Embracing Perfection
Jun. 28th, 2008 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we had a session of the shadake game, where Mira revealed that she had a MAP. With places marked on it. The party decided to go visit one of them... even though it might mean their DOOM!
As it turned out, it wasn't that hard to get back from the safehouse. There wasn't anything but flowers for a day's travel in any direction, but Mira could run a day's travel in five minutes flat, to scout. And about a day's travel away, to the southeast, boom, forest.
To cut the time shorter, Kit could teleport to someone using an arcane link -- a bit of hair, say. That Mira could give him, before running to the edge of the forest.
"Hey," one of the NPCs they'd accidentally brought with them said, "I've got a piece of my wife's tooth in this wedding pendant..."
Unfortunately, his wife was swimming. In the nude. At the bottom of a lake. Fortunately, Kit was able to dismiss the portal before the *whole* lake flooded through, and Mira had extra clothing for the poor woman.
While following the original plan, they did happen to run into some pilgrims worshipping the 'new god' -- they'd heard a prophecy about the new god in Ankh Morpork, but hadn't had time to do anything about it. They didn't really have anything to do about it this time either, but they did teleport them to Briarridge with them, since it was closer to their destination, as Mira showed on her map.
Oh yeah, Mira had a map, with (apparently) the fountains marked -- there was Mirnath (the name of the dragon they'd fought near the water of life), Quinn (the name of the priest who'd buggered off with their first batch of balance water), and Durath (presumably the name of the high priest of corruption). There was another fountain in Ankh Morpork, of course. Oh, and one 'Edom' near where the pilgrims of the new god were headed to. But Cho wanted to go see the fountain marked 'Vaal' isntead, since he recognized the name.
Kit did have a tree-port destination sort of near the fountain of Vaal (sort of near == 3 weeks travel by wagon after portalling back to the forest at an arbitrary point along the road where he'd gotten bored and first portalled them up to Trepani, earlier), so that was their next destination. As they headed down the river towards the town marked Vaal, they noticed their trip going unusually smoothly -- there was no discontentment in the conquered towns, and everyone was doing... little favors for each other, without noticing. Just like they'd seen before, near the pinioned fate spider.
The fate spider Cho tracked down wasn't dead, though -- just frustrated because he had nothing to do. Everything was happening perfectly, so he had no fates to impose.
The scary part was that the party was affected -- they found themselves doing things randomly (but purposefully) and not remembering them. At one point, half the party lost half a day doing random little favors for people that they didn't remember.
Then they came to a city that was *too* perfect -- the people didn't even *talk*. Kit decided that this was going too far, and decided to force the mysterious spell that they couldn't see that had to be controlling these people to react, while Cho and Mira watched for its response.
So he fire-- no, he tripped on some marbled. The second attempt, he levitated in midair and fireballed a passerby to death, ignoring the chamberpot that was randomly dumped on his head. Mira saw a surge of wild magic... 90 seconds *before* the experiment, from the place where the chamberpot eventually fell. Cho saw nothing. Well, he saw the ghost of the man Kit had temporarily killed, who was broken out of the spell by his temporary death.
The man told Cho about a preacher who'd convinced him to live 'perfectly', and that was the last thing he remembered. Since winter, six months ago. Cho decided to see if less drastic measures could break the villagers out of their daze, but the random person he walked up to *was* the priest. Cho *barely* managed to resist falling for his very compelling arguments, and did agree to bring the party to meet the priest the next day at his sermon, where the whole town would be present, then ran off to warn the rest of the party, who were washing up by the river.
Kit had an idea -- his suggestion spells could probably overwhelm the priest's, if the priest wasn't trying very hard (he'd have no need to, most people would fall under his sway easily with a minimal effort) and Kit was. As a precaution, Kit cast a powerful suggestion on the party that they reject everything the priest said, to avoid becoming charmed zombies for an indefinite period of time.
Then, shielded by Kit's magic, they strode confidently into the church to break the congregation free of the preist's evil spell. Only the priest had a *particularly* compelling sermon that day (he rolled a critical success), and Kit's magic was overwhelmed.
So, everyone was charmed. Three months later...
last session | next session
Well, actually, the GM called it there. Kat wasn't present, and Bob might be able to resist the charm better than Kit's spell (she/he has a skill that applies instead of having to use default saving throws) and might be able to save the rest of the party, if she does.
Barring that, it looks like a TPC (total party charm).
As it turned out, it wasn't that hard to get back from the safehouse. There wasn't anything but flowers for a day's travel in any direction, but Mira could run a day's travel in five minutes flat, to scout. And about a day's travel away, to the southeast, boom, forest.
To cut the time shorter, Kit could teleport to someone using an arcane link -- a bit of hair, say. That Mira could give him, before running to the edge of the forest.
"Hey," one of the NPCs they'd accidentally brought with them said, "I've got a piece of my wife's tooth in this wedding pendant..."
Unfortunately, his wife was swimming. In the nude. At the bottom of a lake. Fortunately, Kit was able to dismiss the portal before the *whole* lake flooded through, and Mira had extra clothing for the poor woman.
While following the original plan, they did happen to run into some pilgrims worshipping the 'new god' -- they'd heard a prophecy about the new god in Ankh Morpork, but hadn't had time to do anything about it. They didn't really have anything to do about it this time either, but they did teleport them to Briarridge with them, since it was closer to their destination, as Mira showed on her map.
Oh yeah, Mira had a map, with (apparently) the fountains marked -- there was Mirnath (the name of the dragon they'd fought near the water of life), Quinn (the name of the priest who'd buggered off with their first batch of balance water), and Durath (presumably the name of the high priest of corruption). There was another fountain in Ankh Morpork, of course. Oh, and one 'Edom' near where the pilgrims of the new god were headed to. But Cho wanted to go see the fountain marked 'Vaal' isntead, since he recognized the name.
Kit did have a tree-port destination sort of near the fountain of Vaal (sort of near == 3 weeks travel by wagon after portalling back to the forest at an arbitrary point along the road where he'd gotten bored and first portalled them up to Trepani, earlier), so that was their next destination. As they headed down the river towards the town marked Vaal, they noticed their trip going unusually smoothly -- there was no discontentment in the conquered towns, and everyone was doing... little favors for each other, without noticing. Just like they'd seen before, near the pinioned fate spider.
The fate spider Cho tracked down wasn't dead, though -- just frustrated because he had nothing to do. Everything was happening perfectly, so he had no fates to impose.
The scary part was that the party was affected -- they found themselves doing things randomly (but purposefully) and not remembering them. At one point, half the party lost half a day doing random little favors for people that they didn't remember.
Then they came to a city that was *too* perfect -- the people didn't even *talk*. Kit decided that this was going too far, and decided to force the mysterious spell that they couldn't see that had to be controlling these people to react, while Cho and Mira watched for its response.
So he fire-- no, he tripped on some marbled. The second attempt, he levitated in midair and fireballed a passerby to death, ignoring the chamberpot that was randomly dumped on his head. Mira saw a surge of wild magic... 90 seconds *before* the experiment, from the place where the chamberpot eventually fell. Cho saw nothing. Well, he saw the ghost of the man Kit had temporarily killed, who was broken out of the spell by his temporary death.
The man told Cho about a preacher who'd convinced him to live 'perfectly', and that was the last thing he remembered. Since winter, six months ago. Cho decided to see if less drastic measures could break the villagers out of their daze, but the random person he walked up to *was* the priest. Cho *barely* managed to resist falling for his very compelling arguments, and did agree to bring the party to meet the priest the next day at his sermon, where the whole town would be present, then ran off to warn the rest of the party, who were washing up by the river.
Kit had an idea -- his suggestion spells could probably overwhelm the priest's, if the priest wasn't trying very hard (he'd have no need to, most people would fall under his sway easily with a minimal effort) and Kit was. As a precaution, Kit cast a powerful suggestion on the party that they reject everything the priest said, to avoid becoming charmed zombies for an indefinite period of time.
Then, shielded by Kit's magic, they strode confidently into the church to break the congregation free of the preist's evil spell. Only the priest had a *particularly* compelling sermon that day (he rolled a critical success), and Kit's magic was overwhelmed.
So, everyone was charmed. Three months later...
last session | next session
Well, actually, the GM called it there. Kat wasn't present, and Bob might be able to resist the charm better than Kit's spell (she/he has a skill that applies instead of having to use default saving throws) and might be able to save the rest of the party, if she does.
Barring that, it looks like a TPC (total party charm).
