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>>5120915
Your name is Chlotsuintha, and you are in the process of a particularly messy spot of Life-Weaving. At this stage of the spell, both the piglet – which is dying – and the smuggler – who has been dead for a day – are violently spasming. Unfortunately, at this point, all you can do is trust that your needles are deep enough to stay in place, as your hands are needed elsewhere at the moment. Your right hand is occupied with manipulating the spine as the magic courses through everything. Your left hand is gripping the shuttle, which connects you to the Loom. Beyond a dull and distant pain that throbs in time with your heartbeat, no feeling remains in it. In fact, at this point in the spell, you are probably no longer physically able to loosen your grip on the shuttle. That is one of the things that makes working alone on Life-Looms dangerous. If anything ever goes wrong once the spell is fully active, you are just as strapped in as whatever you are working on. The spell – and with it, the Strangeness – will flow down the path of least resistance, which in theory, should be either the fuel or the raw material, depending on how close the spell is to completion. In practice, the Many Mysteries are often inscrutable. Even if everything is done flawlessly, things can just … go wrong. Really wrong.

Blessedly, this is not one of those times. The spell is progressing at a comfortable rate, and when you snuck a quick look down at the cadaver a moment ago, more illuminated by the glowing light of your eyes than the olive oil lamp you have nearby, you were surprised to see that the pork you stuffed into the skull had already started to turn into something akin to brain. The color was noticeably pinker than it should have been, and the consistency was closer to muscle than the fat – discrepancies no doubt caused by your choice of raw material. You doubt that it would ever properly attach to the rest of the brain or get the look right – and you know that at your skill level, you would never be able to produce working gray matter. But you do not need to get it perfect, you just need to get it good enough so that when you drop the cadaver off of the top of the palisade tonight, the guards that find him splatted do not have any reason to think that he died a day or so ago, so they have no reason to think twice about rolling back the upgraded curfew.

Time passes. Maybe ten minutes, maybe fifteen – you are not sure. If the spell was going to fail, it would have by now. You allow yourself a shaky sigh of relief, as you glace over at the piglet. Here and there, patches of its flesh have begun to turn necrotic, caused by the backwash of the spell. Additionally, it is bleeding from all of its orifices, both of its eyes have distended and the right one, the one you stuck the needle next too have started to smolder. Despite all of this the piglet is still breathing, though you are certain it is being kept alive by the spell.

>>5120918
More time passes. You do not bother looking at the piglet anymore – it is a distraction. When you do glace down from the spine, it is to look at the body. The skull has closed itself up now, and the cracks around the hole are knitting themselves together. Once the knitting is complete, the spell will focus on the smaller cosmetic issues – such as reversing the decay and redistributing the blood throughout the body. This will be the easiest part of the work, as the changes will not be as dramatic as reversing the damage to the skull, nor will they require you to alter the Forms to the extent that you had to do to create the brain replacement. When the skull was shattered, the Form of the skull became the Form of a ruined skull and some fragments of a skull. Reverting the skull to the original Form was relatively straightforward, as the fragments of bone were still recognizably skull fragments, and all you had to do was simply reverse a relatively recent change in the Form. But just because the idealization process was straightforward, that does not mean that it was easy to perform. There was quite a bit of damage to undo, and it takes time. And if the process takes longer, then that means that not only do you have to draw deeper into your magic, but there are also more opportunities for things to go wrong – for your concentration to slip at a crucial moment, for spontaneous fuel or material rejection, or even for something to happen around you that means you could no longer safely be using magic. Working with the brain was even harder, because not only were you replacing instead of repairing, but the material you were working with was further removed from your target. The Form of muscle is closer to the Form of bone, and the Form of pork is closer to the Form of a man’s bone than a man’s brain. You could have tried to pull from the piglet’s brain instead, but that would have almost certainly have killed the piglet, which would have made it harder in the end, not easier.

Probably another twenty or twenty-five minutes. With a final push, the spell reaches completion then as the body heals the last injury – the holes made by the needles. When the last of the needles is forced out, the spell sputters then quietly dies, as you release your death grip on the shuttle. You finally allow yourself to take a good, long look at the prone body of the smuggler. All traces of the injury on the back of his head is gone – though the skull is noticeably flatter in the portion where you repaired it compared to the rest of it, and the skin and the hair that grew over the wound site just look a little bit more … porcine than the bits around it. You unsuppress Strange-Staining and breathe a sigh of relief when it does not activate as you give the cadaver a complete inspection. That feeling of relief is a little soured when you look over at the absolutely mangled remains of the piglet.

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>>5120921
From snout to tail, the beast is completely necrotic – or rather, where the snout and tail were, as they have rotted off. The piglet’s gut and chest cavity both look like they imploded – with enough force that ribs were broken in the process. The pork that you cut from the piglet’s mother has not fared much better – most of it has turned to some really foul looking sludge, though it is transparent enough that you can still see …. something solid in there. Disturbingly enough it is twitching, though when you pull the needles out, it slows, and then stops. You guess that it was just some sort of residual energy … but you really do not know for sure.

As much as you would like to take a break – or even just clean up. But you cannot afford to take the time. You want the body to be as fresh as possible when it is found, but before you can dump it, you are going to need to go out and steal a Spotted Cloak for it. To that end, you spend a minute or so fiddling with the needle in the crook of your left arm, until you are satisfied that it should be able to operate as a temporary socket for your new Wand of Head Knocking. Before you leave the workbench, you grab some salt for the catalyst and the fuel-nodules that you found with the wand, as well as the improvised poke, which you cut the clean … well, the clearer of portions of into binds and a gag.

You hook one of the fuel nodules into the wand, you head into your room to retrieve the stub-club that you took off of the smuggler’s corpse. Your reasoning is that it might not be possible to use the wand at some point … or you might have already knocked someone out, and instead of using the wand again, you could use the club. Options. You want as many options as you can give yourself. There are also the pin-stilettoes … but … you do not think that they would be much help against a guard, and you doubt you have the stomach to use one on a fellow Leper.

>>5120936
You do not like it one bit, but with a needle in your left arm, you are not going to be doing any climbing. So with no other option, you are going to have to use the winch platform as an elevator. If anyone were to come into the belltower, they would obviously see it – and given the upgraded curfew, they would probably have some questions, but there is nothing for it. You make your way down on the platform, which seems to be creaking loud enough to wake the dead, and then you head out into the Midden, eyes and ears peeled for patrols. As you put some distance between yourself and the Belfry, your stomach feels sicker and sicker. Part of it is nerves, no doubt, but most of it is prospect in front of you. Tonight, not only are you going to rob a Leper, but you are also going to hurt one. Actually … now that you think about it, would it hurt? It’s dangerous –Hell, it is potential lethal – but you remember from your lessons that the brain is unusual in that it cannot feel pain from injuries inflicted on itself. Perhaps this wand will not hurt anyone after all?

Feeling marginally better about your purpose here, you look around to get your bearings and hopefully spot a mark. After having to duck and hide from an approaching patrol, you eventually find one who meets all of your criteria. Living alone, far enough away from everyone else, with multiple ways in and out of the residence, and adequately screened from the paths of the patrols by other buildings. As you move in and consider your options, you wonder if this is the best that you could do. This one is still wearing the Spotted Cloak – but if you were to look a bit longer, maybe you would find one who undressed for bed. If you could find such a mark, you might not even need to use the wand – you could sneak on in and swipe it. No magic, no question of hurting anyone, and most importantly, no chance of killing anyone … so long as it all went according to plan. Well … hmm. Your plans have not had the best track record recently, but still … stealing a pile of clothes would be much easier and quicker than stripping someone naked. And if something did go wrong while you were robbing an already undressed Leper, then you would have the wand and the club anyway.

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>>5120937
>Please Choose ONE of the following:
>Save the wand for absolute emergencies and look for an already undressed Leper. Requires three more Stealth Tests [One to find the pre-peeled Leper, one to rob him, one to make it back to the Belfry].
>This is an absolute emergency! You are in range. Use the damned thing right now. Requires one more Stealth Test [One to make it back to the Belfry].
>This is an absolute emergency … but you are worried about the wand. Get right next to him before using it, so if something goes wrong, you can use the Stub-Club instead. Requires two more Stealth Tests [One to break into his place, one make it back to the Belfry].
>This is an absolute emergency … but you are really worried about the wand. This is the first time you have ever used something like this. Maybe it would be a better idea to rely on the stub-club instead? Requires two more Stealth Tests [One to break into his place, one make it back to the Belfry].

Well, it took a little longer than I had hoped, but I am back and ready to run! Here are the previous threads - though idiot that I am dropped the 'The' on the title of the last thread. Thankfully, it still comes up just searching by title for 'Graverobber': http://thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?searchall=Graverobber

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Wand of Head Knocking, Second Degree. Kinesiology. Stable. Silent. Targets known living organisms with brains, causing the brain of the target to vibrate violently, causing concussions, disorientation, nausea, and potentially unconsciousness or even death. Can be blocked by lead. LIMITATION: The tip of the wand must be in an unobstructed line to head of the target. Range is up to six yards with casting, up to twelve with overcasting. Catalyzed with eighth-charge of salt with casting, or a fourth-charge with overcasting. Fueled with eighth-charge of an ounce-nodule with casting, or a forth of an ounce-nodule with overcasting. Some Strangeness produced on caster and on fuel source with casting, Strangeness in the Second Degree produced on both with overcasting. One-in-one-hundred chance for some Strangeness produced on target with casting, one-in-five chance for some Strangeness with overcasting. Base DC 5 for hammer cast. Base DC 10 for hammer overcast. Base DC (2+1pC) for each standard cast of a chained casting. Base DC (4+2pC) for each overcast of a chained casting. LIMITATION: Chained casts of Head Knocking, Second Degree do not have cheaper casting costs. LIMITATION: Chained casts of Head-Knocking can target up to three separate targets with seven total separate casts – any more than this requires a second action. Hammer casts and overcasts of Head Knocking has a nineteen-in-twenty chance to completely knock the target out cold for thirty seconds or so, and each chained cast or overcast of Head knocking has a thirteen-in-twenty chance to completely knock the target out cold for twenty seconds. The duration of unconsciousness stacks with subsequent successful casts of Head Knocking that also manage to fully knock out the target. Each successful cast of Head Knocking has a one-in-two-hundred-and-fifty-six chance to kill the target, determined independently from the target getting completely knocked out. For every subsequent successful cast of Head Knocking on a target that is currently concussed, the odds of outright killing the target are doubled, and then run again. Example: Chlotsuintha performs seven standard casts of Head Knocking, in a chained cast, all at one target, with no bonuses or maluses effecting her cast. She rolls seven d100 dice each with a DC of 9. She succeeds at six of them, meaning that the spell reached completion six times, and that the target has become concussed. She rolls six d100 dice with a DC of 2 to determine if any Strangeness is produced on the target. She succeeds at all of them, meaning that no Strangeness is produced on the target, though Strangeness is produced on herself and on the wand’s fuel nodule. She rolls six d20 dice with a DC of 8. She succeeds four times, meaning that the target is out cold for eighty seconds. Then the QM rolls one d256 die, one d128 die, one d64 die, one d32 die, one d16 die, one d8 die and one d4 die, all with DCs of 2. Two of the tests fail, target dies.

>>5120946
Save the wand for absolute emergencies and look for an already undressed Leper. Requires three more Stealth Tests [One to find the pre-peeled Leper, one to rob him, one to make it back to the Belfry].

Remember
>With the right arm socketed, she will get a bonus to casting with the wand, but a malus for any combat.

>>5120946
>>This is an absolute emergency! You are in range. Use the damned thing right now. Requires one more Stealth Test [One to make it back to the Belfry].
Fewer rolls, fewer chance of rolling a critfail which we cannot afford at all now.

>>5120946
>Save the wand for absolute emergencies and look for an already undressed Leper. Requires three more Stealth Tests [One to find the pre-peeled Leper, one to rob him, one to make it back to the Belfry].
its the one item everyone im the Midden owns, it should not be too difficult to steal one without assaulting someone.

welcome back Trash!

>>5120946
>This is an absolute emergency! You are in range. Use the damned thing right now. Requires one more Stealth Test [One to make it back to the Belfry].
I’m done with tests. Get it done quick and clean.

>but with a needle in your left arm

I thought we socketed our right arm? I mean, I voted for the left arm, but the right arm won.

Weren't we also supposed to begin this session with a flashback to our mother?

Anyways, I'm glad this is back.

>>5120946
>This is an absolute emergency! You are in range. Use the damned thing right now. Requires one more Stealth Test [One to make it back to the Belfry].

Assuming some catastrophe doesn't occur, nothing happening is acceptable. And if it does work but the time he/she is stunned is low it should still be enough time for us to run up and hit them with the club.

Plus, the wand is silent, so I'm not sure what could go wrong aside from magical mishaps, it isn't like failing will alert the Leper. Also, if we are already within range, and the range is 6 yards, then we are basically already close enough to get the jump on this Leper with the stub club should the wand fail anyways, 6 yards is nothing. You can't really draw a weapon or even react all that much if someone charges you from that close and you were unaware of them until that point

>>5121332
>I thought we socketed our right arm?
Uh ... whoops? You are right. We did. Don't know how I missed that.

>Weren't we also supposed to begin this session with a flashback to our mother?
We were, and I wrote the entire thing up, but then I decided against posting it. I had to give away too much information on her past in her internal monologue - and after some careful thought, I want her to remain a mysterious figure. For now, I think it would be best if the only alternate POV was Odovacar. We will still see her, but for the immediate future, it will just be through his eyes.

>>5121336
On a successful hammer cast, the wand only has a 95% chance [DC 1] of knocking someone out completely cold. On a successful chained cast, the wand only has a 65% chance [DC 7] Otherwise they will just be concussed - and could possibly shout out if they saw you, though if you attacked or tried to sneak by them in that state, you would definitely get bonuses to those rolls.

>>5120990 Three More 1
>>5121022 Three More 1 One More 1
>>5121066 Three More 2 One More 1
>>5121100 Three More 2 One More 2
>>5121332 Three More 2 One More 3

>>5121429
Another mistake. I got the DC wrong there. It should be DC 2 (fails on a roll of 1 on a d20 for odds of 95%) for the hammer cast and DC 8 (fails on rolls of 1-7 on a d20for odds of 65%) for the chained cast.

Anyway, now that we are using the wand, we need to make the decision on what kind of cast we are going to do. Currently, you have eight ounce-nodules of fuel with you for the wand, as well as more than enough salt to cast them all. You are within 6 yards of the Leper, and as overcasting this spell is only done to increase the range, there is no need to vote for that.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Hammer Cast [1/8 salt and 1/8 ounce-nodule]
>Chained Cast [1/8 salt per cast and 1/8 ounce-nodule per cast]

>>5121447
>Hammer Cast [1/8 salt and 1/8 ounce-nodule]

Ah, I skipped over the post with the description of the wand's properties in this thread because we already saw it in the previous thread, I didn't realise there were additions to it, nor did I think we'd be using d20's. I thought it'd be a unified d100 system for everything.

>>5121511
Yeah, the system is pretty complicated. Probably to the point of being a fault. That being said, there weren't any additions to the description of the wand from last thread to this thread, only a correction, where I switched 'halved' to 'doubled'.

>>5121447
>Hammer Cast [1/8 salt and 1/8 ounce-nodule]

>>5121447
>Hammer Cast [1/8 salt and 1/8 ounce-nodule]
what was the downside to hammer casting again? More straining or dangerous or something right?

Okay, we despite all of the gobbledygook underneath, all I need right now is just ONE roll of 1d100.

>Critical Success: DC 99 and higher. Target receives the concussed malus and is knocked unconscious for 180 seconds. WITH lethal intent target is killed. WITHOUT lethal intent target cannot be killed.

>Success: DC 23 and higher. Target receives the concussed malus and is knocked unconscious for 30 seconds. 50% chance of First-Degree Strangeness being produced on fuel, rendering fuel unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. WITH lethal intent 12.5% (1/8) chance that the target is killed by the spell. WITHOUT lethal intent 0.098% (1/1024) chance that the target is killed by the spell. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Partial Success: DC 3 and higher. Target receives the concussed malus. 95% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 30 seconds. First-Degree Strangeness is produced on the caster and the fuel, rendering the fuel unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. 1% chance that Strangeness is produced on the target. ~0.4% (1/256) chance that the target is killed by the spell. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Partial failure: DC 2 and lower. 75% chance of the target receiving the concussed malus. IF concussed, 25% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 20 seconds. First-Degree Strangeness is produced on the caster, fuel source and the wand, rendering the fuel source and wand unusable until the Strangeness is deal with, or it dissipates. 15% chance that Strangeness is produced on target. WITH lethal intent, 0.19% (1/512) chance that the target is killed by the spell. WITHOUT lethal intent, ~1.6% (1/64) chance that the target is killed by the spell. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Complete failure: DC 1 and lower. 50% chance of the caster receiving the concussed malus. IF concussed, 15% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 20 seconds. First-Degree Strangeness is produced on the caster, fuel source and wand, rendering the fuel source and wand unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. Two separate 15% chances that Second-Degree Strangeness is produced on the fuel source and wand. ~0.4% (1/256) chance that the caster inflicts a permanent brain injury on themselves. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

Rolled 39 (1d100)

>>5122263
Patternmaker bless my die!

>>5121946 As described in the spell, using any version of Head Knocking produces Strangeness on the caster and on the fuel. If there is Strangeness present in a fuel-nodule, then even if it still has charges left, it cannot be used until the Strangeness has been dealt with, or it dissipates away (at Chlotsuintha's current level at least - once she gets better, she will be able to cast with Strangeness-addled fuel sources). But the presence of Strangeness only becomes an issue after the spell is completed, which is the downside of hammer casting - even if it is more effective, its use of fuel is nowhere near as efficient as chained casting, at least for now.

Currently, Chlotsuintha has eight fuel nodules (and six more that she should be able to revive at some point on the Life-Loom). If she were to hammer cast Head Knocking as many times as she could at the moment, that would be a total of 8 casts, as after every cast, Strangeness would enter into the fuel, temporarily rendering it unusable. However, if she were to chain cast Head Knocking as many times as she could at the moment, that would be a total of 56 casts (assuming that she was in range, and the tip of her wand had an unobstructed line to the head of the target(s)).

Of course, there are going to be times where it is not possible, necessary or desirable to use chain casting. This is one of them.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

If this roll is a 1, then there is Strangeness present in the fuel nodule, and it must be swapped out before you can use the wand again.

Rolled 117 (1d1024)

If this roll is a 1, then the target dies.

So far, so good! Now we just need to get back to the Belfry.

> DC 33: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is a Born and Bred Sneakthief, making a basic Stealth Test like this [Easy]
> + DC 7 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is Hard to Miss, given her size
> + DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth during dusk
> + DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is Known in the Midden
> + DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Tired, and is not thinking as quickly as she should
> + DC 2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Drained, and is not moving as quickly as she should
> + DC 2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha has a temporary socket, and it makes her entire right side stiffer than normal
> - DC 15 Witchlet Chlotsuintha has Complete Knowledge of the Midden
> - DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in an area with some concealment
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in a very poorly trafficked area
> - DC 1 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently wearing underwear
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha has knocked unconscious the person most likely to notice her

> DC 21: Anything lower is a failure. [One re-roll available. Guards are on high alert; they have one hostile re-roll available]

>No Passes: Taking a swing at the Bat! One of the patrols recognizes you and gives chase!
>One Pass: A Strange Shadow. One of the patrols sees something, and gives chase!
>Two Passes: A Strange Sound. One of the patrols hears something, and the guards focus in on this area. Next roll in the Midden has two hostile re-rolls.
>Three Passes: A Quiet Night. No one sees or hears anything. You slip right through.

>Three rolls of 1d100 please!

Rolled 89 (1d100)

>>5122306

Rolled 58 (1d100)

>>5122306

Rolled 20 (1d100)

>>5122306

Rolled 1 (1d100)

>>5122310
Using the guards hostile re-roll to potential counter this pass ...

>>5122401
Well thank god crits don't get counted in rerolls. I think we should use our reroll here to counter this nonetheless.

>>5122401
Jesus Christ.

Okay, well, thankfully, there is no criticals on re-rolls otherwise you would have been in trouble. Would you guys like to use your last remaining lucky coin?

Also, here is the missing text from the roll prompt that I have forgotten two times in a row now:
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2), then you automatically fail this test, and you manage to trip during the chase, spilling the bag and losing the piglet.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99), then you automatically pass this test, and in the process, you find an old tenth-talent lying in the gutter by the toll gate.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.
>You are STRONGLY encouraged to roll again after fifteen minutes if more rolls are needed, to keep the quest moving.

Please choose ONE of the following:
>Use the remaining lucky coin for a re-roll.
>Do not use the remaining lucky coin for a re-roll.

>>5122411
>>Use the remaining lucky coin for a re-roll.

>>5122411
>>Use the remaining lucky coin for a re-roll.

>>5122411
>Use the remaining lucky coin for a re-roll.

>>5122411
>Use the remaining lucky coin for a re-roll.

>>5122593
>>5122458
>>5122419
>>5122417
Alright. Now we just need someone to roll for it. 1d100, please.

Rolled 79 (1d100)

Here goes nothing.

Rolled 90 (1d100)

>>5122665

>>5122411
Wait, why are we giving up our final reroll by giving the guards two later ones? I know this vote already passed, but if rerolls don't count as crits, would it be better to attempt a chase? I honestly haven't experienced the chase mechanics, so I am asking from a point of ignorance here.

>>5122686
Well, you are not alone. We have not been chased get in this quest but for the few anons who have stuck with me for a while, they might recognize the mechanic from my previous quest, Collapsing (though it has been reworked).

Basically, Chlotsuintha and the guards would have taken turns making rolls. If over the course of these rolls, the collective value of Chlotsuintha's rolls was high enough, she would manage to escape. If the collective value of the guards rolls got high enough, they would have chances to corner her, which if successful, could initiate a fight. Also, if either the guards or Chlotsuintha rolled poorly on one particularly roll, they would suffer some sort of consequence - like being injured or receiving some temporary malus for chase rolls, losing a weapon or an important possession, and in the case of Chlotsuintha, potentially being recognized.

Suffice to say, chases are dangerous - especially for Chlotsuintha, with her innate risk of being identified by her unusual height.

Anyway, I've got four more questions for you guys. First - the original plan tonight was to drop the now fully dressed cadaver off of the palisade - but sneaking up the thing while carrying a body is going to be noticeably harder, and you have just used up your last re-roll. Do you guys want to still go through with it, despite the increased difficulty to that stealth test, or would you rather find a rock and crush the back of the smuggler's skull before you head out, even if it might not look as convincing as the real McCoy? Second - when it becomes apparent that the 'smuggler' has stolen and is wearing someone else's clothes, and does not have his original clothes in his possession, it might raise questions. Should you burn some of the remaining rags somewhere where they will be found to make a red herring? Third - possessions. When you found the smuggler's body, he had the remains of two vials of laudanum in his pockets, and the stub-club. Should you put them back? Should you leave something else? Fourth - where to next? There are two big tasks on the table tonight - stealing the Lifting Oil and investigating the late Aldoin's house, but there are other places that you could check in on too.

>>5122738
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Carry the cadaver up the palisade before dropping it off, as planned.
>Find a rock, or use the bastards own stub-club to bash his brains in instead.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Burn the clothes
>Do not burn the clothes

>Please choose SOME of the following [choosing nothing is also an option]:
>Return the shards of glass and the corks from the vials
>Return the Stub-Club
>Plant 150 eighth-talents on the smuggler - the going price for one vial of laudanum.
>Plant two silver twenty-talents on the smuggler

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>After leaving the Midden, head to the late Aldoin's house.
>After leaving the Midden, head to the Refineries to steal Lifting Oil
>After leaving the Midden, head to the South Burying Ground and the remains of the house that the Inquisition burned down.
>After leaving the Midden, head to the [write-in, subject to QM approval]

>>5122758
>Carry the cadaver up the palisade before dropping it off, as planned.

>Burn the clothes
>Return the shards of glass and the corks from the vials
&
the "silvered snuff box" that we took (Thread #1 4949228 & >>4979957) as well seems like a better way to tie the body to a crime so that might also be something else to leave behind, also I would fell better if it was returned before we left since we probably aren't going to be able to "fence" it in time and it would probably considered valuable.

>After leaving the Midden, head to the Refineries to steal Lifting Oil
It's the next step and 2nd last thing we will need, if we have any time left after we have everything then we can go investigate.

>Find a rock, or use the bastards own stub-club to bash his brains in instead. (crouch when doing so to leave the impression of a shorter assailant)

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Do not burn the clothes

>Please choose SOME of the following [choosing nothing is also an option]:
>Return the shards of glass and the corks from the vials
>Return the Stub-Club (stash nearby)
>Plant 150 eighth-talents on the smuggler - the going price for one vial of laudanum.
>The Silver Snuff Box

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>After leaving the Midden, head to the Refineries to steal Lifting Oil

>>5122758
>Carry the cadaver up the palisade before dropping it off, as planned.
>Return the shards of glass and the corks from the vials
>Plant 150 eighth-talents on the smuggler - the going price for one vial of laudanum.
>After leaving the Midden, head to the Refineries to steal Lifting Oil

we are not going to fix the bashed skull of a corpse only to then re-bash it with a rock goddammit!

>>5122758
>Carry the cadaver up the palisade before dropping it off, as planned.

>Burn the clothes

>Return the shards of glass and the corks from the vials
>Plant 150 eighth-talents on the smuggler - the going price for one vial of laudanum.
>The Silver Snuff Box

>After leaving the Midden, head to the Refineries to steal Lifting Oil

>>5122758
>Carry the cadaver up the palisade before dropping it off, as planned.
>Burn the clothes
>Return the shards of glass and the corks from the vials
>After leaving the Midden, head to the Refineries to steal Lifting Oil

>>5122758
>>5123294
Eh, I'll also include the silver snuff box and 150 eighth-talents in my vote as well.

>>5122758
>>Please choose ONE of the following:
>>Carry the cadaver up the palisade before dropping it off, as planned.

>>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Do not burn the clothes

Burning is too much mess and smoke and noise. Let the question go unanswered

>>Please choose SOME of the following [choosing nothing is also an option]:
>>Return the shards of glass and the corks from the vials
>>Return the Stub-Club

>>Please choose ONE of the following:
>>After leaving the Midden, head to the Refineries to steal Lifting Oil

>>5122758
>Carry the cadaver up the palisade before dropping it off, as planned.

>Burn the clothes

>Return the shards of glass and the corks from the vials

>After leaving the Midden, head to the late Aldoin's house.

Patternmaker, I hate the risks that we're taking. Also, want to explain the reasoning behind investigating the South Burial Grounds and the burnt down house? I'm curious as to why Chlot would want to go there.

>>5122823
I oppose giving the body the Snuff Box, and not just because we don't know what's in it. If we plant the Snuff Box on the noticeably smaller Leaper smuggler, all we'll be doing is painting a target on our backs for the Thief-takers to take interest in us, which is the absolute last thing we need. We don't need to connect our foreign ship heist to the Leaper smuggler's murder and illicit dealings, especially since our height problem is a dead giveaway that we committed these illegal acts instead of our framed small smuggler. I'm not about to let y'all increase the risks of us getting caught and punished as uncloaked Leaped thief over some asinine plan to frame our large crossdressing crimes on the smaller Leaper smuggler, which will cause more heat to focus on us and Midden by the authorities, not lessen it as is our intention.

>>5123881
The thing is that we know that the box has "value" to someone who doesn't match up with our description and didn't steal it since it could be turned in and have the money turned back over like an "IOU".

The Crier (Thread #1 >>4979957)
> – and the honorable captain will pay another one hundred twenty-talents for the safe return of his late father’s silvered snuff box, no questions asked.

So it has a known value, which would mean that it "could" be used by someone to purchase something in place of coin, so could have been traded in by someone who bought, or was used to purchase the laudanum the smuggler "had" on him which would explain multiple vials since they would be needed to decant doses appropriately.

This may do two things, bring interest onto the body which we want, tie things in circles that don't make sense, and indicate that the "Crossdresser" will have already fenced the goods and so have likely already managed to move on, or even that they use / want laudanum for whatever reason, which we don't which is one more thing that won't add up and could draw resources further into a wild goose chase, that the guard doesn't have.

>>5123934
You're ignoring the obvious point, which is the height of the thief matches our height. Even if drawing more attention to the dead smuggler is what we want (and we don't want more attention, we want less), all you'll end up doing is painting a bullseye on our large back for not only the thief-takers, but the Midden guards as well, and I'd be surprised if the Inquisition was left in the dark about all this. It's like you're trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it, it's just gonna make the scrutiny worse on us, not better. They'll need to investigate this large Crossdresser, and our family holds the reputation of being large and eccentric in Midden. It's a bad idea to plant this Snuff Box so close to where we live, operate, and are very well known.

Heads up, my ID will have changed.

>>5123864
>Also, want to explain the reasoning behind investigating the South Burial Grounds and the burnt down house? I'm curious as to why Chlot would want to go there.

Chlotsuintha is understandably curious about the mysterious university student and his machine that appearentally exists only to attract Hook Gulls. It is possible that even after the Inquisition is done with the site, there might be some sort of clue that only a Witchlet could find. As for what Chlotsuintha could do in the South Burying Ground ... well, all I will say is that the Inquisition still has not discovered the Strangeness in the Morgue, and that Chlotsuintha has options right now that she wont have when the Inquisition starts to do their due diligence.

>>5124102
>Chlotsuintha has options right now that she wont have when the Inquisition starts to do their due diligence

Options like what? I genuinely all for taking this opportunity, but I know from experience how hard it is the change anons' vote after they've voted. I personally think that this would merit more discussion on what should be our next move.

>>5124114
I don't want to just come out and say what to do, but since you asked, I guess I could explain what I am getting at a little more directly.

Eventually, the Inquisition is going to realize that there is all this Strangeness around the Mount. Once they find some, they are going to try to track down all of it - and those breadcrumbs are going to eventually lead them to to the coffin, a coffin that should be Stranger than it currently is, as Chlotsuintha magically remediated it. (The Inquisition will have seen the effects of the Strangeness in the Morgue, so the will be able to approximate how Strange the coffin should be, based on level and length of exposure.) There is also the fact that they are going to be able to tell that the coffin was magically remediated, as mundane remediation requires the application of pressure and dramatic changes in temperature, which leaves evidence in the form of crush and burn marks, neither of which are present on the coffin at the moment.

As soon as they exhume the coffin, they are going to realize that at some point, it was in the possession of a magic user. From there, they will look at whoever could have been alone with the coffin as a suspect - and it is no secret that Chlotsuintha was alone with the coffin. So pretty quickly, Chlotsuintha is going to become their primary suspect. If she manages to pack up and leave the Mount before the Inquisition realizes all of this and tries to take her in to perform a much more through and invasive test to see if she is a magic user, they are going to correctly assume that she is a Witch(let). They will also assume that she is responsible for all of the Strangeness that they are dealing with, possibly even Aldion's death, so they will definitely be coming after her.

To avoid this, Chlotsuintha would need to come up with a plan to obfuscate her role in all of this, so even after she left, she was not a suspect. She would also need to implement that plan as soon as possible, as it is only a matter of time before the Inquisition finds the Strangeness and starts an investigation that will lead them to the coffin.

>>5123881
this anon is right, snuff box write in does more harm than good.

>>5122758
I'm willing to change my travel vote >>5123864 to
>After leaving the Midden, head to the South Burying Ground and the remains of the house that the Inquisition burned down.

>>5124231
I'm definitely up for that. What are our options for obfuscation, if you don't mind me asking?

>>5124375
Well, speaking generally, there are two points of concern here: the condition of the coffin and Chlotsuintha herself. To obfuscate this mess away, a plan would need to either address the condition of the coffin (make it look like the Strangeness was dealt with mundanely instead of magically, or alternatively, hide the coffin elsewhere) or to address Chlotsuintha (make it look like she died or was killed)

Couldn't we just drop him off the opposite side of the wall? Or wouldn't the place where he was coming from be the real object of any investigation if he had the snuff box?

>>5124626
You can drop him off of either side of the palisade, but either way, the smuggler is going to be tied to the Midden.

Anyway, I am going to go get something to eat, and then I'll be back to close the vote and get to writing. I'll also need some rolls at some point, but I'm not ready for them yet.

Dumping the body:
>>5122823 Drop 1
>>5122886 Drop 1 Bash 1
>>5123102 Drop 2 Bash 1
>>5123275 Drop 3 Bash 1
>>5123294 Drop 4 Bash 1
>>5123456 Drop 5 Bash 1
>>5123864 Drop 6 Bash 1

Burning clothes:
>>5122823 Yes 1
>>5122886 Yes 1 No 1
>>5123275 Yes 2 No 1
>>5123294 Yes 3 No 1
>>5123456 Yes 3 No 2
>>5123864 Yes 4 No 2

Placed with the body:
>>5122823 Shards and Corks, Snuff Box
>>5122886 Shards and Corks, Eighth-talents, Snuff Box, Stub-Club (nearby),
>>5123102 Shards and Corks, Eighth-talents
>>5123275 Shards and Corks, Eighth-talents, Snuff Box
>>5123294 Shards and Corks, Eighth-talents, Snuff Box
>>5123864 Shards and Corks

As per the votes, the shards and corks, eighth-talents and the snuff box will be placed with the body.

Afterwards:
>>5122823 Lifting Oil 1
>>5122886 Lifting Oil 2
>>5123102 Lifting Oil 3
>>5123275 Lifting Oil 4
>>5123294 Lifting Oil 5
>>5123456 Lifting Oil 6
>>5124375 Lifting Oil 6 South Burying Ground 1

> DC 33: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is a Born and Bred Sneakthief, making a basic Stealth Test like this [Easy]
> + DC 7 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is Hard to Miss, given her size
> + DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is Known in the Midden
> + DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Tired, and is not thinking as quickly as she should
> + DC 2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Drained, and is not moving as quickly as she should
> + DC 25 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is carrying a stiffened, dead body up a wall.
> - DC 15 Witchlet Chlotsuintha has Complete Knowledge of the Midden
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in unlit area at night
> - DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in an area with some concealment
> - DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in a poorly trafficked area
> - DC 1 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently wearing underwear
> - DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha has successfully manged a similar stealth test recently

> DC 34: Anything lower is a failure. [No re-rolls. Guards are on high alert; they have two hostile re-rolls]

>No Passes: Caught Dead to Rights! The guards see you dumping the body, so the deception fails. To make matters worse, they recognize you and give chase!
>One Pass: Just Dead Weight. The guards see you dumping the body, so the deception fails. To make matters worse, they give chase!
>Two Passes: Deadlifts. The guards hear you dumping the body, and one of them swears they hear something on the other side of the palisade after they find the body. The deception works, but anything sufficiently suspicious will ruin it.
>Three Passes: You're Clean, and He's the Jerk. By the time that the guards find the body, you are already on way.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2), then you automatically fail this test, and you sprain your ankle as you flee the guards, complicating your escape.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99), then you automatically pass this test, and in the process, stumble across a new way in and out of the Midden.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.
>You are STRONGLY encouraged to roll again after fifteen minutes if more rolls are needed, to keep the quest moving.

If there ever was a time for your luck to run white, this was it! Three rolls of 1d100, please!

Rolled 23 (1d100)

>>5124920

Rolled 26 (1d100)

>>5124920

fuck...gg no re

If we get 0 we'll just have to take the coins and our father's notes and run.

Rolled 85 (1d100)

>>5124920
Patternmaker fuck my arse

>>5124978
Bless you! Now lets hope the hostile rerolls don't fuck us.

Rolled 78 (1d100)

>>5124978
First re-roll

Rolled 25 (1d100)

>>5124978
Here we go. Second re-roll.

>>5124977
Burn everything down, take the clothes we ordered and gtfo as far as possible.

>>5124984
Fuck. Well, so much for all that. I actually don't think we can even get our father's notes, but I'd like to try. We may be on the lamb but we can still hide in the city. If we get the notes we still can learn more magick with time, and if we take a significant quantity of money then our immediate future will be secure assuming we can escape.

>>5124984
Would killing the guards at least prevent immediate detection of our identity?

>>5124985
Yeah, we'll have to use that hiding spot we found earlier. Take some essentials, food, water, enough to let us survive a day, get the notes, if we have time and carrying capacity get some money, if not we can just steal some or mug people. Hide in places like the well or other hiding spots or that one busted building. Get our dresses, escape town.

If we can't get the notes then we must not go crazy and go for the most insane choices like anons often do, we can try and escape with our life to the Great Gloom and find a teacher there, we won't be independent, but we'll have our life, hopefully.

>>5124991
You wanna fight professional fighters? I mean, I can't remember but I think our fuel nodule on our wand is strange now, I guess we could take the strangeness into ourselves(?) to spam chain-cast it and then stab everyone to death.

Well, shit.

>>5124998
It could still be worse if only slightly.

>>5124996
It counts as an emergency and would buy us valuable time to retrieve our stuff.

File: Laudanum Vial.jpg (77 KB, 750x750)

77 KB JPG

>>5124984
Fucking black luck. Now there is nothing left to do but run. Not to worry, she can climb much better than the guards can, so she should be able to avoid them - but she will have to leave tonight, with nothing more than she can carry on her back. There is nothing else for it.

Or ...

We still have the Head Knocking wand with us (the plan was to unsocket it at the last possible second, right before the climb) and the pin-stilettoes and stub-club. We could try to stand our ground and fight - get them downed and unconscious ... then slit their throats, or bash their heads in.

It is not guaranteed to work, but there is a chance - if she kills these men. Men that she could just as easily run away from.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>The Last Night. Chlotsuintha will run away, initiating a chase.
>The First Blood. Chlotsuintha will stand and fight and kill.

>>5125011
>The First Blood. Chlotsuintha will stand and fight and kill.

>>5125011
>>The First Blood. Chlotsuintha will stand and fight and kill.
We need the dresses. We stick out like a fucking pimple in the forehead with our rags, the only way to get it is by buying as much time as possible.

Wait...fuck...argh...this directly increases our chances of being followed very quickly by the inquisition and killed if we don't kill them, so our life is in danger in a sense if we don't commit these murders, and this is our father's and our legacy we are talking about. But, we also established that we were willing to risk pretty severe consequences if our life wasn't in immediate danger, we don't have to kill these men and we can easily escape. This is giving me anxiety. I also thought that we'd have to kill eventually, and I even wanted to just to get Chlot the experience she'd need to live alone in the world as a witch, but I wanted to kill fucking scum bags or people we had absolutely no choice but to kill lest our life be taken from us.

I need some time to think.

>The First Blood. Chlotsuintha will stand and fight and kill.

>>5125011
>The First Blood. Chlotsuintha will stand and fight and kill.
If the alarm doesn't go up, and we manage to contain things somewhat we could blame things on the body if we wound it before we let it fall.

I guess I'm fine with this, we really need the time to get our affairs in order. I'd at least want enough time to get some essentials and a few more coins and the dresses, and I doubt we'll have that time if we don't kill these men.

>The First Blood. Chlotsuintha will stand and fight and kill.

It is time.

>>5125011
>The First Blood. Chlotsuintha will stand and fight and kill.

Kill the guards with the stub club and plant it on the body later. We have no other choice. It should delay their investigation somewhat.

>>5125090
Also we should probably take the snuff box since leaving it here doesn’t give a benefit now.

>>5125011
>The Last Night. Chlotsuintha will run away, initiating a chase.

Also, I want a referendum on the snuff box shit again, because that was clearly a stupid idea that shouldn't have been entertained to begin with, especially since we're about to commit serial murder to compound our crimes that will be connected to us via height autism.

>>5125028
>This is giving me anxiety.

Welcome to my entire quest experience. For a couple months there's been nothing but increasing anxiety on my end as the bullshit keeps piling without any break or release. I don't want to die, but I'm being blackmailed by our Father's legacy into staying here when our luck is clearly as black as coal and all these plates that we're spinning will inevitably fall on our head, potentially killing us in the process. I just want something to go right for once without something else happening to render our efforts insignificant, or worse, retroactively fucking us over. We're just grasping at sand, struggling in quicksand, and I'm getting tired of struggling.

>>5125011
>The First Blood. Chlotsuintha will stand and fight and kill.
Here goes nothing

Okay. Before I let the next update balloon any further, I am going to write everything up to the start of the fight.

>>5125280
I'm serious about the Snuff Box referendum, it was a bad idea before this turned into a shitshow, I'm not about to let this slide as we get fucked over into oblivion by our Black Luck.

No, you need to stop messing around here. The patrols could change, or someone could wake up and see you. You need to strike while the iron is hot. This Le – this mark sleeps in a crude hovel, built leaning against the walls of a larger stone ruin. Pulling off and then pocketing your gloves, you get yourself into a position where you can see right into it, to where he is sleeping on a pad that from here looks identical to the one that you were issued, down to the stains and patches. Right now, he is snoring just loud enough that you can hear him from where you stand. The wand is already socketed in your right arm, and the fuel is already hooked in. All there is left to do is measure out the salt necessary to catalyze the spell … and take out the wand. The streets of the Midden are dark and standing outside of your mark’s hovel and inside a larger ruin, it is darker still. But even so, the yellow-white of the bone seems to gleam. The salt is coarse on your hands, and you are careful not to grip the wand too tightly, lest you risk damaging some of the inscriptions.

As you bring the tip of the wand to bear on the greasy brown mop of your mark, you swallow in a dry throat. You are acutely aware that your knowledge of wands is strictly theoretical, though you try to convince yourself that it should be exactly just like using the Life-Loom. There is a sudden noise behind you that scares you so much that you are only just able to keep yourself from crying out. Panicking, you look over your shoulder – but you see nothing. You strain your ears – but you hear nothing – aside from the regular breathing of the mark. You stand and stare and strain for what seems like a full minute, but when the noise does not repeat itself, you force yourself to turn around. Once more, you point your wand, and before you can lose your nerve, you reach into the wand, feel the power there, and call to it.

And just like that, the wand casts its spell.

Immediately, you can tell that it worked flawlessly when your target shudders and his breathing becomes noticeably more shallow. Besides that, the only evidence that you just cast a spell is the slight heat in the wand that matches the cool numbness in your arm, the wisps of smoke from the salt that was consumed … and the fact that your eyes are gleaming like stars, enough to throw light in the near total darkness. At first, you are worried about the light as you pocket the wand approach the now completely unconscious target, but once you get to work gagging and blindfolding him you are thankful for the illumination. You start to tie his arms up, but then you realize that if you do that, then you will not be able to undress him. Swearing under your breath, you start to strip him instead. You get the Spotted Cloak off of him and are in the process of unbuttoning his jerkin when he starts to regain consciousness. You strike him hard in the head with your elbows, just as your father taught you to do.

>>5125649
Between your blows and the gag, you are able to keep your mark quiet as you pull off the rest of his clothes. You take everything off of him, though you leave his boots, as you will reuse the ones that you took off of the smuggler. Before you get up and leave, you take a second to switch out the ounce-nodule attached to your wand - and while Strange Staining does activate as you look at the temporarily compromised fuel source, you are pleased to note that nodule is not smothered in the white and gray and black splotches caused by the spell, indicating that this nodule is not as far gone as you thought it would be after use. With any luck, you will be able to use it again within the day. For a moment, the unpleasant work you have done here is forgotten, and all you are thinking of is the six nodules that you left behind in the Life-Loom’s workbench, the ones that were deformed or depleted, and you wonder if you will really be able to repair – and more importantly – recharge them. If you can, you should save one of the working nodules, you know, keep it as a template.

Underneath you, the Leper moans piteously, drawing you back into the moment, and you kick yourself for getting distracted all because you are a little queasy about this. As you bind his feet and his hands, however, you notice that he is bleeding from underneath the gag, and you find yourself hoping that you just split his lip. Anything more than that – like getting a tooth knocked out, or Pattern’s Perdition, something internal – could be really serious for a Leper. Feeling kind of woozy yourself, you get to your feet and check the bonds in what remains of the dimming illumination from your eyes.

The bonds are sound, though you cannot say the same for the body they are tied on. This Leper is rail thin, and there are these painful looking pockmark scars around his neck, armpits, and crotch. Whatever is wrong with him, it seems to either originate from or attack his lymph nodes. You can also tell that he is having a hard time breathing under the gag, even though his nose is clear. Oh, wait, was he snoring because he is congested? Is he sick? Or rather, sicker than usual? You did not think it was possible, but you feel even worse about what you have just done. You resolve to pray for this man – hopefully when the guards announce that they found the body, they will mention this Leper by name, so you know who exactly to pray for. If you get a chance, maybe you could even leave him a coin, like you are going to do at some point for Vaclav. As you leave the poor man shivering on his pad, now that your eyes have finally stopped glowing, a worrisome new thought comes to you. The smuggler – who you are pretending to be right now – killed Smil and is the subject of a substantial manhunt. He would be looking to make a clean getaway. Would the guards wonder why he took the time and the risk to leave this Leper alive?

>>5125937
You think about it for about a second. You think about it as he lies there, trussed up, just like the piglet was before you muster what resolve you have left and put your foot down. It does not matter what the damned smuggler would have done – his Red Thread has run its course. This is you and your soul you are talking about here, and you know that you cannot just kill some completely defenseless Leper … not because of some needless and heedless fear that slipped into your head. Plotinus and the rest of the guards here in the Midden will want to make an end of this, not to escalate it. Besides, they cannot expect to get clear answers for all possible questions in an investigation like this. You bundle up the stolen clothes, turn and stalk away into the night, but instead of taking a weight off of your shoulders, all it does is press down harder.

You are worried that all of the work you have done tonight is going to be for naught because you left him alive while at the same time, you are sick to your stomach that you seriously thought about killing him. You clutch the bundle tight to your chest, and you try to focus on the delicate matter of sneaking through the Midden. In the narrow streets between hovels and ruins, there is very little light – so little light that you almost wish your eyes were still beaming white, just a little. Obviously, you are glad that they are not, but you certainly wish you could see better. You make your way back to the Not-Temple without incident and you use the winch platform to get you and your purloined clothes back into the Belfry, to spare your socketed right arm.

Once inside, you immediately head over to the workbench, where you left the cadaver, and get to work dressing him. Even though he is not stiffening yet, he is cool to the touch, so you have to move fast. Once you have dressed him – and checked to make sure that you dressed him correctly – you hustle into your room to retrieve the shards of glass and corks that you found on him, the ones that almost certainly came from one of the vials of laudanum that he was peddling. You carefully scoop them up and slide them into a pocket of your pocket jerkin, then you go over to where you dropped the swag you purloined from the Euthyphro. You fish out a little more than 150 eighth-talents, which based on the conversation that you overheard is the going price of one vial. Unfortunately, the monies from the haul are almost all in the largest denominations, so it takes some doing, finding enough the eighth-talents. You kick yourself for not doing this before reversing the decay on the Life-Loom, and you kick yourself even harder when you realize just how much time you are spending on this. Racing against the clock as you are, you decide to include some larger denomination coins. Not that large, mind you, just fourth and half-talents, but large for a Leper.

File: Silvered Snuff Box.png (36 KB, 72x72)

36 KB PNG

>>5126028
For a moment, you consider giving him some serious money, twenty-talents. Narcotics are supposed to be a profitable trade, after all – but you decide against it, partly because this is your money, and partially because you do not want raise any more questions – such as why this smuggler was selling laudanum in Midden to Lepers at great personal risk to himself for a fraction of what he could sell it for to some “distraught” widow or something. No doubt that guards would be asking themselves that anyway, but there is no need for you to draw attention to it. It is a fair question though, and the answer that you have come to – that the smuggler was here because of your father, just leads to a lot more questions. Was this smuggler one of father’s ‘professional friends’, or … well, suffice to say that none of the other obvious answers are appealing, though you feel really conflicted about hoping that a confederate of father’s died. Not to mention that he sold drugs and murdered a Leper.

After some thought, you decide to hold on to the stub-club. It is a well-made weapon, and you would feel much more comfortable about going into a fight with it than the pin-stilettoes. It will just have to be another mystery for the guards. There is something else though … the snuff box that apparently belonged to the late father of the captain of the Euthyphro. You swiped the thing just on a whim as you left the cabin with your swag, but the crier that you passed earlier specifically mentioned this thing in his spiel, with a reward for its return equal to the price on you head – one hundred twenty fraying talents, equal to a decade and three months’ worth of wages for a gravedigger. That is a life changing sum for any Imperial Subject, and even an Imperial Citizen would not scoff at that kind of money. A reward that large makes this thing dangerous, dangerous enough that you are seriously considering just giving it back – in a way that would hopefully tie the knock-over of the Euthyphro to the smuggler. Now that would definitely raise some questions too, but that crop of questions would have to lead any investigation away from the Midden. Before you make any decision though, you decide that you should investigate the thing first, to make sure that there is no other reason beyond sentimentality that it is so valuable to the captain. You unlatch the lid and take a look inside. You have no experience with tobacco, and you have never even seen snuff before, but the dark brown, finely ground powder matches the description you have in your head. It is dryer than you imagined, however. You poke around inside, looking for something, anything … but there is nothing. There is nothing in the snuff, no hidden compartment, no secrets. What etching there is on the box is not particularly ornate, and there is not even any inscription on the inside. He really must want the thing just because it reminds him of his father.

>>5126327
So, then should you leave it with the Smuggler? If it would mean that no one would be looking for a piratical crossdresser after tonight, then it would be an obvious ‘yes’. Your issue is that you are not convinced that it is going to work that way – in fact, the only thing you are convinced of is that you are dawdling here. Unable to come to a decision at the moment, and acutely aware that the body is presumably stiffening up again right now, you decide instead to decide later, at the scene. Hopefully, once you get everything in position, the right answer will come to you. You snap the snuff box shut, latch it up, and then slide it into an empty pocket in your pocket jerkin. You then shovel the coins you are going to plant on him before you return to the body and drag it down the stairs to the winch-platform.

Carrying the body is a real pain, especially with the needle in your right arm, but you have already decided to leave the needle in until the last possible second, so you just grimace through the pain as you move slowly and steadily through the Midden. As you do, you blink your eyes bit – which have long since adjusted back for the near darkness of the narrow streets, lit only by the moon and stars overhead. As you make your way to the palisade piecemeal, going from concealment to concealment, you find yourself reflecting on how different your experience with the wand was from your experience much earlier in the day, casting Salt-Remediation and Salt-Mitigation spells. Really, it was a complete night and day difference. With the wand, you barely felt anything – to the point that the first indication that the spell was finished was that the target spasmed when it hit. Compare that to the spells that you cast without assistance. The strain on those hit you hard, really hard. to the point that one of them made your damned nose run blood like a pump.

The black boon of magical implements is the white curse of unassisted casting. You can push yourself much, much further when you are working with implements, but not only is it more dangerous because you are calling upon more magic, it is dangerous because during operation, the implement itself is the one that is being strained, not the caster – and the feedback from strain is crucial safety net. Not only does strain indicate when you are approaching, at and past your limits, when your body is under enough of it, you will just go into shock, and the spell will end. To get to a point where a fatal or even just a debilitating incident is possible with unassisted, you have to take yourself there deliberately – baring some freak cases, of course. But with implements, the painful safety of strain is not present. You can comfortably draw and draw and draw and draw no problem, then when you disconnect from the implement, you receive a fraction of the strain the device experienced, but it that fraction is still enough to be fatal.

>>5127325
To your surprise, you manage to get to the palisade without running into any patrols. As you cut through the shell of a villa you do not recognize, picking your way through the debris and detritus, you reflect that while you would like to just chalk this up to white luck, you are worried that the patrols that should have been in this portion of the Midden have already discovered the Leper that you robbed … though perhaps not, as they would probably signal to the other guards with a whistle or horn, and you have not heard anything. Maybe you missed it? Oh, what if they signaled while you were in the Belfry, or fumbling on the winch platform? Would you have heard it then? You are not sure. Well, either way, you must remain on guard.

Encumbered as you are making you way to wall takes a little bit of doing, as the ground around here is just the basalt bedrock ubiquitous to the Mount– it is rough and uneven under your feet. Not to mention that there is even debris and the remains of walls in the belt that the guards typically keep clear on both side of the palisade. But shortly, you manage to make it to the fence, and after checking to make sure that you are hidden from the distant street by the unexpected cover, you put the body of the smuggler down, leaning him up against the wall. You are going to give yourself just a moment to recover and plan your way up. And now that you think about it, you should make a decision about the snuff box now, because if you are going to plant it on him, then it should be on him when he falls. There is also the question of just how high you will need to take up the –

From behind you, there is a roar, and less than a foot from your head, a portion of the wall explodes into splinters. As the small shards fly, you just stare at the divet in the wood dumbly, not comprehending until you hear the horn – and the shouting. Making up for lost time, you shift into a crouch and fling yourself back towards the dubious cover of the walls. Your heart pounds and your mind races as you peek out towards your assailants and your stomach drops straight into your ass when you count three guards – one with a musket, presumably the one who shot you, one with a lantern on his pike, and an officer, with the horn in one hand while the other digs at his belt for a pistol.

How the Hell did this happen? You … you were so careful! Panic is setting in as the guards begin to pick their way through the ruins towards you, and you shoot a quick glance over to where the body of the smuggler is hidden. Even if they did not see it, the fact remains that you are not going to be able run away with him on your back – you will have to leave him here. Which means all of your work tonight is going to be for naught – if anything, this will bring in even more guards. As you get ready to bolt from cover before the guards get too close, you finally are able to understand what the guards are shouting.

“Sty, stop!”

>>5127856
Your heart skips a beat, and you actually feel as if you are going to faint for a moment before fear brings you back into the moment. It is over – it is all over. Even if you escape, even if they are not sure it is actually you – the first thing they are going to do afterwards is check on the Belfry. Maybe you could beat them back there, but you are not going to be able to hide all of the magical equipment and paraphernalia. And even if somehow you were able to hide or explain everything away, it still would not matter, because your father is missing! You are already known to the Inquisition – in fact, they might be coming for you this morning to take a statement about South Sexton. There is no way out of it now, not only are you going to have to abandon most of your father’s equipment, if you do not want to get yourself mitigated and harvested for material, you are going to have start running. Right now. And not stop for the rest of your life.

The guards are going to be on top of you soon, but at the moment, the ruin of the villa is between you and them. You shift into a position to run … but as you do, the needle in your right arm tweaks you a bit, and with a dull, sick feeling, you realize that there is actually a way out of spending the rest of your life running. A way to buy you precious time to save your father’s legacy. You would still have a chance – for everything you have ever wanted or hoped or dreamed of.

And all you need to do for that chance is to kill these men.

Down them with Head Knocking, then slit their throats of bash their skulls in.

For a split second, the face of the piglet flashes in front of your eyes – twisted in pain and terror, then twisted even further in death – and you feel yourself relenting, but you stop yourself. Instead, you force yourself to think like father, to think a man would, and not some soft, weepy woman. If you let them live, these men will be the death of you. They will not be the ones to kill you of course, unless they got preposterously lucky, but they will be the death of you all the same – unless you kill them.

That is it. That is all there is to it. You need to kill them, and you need to kill them now.

You feel numb and cold as you reach for your salt. You do not bother measuring out the charge, you just coat the palm of your hand and then grip the wand. It is not good for the engraving, but you have more important concerns at the moment. Specifically, your range. Casting will only work up to six yards – beyond that, you will need to overcast your spell.

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>>5127897
>Please choose ONE of the following:

>Take this opportunity to press in as close as you can (while still remaining in cover) before line of sight is established. You will have the most opportunities to use your wand, but if anything goes wrong, the guards will be right on top of you.

>Stay where you are and engage them at the overcast range of 12 yards. This option is the best for personal safety, but it presents issues with fuel – as overcast spells require 1/4 of a fuel nodule, meaning that you will only have a maximum of four casts instead of seven to spread across your three targets (as per chain casting rules) before having to reload, giving any still combat capable guards the opportunity to counter attack, and it means that if they disengage without drawing any closer, they will be out of range, and you will have to chase after them.

>Stay where you are and engage them at the casting range of 6 yards. While this provides a mixture of benefits from the first two choices, it also means that the guards will have the opportunity to attack you first.

>>5127901
>>Take this opportunity to press in as close as you can (while still remaining in cover) before line of sight is established. You will have the most opportunities to use your wand, but if anything goes wrong, the guards will be right on top of you.
Wand success probabilities are large enough that we want to achieve the most hits possible with least fuel required

>>5127901
>Take this opportunity to press in as close as you can (while still remaining in cover) before line of sight is established. You will have the most opportunities to use your wand, but if anything goes wrong, the guards will be right on top of you.

...I think this is best, less chance of them getting away, no second degree strangeness, we initiate, high chance of success, have spare casts for a second turn though they will basically be on top of us. Though I may be misunderstanding the way the wand of headknocking works.

>>5127901
>Take this opportunity to press in as close as you can (while still remaining in cover) before line of sight is established. You will have the most opportunities to use your wand, but if anything goes wrong, the guards will be right on top of you.

>>5127901
>>Take this opportunity to press in as close as you can (while still remaining in cover) before line of sight is established. You will have the most opportunities to use your wand, but if anything goes wrong, the guards will be right on top of you.
The Patternmaker sees fit that once Chlot is given the power to fight that she must fight

>>5127901
>>Stay where you are and engage them at the casting range of 6 yards. While this provides a mixture of benefits from the first two choices, it also means that the guards will have the opportunity to attack you first.

>>5127901
>Take this opportunity to press in as close as you can (while still remaining in cover) before line of sight is established. You will have the most opportunities to use your wand, but if anything goes wrong, the guards will be right on top of you.

Welp. Here we go

Alright, almost unanimous for getting in close.

Now, everyone hold on, cause things are going to get Strange.

You need to move - get as close as you can while still remaining in cover, to give you the chance to get multiple casts off without resorting to overcasting. As you break cover, fearing a musket ball, you instinctively bring an arm up in front of your face and close your eyes, but as soon as you realize what you are doing, you force your eyes open and arm down. As terrifying as it might be, you have to look – and you cannot let whatever you may see break your nerve.

Blessedly, all you see for the moment is wall, as the guardsmen are blocked from sight by the shell of the villa. Your feet fly over the basalt as your eyes settle on your destination – a free-standing portion of the outermost wall of the villa. Between the wall and raised foundation, you are certain that it will provide the most possible protection out of all of the available cover. You are moving so quickly that you actually run straight into the wall, but you are able to keep your feet – and more importantly, keep the wand in your hand. Taking this last opportunity to prepare, you pull the stub-club out of your Spotted Cloak. If the guards do manage to close on you, you will want the weapon at hand, ready to go. Luckily, the piece of wall you are hunkered behind was built on top of a raised foundation, which juts out a little bit underneath the wall – forming a crude shelf. You rest the club there as you also reach into your pockets to withdraw two more fuel-nodules to hold in your left hand at the ready. You peek out of your new cover and suck your breath in as you get a good look at the trio of guards clanking and clattering their way through the empty interior of the stone shell. By your best guess, they going to cross the outer limit of the overcast range any second now. But when you realize that they are running towards the piece of wall that you originally dove for after first being shot at, you realize that you have enough of the advantage here that you should actually be able to pull this off. Considering your purpose here, you have conflicting feelings about that thought, but before you even start to articulate them, much less tell yourself to pull your head out of your ass and get ready, you are distracted by the stub-club starting to slowly roll towards the edge of its improvised shelf. As you glance down while you push it back into place, you realize that you are moving slowly as well, and when you look out at the guards, somehow … they are running slowly.

Before you are able to even try to make sense of this, you are hit with this inexplicable feeling of vertigo as you look out at the incomprehensible scene, then instantaneously every strand of hair on your body tries to stand on its end and there is this undeniable feeling that you are being watched from above.

Reflexively, you look up. Understanding dawns, while your heart skips another beat as you can feel your face slowly and steadily twists in terror under your lead-lined mask.

>>5130319
The clouds that darkened this night are gone. As is the moon. As is the night sky itself – replaced with something closer to shiny, shifting oil. There are no stars anymore either, save for one – the Lodestar. At least three times larger than the sun and sitting much higher in the sky, though it does nothing to illuminate the world below as it gleams angrily down at you, with long undulating tendrils of light emanating from it.

The Lodestar is not just the Keystone of the Firmament – which you suddenly realize is what appears to be the oil that has replaced the night sky – it is the lens from which the Patternmaker scries into the Realms of Flesh. Right now, He is using it to look directly at you. Perhaps at the guards as well, but all you know for a fact is that He is looking at you.

And where His gaze falls, Judgement comes.

Earlier, after that Leper appeared from nowhere to witness you attempting to enter the tunnel out of the Midden hidden in the dried up well, you were worried that he had been sent there as a form of Retribution for you refusing to even attempt a Trial that had been laid out for you – saving the Coroners and whoever else they came in contact with from the ravages of the Strangeness … and the Inquisition. And after that, when the Dressmaker Hortingea, in a bid to get you to accept charity, spoke kind and gentle words about the responsibility of those with lighter burdens to help the deserving with heavier burdens – in effect castigating you for your dereliction, you feared even the idea that perhaps the Patternmaker was directly eying your Red Thread for Judgement through Trials. Or that he was directly implementing Retribution on you for daring to ignore His challenge.

But by its inherent nature, the Great Pattern is subtle enough that the appearance of the Leper and the words of Hortingea could have just been black luck and coincidence. Without even articulating it, you let yourself believe that – doing everything you could to push the thought of a failed Trial and Retribution from your head. Things have been so hard, and you have been so deep over your head, but surely, all your problems were just … problems of this world. But now, you can plainly see that this is not the case – and that is putting it mildly. Still, more terrifying than the thought of having your Red Thread examined by the Maker right after having failed Him, is that by throwing back the curtain like this, He wants you to know that He is watching you, and that at least some of what has happened to you is caused by His direct intervention.

Wondering how you could have ever attracted His attention in the first place, you are just about to try to fling yourself to the ground and start praying, guards or no guards, when you notice that one of the tendrils of light from the Lodestar is stretching longer and glowing much brighter than others.

>>5130322
As you watch, the tip of the tendril pushes through a spot in the Firmament, and the shifting and swirling in that portion begins to get noticeably more agitated. Soon you can actually feel the immeasurable power of the Patternmaker flow through the Firmament, similar to how you can feel father’s casting if you are close enough and the spells were of a sufficient intensity. He is changing something in the Pattern – and for you to feel it, then that means whatever the change is, it is either a radical divergence from the existing Forms around you, or it is a change directly on your Form. It is even possible that it could be both, a small change to you and everything around you. That would be preferable, because if all of this power was just used on your Form, then that would mean that it was some massive, life-changing alteration – and you intuitively know that any Transformation that you put through here is not going to be an improvement, it will be an act of Retribution. A punishment.

As suddenly as it started, the tendril withdraws – His work, whatever exactly it was, completed. You do not feel any different, but the change might be so subtle that you it will not be immediately obvious. You instinctively move to pat yourself down, and even though you stop yourself before you risk dropping the wand of the nodules, you notice that you are able to move a hair faster than before – presumably whatever effect the Revelation of the Patternmaker has had on the flow of time is coming to an end.

As you do, you inadvertently glance out of cover, and your heart skips its third beat tonight. Like the previous Retributions you have faced, this one has a distinctly mocking quality to it – but this one has teeth as well.

There are now four guards. And you have gotten in as close as you can … with a wand that can cast on a maximum of three targets at a time.

You are completely numb – for all intents and purposes, you are in a state of shock. There is no way that you managed to overlook him, none. More than that, you intuitively know that this is not some guard that was running behind the original three, that the Patternmaker moved up with the rest of them. No … no. The Patternmaker made a fourth man, dressed and armored him, put a pike in his hand, and filled his head with memories of a guard’s life that he did not live – that no one lived. He must have given the other guards false memories too because the new guard is in front of two of them, and they are not reacting in any way. With the way the Forms work, it is possible that hundreds of people have memories of this man now. In fact, that could have been why you could feel the Patternmaker’s power. Not because he was changing you, but because he was holding you constant as he changed the rest of the Firmament. If you did not remember that there were originally just three guards before you ran in, then this would not be Retribution, it would just be a terrible decision.

>>5130325
But whether this was a mistake or retribution, or whether you have true memories or not, either way, what can you possibly do now? Even if you were to try to hide from them instead of fight, the moment they pass the wall, they will see you, and you will have lost both all of the advantage offered by surprise and cover, and probably the initiative as well. So that’s no good. You get a full body chill as you realize that you still are going to have to fight – and with more targets than your wand can deal with in one chained cast, that means you are going to have to accept that even in the best-case scenario, where all of the casts land, and you knock all three of them out, one of the guards is going to have an opportunity to counterattack.

It suddenly occurs to you that this must be part of a new Trial you are facing here. You need to figure out which three of the four guards are the biggest threat, and hit them with the wand first, then overcome the remaining guard, as well as any of the first three that were not completely downed with your wand, if you can, and your weapons, if you must. But which three do you hit first?

>Write-in your three targets. Indicate the one that you think is the most dangerous; they will receive three casts of Head Knocking, while the others will just receive two.

>>5130322
It is scenes like this that make me want to become a god-fearing person...

Well, perhaps not, I'm not sure how to convey how I feel.

>>5130325
What in the f-

>>5130326
I swear that if we get out of this alive I will vote in every capacity to pursue goodness no matter the cost, not from the moment we hypothetically escape with all the workbenches intact and our father's notes, our misbegotten wealth, and our life, but from the very next moment after we maybe escape this encounter, in fact I don't think we should steal at all, I think we should just work to restrict the spread of Strangeness from the coroners and whatever else is going on in this city.

I'm sorry anons, I'll vote how to kill these men, but after that if you want to be pragmatic you'll be doing it without me. It was a mistake to go against god.

>The new Fourth guard that is armoured and has a pike, the guard with a lantern on his pike, and the officer with a horn in one hand and a pistol in the other. The officer is most dangerous.

My reasoning is the fourth new guard is specifically called out as being armoured, the officer is likely a better fighter, more disciplined and can coordinate his men to be more effective and has a ranged weapon that can be maneuvered in close-quarters and can call more guards, the lantern-pike guard because I'm hoping if he falls the lantern will sputter out - it is a thin hope but perhaps possible - but also I am targeting those with polearms because they have good ranged and are versatile and deadly weapons and most importantly to me, they have a higher rate of attack than firearms of this era. The musket guy may still be reloading and doesn't seem to have a melee weapon in his hand. I think going after what I perceive to be the most vulnerable guard is the most efficient so as to be able to finished off the hopefully stunned remaining guards quicker afterwards. Going after say, the armoured pike guard as the only unstunned one may take so long as to allow the other guards to get back in the fight, hence going "weakest" to strongest is best in my opinion.

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>>5130354

Supporting this well reasoned plan.

Also. WTFLOLGOD pic related.

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>>5130354
Point of clarification about the armor - all guards are issued singular cuirasses* and helmets. The 'new arrival' is not any more or any less armored then the others.

*which replaced segmented curasses - Lorica Segmentata - from the early history of the Empire. Pic related.

>>5130326
The Officer is the most dangerous, then the two guys with a pike. The guard with a musket has to reload so leave him for the last.

>>5130326
>when you realize there is a God, and that he hates you

I knew we should've tried to mitigate the Corners when offered the choice. I'll vote to pursue mitigating the Corners of it isn't Patternmaker TM (autisticly hard).

>Armored lad was created specifically to fuck us over, it stand to reason that he's the most dangerous. Officer and Pike dude get secondary priority, leave the musketeer for us to deal with personally.

>>5130354
Support. We should aim to incapacitate. Tie them up or whatever. God is fucking watching!!

>>5130496
Does that not beat the point of fighting these men? We’re here to kill anon, not run.

>>5130605
the point is to buy us time to grab daddies stuff before running. After the musket ball fuckup we'll soon have the inquisition on our heels and there are some strong hints that the whole city will go to shit very soon. There is no fixing this, this was only ever about time.

>>5130496
>>5130774
same anon btw, don't want to appear to samefag.

>>5130774
Dead guards can't tell people what they saw, and it would be pretty easy to adjust things to make it look like the Smuggler got caught by the guards, though I do think at this point is probably in the noise and we're planning on leaving ASAP.

>>5130432
+1

>>5130774
I don't think tying these men up would get us enough time, we'd have to escape with just the notes and wealth, plus essentials. We would not be able to take the workbenches or dresses.

The point of fighting was from the very beginning that killing them with no witnesses would essentially offset the consequence of having been spotted entirely, aside from the corpses we'd leave and the damage to our soul and effects of the loss of their lives on their families.

Even just getting the dresses before leaving would make escaping a lot easier, or would even open up a lot of options for us if we for whatever reason chose to stay in the city using crime or honest work to sustain ourselves as a non-Leper.

Regardless, if we escape this encounter in decent condition my personal priorities have changed due to my change of heart. I think we should do what we can to alleviate the effects of the spreading Strangeness, we should not have refused our trial. If there are concerns about our own life or a lack of focus on escaping or general pragmatism, I still think we can look after ourselves by fiddling with the coffin or replacing the musket ball or something, though it may involve incriminating the Sexton, which I may not be okay with anymore. If it would help us retain the original purpose of taking the musket ball, I suppose we could copy the glyph on the ball down or do a quick preliminary examination so we know what bath to go down if we want to replicate it. We probably don't have the time though.

Okay, let us count the votes.

>>5130354 Targets both Pikemen and the Officer, the Officer is the most dangerous 1
>>5130362 Targets both Pikemen and the Officer, the Officer is the most dangerous 2
>>5130432 Targets both Pikemen and the Officer, the Officer is the most dangerous 3
>>5130461 Targets both Pikemen and the Officer, the Officer is the most dangerous 3 Targets both Pikemen and the Officer, the second Pikeman is the most dangerous 1

So that settles it. There does seem to be a question if we still want to kill these men. We will need to get that resolved before the fight, as the effects of Head Knocking change if the caster has lethal intent or not. I'm going to open a quick little vote while I write up an intermediate scene. Once done, I'll post the scene, and close the vote, unless it is tied. This is important enough that I am not comfortable rolling for it.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>You still intend to leave no witnesses here.
>Being watched as you are, you have lost your nerve for killing.

>>5131339
>>5131188
Just realized I missed this one, but it does not affect the outcome of the vote.

>>5131339
>>You still intend to leave no witnesses here.
Look, if we kill these guards, we can make it so that it appears that the smuggler killed them before falling to death from his wounds. Sooner or later they will figure out that something doesn't add up but by then we have bought valuable time and are hopefully a thousand miles away from this hellhole.

>>5131339
>>You still intend to leave no witnesses here.

>>5131339
>Flip a talent for it

>>5131339
>You still intend to leave no witnesses here.

I did say I would vote only for good, but after we escape this encounter, if we do.

Leaving them alive basically renders the entire point of confronting them moot. Well, not entirely, as the other anon says it'll buy us time. Enough time to MAYBE get our father's notes and some essentials and wealth. But it would be safer to kill them. Plus, we cannot stay in this city to assist with the Strangeness or other things going on if we are forced to escape and run around as a hobo, though I admit that is a bit myopic to want to kill people in order to do good later on.

>>5131339
>You still intend to leave no witnesses here.
I'm not sure that the other option would provide enough time for us to do the rest of the stuff we need to, without seriously compromising our time table and what we manage to take with us.

>>5131433
The other option would be to tell them what is up before booking it / knocking them out, so the Cleansers could follow up on things.

>>5131339
>Flip a talent for it

Though taking a body or two of the dead guards would aid us in creating a red herring for the other guards to distract themselves with, and in creating our body double to fake our death with. While killing is still amoral and shouldn't be our norm, another body or two would ease a lot of headaches while diverting attention and bringing focus on the guards themselves instead of a killer running amok in Midden.

Alright, just … keep calm, and think it through. Who is the most dangerous? Well, it would have to be one of the two guards armed with – wait, no, it would have to be the officer, because the musketeer has already taken his shot. In fact, that means the guard with the musket is the least dangerous of the four. So two for each of the pikemen, three for the officer and then distribute the second cast as needed. With some white luck, you should still be able to down them all before they are all on top of you. You shift position one more time to peek out of cover at the approaching men, and you notice that the flow of time has continued to speed up. Still not at normal speed, but it is definitely getting there.

However, as you position the wand for your cast where it should be able to connect with all three of your targets, suddenly, you are doubting your read on the situation. Could the officer have been the one who shot you? If he was, then that would mean that the musketeer still was ready to shoot. You only got a very brief look at the officer – at all of the guards really – after you realized you had been shot at. Instead of trying to pull a loaded pistol from his belt, could he have been shoving a discharged one back in? Or what if he had a second pistol with him? From the new, closer position that you moved to, you have not been able to get a good look at the officer. He might have another – Hell, he might have several others. It is not uncommon to carry multiple pistols after all, considering that it is impractical to reload them during … oh, Pattern’s Perdition. What if, as an act of Retribution, the Patternmaker … reloaded the musketeer’s musket?

Judging by how the guards are moving, the flow of time has returned to normal. They are all within casting range now, and if you keep delaying, they are liable to find you. ‘Under the gun’ as you are, you make a split-second decision to stick with your original judgement, if only to get you going before you completely lose the initiative here. Acutely aware that you could be captured – or dead – in a matter of moments, your last thought before reaching into the wand is wishing that you had the time to pray.

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>Critical Success: DC 99 and higher. Target receives the concussed malus and is knocked unconscious for 180 seconds. WITH lethal intent target is killed. WITHOUT lethal intent target cannot be killed.

>Success: DC 27 and higher. Target receives the concussed malus, 95% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 30 seconds. 50% chance of First-Degree Strangeness being produced on fuel, rendering fuel unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. WITH lethal intent 12.5% (1/8) chance that the target is killed by the spell. WITHOUT lethal intent 0.098% (1/1024) chance that the target is killed by the spell. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Partial Success: DC 7 and higher. Target receives the concussed malus. 65% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 30 seconds. First-Degree Strangeness is produced on the caster and the fuel, rendering the fuel unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. 1% chance that Strangeness is produced on the target. ~0.4% (1/256) chance that the target is killed by the spell. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Partial failure: DC 2 and lower. 50% chance of the target receiving the concussed malus. IF concussed, 15% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 20 seconds. First-Degree Strangeness is produced on the caster, fuel source and the wand, rendering the fuel source and wand unusable until the Strangeness is deal with, or it dissipates. 15% chance that Strangeness is produced on target. WITH lethal intent, 0.19% (1/512) chance that the target is killed by the spell. WITHOUT lethal intent, ~1.6% (1/64) chance that the target is killed by the spell. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Complete failure: DC 1 and lower. 50% chance of the caster receiving the concussed malus. IF concussed, 15% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 20 seconds. First-Degree Strangeness is produced on the caster, fuel source and wand, rendering the fuel source and wand unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. Two separate 15% chances that Second-Degree Strangeness is produced on the fuel source and wand. ~0.4% (1/256) chance that the caster inflicts a permanent brain injury on themselves. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

As per the vote, Chlotsuintha still is casting with lethal intent. The order of the rolls are: Officer, Officer, Officer, Pikeman I, Pikeman I, Pikeman II, Pikeman II. We will need seven rolls of 1d100. Once you roll, wait fifteen minutes. If there are still rolls needed, please roll again. May our luck run white.

>Please, I need seven rolls of 1d100.

Rolled 86 (1d100)

>>5132141

Rolled 13 (1d100)

>>5132141

Rolled 64 (1d100)

>>5132141
number 2

Rolled 9, 5, 16 = 30 (3d20)

>>5132148
>>5132157
>>5132169
Let's see what happens to the Officer.

DC 2, DC 8 and DC 2

Rolled 63 (1d100)

>>5132141

Rolled 6, 33, 20 = 59 (3d100)

>>5132175
Officer is unconscious for 60 seconds. Please note that I screwed up the duration of unconsciousness for chained casts. After this combat, it will be corrected, but it should only be twenty seconds for Success and Partial Success. If there ever is a discrepancy, the spell description will be considered 'controlling'.

Now, rolling to determine if the Officer becomes Strange or not. DC is 2.

Rolled 3 (1d8)

>>5132183
No Strangeness is produced on the Officer. As one of the three casts on him was only a Partial Success, then that means that Strangeness is produced on the fuel (and the caster) regardless, so there will not be any rolling for that.

Initial odds of lethality are 1/8, will double two times. DC is 2.

Rolled 3 (1d4)

>>5132186
Odds of lethality double. DC remains at 2.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>5132188
Odds of lethality double again. DC remains at 2.

>>5132190
The Red Thread of the Officer is plucked.

Okay, well I'm going to get lunch. By my count, we still need three more rolls of 1d100.

Rolled 20 (1d100)

Pikeman I, Roll 2

Rolled 61 (1d100)

>>5132141
Pikeman II

Rolled 20 (1d100)

>>5132141

Rolled 6, 7 = 13 (2d20)

Okay, moving on to Pikeman I.

DC 2, DC 8.

Rolled 92, 81 = 173 (2d100)

>>5132446
Pikeman I is unconscious for thirty seconds (should just be twenty, but as per >>5132183 I screwed this up, so you get the extra duration).

Now rolling to determine if the target becomes Strange or not. DC is 2.

Rolled 3 (1d8)

>>5132460
No Strangeness is produced on Pikeman I. As Strangeness has already been produced on the fuel source, there is no need to roll for that.

Initial odds of a lethal outcome are 1/8, will double once. DC is 2

Rolled 4 (1d4)

>>5132471
Odds of a lethal outcome double. DC remains at 2.

Rolled 14, 18 = 32 (2d20)

Pikeman I will live a little longer. Moving on to Pikeman II.

Also DC 2, DC 8.

>>5132477
Pikeman II is unconscious for sixty seconds.

Rolling to determine if the target becomes Strange or not. DC is 2

Rolled 34, 27 = 61 (2d100)

>>5132480
Would help if there were dice.

Rolled 7 (1d8)

>>5132485
No Strangeness is produced on Pikeman II. As Strangeness has already been produced on the fuel source, there is no need to roll for that.

Initial odds of a lethal outcome are 1/8, will double once, just like last time. DC is 2

Rolled 3 (1d4)

>>5132488
Odds of a lethal outcome double. DC remains at 2.

The remaining guard is attempting to disengage. You will roll for initiative. If above the DC, Chlotsuintha is able to get the wand operational before the guard leaves the overcast range. If below the DC, the guard is able to get out of range, and you must either let him escape or attempt to run him down. If it is at the DC, then the test is won by the side that had the initiative last, which in this case would be Chlotsuintha. If neither side had initiative, then re-roll the test.

> DC 50: Witchlet Chlotsuintha and Musketeer [Name Unknown] are equally fleet of foot
> + DC 15: Musketeer [Name Unknown] is Mortally Affeared
> + DC 5 Musketeer [Name Unknown] has Some Knowledge of the Midden
> + DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is Light Blind from the lanterns
> + DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Tired, and is not thinking as quickly as she should
> + DC 4 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Drained II, and is not moving as quickly as she should
> + DC 2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha has a temporary socket, and it makes her entire right side stiffer than normal
> - DC 6 Musketeer [Name Unknown] is Winded, and is not moving as quickly he might otherwise
> - DC 20 Musketeer [Name Unknown] is Encumbered by his armor
> - DC 5 Musketeer [Name Unknown] is Light Blind from the lanterns
> - DC 40 Musketeer [Name Unknown] is running over uneven ground at night with no light.

> DC 13: Anything above means Chlotsuintha can overcast Head Knocking immediately. Anything below means that the musketeer gets out of range. At DC, revert to whoever had initiative. If no one had initiative, then re-roll.

>One roll of 1d100 please!

Rolled 88 (1d100)

White luck, white luck.

>>5132562
Okay, now you guys just need to decide how many casts you want to loose at this poor bastard. In case it was not clear - he is out of range of typical casting, which means that you are going to have to overcast if you want to hit him - so you have a maximum of four casts, not seven, the DC will be higher, you are more likely to produce Strangeness on the target (20% per cast compared to a 1%), and you will probably produce Second Degree Strangeness on yourself and the fuel (guaranteed outcome with partial success, 50% chance for just First Degree Strangeness with success, no Strangeness with Critical Success).

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Hammer Overcast
>Two Chained Overcasts
>Three Chained Overcasts
>Four Chained Overcasts

If you fail, you will have an opportunity to chase him down and get in range for regular casting, but you must remember that the Pikemen are just unconscious.

>>5132589
>Two Chained Overcasts

>>5132589
>Three Chained Overcasts

>>5132589
>Two Chained Overcasts

>>5132589
>Three Chained Overcasts
Play it safe

>>5132589
>>Three Chained Overcasts
play it safe, chlot can't afford to chase too much

>>5132589
>>Three Chained Overcasts
Better to have to clean up strangeness than to have a chase.

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63 KB JPG

>>5132614
>>5132650
>>5132655
>>5132731
>>5133109
>>5133127
Okay, Three Chained Overcasts.

>Critical Success: DC 99 and higher. Target receives the concussed malus and is knocked unconscious for 120 seconds. 50% chance of First-Degree Strangeness being produced on fuel, rendering fuel unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. WITH lethal intent target is killed. WITHOUT lethal intent target cannot be killed.

>Success: DC 32 and higher. Target receives the concussed malus, 95% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 20 seconds. 50%/50% chance of First/Second-Degree Strangeness being produced on fuel, rendering fuel unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. WITH lethal intent 12.5% (1/8) chance that the target is killed by the spell. WITHOUT lethal intent 0.098% (1/1024) chance that the target is killed by the spell. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Partial Success: DC 12 and higher. Target receives the concussed malus. 65% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 20 seconds. Second-Degree Strangeness is produced on the caster and the fuel, rendering the fuel unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. 20% chance that Strangeness is produced on the target. ~0.4% (1/256) chance that the target is killed by the spell. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Partial failure: DC 11 and lower. 50% chance of the target receiving the concussed malus. IF concussed, 15% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 12 seconds. Second-Degree Strangeness is produced on the caster, fuel source and the wand, rendering the fuel source and wand unusable until the Strangeness is deal with, or it dissipates. First-Degree Strangeness is produced on target. WITH lethal intent, 0.19% (1/512) chance that the target is killed by the spell. WITHOUT lethal intent, ~1.6% (1/64) chance that the target is killed by the spell. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Complete failure: DC 1 and lower. 50% chance of the caster receiving the concussed malus. IF concussed, 15% chance of the target being knocked unconscious for 20 seconds. First-Degree Strangeness is produced on the caster, fuel source and wand, rendering the fuel source and wand unusable until the Strangeness is dealt with, or it dissipates. Two separate 15% chances that Second-Degree Strangeness is produced on the fuel source and wand. ~0.4% (1/256) chance that the caster inflicts a permanent brain injury on themselves. Subsequent casts of Head Knocking on the target double the odds of the initial lethality.

>Please, I need three rolls of 1d100.

Rolled 19 (1d100)

>>5133583

Rolled 53 (1d100)

>>5133583

Rolled 36 (1d100)

>>5133583

Time to club Pikeman I then Pikeman II and finally the Musketeer to death.

Rolled 14, 12, 20 = 46 (3d20)

Okay, here we go - let's see what we do to the musketeer.

DC 8, DC 2, DC 2.

Rolled 2, 5, 3 = 10 (3d5)

>>5133657
Musketeer is knocked unconscious for 60 seconds.

Now, to see if Strangeness is produced on the target.

DC 2.

Rolled 48 (1d256)

>>5133661
No Strangeness produced, though now both you and the fuel nodule are Strange in the Second Degree.

1/256 chance that the target dies, doubles two times for both completed casts.

DC 2

Rolled 44 (1d128)

>>5133667
Odds of a lethal outcome double. DC remains at 2.

Rolled 2 (1d64)

>>5133670
Odds of a lethal outcome double again. DC remains at 2.

>>5133672
Praise the patternmaker

>>5133672
The Patternmaker is giving me mixed signals...

>>5133679
I think he lives (just for a little longer) anon

Congratulations are in order! Excluding your sparing with the sow, you have just won your first combat - for all intents and purposes, a flawless victory. That being said, this could have gone the other way easily. If even one of the three guards that you initially target managed to keep their feet, the Musketeer would have rushed in to save him. And while you were right - he was the one that shot at you, that does not mean he was a going to be a wallflower for this fight. His musket has a bayonet, and more than that, it has enough weight and length to it that it can be used quite effectively as a club in a pinch. If he managed to close before you had the spell ready, he would do serious damage. Possibly fatal. Even if it wasn't, in this fight all he needed to do was to down you. You would have been captured, the wand would have found, you would have been turned over to the Inquisition, and it would be a Game Over.

But that didn't happen. You downed all three of his fellows in one go, and as none of them were responsive he thought they had all been killed. He turned tail, he ran, and he got laid out for his trouble. Now, it is time for some messy work. Also, you guys need to make a final decision on the Snuff Box. Either way, after this you are heading out into the Mount to go pay a visit to the Refineries.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Leave the box
>Keep the box

>>5133752
>Keep the box

>>5133752
>>Keep the box
With the bloody mess we are going to make, I doubt they would care about the box.

>you would have been turned over to the Inquisition, and it would be a Game Over.
What kind of Bad End would an inquisition Game Over entail?

>Either way, after this you are heading out into the Mount to go pay a visit to the Refineries.
Shouldn't the place be swarming with guards after the horn was blown?

>>5133752
>Leave the box
We don't really have a reason to keep it at this point, it may as well end up back with the captain.

>>5133752
>>Keep the box
I see little reason to tie our dock escapade to this.

>>5133776
Wouldn't we be harvested for parts?

>>5133752
Combat always sits at that edge between success and failure, it should be avoided as much as possible
Men break, and no one puts them back together again
>>Keep the box

>>5133752
>>Keep the box

>>5133752
>Keep the box

Thank the Patternmaker for our White Luck, even if he did decide to fuck is over intentionally because he hates our guts.

Closing the vote, as it was practically unanimous for keeping the snuff box.

Writing!

By your estimation, the officer of the guards is the most dangerous of the thr – of the four here, so naturally, you target him first. He still has the horn in his off hand, but since it was blown when you were first discovered, it has not been sounded again – probably because he was the one that was shouting your name. At some point during his charge through the night, he managed to get his pistol into his hand, but he is not holding out at the ready. It might be that is considering the possibility of taking you alive, and the shot was actually the guard with the musket firing reflexively. So you feel even worse than you thought you would when you see him start to convulse. At the speed that he is moving at, getting the shakes practically guarantees that he will lose his footing. And he does. While that is happening, he drops the horn and starts to raise his left hand, possibly bring it towards his head, but before it can even clear his chest, he goes limp as he is knocked out cold. Convulsions from the second and third cast are progressively more violent, and he hits the uneven basalt face first.

The wand is completely silent, so the original guard with the pike, who was ahead of the officer and to the left does not even realize that his boss has been downed until he hears the clattering. The guard with the musket and the … other guard with a pike, however, they were in a position where they could see what was happening. More importantly, however, is that all of them can now see the light that your eyes are putting off – though as none of them are screaming ‘Witch’, it seems that they just assume whoever just downed their commanding officer has a head mounted lantern. The original pikeman moves to close the distance, shifting the head of his pike down, so the lantern that he has hung around the bill falls free. It does, but by the time that the lantern hits the ground, he is doubling over, as if he was punched in the gut, and trembling with convulsions. The other pikeman was moving to close on you as well, but as soon as he saw his fellow downed, he changes course to put himself between the two of you while still advancing. As he levels the head of his pike – unencumbered by a lantern – directly at your chest, you realize that he is swearing at you to the point that in the light from your eyes you can see that he has gone red in the face. Several steps shy of thrusting distance however, the final two casts of Head Knocking reach completion, and he goes down, with his knees locked straight.

Not understanding how three of his fellows have been downed silently, but perfectly understanding the danger, the musketeer dumps his firearm and starts to flee. Even if he is still encumbered by the weight of the cuirass and winded from sprinting all the way over here, he is still moving quickly. You will have to make haste, otherwise he will be out of overcast range before you are ready to cast again.

File: Fuel Table 4-3.jpg (63 KB, 518x465)

63 KB JPG

>>5135375
But you are prepared to make a quick turnaround. You have much more salt in your grip than you would need for five or six chained casts – let alone the two that you have planned, and you already have two fuel nodules in your left hand, waiting to go. Judging that you will only get the opportunity here to use one of them, you drop one while you use your thumb and forefinger to rip the almost depleted fuel nodule out of the wands’ fuel socket while you watch the fleeing guard. As you glance down at the plucked nodule, Strange-Staining activates, but you know as it was just used for a typical cast that it should not be communicably Strange, and you let it drop to the ground as well. You cram the fresh one in and take a deep breath, before stepping out of your cover, pointing the wand directly at the fleeing guard’s head and reaching much deeper into the wand to perform your first overcast with it.

Three chained overcasts produce a little more heat in the wand, a little more coldness and numbness in your arm, but substantially more smoke and fumes from the depleted salt than seven chained casts – though perhaps that has to do with you oversalting the wand than any increased strain in the spell. Either way, you send the final guard sprawling. After sparing a glance at the other three guards, and checking to make sure that there are no more coming, you remove the second fuel nodule. Without even looking at it, you know that because you used this nodule for overcasting, this one is going to be Strange in the Second Degree – in other words, communicable. Worse than that, you will be communicable as well, though thanks to your natural stability, not anywhere near as long as this nodule will. The important thing is to not get the wand Strange. If the wand becomes Strange, then it will become unusable – at least for a Witchlet*.

Luckily, even after being depleted by the spell, the salt on the handle of the wand is still an effect barrier against the transmission of Strangeness. Moving quickly, as it is only a matter of seconds before the guards begin to come to, you pull your left glove on, take the shaft of the wand in your left hand, use your right hand – which is just as Strange as the nodule, so you do not have to worry about one contaminating the other – to pull the near-depleted fuel out. You slip the ounce-nodule in your pocket-jerkin, which as it is in direct contact with your skin, will become Strange anyway, and not your Spotted Cloak, as it is not in direct contact with your skin, and with any luck will not become Strange. Using your left hand, you stuff the wand in Spotted Cloak, and then pull your other glove on while trying to keep the salt still in your hand – partly to protect at least some of the glove against the Strangeness, and partly to not leave any salt behind. You doubt that anyone would notice, but with the Inquisition sniffing around it pays to be careful.

>>5136135
Enough dawdling. You only have a matter of seconds before the guards start to regain consciousness. You grab the stub-club from its perch and trying to not think about what you are going to do here, you walk over to the where the guards lie, sprawled over the rough-hewn ground. As you make your way over, you notice with a start that the Lodestar is no longer in the sky. You do not know what to make of that – if His disappearance constitutes acceptance, or if he has already seen enough to Judge you. It is not said that sins are committed in the Forms, not in these fleshy Shadows? That one’s intent is what is Judged, not one’s action?

In a really twisted sense, that sentiment actually makes you feel marginally better. If you have already sinned, why worry about it?

But as you bend over the first downed guard, that flimsy shield falls to pieces. Even if you have already transgressed by deciding that you are going to murder these men, that does not mean that the action itself should not be Judged as well. This is wrong – the thought, and the deed – deeply, deeply wrong. If you had been cornered, and you were forced into a fight for your life, and in the process, you killed these men, then that would be one thing. But choosing to fight them when you could have run away, and then killing them while they are as defenseless as babes … these men are not brutes, fit for nothing more than laboring into infirmity, then being cast into an Eternal Starlight as an oblation. These men all have souls – more than that, their souls are no doubt in much better condition than yours.

Underneath you, bathed in the harsh white light from your eyes, the guard moans, startling a shriek out of you. Instinctively, you bash him with the stub-club. You can feel the shock from the hit reverberate up your left arm. Realizing that you do not have time for this, you stifle a sob as beat him to death, repeating in your head over and over again that murder is not an unforgivable sin. It is, however, harder to commit than you thought it would be. Not to mention that it is hard to judge when you have done fatal damage, as your victim is unconscious. Still, when you stand up, feeling as woozy as if you had been clubbed yourself, you are certain that you have finished him off. You force yourself to move – to hurry – over to the next nearest guard, the officer. He is already dead, but you give him a couple of whacks, just enough until you feel the skull break.

By the time you get to the third guard – the original pikeman – actually stirring, shakily trying to lift himself off of the ground. Before he can regain his feet, you stomp on his face, then you bring the club to bear against him. As you do, you notice that he looks like a slightly younger version of the first pikeman, and somehow, you instinctively know that the pikeman the Patternmaker created – the one you have already murdered – was made as an older brother to this one.

The first kill is always the hardest, but don't worry Chlot! It gets easier afterwards.

>>5136184
The logistics of spontaneously creating life, then imbuing them with memories of a life they have not lived, and then rewriting other people’s memories to include them is hard enough to wrangle with – but the idea of the created person being made as a relative to an existing family, there is something deeply unsettling about that. You instinctively think of the created guards as somehow being different than the guards that were produced by the Firmament, but … really, besides their true age, is there any actual, fundamental difference? It suddenly occurs to you that the reason that the older pikeman, the one that Patternmaker just made, diverted his charge – it was to protect his younger brother. The older brother was created behind the younger one as the group of guards were moving through the ruins – it is possible that never actually saw him with his own eyes before he got downed. And yet … who are you to question their bond? Or if this older pikeman should be considered real? Its insensitive, not to mention probably blasphemous – which with everything else affecting the condition of your soul right now, is the absolute last thing you want to be.

All of that being said, however, it does make you wonder just how frequently the Patternmaker does things like this. No one would ever be any the wiser – unless He held their memories constant as well, and you doubt that you would ever be able to tell anyone about this. Or should, for that matter. It also begs another question – a much darker one. If the Patternmaker adds people to the Firmament as He pleases, does that mean He does the opposite? Just … cut people out from the Firmament, not even leaving memories behind?

You look down, and realize that at some point, you have stopped beating the guard. Once you check to make sure that you have murdered this one too, you get up and head over to the final guard, the musketeer. Even if you could have run away from this fight, what happened with the other three … you do not want to say it was better, but it was … closer to fair. They were armed, and they were coming for you. And when you come for someone like that, there is an implicit understanding that things might not go your way. That you might just get killed like the officer was. Or if you are downed, you might not be allowed to get back up, like the pikemen were not. But with this musketeer, there was none of that. He was unarmed and running away. He did not pose a threat – an immediate threat at least. You could have –

No, what are you saying? You could not have ‘just run’. Not after downing three of his fellows with a fraying wand with your eyes blazing like beacons. Even if he did not understand what happened, there would be a report, and with the Inquisitors on the alert, it would only be a matter of time before they got their grubby fingers on it. What would you do then, huh? Let those bastards run you into a Leadbelly grave?

>>5136799
It changes nothing! It changes not a single solitary thing if this fourth transgression is even a whit more serious than the previous three. You – you pause, as you realize that you have committed four transgressions already tonight. You knocked over that stockyard, stole the piglet, and slaughtered the sow. As it dawns on you that you are so far gone from normalcy that you have to remind yourself that stealing is wrong, you get mad – perhaps as mad as you have ever been. Mad that you have to resort to this, mad that you have to live as you do, mad that you have sin as you have and are going to have to again. The Many Mysteries are supposed to bring you closer to the Wisdom, not to the Pits of Hell. So why does it have to be so damned fraying hard! You unleash on the pikeman – hitting him as hard as you would if you were hewing basalt with a toothpick. And while the stub-club might not be able to do the damage a ‘pick could, skulls are nowhere near as strong as basalt is either. One swing goes a little wild, and you bash his mouth open – leaving a bubbling, red ruin as shards of teeth go flying. After several more hits that are on target, another one goes wild, and you burst his eye as cave in his orbital. By the time that you are through, the smuggler’s head was in better condition when you found it. Much better condition.

Having vented enough of your anger to think coherently once more, you leave the musketeer where he lay and survey the scene of your crime – your crimes, rather – in the still blazing light of your eyes. All of the guards are still. Beyond that, you might hear something in the distance that could be a patrol … but you have excellent hearing, and even with straining your ears you cannot tell for sure. It probably is a patrol, but this portion of the Midden is an absolute maze, trying to find your way through it at night, without knowing the streets – if they are guards, then they are hopelessly lost, at least for now. The officer should have hung back and kept blowing for back up.

A terrible thought comes to you. What if the reason the officer was not blowing the horn was because he knew that reinforcements were being called in some other way? Could he have sent a guard off as a runner to find nearby patrols before the first shot was fired? If this hypothetical runner had been paying attention to where the guards were patrolling, and actually had an idea of what streets to take, then he might have better luck at bringing in reinforcements than just a horn. You stare out through the shell of the villa for a little bit, thinking on this, before you realize that your eyes are liable to give your position away, and you advert them to the ground. Keeping your gaze downward, you return to where the first three guards fell within a stone’s throw of your cover.

>>5137130
It has been what? A minute and a half already? More? Assuming the officer did send a runner, there would be no way you could catch up to him. So there is nothing you can do about it – except of course, worry. You look down at your left glove and watch as the Strangeness slowly spreads from existing spots and shows up in new patches here and there throughout the canvas. You experimentally press one of those patches into the Spotted Cloak, to make sure that the Strangeness is not communicable. When it does not spread, and when you cannot find any on the stub-club, which you were holding in your left hand, as your right arm is currently socketed, you are satisfied that you can safely touch the bodies to stage the scene however you wanted it. Obviously, you should injure the smuggler in some way. It will have to be with one of the pikes, as shooting him would be no good – if that is another patrol you are hearing trying to find you, the shot might draw them towards you – or if there was a patrol going around the perimeter of the palisade, that could alert them.

Now that you think about it, an outside perimeter patrol should have been able to hear the blast of the horn. And even if a patrol in the Midden got lost, all they would need to do is get to the cleared away belt and just go in the right direction, and they would eventually find you. Hell, if they went in the wrong direction, they would eventually find you. This place is supposed to be just swarming with guards – how is it possible that it is taking this long to respond to a call? Did something happen?

For now, you cannot bother with any of this. You need to finish up here and get the Hell out of the Midden. So, let’s see – you are going ‘injure’ the smuggler with the pike, plant the cork, glass shards and low-denomination talents on him, but not the snuff-box, then drop him off of the palisade. Are you forgetting anything?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>No, you are not forgetting anything
>Yes, you are forgetting (write-in)

>>5137225
>>Yes, you are forgetting (write-in)
Plant the stub-club. How can we let the murder weapon go missing?

>>5137225
>Yes, you are forgetting (write-in)

If the officer has a spare pistol or two, take them and half the ammunition. Same for any daggers. And don't forget any cartridges or witchlet paraphernalia.

I'm very tempted to grab a body, just to create our body-double for us to throw the Inqusition off our trail. If not these lads, then we'll have to break into morgue or something, because I am not having the Inquisition on our trail after we just gotten out of this hellhole of a situation we're in.

>>5137225
>Yes, you are forgetting (write-in)
Chlot dropped a fuel nodule or something, didn't she?

>>5137232
Supporting. We bashed those guards with the stub club, now we plant it on him. Circumstances have changed.

>>5137246
I think you're right anon.

Good work - you guys caught both of the traps. I will get to writing this up, but here is another question for you. Once you are on the other side of the palisade, do you want to take the time to re-socket your arm? If you were discovered in the Mount, or in the Refinery, then it means that you could not simply climb your way to freedom - which is a perfectly legitimate strategy to prevent or prematurely end a chase. On the other hand, if you got cornered, you would not be able to use the wand to fight your way out.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Re-socket your arm as soon as you can, even if it means that you cannot climb your way out of trouble
>Leave your wand in your pocket, even if it means that you will not be able to use it if you are caught by surprise

>>5137735
>Re-socket your arm as soon as you can, even if it means that you cannot climb your way out of trouble

We aren't an experienced fighter, if we are truly cornered such that we cannot run (we'd have to run far enough away to have enough distance between them and us to be able to climb safely) then we'll need the wand to fight because we cannot fight anyone that is not weaker than us, has a firearm or polearm or long blade as those are too lethal and quick for us to comfortably have a chance of fighting with daggers or wrestling with. Plus fighting normally will take longer than with the wand, people may come and interrupt us and we won't have time to put in the wand if more than one person encounters us.

The trouble is not escaping per se, but scouting or infiltrating. If the best ways to do those are by climbing, then we deny ourselves those options.

>>5137735
>Re-socket your arm as soon as you can, even if it means that you cannot climb your way out of trouble

>>5137735
>>Re-socket your arm as soon as you can, even if it means that you cannot climb your way out of trouble

>>5137735
>Re-socket your arm as soon as you can, even if it means that you cannot climb your way out of trouble.

The right tool at the moment.

>>5137735
>>Leave your wand in your pocket, even if it means that you will not be able to use it if you are caught by surprise

>>5137735
>Leave your wand in your pocket, even if it means that you will not be able to use it if you are caught by surprise

Literally planning on climbing our way out with a shit ton of lifting oil lads.

>>5137735
>>Leave your wand in your pocket, even if it means that you will not be able to use it if you are caught by surprise
Chlot might prefer to have the option to run over the option to fight and kill again...

>>5138085
Changing my vote to
>Leave your wand in your pocket, even if it means that you will not be able to use it if you are caught by surprise

>>5138250
I mean...won't we just un-socket it then? The point of this choice is whether to rely on climbing or the wand in an emergency, we can use either if we have time to prepare but not in a pinch, at least if I understand things correctly.

Pattern’s Perdition, you are forgetting something alright. Not only were going to leave two of your fuel nodules behind where you dropped them, after going to all of the trouble of staging the guards as if they had been beaten to death with the stub-club, you were about to wander on off with it still in your pocket. Still ill-at-ease from the inexplicably continued absence of reinforcements, you grab the two discarded fuel-nodules before you do anything else – just in case they were to show up, they are the absolute last thing that you would want to just leave around. You make sure to pocket the full ounce-nodule with the rest of the full ones, and the nearly depleted and Strange one from you first chained cast here in its own pocket in your pocket-jerkin, just like the nodule you just plucked from the wand. Satisfied that no matter what questions the guards may have when they finally do come across the mess you have left them here, they will at least have no cause to wonder if any magic was involved, you nod to yourself, then grab the nearest pikeman’s pike, and hustle over to the smuggler’s corpse.

As you make your way over there, your steps still illuminated by the harsh white light beaming from your eyes, you reflect on the story that you are trying to tell here. You got three guards, pretty much one right on top of another, who were fighting, and then one a little further off, who was running away. So with that in mind, just how injured should this bastard be – and perhaps more important, where should he be injured?

>Please choose ONE of the following for EACH of the targeted body parts that you choose
>Mortally Wounded
>Seriously Wounded
>Barely Wounded

>Please choose ONE of the following
>Head and neck
>Chest
>Gut and groin
>Arms
>Legs

I'm still working on writing up the Refinery update, but I don't know when I will get it finished. I keep going back and forth on how I want to work it, both in terms of dividing it up, and mechanically.. Hopefully, I will have the next post up later today - maybe around 5:00 pm, Eastern Standard time.

>>5139351
If we have the option having him fall off the Wall might be necessary still be an idea

If he was to have killed these four, in the way we "did", he is going to need to have taken the three on, then run down the riflemen after they booked it. So nothing to bad could have been inflicted since he needed to have caught up, maybe some to cuts of the legs and arms to provide a reason for the fall.

To that end

>Head and neck
>Barely Wounded

>Chest
>Barely Wounded

>Gut and groin
>Barely Wounded

>Arms
>Barely Wounded

>Legs
>Seriously Wounded

>>5139351
We still going with the original plan, or did this fight do the smuggler in? If he's supposed to climb, his arms and head need to be relatively unharmed. His legs must stay unharmed throughout the encounter, because he must chase down the musketman, and we're using a pike to damage him, not a musket. So, baring trying to climb and break the smugglers neck again.

Mortally Wounded
>Chest

Seriously Wounded
>Head and neck
>Gut and groin

Barely Wounded
>Arms
>Legs

Make sure you avoid the lungs, so he can still run and exert himself in chasing down and beating the musket man to death. I'd say pierce the stomach, but I don't know how long it'll take for the acid to liquefy the other organs, if it's immediate then that's a no-go. I trust Chlot's judgment in this matter.

>>5139383
supporting

His legs cannot be seriously wounded or else he wouldn't be able to give chase to the musket-man. The bayonet on the musket isn't bloody, if we are going to tell the story of him bleeding out or trying to climb and falling then his leg wounds should be the last wounds inflicted in this story and the wounds should be by bayonet.

>>5139351
Supporting >>5139383

Didn't stop to read the anon's post before typing before.

I'm a bit too tired to properly think this through, so I'll just drop a few thoughts:
>The story we are telling is that our guy beat up and killed 4 trained armed guards with a club, he must be some sort of berserker or on crazy combat enhancing drugs for this, and he better be properly fucked up from the fight
>we should impale him on the bayonet

>>5139383
+1
Just make sure to make it appear as if it’s the fall from the wall that broke his neck and killed him

Okay there is enough of a consensus here for me to work with. The update will be coming soon.

Well … he should be pretty damned injured, considering this fight was one against four. But the worst of the wounds cannot be on his legs or arms – because if they were, then he never would have been able to run down the musketeer or get high enough on the palisade that a fall would be fatal. Or actually, now that you are injuring him, perhaps it would make more sense to drop him from a non-lethal height, and make it look like he survived the fall, but bled out on the ground. The important thing is to limit any injuries to the arms and the legs to bruises and scrapes – though at this point, you doubt that the body can still bruise very well. Other then that, you are free to distribute injuries … within reason, of course.

You get to work with the pike. About halfway through, you realize that you should probably get some blood on the other pike as well, so you jog over. You are about to just exchange the bloodied pike in your hand with the clean one on the ground, when you realize that might not be a good idea – you are not sure how, but could it be possible that the guards have some sort of record for what weapon has been issued to who? In the still bright light of your eyes, you cannot immediately see any identifying marks on the weapon that could be used for identification like that, but now that you have thought about it, you see absolutely no reason to risk it – with the guards still inexplicably absent after the call for reinforcements that the officer made on the horn while his men moved to engage you.

Still uneasily wondering why the reinforcements never came, you deliberately put the soiled pike where you found it, and then grab the fresh one before sprinting back to the body of the smuggler, to finish this part of the deception. After returning the second pike, you pluck the needle of your temporary socket out of your right arm – choking down a squeal of pain in the process. Checking to make sure that the Strangeness has not advanced beyond the shielding, you tenderly place the device in a pocket of its own. If your luck turns and holds white, then you will not need to use it again tonight. Your supply of ounce-nodules is running out fast; you have the wand for what, less than an hour, and you have already used up almost a quarter of the functioning charges by your count. There are the non-responsive ones that you found as well, but even though you should be able to nurse them back to health, you doubt that you are skilled enough at the moment to recharge depleted modules, and you have no idea how to make new ones. And then, there is the Head Knocking spell itself. Every single time that you use it, you are risking killing someone – and spreading the Strangeness. Really, it would be best for everyone if you were able to finish up the night without using anymore magic. And of course, setting or resetting a socket is not something that should be done under duress. You could hurt yourself, or create an unsafe connection.

>>5142317
Not to mention that after all of the casting tonight, you yourself have become quite Strange – Strange enough that direct contact with your skin will pass on the Strangeness, and that any further casting would noticeably be more difficult. Not impossible, of course but –

Your ears perk up. Just at the edge of audibility, you hear something off in the distance. Something that could be guards approaching – and unlike the earlier false alarm, this sound does not go away. Time for you to finish this gristly business here. After making one last check, illuminated by the light of your eyes (which are finally starting to noticeably fade after all of this time), you are satisfied that you have done everything to properly stage your story. You stuff the bloodied stub-club into one of the pockets of the stolen Spotted Cloak you have dressed the body of the smuggler in, and then you carefully sling the cadaver over your back, using your rope belt to secure him. When you went about injuring him, you were careful to make sure that all of the wounds were on his front, so that when you go to carry him, back-to-back up the wall, you are doing everything you can to minimize the risk of getting blood on your Spotted Cloak.

With the body hanging limply off of you, you enter the looming shadow of the palisade. Keeping your beaming eyes trained directly on the wood, as to not give away your position, you start your ascent. Progress is not just painfully slow – it is painful. Your right arm is spasming, the muscles in its crook throbbing violently around the site where you pinned the socket into yourself. After years of helping your father rob graves, you are no whobody to corpse carrying, or even climbing and carrying at the same time, but you have never done it completely unassisted like this. Typically, you would get the body into the Midden through the tunnels that lead to the dried up well, then father would head up the well first. Once he had ensured that the coast was clear, he would drop down a rope for you to secure to the body under their arms. As you would climb, he would pull on the rope in time with your ascent, to take as much of the load off of you as possible. Compared to doing it by yourself like this, it made it so easy that it might as well have been magic.

You really, really miss him. You wish he was here to tell you what to do – he would never wind up going in circles like you have, seemingly only making things worse. More than that though, you want to know that what you have done here tonight was the right thing. You are certain that he would say that it was, but you want to hear him say it – hear him say that you really did not have any choice, that under the circumstances, you are being the best possible student and daughter anyone could be. But most of all, you just want to see him, to know that he is alright – Hell, to know that you are going to be alright.

>>5143457
It takes you much, much longer than you would have liked, but you manage to make your way to the top of the palisade with the body. You peer over the top, to make sure that there are no patrols coming in the outer perimeter – and when you are satisfied there are not, you pitch yourself half over the fence, holding yourself in one place with one arm and loosing your improvised carry-strap with the other. But the very moment you get the knot untied, the body begins to slip off of your back. Instinctively, you try to shift underneath it, and reach out with your free arm to get a hold of the corpse once more. As you do, you start to tip precariously, just as your right arm, the one you are holding on to the palisade with, starts to shiver under the strain. Making a split-second decision, you prioritize your own safety and the cadaver go. Positioned as you are, with the top half of your body outside of the Midden, you cannot even watch the body the fall – all you can do is listen to the cloak flap and rustle on the way down, before ending with a dry sounding thump. Well … that certainly did not go as planned. Still, you dropped the body, and as the other end of your rope belt was tied to you, you did not leave that behind. Hanging over the edge, you rack your brain – did you leave anything behind that you did not intend to? Did you plant everything that you meant to? More importantly, did you plant everything that you should have?

Unfortunately, the noise that you heard earlier off in the distance is getting louder now, and you are more and more certain that it is in fact a patrol. One way or another, you are done here. Deliberately keeping your glowing eyes pointed towards the rough lumber of the palisade, you get back on your feet outside of the Midden and dash across the perimeter belt to the cover of nearby buildings. Once you are back in the shadows, you start to look for a safe spot to change out of your Spotted Cloak, and into your ragged, hooded dress. As it will be making direct contact with your skin, it is going to become Strange in short order, but you do not have the hour or so to sit down and perform a self-remediation, so you are just going to have to accept it. Finding a secluded corner in a dead-end alley, you reflect on what you have down as you strip down.

Four men are dead – by your hand. What is there to show for it? Besides the Strangeness percolating through your blood, and an even more thoroughly frayed Red Thread, of course. Well … there is the hope that when the guards find the bodies, they will recognize that the man who murdered Smil is dead, and that they can end the upgraded curfew. But as soon as that thought is formed, it is assailed by doubts – springing up like mushrooms after a heavy rain. What if the guards thought there was more than one smuggler working in the Midden? If that was the case, finding the body of one of them might not be enough to bring things back to normal.

>>5144928
You try to recall the speech that Plotinus gave in the plaza when the upgrade curfew was announced. Now that you think about it, you are almost certain that he said ‘smugglers’ and not ‘smuggler’. Your stomach rolls and your throat gets all clammy. By the Heights of Hell, did you … did you kill those poor men for nothing after all?

But before you can manage to spiral completely into despair, somewhere from inside yourself you manage to find a little steel. No matter what happens tonight, those guards did not die for nothing, they died as part of your Trial. There is absolutely no ambiguity to whether or not this was a Trial or not; the Patternmaker revealed himself to you, making a point of letting you know what He was doing. But the Trial did not begin when the Lodestar rewove the Firmament to make the three guards into four, no the Trial must have begun when the three guards were brought to where they would see you by the Pattern. Having fled from the first Trial with the Coroners, the Patternmaker forced you into this second one. And even if you had chosen not to fight – getting out of the city with any of father’s equipment or notes would have been difficult enough that it could constitute a Trial on its own. For some inexplicable reason, the Patternmaker has taken an interest in you. So sooner or later, you were going to be Tried. That means it cannot really matter what you were doing at the time, the guards would have shown up regardless … right?

Well, either way, you need to realize that you have no way of knowing what the guards are going to think, and certainly not what the guards are going to do. So there is no good reason to fret your self to the edge of a breakdown, worrying that this has all been for naught. It is entirely possible that the guards will end up interpreting the scene exactly as you want them to, and act accordingly by ending the expanded patrols. And even if they do not buy it, because it seems too far fetched that just one smuggler managed to kill four guards with a stub-club, well … then it was not like they were guaranteed to fall for it when it was just the smuggler’s body instead of all five of them. And you had to dump the body. Leaving it in the Belfry for any longer would be asking for trouble … using the Loom to dispose of it would have been time consuming and dangerous, and hiding it would have been almost as risky as dumping it, and to ensure that it was not found anytime soon, that would take time as well. Even if it does not work out as well as you hope it will, repairing and then dumping the body was probably the best option available to you, and that is discounting the chance that it ends the upgraded curfew.

>>5145688
You need to stop going around in circles like this. What is done is done – both in regard to your chances of a successful escape from the Mount and to the condition and cleanliness of your soul. You will just have to wait and see what the wages of tonight’s work are.

Instead, what you need to do now is put this behind you – and keep it behind you. There are still so many things you need to do. And on the top of that list is to go to the Oiler wharfs, case the Refineries there, and then pick one to knock over for flameless lifting oil, a substance worth at least two or three times its own weight in gold. And not only are you doing this on your lonesome, you have only a matter of hours to complete the heist, barely any opportunity to case the exteriors of the Refineries, no opportunities to case the interiors – and worst of all, because of the inherently Strange nature of the ichor that is being refined, and equipment used in the refining process, at all times, the Inquisition, by Imperial Law, must have a permanent presence on all Oilers and near all Refineries.

On one hand, these Inquisitors, and the Cleansers underneath them, are singularly concerned with the safe operation of all Strangeness-adjacent equipment and preventing the Strangeness from breeching containment – not hunting Witches, Witchlets, Strangers or magical artifacts. On the other hand, they are still Inquisitors, and right now, you are Strange enough that you would be considered a Stranger … if you were not already a Witchlet. At the very least, they should only have Spot-Dosimeters, so as long as you keep yourself all wrapped up, they do not have any more advantages over you then a typical guardsman would.

And to the end of keeping yourself wrapped up, and preventing yourself from spreading the Strangeness, you realize that you are going to have to keep wearing your gloves. At this point, the left one is completely subsumed by the white-gray-black Strange-Staining stains, but the right one just has some incidental spotting, no doubt because of all of the salt you had on your right for the casting is blocking transmission in areas where it is in direct contact, and drastically slowing transmission in areas where it is not. The important thing, however, is that none of the Strangeness on either of the gloves is able to spread – and once you confirm that is the case after tentatively testing them by holding them against a portion of wall, you commit yourself to wearing them. Considering that it is a death sentence to be caught as a Leper outside of the Midden, you are not thrilled about mixing outfits like this, with the distinctive spots of the Spotted Cloak featured prominently on the palm and the back of the gloves, but at this point, you do not have a choice. Besides, if anyone gets close enough to see those spots, then you probably are going to have a lot more immediate problems anyway.

>>5145690
You finish getting dressed in your street clothes, and you bundle up your Spotted Cloak and your lead-lined mask, stashing them between a dilapidated crate and an equally dilapidated wall. The light from your eyes has finally faded to the point that you can no longer see it, even when you hold up a hand directly in front of your eyes. Your business here concluded, you hike up your hood, and sticking to the shadows and side streets wherever you can, you head out into the creaking wooden morass of Stickport. Compared to all of the other threats that you are facing at the moment, the danger presented by the men of the Thief-Takers Guild seems small, but you must never discount them. The bounty on your head might as well be nailed to it – nothing that you can do will hide the fact that you are of ‘unnatural height’ for a woman. And what happens when you do finally make your way out of the Mount, and you are traveling unchaperoned? Even a typically sized woman doing that would attract unwanted attention, so you can only imagine that your size is going to make it even worse for you. Then –

You stop and physically shake your head before continuing on. You have gone from worrying about the past to worrying about the future – which is not any better. Anyway, the Thief-Takers are not the Inquisition. There are places where they are effectively banned from operating by local authorities, and unlike the Inquisition, the burden of proof would be on them, not you. They need to prove that you are the bounty they are claiming. Now, just how high of a bar that burden of proof would be is largely dependent on the individual Port Authority Justiciar that you were brought in front of, but you can think of a couple of preventative measures that could help ensure that something like that never came to pass.

Instead, you try to think of more pleasant things on your way to the Oiler Wharf, like what part of the Head Knocking wand are you going to look to improve when you attune its virgin twin. You have a lot of options really. Improving the likelihood of the cast causing unconsciousness seems like an obvious choice, but years of instruction from father, who was absolutely obsessed with making his magic and constructs as efficient as possible, points towards the possibility of subtler improvements. The catalyst efficiency is already decent, and as salt is not particularly dear, you do not know if an improvement in this regard would actually meet the spirt of the test that mother set out for you in her note. Fuel efficiency on the other hand, now that would be something. Or maybe you could look into working on the refractory period of the wand, perhaps even changing the chained casting from in-series to in-parallel. Or …

It does not take long to get to the Oiler wharf, but the time that you spent in your head was a pleasant and much needed break. A second surprise is waiting for you as you round the last corner to peer furtively at your targets.

>>5145864
The Oiler fleet is in. In fact, it must have just arrived, because the wharf is absolutely humming with activity. Figuratively and physically, as the cooling pumps on both the ships and in the plants are causing the roughhewn planks of the wharf to tremble. The gate to the wharf, typically barred closed and kept under armed guard, is wide open, to allow workers hustling in. Thinking quickly, you climb up to the low-slung roof of the warehouse that you are hiding behind, pressing yourself down, concealing yourself as best you can in the shadows. It really does not seem necessary though, as no one is sparing anything a second glance. Diluted ichor, long enough outside of whatever abyssal creature the Oilers harvested it from, will degrade and eventually start to cook off. To prevent this from happening, Oiler ships are outfitted with pumping equipment, allowing them to constantly pull in seawater to cool the diluted ichor that they are carrying, which helps retard the decay of the ichor, as well as prevent the cookoff of decayed ichor.

It is a losing battle, however. Even before the Strangeness, when there were Sea Witches who specialized in refrigeration and sailed aboard Oilers to keep their tanks cool, it was not unheard of for a ship to lose ten to fifteen percent of its load before they could make it back to port, where the ichor would be stabilized in a Refinery’s stack. With nothing but ambient temperature seawater, the loses on a typical voyage are now closer to thirty percent. And considering just how valuable this stuff is, the Refinery operators do everything in their power to cut those losses down. One of the reasons that there are Inquisitors aboard Oiler ships is to make sure that the captains are properly diluting their haul with seawater. While undiluted ichor does last longer and is easier to stabilize and refine, it is also dangerously Strange. By diluting it with seawater – specifically, with the salt in the seawater – the danger can be kept in check. But never fully eliminated. Father had worked on board an Oiler as a Cleanser for a year or so, underneath an Inquisitor, and after he was made a Dosimetrist, the Inquisition was considering putting him on another – obviously, that never happened, but when you could wheedle a story out of father, and he would speak of his time on the high seas, he would always do so with some fondness.

Your reminiscing is abruptly ended when in the veritable sea of beige uniformed workers, you see several figures dressed all in red. Even though their eyes and Spot-Dosimeters are solely on pumping equipment and hoses that the men around them are bringing over for them to check, you cannot help but shivering at the sight of them. You drag your eyes away from them and focus on the Refineries themselves. Somewhere inside those towering buildings is the flameless lifting oil that you seek. You just need to figure out a way into one of them.

>>5146211
The surface of the wharf has lots of places to hide, to be sure, but it also has a lot of people to hide from. Alternatively, there will be next to no one underneath the wharf, except the occasional technician checking the pipes and the pumps, but between the venting steam and moving pumping equipment, there are different dangers down there as well.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Sneak in on the surface of the wharf.
>Sneak in underneath the wharf.

>>5146214
>Sneak in on the surface of the wharf.
If it wasn't operating in full swing, the underneath may have been the better option, but we are going to need the extra options that going above will provide.

Also Steam related issues are absolutely no joke, let alone superheated steam, we should stay as far away as possible from the workings of the plant if possible.

>>5146214
>Sneak in on the surface of the wharf.

>>5146211
>Sneak in on the surface of the wharf.
Chlot has no excuse to be under the wharf, there are a lot more people to hide among and pretend to be a part of topside

>>5146214
>Sneak in on the surface of the wharf.

>Sneak in on the surface of the wharf.

>>5146214
>>Sneak in on the surface of the wharf.

Okay, we are going topside!

> DC 33: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is a Born and Bred Sneakthief, making a basic Stealth Test like this [Easy]
> + DC 7 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is Hard to Miss, given her size
> + DC 15 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is wearing a dress, marking her as a woman
> + DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is matches the description of an active bounty
> + DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Tired, and is not thinking as quickly as she should
> + DC 4 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Drained II, and is not moving as quickly as she should
> + DC 1 Witchlet Chlotsuintha had a temporary socket, and even after removal, it makes her entire right side stiffer than normal
> - DC 8 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth at night in a mostly unlit area
> - DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha has Cursory Knowledge of the Oiler Wharves
> - DC 15 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in an area with outstanding concealment
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in an extremely noisy area
> - DC 1 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently wearing underwear
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in an area where all guards and potential witnesses are distracted

> DC 22: Anything lower is a failure. [No re-rolls available. No Hostile re-rolls available]

>No Passes: The Euthyphro's Justice! Some guard sees you, and recognizes you from the bounty. Guards give chase!
>One Pass: A Strange Shadow. An alongshoreman sees you some movement, and calls for the guards. You have moved on before they arrive, but the alarm on the Oiler Wharves and in the Refineries have been raised, raising the DC value for Stealth Tests in the this area, and giving the guards one re-roll.
>Two Passes: A Slipping Shadow. You accidentally slip on something, and as you regain your footing, you make a little bit of noise. A Refineryman hears something, but at the moment, thinks nothing of it. Depending on what happens here tonight, this might eventually be reported.
>Three Passes: A Slippery Shadow. No one sees or hears anything. You slip right through.

>Three rolls of 1d100 please!

Rolled 22 (1d100)

>>5147069

>>5147074
Right on the wire, thank the Patternmaker!

Rolled 4 (1d100)

>>5147069

Rolled 50 (1d100)

>>5147069

Okay, two passes. Pretty damn good. I'll try to get the posts up around dinner time tonight, EST.

You decide to accept the higher risk of getting spotted and stay on the top of the wharf. There is just enough cover from the crates and barrels and piles of canvas sacks along the side of the wharf opposite the Oilers that you are comfortable enough to attempt it, and the presence of machinery underneath the wharf … to tell the truth, it scares you. Beyond the most basic of machines, like the winch that father installed on the platform, you really have no experience with these mundane contraptions, and to make it worse, you really do not understand them that well either. In your lessons with father, instrumental sciences were always your weakest subject, though they were also the subject that the least amount of time was spent on. Back then, you had been thankful for that, but now, in a place like this, you kind of wish you had more background.

You look down between the hewn planks of the wharf. Even over the sound of waves lapping against the piles of the wharf, you can hear water rushing through a pump underneath you somewhere in the darkness. Further up the wharf, you can see steam billowing from the underside, and hear the metallic banging of the pumps. And for the length of the wharf, underneath all of the pumps and pipes and Pattern knows what else is either jagged basalt or choppy water, slick with incidental industrial discharge. Honestly, you could not say which of the two would be worst to fall over.

Having spent enough time in reflection, you move to the edge of the low-slung warehouse roof, and once you are as certain as you can be that no one is watching you, you drop to the ground and break for the shadows. There are lampposts all along the wharf, but they are not putting off that much light, and for those whose eyes have adjusted, the areas outside of the reach of their light will appear all the darker. Working your way through those areas, you make good time, except at one point you do step in something slippery, which considering where you are is almost certainly oil. Before tonight, you might have been worried about getting some unknown oil on your boots – the only really decent article of clothing that you currently own – but after spending the better part of twenty minutes wading through pig shit in the paddock, you cannot even find it in yourself to care about that. However, you inadvertently make a bit of noise as you try to keep your footing. Grimacing, you get behind the best available cover, a long, steel banded crate, and you peer out from behind the shadows to see if anyone is going to come investigate.

A passing man-along-the-shore jerks his head at the noise, but the spot that he focuses on as he passes is a few yards ahead of you. Probably figuring that you were just a rat or something, the man continues on, all without breaking his stride. The rest of the way to the first of several Refineries is uneventful.

But as you might have expected, your little streak of white luck does not hold. The Refineries here all have what are basically square towers with massive bay doors facing the Oilers that are moored opposite of them. To keep these doors clear, there are breaks in the stacks of supplies that you have been using as cover. And not only is this open ground in front of the doors properly lit, but it is also positively teeming with men-along-the-shore and Refinery workers, loaded down with tools and what not, coming and going. You are not even going to bother judging the distance to the other side of the door where the cover starts up again – it is painfully obvious that you are going to have to find another way around.

Your first instinct is to take the long way around the tower and the rest of the Refinery, but when you go to turn the corner around the ass end of the building, you frustratingly find that the building was built right to the damned edge of the wharf. You peer out around the corner, just to see the piles, and the choppy dark waters underneath them, just barely visible in the limited moonlight. Withdrawing, you consider your options. You have already ruled out going underneath the wharf, but what about shimmying yourself alongside the outside of it, just until you got to the other side? You do not like the idea. As direct contact with your skin is enough to spread the Strangeness, you would have to do it with your gloves on, which makes it considerably more difficult. Not impossible, mind – you did after all just climb the palisade with gloves on, not to mention a cadaver on your back, but … the walls on the back end of the Refinery are not just unsuited to climbing, they also look damp to the touch with the moisture in the air. Underneath them, the piles are even worse – they look to be soaking wet.

Uncomfortable with that particular avenue, it seems that your best bet is to climb up and over the Refinery, so you set out looking for a spot to do just that. But that is easier said than done. None of the corners that you can see are square, they are at these odd angles, meaning that you are not going to have a ‘chimney’ to climb up, and the longer that you look at the walls of the Refinery building, the less and less comfortable you are with your prospects of climbing the damned thing while still wearing gloves. You seriously consider taking them off, but with the presence of Dosimetrists on the wharf and just how poorly things have been going for you lately, you are loathe to tempt Perdition like that.

However, while you were looking for a spot to climb up and over the Refinery, you eventually made your way all the way back to the tower, where you noticed a set of steel rungs mounted into the wall. This ladder does not go all the way to the roof, instead, it stops barely two stories into what must be an eight story tower, not counting the smokestacks on top, at a small suspended platform, hung right in front of a door.

Standing directly underneath the platform, you quietly huff in frustration. You cannot even imagine just how many workers are on the other side of that door. Obviously, at some point you were going to have to set foot inside to take a look around, or at the very least to steal the damned oil, but you were hoping that you would be poking your head in a much less trafficked area. Still, you do not have a lot of options here – in fact, you basically just have two. Either try this door or risk the underside of the wharf. It takes you a solid minute to make up your mind, but in the end, you decide that you would be better off sticking to the route that had purpose-built handholds. It has been a long night, and that kind of technical climbing is particularly draining – not to mention that it is not just getting there, you have to consider the return trip, carrying the flask of oil.

As quietly as you possibly can, you make your way up the rungs to the platform, careful to keep the hem of your dress from getting caught underneath your boots. The last thing you would want is to tear off the extensions you sewed on to it to get it to ankle length. As you pull yourself up to the platform, you reflect again on how unsuited dresses are for this kind of work, just as you did last night on the Euthyphro. It is odd actually, this time you are wearing underwear, but you feel even more exposed for some reason. Focusing on the task at hand, you immediately more to the door, intending to put your ear to it. You are only a matter of inches away from it when you realize just how dumb that would be, considering that direct contact with your skin will spread the Strangeness. Mentally kicking yourself for that near-disastrous mistake, you settle for getting as close as you can to the door instead, straining your ears to see if you can hear anything.

But with all the din, especially the regular noises of the pumps and the irregular noises of the pipes, you seriously doubt that you would hear a Legion in parade marching one the others side of the door, let alone a few workers quietly adjusting valves or whatever it is they are doing. You have a little bit better luck when you stoop down and try to look under the space beneath the door. There does not seem to be much to make out, but at the very least, you are confident that there is no one standing immediately on the other side of the door.

The hinges on the door are so damned stiff that at first you thought that the door had been barred from the other side. That is probably a good sign actually – it means whatever this door opens up on to is not heavily trafficked after all. You offer up a quick prayer before both figuratively and physically sticking your neck out and taking a peek. The first thing you notice is that you are not overlooking the floor of the tower, as you thought you would. Instead, you are in a completely dark, completely enclosed room probably a little bigger than your room in the Belfry.

You quickly slide into the room, and close the door behind you, then you just stand there for a moment, to let your eyes adjust to the darkness. It much easier said than done – there must be a pump nearby, because the room is shaking. Not tremoring like the wharf, but shaking, really shaking. Between that an the near-deafening sound, it feels as if you are inside a drum. It is so bad that you actually have to put your fingers in your ears while you wait on your eyes. And this room is not just assailing your ears – it has designs on your nose as well. In the stale air, the slick smell of grease and the sharp smell of metal are strong, but it is the almost overpowering smell of salt that gets to you. It is enough to make your eyes water, which is dangerous, considering that your bodily fluids are capable of spreading the Strangeness, even better than skin contact could. It is enough to make you wish that you were wearing your Leper’s mask right now, with the gauze wrapped around your face underneath it. You cannot imagine working in a place like this for more than an hour, much less day-in and day-out. Perhaps it is only this bad when the Oilers have just arrived? Well, either way, you are certainly never going to complain again about hewing, squaring and plumbing graves again!

Finally, your eyes finish adjusting to the darkness, and you try to do your best to make sense of the room. Along the exterior wall, the one you came through, there is an absolute rat’s nest of pipes, and here and there are what must be some manner of mechanically metered valves. The mess of pipes all head up to the ceiling, where they all eventually merge together into one massive pipe, as branches would merge into larger branches, and then into the trunk of a tree. This ‘trunk’ looks like it heads directly into the Refinery. Over the abominable noise, you can just barely hear liquid moving through it, but you are not sure if it is diluted Ichor, or finished Lifting Oil, or just salt water, or some other ingredient in the refining process.

Beyond that, there are a couple of crates and sacks alongside the wall opposite of the door, but they all are shut up, so you are not going to bother messing with them. There are however, two hatches. One in the middle of the floor of the room, going down, and one in a corner of the ceiling, out of the way of the pipes. Figuring that going down will simply take you to the floor of the ‘tower’, you decide to go up. Maybe if your luck turns white again, you will be able to get onto the roof, and finally be able to proceed further down the wharf … though at this point, you are beginning to think that if all of the Refineries are going to be fraying pains in the ass to move around like this one, perhaps it would be best to just settle on knocking this one over.

You shuffle your way over to the corner. then climb up to and then through the hatch, thankful to leave that miserable little room behind.

The roof of the room that you just left is completely flat, and beyond a crude wooden railing and housing for a pumping unit, it has absolutely no cover at all. Swearing under your breath, you go prone on the roof, careful to make sure that you do not spread the Strangeness as you do your best to remain unseen while you survey your new surroundings.

As you might have expected, you are now inside what you have been calling the ‘tower’, which as far as you can tell is simply a protective shell around three massive columns of pipes and pumps interspersed with other machines whose function you could only guess at. They run for about seven stories of the eight of the tower, each of the three terminating just under the vented roof with a brick smokestack on top. If you had to guess, you would say that the smokestacks were of a similar size to the belltower of the Not-Temple. The columns are banded with platforms about one every ten feet or so for the entire height of the structure – including the ‘stacks. Furthermore, the pipes in this room are directly connected to one of the columns, and on top of the big transport pipe, there is a catwalk, supported by cables that run from the wall of the tower behind you to the nearest of the three columns. Looking up, you are not one hundred percent sure, but from here, it looks like that the uppermost platform around the column has roof access. Which is excellent news, because if there is one way up on to the roof, then it stands to reason that there might be more. As it stands right now, the roof looks to be the easiest and safest way to move around the Refinery.

There is something that is bugging you, however – there is no one on any of the platforms that you can see, and so close to a pump, you are barely even able to hear yourself think, let alone any workers in the distance. But you have a hunch as to where they might be, and deciding to act on it, you crawl to the edge of the roof of the miserable little room, and as the pump does its best to deafen you and shake your teeth out of your head at the same time, you peer down at the floor of the tower.

While it was as you expected – the workers are on the floor of the tower, rushing around with hoses and tools, presumably finishing pumping the diluted Ichor into the plant – you also see something that you did not expect. It turns out that this part of the Refinery is not just on top of the wharf. In the center of the floor of the tower, there is a massive square hole, which the columns are mounted half in and half out of, along three of its sides. The fourth side, the one furthest from the bay door, is covered with pipes coming up from below, nearly all of which converge and head out of the tower, further into the Refinery. In the center of the chasm, there is a large piece of machinery, puffing sooty looking steam. If you had to guess, it would have to be some sort of pump.

Just like the columns, the pump, and the walls of the pit are banded in platforms, that connect together at different heights around the smoking machine, just like the spokes of wheel. Even though the hole is lamp-lit, it is pretty damned dark – you are just close enough to make out that some of the workers are carrying around lanterns of their own. With a bit of a start, you realize that the pit is so deep, that the lowest portion of it that you can see must be at sea level, and as far as you can tell, it goes quite a bit lower than that. All in all, it is a pretty substantial piece of earthwork, but you should have figured that there was something more to this place the minute that you saw those columns. You have no idea how much those things must weigh, but if you had to take a guess you would wager that it would be magnitudes more than could be safely supported by a wooden wharf.

Once you have satisfied yourself that the pit is part of the processing-side of the Refinery, and that the lifting oil that you are looking to steal is not going to be down there, it is time to move on. Of course, under the circumstances, that is easier said than done. Much like the roof of the miserable little room you are perched on right now, the catwalk strung right on top of the pipe that leads to the nearest column has absolutely no cover. All someone on the floor of the tower would need to do is look up, and they would be able to see you. If they heard you walking – well, actually, between the noise of the pump, the pipes clanging, and whatever the Hell is moving through the pipes, you doubt that you would be able to hear your own footsteps, let alone someone on the floor. Still, staying so long in an exposed spot is beginning to fray your nerves – you have a sinking feeling that you are being watched. Thankfully, you are not so scatter-brained that you cannot figure out that is all just nerves – completely in your head. If someone did see you, they would call out to you, call out to the guards, at the very least, they would do something to make themselves known.

Make themselves known …

You have been actively trying to not think about what happened at the palisade, but …

Holding your breath, you look up at the ceiling. Around where the ‘stacks pass through the roof, there are rows and rows of hatch vents in the roof of the tower, and nearly all of them are wide open. Even with the limited light, it is hard to see, but after straining your eyes a bit, you are certain that the night sky is still there. For a split second, you feel relief, but then you remember that just because you cannot see the Lodestar at the moment does not mean that the Lodestar cannot see you, and the sinking dread you were experiencing comes rushing back, even worse than before. It is undeniable that you were put through a Trial. And just as night follows day, Judgement comes after a Trial.

But just how soon after? The Patternmaker exists in realm where time has no meaning. Who knows how long it will take for His Judgement to manifest in the Pattern, and if it is a typically subtle ministration, then odds are you might not even be able to recognize it for what it is.

Breathing just a little bit raggedly, you force yourself to look down, to focus on the task at hand. Because what is done, is done. And what is not done, that too, is done. You offer up a quick prayer, just as much for the sake of your nerves as for the sake of your soul, and then you climb to your feet. Perhaps you can make things right somehow – or at least, better. Perhaps the catwalk will fall, carrying you down with it to the floor, where you will be seen by all and sundry, then arrested by a guard. Either way, you cannot let possibilities stupefy you like this – you have to get across to the columns, then on to the roof, so you can search every inch of this outsized shed for your fraying flameless lifting oil.

> DC 33: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is a Born and Bred Sneakthief, making a basic Stealth Test like this [Easy]
> + DC 7/2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is Hard to Miss, given her size
> + DC 15/2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is wearing a dress, marking her as a woman
> + DC 5/2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is matches the description of an active bounty
> + DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Tired, and is not thinking as quickly as she should
> + DC 4 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Drained II, and is not moving as quickly as she should
> + DC 1 Witchlet Chlotsuintha had a temporary socket, and even after removal, it makes her entire right side stiffer than normal
> + DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in an area with no concealment
> - DC 8 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth at night in a mostly unlit area
> - DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha has Cursory Knowledge of the Oiler Wharves
> - DC 15 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in a preposterously noisy area
> - DC 1 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently wearing underwear
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in an area where all guards and potential witness are at a considerable distance (halving appearance maluses)
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is attempting Stealth in an area where all guards and potential witnesses are distracted

> DC 18: Anything lower is a failure. [No re-rolls available. No Hostile re-rolls available]

>No passes: Who goes there? A technician sees your figure moving along the catwalk and calls for the guards. You have moved on before they arrive, but the alarm on the Oiler Wharves and in the Refineries have been raised, raising the DC value for Stealth Tests in this area, and giving the guards one re-roll.

>One pass: Evening wear and tear. Your dress snags on a nail in the catwalks railing, ripping a long hole down your leg. When you leave the wharves, you will stand out even more than usual. Also, you must be even more careful to not spread the Strangeness.
>Two passes: A Strange Shadow. As you move over head on the catwalk, your shadow falls on a comptroller walking underneath. By the time he looks up, you have managed to get out of his sight, and he convinces himself that he imagined it. Depending on what happens here tonight, he might reevaluate that …
>Three passes: A Slippery Shadow. No one sees or hears anything. You slip right on over to the relative concealment of the nearest column.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2), then you automatically fail this test, and one of the workers recognizes you from the bounty description.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99), then you automatically pass this test, and you find a lucky tenth-talent on the catwalk, which gives you a single-use re roll.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.
>You are STRONGLY encouraged to roll again after twenty minutes if more rolls are needed, to keep the quest moving.

>Three rolls of 1d100 please!

Rolled 46 (1d100)

>>5154507

Rolled 60 (1d100)

>>5154512

Rolled 24 (1d100)

>>5154507

>>5154587
>>5154535
>>5154524
Alright, good stuff. I will get to writing.

Also, I wanted to thank you guys for sticking around. It really shouldn't have taken almost a week to get this update finished, but things got away from me there.

>>5154635
Gib coin?

From the distance from where you are to where most of the workers are, odds are good that if they saw anything, it would just be a silhouette moving along the catwalk. So, it stands to reason that if you were to run this distance at full tilt, someone watching might assume something was wrong. On the other hand, if you were to take a brisk walk over to the column, then even if someone saw you, they might not think anything of it.

So, you take the catwalk as slowly as you bear. All the while, your skin is positively crawling. Making matters worse, the sensation of being watched is back, and you are not sure if you are imaging it, if you are being watched from the floor, or from somewhere else entirely. But as hard as that may be, you must not let that unnerve you. Still, you hold your breath the entire way across, only exhaling once you have put the column nearest to the miserable little room between you and the pit. As you take a moment to gather your thoughts, you notice from your new vantage point that there are also catwalks alongside the pipes that lead further into the Refinery. As you mull over whether or not the new route is worth risking, instead of going to the roof, as you originally planned, there is a booming echo from the bottom of the pit, loud enough that it for a split second, it drowns out all of the other noise in the tower. As you reel from the noise, you are knocked off of your feet. Not understanding what is going on, you crawl to the edge of the column and you peer around it … only to have to duck as flaming debris starts to pepper all of the columns. You were able to see one thing though – the pump that was steaming and smoking in the middle of the pit was completely obscured by billowing black smoke. In fact, you are not sure that it is even there anymore. You cower behind the column, while more debris shoots out of the pit – and you can tell from the sounds that these new arrivals are moving faster and hitting harder, no doubt accelerated to dangerous speeds by burning Ichor. Perhaps because of the damage from the debris, perhaps because of system blowing out, or perhaps because of some safety feature, the column in front of you starts bleeding. Steam, water, oil and sludges of various colors start coming out up and down the massive stacks.

Some of that sludge falls right in front of you, and you backpedal away from it as Strange-Staining activates. This is too much – this is all too much; you have to get out. You turn around and look towards the bay door, to see if there is a way down to the wharf … and you watch, stunned as the Oiler that was moored in front of this Refinery, presumably the one that was being pumped into this Refinery, whose deck is completely ablaze, lifts itself out of the water. Its midships, where the Ichor tanks are located, are crumpling, and the only thing that seems to be keeping it from floating away into the night is the hoses running to it from under the wharf.

What the Hell happened? More importantly, what the Hell should you do? Already, there are workers rushing into the tower from the wharf, while others wrestle with equipment. You are seriously considering jumping down to the platform underneath you and then to the floor underneath that, witnesses be damned, when all of sudden, from behind you, further in the depths of the Refinery, there is a blinding white flash. It is bright enough that you can make yourself out in the shadows that it casts on the mortally wounded column in front of you. Without thinking, you close your eyes, and throw your arm in front of your face. Impossibly, the light is bright enough that it hurts your eyes anyway. The following blast of heat is enough to flip your skirt and chemise up to your mid back, but beyond being uncomfortably and unexpectedly warmed, you can feel no injuries when you reach back to lay it back into place.

Breathing heavily, you just lie still for a moment, keeping your eyes covered, waiting for something else to go wrong – like the column in front of you bursting like bad fruit fallen from the tree, or maybe the catwalk dumping you on the floor. But after what might be the longest two or three seconds of your entire life – nothing happens. When you realize that you cannot hear anything immediately, you immediate assume that you have been deafened, but when you can hear yourself make a sharp inhalation at the thought, you realize that everything has just gotten a whole lot quieter. You get up, letting your arm fall free from your face. The first thing that you notice is that the ship is still there, burning, hanging in space. The next thing you notice is that the men that were on the floor, either the men that were rushing in or possibly men that made it out – all of the ones that appear to be conscious are holding their hands to their eyes.

They have been blinded, perhaps permanently.

A terrible thought strikes upon you like a club. Is this the Judgement?. All of this … is a reward? You wanted to steal lifting oil, fresh from a Refinery, and the Pattern obliges you by blinding and killing potential witnesses. Sick to your stomach, you start to vomit, but you force your mouth close – determined not to let a drop of spew past your lips, for fear of spreading the Strangeness. As you choke down your own bile, you wrestle with the terrible implications.

The twists and turns of the Pattern are harsh, and to the indolent, may seem needlessly cruel – but there is great strength to be found in adversity. The Patternmaker wants you all to rise to His Great Challenge – so this, assuming this was not just some freak coincidence, what happened here is an act of the purest Love imaginable … though it may be hard for some to accept, in the moment. It is no different then when a father takes a rod to his son. In time, they should understand that it was truly for their own good.

The Trials that the survivors here will face are going to be huge – and you have no doubt that not all of them will manage, but in the end, it will bring them closer to Wisdom. And as for those who died here, so long as they have lived decent and proper lives, then death should hold no fear for them. That is not to say that what just transpired here is not sad, that those who passed should not be missed or mourned, but … these things happen.

What has got your gut tied up into knots is that these things are all happening around you. First there was the graven steel musket ball – you tried to take care of it, made things worse for yourself, then when you were faced with an opportunity to help others, you fled from it, which also made things worse for yourself – now there is this. And if you want to widen the net, there was that Strange machine that was attracting the Hook Gulls, and the body of the smuggler that showed up at your door step.

Because of that machine, several families are now homeless, and one family, along with that hapless Animal Control Leper, are suffering in curative custody. If you had bothered to look into it yourself, then maybe you could have spared all of them that – not to mention, you could have learned something in the process. And because of your great scheme with the cadaver, you wound having to kill four people … probably making the curfew worse in the process.

There is no way around it. Since you tried to take things into your own hands last night, calamity has been lapping at your heels, nearly everything that you have tried has gone wrong in some way, and when it goes right – it is a dire cost for someone else. You know that the Patternmaker elevates some souls for greatness … and He also marks some souls for infamy. Is it possible that this is what is going on? That you are the rod, the lash, the Trial? That you are some monster that brings ruin, until they are slain by a hero, or culled by the Patternmaker himself?

No, no, that cannot be. If that was true, then things like this would have been happening your entire life, right? And they have not been, right? You keep repeating that thought over and over in your head, but unfortunately it does not make you feel any better. You still feel sick to your stomach, sick to your very bones. You wish you could talk to a priest about all of this, but you know that would be a terrible idea. You wish you could talk to father about this too, but you are beginning to realize that you probably are not going go see him ever again.

You shake your head emphatically, and tell yourself that you need to pull your head out of your ass. You came here for lifting oil – and if your presence here somehow was responsible for all of this … death and destruction, then it would be heinous for you to not get the damned oil. But this is not your fault. This simply cannot be your fault. You just cannot accept it …

>>5154976
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Stay in this damaged Refinery with witness that are blinded and try to steal the Lifting Oil from it -possibly using this opportunity to save some people to. You do not know if it will save your soul or anything, but it would certainly make you feel better.

>Sneak into a Refinery that is not on dangerously damaged, but has witnesses that are not blinded, and try to steal the Lifting Oil from it – forgoing the opportunity here to same some people. It is hard, but you cannot risk being tied to this scene like this with all of the other fraying bullshit weighing down on you. The next time, you will do the right thing … the next time.

>>5154673
Yeah, okay. +1 lucky tenth-talent, redeemable for a re-roll on any non-critical test result.

>>5154979
>>Stay in this damaged Refinery with witness that are blinded and try to steal the Lifting Oil from it -possibly using this opportunity to save some people to. You do not know if it will save your soul or anything, but it would certainly make you feel better.

>>5154979
>Stay in this damaged Refinery with witness that are blinded and try to steal the Lifting Oil from it -possibly using this opportunity to save some people to. You do not know if it will save your soul or anything, but it would certainly make you feel better.

We need to be better lads.

>>5154979
>>Sneak into a Refinery that is not on dangerously damaged, but has witnesses that are not blinded, and try to steal the Lifting Oil from it – forgoing the opportunity here to same some people. It is hard, but you cannot risk being tied to this scene like this with all of the other fraying bullshit weighing down on you. The next time, you will do the right thing … the next time.
A coin is very welcome trash