (presumed incinerated) or the high preist (presumed teleported away), and taking some specific samples of water of corruption, they headed to the library themselves.
It apparently *was* protected, since the summoned Thing had been able to hide the rest of the village but not it -- where Mira showed them some berries they'd taken from the tree fed on the water of corruption, and the high priest's book of results from testing the water. The dryads were horrified by the way the tree had been tormented, but did an identify spell on the berries, and revealed that they were a special kind of counterspell, that would negate any form of holy magic.
"ANY holy magic?" Kit mused, thinking about his curse.
"Here, try one," Mira said, handing him a berry.
"It probably wouldn't work," Kit said, taking it, "After all, I've tried other spells that should negate anything, and they never worked on the curse. Not to mention that I've been severely weakened, and being turned back into a fox *without* all my former power might not be useful. Still... I'm curious to see if it would work."
Too curious to resist, as it turned out. Fortunately, the berry didn't work on Kit's curse. Fortunately, because the berry *did* work on Kit himself -- his kitsune nature was made of holy magic, and when the berry nullified it he was just an ordinary fox, without any intelligence or memory or anything like that.
But he came back the next day, restored to human form by his curse of immortality. And he had a little news to relate to the party, of what he'd experienced while not existing -- some information that should have been in the library books no longer existed either, and he'd absorbed a little of it, although he hadn't really been conscious to memorize it in detail.
But somehow, with that information he'd figured out that his month-long illness had been caused by his old friend _____ (he had a name that I don't remember) who'd used some sort of synecdoche link to steal his power from a distance. It would have lasted indefinately if the dryad mage hadn't broken it. Worse, the same mage knew a spell (now missing from the library) that would let him de-power a god. He wasn't good enough to cast it, on his own... maybe if he'd had all of Kit's former power?
But he could cast the power-stealing spell again at any time, so Kit wanted to use the druid-teleport to return to Briarridge (he knew those forests well, since he'd lived a lifetime there) and steal whatever link the wizard was using to get to him -- Kit had been a willing (and later, unwilling) test subject for the mage's research, so he probably had several. Hopefully, Kit's true name wasn't enough to let him do this from a distance, since that would be hard to take back.
But the rest of the party talked him out of it. If the wizard could soul-rape Kit from thousands and miles away, how could they possibly stand up to him in person? Not to mention that Kit's other enemies ruled Briarridge.
Kit: "We don't need to fight him, just sneak in and destroy the link he's using."
Mira: "Sneak. Right. Because you're so good at sneaking."
Kit: "You didn't do any better! Leen had to rescue you from a cage."
Leen: "I think that proves her point, Kit."
So instead, Kit (using his notes on anti-magic, and an hour or so of work) made some caster shells for Mira to carry, that would cast a mordenkainen's disjunction on him to (hopefully) break the wizard's soul-stealing spell if it happened again. He couldn't restrict them to just that one spell because of what they were and because he was improvising, and they'd only work on targets that had allowed themselves to be wizard-marked by Kit (a ritual that made it easier for Kit to cast spells on them), which meant Kit himself and Cho.
Cho: "Don't use them on me unless it's an emergency."
Kit: "I thought you didn't use magic? This will only dispel magical effects, so you should be fine. Probably."
Cho: "I'd rather not find out. Don't use them on me unless it's an emergency.
Then they left the book of notes on the water of corruption in the library, and headed back to find their cart and buried treasure... partially washed away by the runoff from the blizzard Leen had used to drive off the soot-men. But most of the treasure was there, Cho was able to repair the cart, and while the statue had suffered some damage and could no longer be animated as a nightmare, it could still be animated as a horse to pull the cart.
last session | next session
Mira and Leen, having freed all the insane monstrous cultists whose transformations had failed, fled from the basement, grabbing Cho in passing as the high priest headed down to fight... but they couldn't flee the temple entirely because of the crowd harrassing Kit. Kit didn't really want to run off and abandon his friends, so he made a vow to the crowd that if they didn't lock him up and let him see his friends, he'd stay in the temple until he knew what the water had done to him. Since he *did* know what the water had done (nothing), he figured it would be an easy vow to keep.
So back in the common room, he met up with the others, included Bob -- back in the feriphal body -- who was badly mentally scarred from something he didn't want to talk about. Kit siphoned off enough of his insanity that he was feeling normal again, but in the process managed to seriously freak himself out -- Bob had suffered lasting sanity damage by trying to possess the high priest, who wasn't... human. Maybe he was a dragon, maybe he was something else, but he was definately something really freaking creepy. And he'd been running the cult under false pretenses -- he was really searching for a way to remove a curse from himself.
The quality of the damage meant that Kit couldn't regenerate it in a few minutes like he'd hoped. And that he really, really wanted to be out of the building. Luckily, the building was now on fire. There was a panic, and a riot, and Kit's spell to Suggest that people leave in a calm orderly manner was phrased badly ('calm down and leave in an orderly manner') making it easy to resist, since calming down wasn't reasonable.
But a lot of people got outside, including the party, since most of the people who resisted either went to fight the fire (elemental) or loot the gift shop. While proper kitsune in fox form started nuzzling up to people to make them feel better (one of them kept insistantly bugging Kit, because he couldn't be healed in that fashion), Kit had the worshippers build an army of snowmen for him to animate and send into the fire to rescue people. Leen contributed some more durable ice sculptures, and a nice big freezing breath to calm the fire momentarily and give the snow army a fighting chance.
So they managed to save most of the cultists, and even took a trip back to the library and fetched a few of the dryad healers since there weren't enough foxes to get everyone, and Kit's healing abilities were pretty pathetic, especially with foxes around making him nervous. Then, after searching the temple in vain for any sign of Tess (presumed incinerated) or the high preist (presumed teleported away), and taking some specific samples of water of corruption, they headed to the library themselves.
It apparently *was* protected, since the summoned Thing had been able to hide the rest of the village but not it -- where Mira showed them some berries they'd taken from the tree fed on the water of corruption, and the high priest's book of results from testing the water. The dryads were horrified by the way the tree had been tormented, but did an identify spell on the berries, and revealed that they were a special kind of counterspell, that would negate any form of holy magic.
"ANY holy magic?" Kit mused, thinking about his curse.
"Here, try one," Mira said, handing him a berry.
"It probably wouldn't work," Kit said, taking it, "After all, I've tried other spells that should negate anything, and they never worked on the curse. Not to mention that I've been severely weakened, and being turned back into a fox *without* all my former power might not be useful. Still... I'm curious to see if it would work."
Too curious to resist, as it turned out. Fortunately, the berry didn't work on Kit's curse. Fortunately, because the berry *did* work on Kit himself -- his kitsune nature was made of holy magic, and when the berry nullified it he was just an ordinary fox, without any intelligence or memory or anything like that.
But he came back the next day, restored to human form by his curse of immortality. And he had a little news to relate to the party, of what he'd experienced while not existing -- some information that should have been in the library books no longer existed either, and he'd absorbed a little of it, although he hadn't really been conscious to memorize it in detail.
But somehow, with that information he'd figured out that his month-long illness had been caused by his old friend _____ (he had a name that I don't remember) who'd used some sort of synecdoche link to steal his power from a distance. It would have lasted indefinately if the dryad mage hadn't broken it. Worse, the same mage knew a spell (now missing from the library) that would let him de-power a god. He wasn't good enough to cast it, on his own... maybe if he'd had all of Kit's former power?
But he could cast the power-stealing spell again at any time, so Kit wanted to use the druid-teleport to return to Briarridge (he knew those forests well, since he'd lived a lifetime there) and steal whatever link the wizard was using to get to him -- Kit had been a willing (and later, unwilling) test subject for the mage's research, so he probably had several. Hopefully, Kit's true name wasn't enough to let him do this from a distance, since that would be hard to take back.
But the rest of the party talked him out of it. If the wizard could soul-rape Kit from thousands and miles away, how could they possibly stand up to him in person? Not to mention that Kit's other enemies ruled Briarridge.
Kit: "We don't need to fight him, just sneak in and destroy the link he's using."
Mira: "Sneak. Right. Because you're so good at sneaking."
Kit: "You didn't do any better! Leen had to rescue you from a cage."
Leen: "I think that proves her point, Kit."
So instead, Kit (using his notes on anti-magic, and an hour or so of work) made some caster shells for Mira to carry, that would cast a mordenkainen's disjunction on him to (hopefully) break the wizard's soul-stealing spell if it happened again. He couldn't restrict them to just that one spell because of what they were and because he was improvising, and they'd only work on targets that had allowed themselves to be wizard-marked by Kit (a ritual that made it easier for Kit to cast spells on them), which meant Kit himself and Cho.
Cho: "Don't use them on me unless it's an emergency."
Kit: "I thought you didn't use magic? This will only dispel magical effects, so you should be fine. Probably."
Cho: "I'd rather not find out. Don't use them on me unless it's an emergency.
Then they left the book of notes on the water of corruption in the library, and headed back to find their cart and buried treasure... partially washed away by the runoff from the blizzard Leen had used to drive off the soot-men. But most of the treasure was there, Cho was able to repair the cart, and while the statue had suffered some damage and could no longer be animated as a nightmare, it could still be animated as a horse to pull the cart.
last session | next session
