>>25872458
Huh...that image has nipples in it.
Do we have nipples?
If so, check their sensitivity.

>>25872458
Last we left off the heir was asking us what the hell we wanted with the city. Repasting the last reply:

"My goal is the unification of Margell, so that it may stand against the onslaught of Golgoth. Until now, Sholta has not only decided to work with Golgothan daemons, knowing or not, but also decided to attack my own forces. So you see, either I have to remove this city, or it follows my orders from now on. I stress the fact that I am being unusually forgiving with this city by offering you this compromise at all."

>>25872458
Boss you gonna jump on the IRC? Got a question.

>>25872585
i posted that in last thread. Changed my mind since. Please wait while I type it out on phone.

>>25872658

And you can't ask in thread because...?

>>25872694
It's not specifically about TDQ, so figured I'd keep the thread clean of miscellaneous chatter.

>>25872660
We want to be rough here. Nice got us nowhere last. Start by going corporeal and staring into his eyes for a few seconds to get a read on his emotional state. Then flatly state "last I was here I answered questions freely and was attacked in return. No more." Then change into an amused grin and say, playfully, "I gave the prevoous Count two hours which he has not made use of. In the interest of speeding this up, I will sell you answers for one of those hours per question. Your choice."

>>25872754
Good tone, should force some answers out of him.

>>25872754

"I ask again," he says, "what do you want with this city?"

And yes, I know, tiny update for a long delay. Something came up. Should be good now.

>>25873183
"My goal is the unification of Margell, so that it may stand against the onslaught of Golgoth. I recently earned the ear of the Duke ruling in place of their "King" of Kestis in Shorefall, while Sholta on the other hand has decided to work with Golgothan daemons, and even joined them in attacking my allies. I would much prefer a Sholta working towards achieving my goal, and given that it's been doing the opposite of that, I will have to either remove Sholta or force it to follow my will.

More specifically, on the short term I would want Sholta to do everything that can be done to secure Margell, including to send its soldiers to assist in the war in Ommos, both the present and the future against Golgoth. Longer term... Well Margell needs a ruler, but I have yet to conclude who of you mortals is the most fitting. Once that is so, I'm sure Sholta's influence as a neutral party can be useful in ensuring that person become King as well.

One hour."

Phew, that one took me a while. Sorry.

Also, I was hoping to hear how he looked in the post you're quoting. Like, was he looking scared, angry, nervous, did he break away from the stare, stuff like that. Posted my response above without that info, but it would still be nice to know.

>>25873545
I can't find anything wrong with this, or think of anything to add.

>>25873653

While, a combination of scared and angry and he's not breaking away, if that changes anything.

>>25873832
Well that's an improvement over the last one. Could've hoped for just scared considering his age and probably inexperience, but it'll do. Stay the course.

>>25873889

"Sholta will not declare for Kestis," the young Count says, and then flicks out his dagger and rams it through your stomach. The practiced motion gives you little time to react. You stagger away, bleeding badly as the young Count wrenches the dagger from your stomach, but it'll be a solid ten minutes before you actually black out from blood loss, a few minutes more if you can find the time to stop the bleeding some.

In retrospect, going corporeal in front of the guy whose father you just murdered may not have been the wisest choice.

>wat do?

>>25874127
Does going into shadow form stop the bleeding temporarily? Shadows cant bleed, so.

>>25874127
Getting real tired of your shit, Sholta. Real tired.

>>25874167
Wondering about that too.

>>25874167
>>25874247

Shadow Form won't slow the bleeding at all. Blood casts a shadow, so the shadow of a person will bleed the shadow of blood, and as far as the arbitrary laws of magic are concerned, that's basically the same thing.

>>25874461
Well damn. I don't think we can count on these guys not to murder us in the meantime. I guess we'll have to go shadow and try to find some place we can hide and recover, but I'm not sure if we can even make it out of the castle at this point. How difficult is it for us to move?

delude him with "you've killed me. immediately going to [place outside of town] without talking to anyone and waiting there will bring your father back." then hide and heal somewhere.

he seems like a cool guy. we should keep him.

>>25874890
We're going to murder everyone in the city anyway, and we wont heal that fast.

>>25874890
I think that would be two delusions. In our current state, that's probably going to knock us out instantly. The first could be dropped, but if we're in shadow form we don't need to remain unseen anyway, because there's probably nowhere in this place we could hide long enough to recover.

Hm, unless maybe someone voluntarily kept us hidden. Perhaps that scholar guy from the previous meeting would do it, in exchange for daemonic knowledge or something. He seemed like one of the few people who didn't want to murder us.

>>25875022
This is an interesting idea, but is it worth the risk? It's hard to tell.

>>25875045
probably not

>>25875045
Depends on what else we have. We have to hide somewhere to recover, the question is what places we even have available. That's mostly dependent on how far we can make it.

>>25874658

Your maximum speed is slower than normal, but you can still run.

>>25874890

As >>25875022 mentions, that's two delusions, and since you're currently dizzy with blood loss and getting worse by the second, that's a dangerous amount of exertion. You aren't *guaranteed* to black out from it, but it is a strong risk.

>>25875129
Yeah, TM how far could we make it out of the city before blacking out?

>>25875264
I don't think "out of the city" is the correct direction. Unless the terrain immediately outside the city allows for good hiding places, we could be found by anything while recovering, unable to defend ourselves. We've probably got a better chance finding a hiding place in the city proper.

>>25875264

You'd be lucky to make it to the gates. You've got about ten minutes and you're close to the city's exact center right now, with lots of walls between you and the outside, not to mention miles of open plains and farmland surrounding the city before you reach even lightly forested areas.

>>25875524
That settles it then, we're hiding in the city. We can try to look for an out of the way hiding place, like somewhere in sewers if there are any, or we can bet on finding mercy in a random house. The trick on the latter would be convincing them not to tell the guards about us, since we don't want those involved at all, but if we can do that we should be able to recover safely.

>>25875678
I agree, we need to find a sewer entrance if there are any.

>>25875678
>>25875772

You might not have time to try both. Are we checking for sewers first?

>>25875841
Yeah, lets do it.

>>25875841
Personally I'd put my money on trying to find someone who will take us in. Even if sewers can keep us safe from the majority of people in the city, it could very well leave us exposed to a small, very bad portion of them. I prefer our chances with pity.

>>25875948
TM if we black out all active delusions cease right? If we have to use a delusion to get someone to take us in, they could turn us over once it expires. That would be bad.

>>25876008
But is Sholta so edgy that we need a delusion to convince someone to take mercy on a wounded little girl?

>>25876100
Everyone here has tried to kill us in one fashion or another multiple times now. I'm not willing to take the risk that some peasant isn't gonna risk pissing off the (rather huge) military presence here over a little girl.

>>25876131
The alternative is hoping that the sewers don't contain anything that would do horrible things to us while we're vulnerable.

>>25876008

Yes, all Talents that can be turned off are turned off when you lose consciousness. Only things like Fortitude remain on at all times.

>>25876100

This is not a functioning first world democracy. These people frequently live on the razor's edge of starvation and another mouth to feed walking up and asking for shelter might provoke the kneejerk reaction of "get lost," not because these people are amoral jackasses but because they can barely take care of their own children. To say nothing of the fact that this level of poverty means that children, especially ones who don't have homes of their own to retreat to, are often thieves (because how else are they going to stay alive when they aren't old enough to pull anywhere near their weight on a farm or mine?).

On the other hand, Sholta has been mostly free of the wars that have ravaged the rest of the land for the past 50 years, which means they'll be relatively prosperous, so it is not impossible that someone will be willing to lend a hand out of pity.

>>25876263
Fine, try the sewers then.

>>25876421
>>25876203

You enter your Shadow Form before the new Count can stab you again and flee from the room. He's left stabbing at the wall. "Guards!" he shouts, chasing after, "follow that shadow! And fetch a priest to tell us how to kill it!"

You flee through the castle. Normally you can nimbly climb up the wall with the expertise granted by tens of thousands of years climbing into difficult to reach places, but badly wounded the climb takes its toll much worse than normal. You are nearly exhausted by the time you get across the wall and into the city at all.

Darkness clouds the edges of your vision as you search for a sewer entrance. Does this city even have a sewer? They aren't very common in shitholes like this, but Shorefall had one...

You stagger around for several minutes until you're half-blind from the darkness at the edges of your vision, lightheaded and dizzy. If there are sewer entrances you haven't found them, but on the bright side you don't think there's anyone following you...But you can't really tell. Hard to process things, hard to think. This is very bad.

>wat do?

>>25876868
Sounds like we aren't going anywhere. I guess try to find the most out of sight spot in our immediate area, get there and use our last strength to try use some of our clothing to stop the bleeding so we'll be stuck here as short time as possible.

OR we pray for some good fortune and use our last strength to bang on the nearest door and beg to be hidden. Because getting off the streets would be massively helpful right now.

They're both pretty bad options, but I somehow doubt the streets would offer much in terms of hiding places, especially in a city with so many guards patrolling, so I'd go for the second.

>>25877268
We're better off slumping in a dark corner and hoping nobody finds us. Here's hoping we can pass a Hide check while unconscious.

>>25877394
>>25877268

If we don't have a consensus as to whether we hide in an alley or ask for help, let's roll for it.

Rolled 70

>>25877637
Hide in an alley.

Rolled 79

>>25877394
You sure? It could take a while to recover, seems almost certain that some people will find us and one of them could easily decide to not just ignore it.

>>25877637
I'd still try a door.

>>25877803

And we have a winner. Staggering to the door, you hammer on the frame, and an irritated looking housewife opens the door. "Help," is all you manage to get out before teetering forward. You don't even remember hitting the floor.

You can barely remember or process the next few...Hours? Days? Months? You fade in and out of consciousness for a time. There's shouting and screaming that you're too tired to process. You feel an incredible pain and panic upon the realization that you've been decapitated. You open your mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.

For an eternity, you can't breathe. It is unbearably cold. You come to the realization you are underwater, your half-regenerated body's organs and nerves exposed to the frigid water. And then you white out from pain and come to and realize all over again.

Something drags you across the ground, heedless of your half-formed state. A few breaths of air rudely interrupted by a punctured lung. You gasp again.

Some time later your lungs reform again. You regain coherence for a moment. You're in a bed in a room warmed by fire. A pair of decaying corpses guard the entrance. Mari is slumped to the side beside your bed. Dead? Sleeping? You look down to see your chest and arms nearly whole, your legs a pair of bloody stumps, and white out from pain again.

When you come to, Mari stands over you, one hand clenched around your wrist while your legs stitch themselves back together. "Spirits, finally," she says, exhausted, slumping backwards.

"How long?" you ask, hoarse.

Mari hands you a cup of boiled water and says "it's December."

>wat do?

>>25878132
Hug Mari passionately.

>>25878132
"Damn it all, got careless. I'm sorry. What'd I miss?"

>>25878132
Well fuck, this didn't go very well at all.

>>25878214
>>25878237
Both, then? Don't forget to actually give thanks where due.

>>25878237
"Also, are you healing me? Shit, I must've missed a hell of a lot."

>>25878214
This.
Add in some crying and weeping too.
Lets act our appearance for once.

>>25878584
No. Too far. There's appearing to have emotions, and then there's appearing to be weak. A brief display of emotion could be useful in, well, connecting with her. If she thinks that we see her as a friend, that may help her be more loyal to us, but it should be followed by getting right back to business.

>>25878214

Mari smiles a bit, and somewhat awkwardly returns the hug. "Good to see you, too," she says.

>>25878237

"Well, we waited around for about three weeks before we decided something had definitely gone wrong in Sholta. So Jack brought his giant army of ghouls. Numbers were about even, but Jack's ghouls never run away. It didn't help that the Sholtan officers came down with a sudden case of exploding brains," Mari smirks. "Jack, ah, 'persuaded' the priest to tell us what they'd done to you after capturing the city. He'd told the Sholtans to cut your head off and toss it underwater, but he had no idea which body of water they'd done it in, and Jack had already killed all the soldiers. So it took us a while to find your body with Jack's ghosts, and then we had a ghoul bring it back here."

Mari opens the shudders on the window. A few months of decay have already taken their toll on Sholta, buildings collapsing and zombie patrols shambling through the streets. "We guessed that your latest visit to Sholta probably hadn't improved your opinion of them any, plus we took some losses in the fight and had to make them up somehow. Making undead is apparently really slow, so Jack went with the quick and easy type."

The door opens. A boy of about seventeen years, wired with muscle, stands in the doorway, looking impatient. "Mari, council started ten minutes ago, what are you doing?"

"Anomaly's awake," Mari says, "finally put her back together!"

"Good for you, hurry up," the boy says, "we're waiting on you."

"That's Bael," Mari says, rolling her eyes, "he's new, but he thinks he owns the place. He gets to be an officer because there's only like twelve people left in this city who can still think."

Mari gets up from her seat, and you try to follow, but are overcome by a wave of lightheadedness. This'll pass within a few hours, but for now you should probably rest. "Get some rest," Mari says, "I'll fill you in on the rest later."

>>25879195

And with that, it is time for me to go. See you guys tomorrow, where we figure out how the Hell the timeline works now.

>see you then