TEST DRIVE ※ 1

[wildestmods]

TEST DRIVE #1

These woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but being lost in them is pretty alarming to most people. Perhaps it's lucky you're hearing what sounds like... a party?

If you follow the sounds through thinning trees, a brick-paved road rises from the ground ahead. Keep going, and you'll find yourself approaching a bustling festival. Small, jaunty, colorful buildings line a way bedecked with flags, banners, and (of course) ever-present vendors.

Good morrow! Dost thou carest for a turkey leg? Some funnel cake? Modestly priced costume jewelry? Come right this way, dear visitor! The faire is here!

First, however, the faeries would like a moment of your time. At one of the entry gates, a spritely, brightly-dressed faerie tells you, "Tickets are long-since sold out, but joy is one currency we accept. So as long as you plan to enjoy yourselves, you may enter with a day pass. However, please read the sign. By entering, it means you agree to the terms."

The faerie points to a large wooden sign with words painted on it. The sign says something to the effect that the summer faeries are not responsible for anything that happens at the faire, and by entering you're agreeing to exempt them from indemnifying you for not offering the same magical protections they offer proper ticket holders in the unlikely event of surprise and disaster, etc etc.

Fortunately, it's actually not that different from a standard legal agreement for some kind of dangerous activity like go-cart racing. Of course faeries would be careful about any legal disclaimers for events.

USEFUL LINKS

Premise/Short Facts | Arrival/Welcome | Setting Background/FAQ


A FAIRE SHAKE

A renaissance faire is in full swing in the woods today, or so it would seem. But no one here is just playing a part: these outsize personalities, bright costumes, and pseudo-Elizabethan voices are perfectly real.

It's the only place you can go for food and appropriate clothing. Also there's magic at your feet, drawing you towards others bound by the Quest magic, making it so all paths seem to lead to the Faire. Even if you don't want to enter, it feels like you have to, like there's something important to find.

a) The Faerie Toll
Some of the faeries are lighthearted and cheerful, with round and heart shaped faces and brightly colored clothes. These summer faeries are willing to part with some faerie coin in exchange for certain actions. Anyone that watches others take them up on their deals can see that the actions are indeed harmless, and there is no catch. Apparently happiness and frivolity really can be exchanged with the faeries here. Ways to earn a small bit of coin: physical comedy, agreeing to a round in the dunk tank (yes they have one), telling the faeries a good joke (but it really has to be a good one, by faerie standards), letting oneself getting pied in the face, and pieing someone you're with in the face, among other things. Silly dances are also in high demand, especially ones with actual rules vs. ones that are made up on the spot, with a clear preference for moves like tiktok dances, the macarena, or the Hustle.

b) New and In Stock

You tried to steal from the faeries instead of paying their toll, or have otherwise misbehaved. The faeries like your moxie, though. They'll let you keep what you took (if you took something), but first you're gonna have to do some time in the stocks.

Will anyone take mercy on you and bust you loose? Does anyone have a tomato? Perhaps you meet someone else while they're suffering a similar punishment in the other stocks across from you. If you didn't actually steal, maybe you got framed. Or you're in the stocks with your "partner in crime" who you were falsely accused of being affiliated.

Fortunately, you won't be in there overly long. Even if you can't escape and no one busts you out, the faeries aren't particularly cruel and the absolute worst you'll get thrown your way by the crowd is a fruit.

If you push, the faeries might also let you out if someone else agrees to be responsible for your good behavior. This could, naturally, lead to both of you doing more time together.

c) I'm Just Here For the Turkey Leg
Wandering lost in the woods is hungry work. Maybe you know better than to eat food offered by faeries, but the humans of the faire should be safe enough, right? Where else are you going to find a whole turkey leg, a funnel cake, or a cold beer around here? The lines can get pretty long though, and sometimes orders get mixed up, or someone swipes what was yours! Maybe they bump into you and spill food down your front. Or perhaps you see someone with no money and decide to offer to share.

Some of the food seems out of this world or is clearly made for a more alien palate (not always in an appetizing way). Most of the food has big enough portions if you're not the only one eating

d) Surely, You Joust
Whether you're just watching, betting on the outcome, or have convinced someone to armor you up and put you on a horse, the jousting tournament is a major event! Will anyone be able to unseat the intimidating Black Knight? Have you started a rivalry with a competitor you just met in a line twenty minutes ago? Are you helping another member of the squad by pumping them up for their match? Or are you just over here to see how many horses you can pet without anyone noticing?

Even those not interested in the competition might want to give it a whirl. There are different rewards for unseating certain levels of competitors like food supplies, flasks of boozeahol, small bags of silver or gold, and weapons of moderate quality, like swords, knives, or bows.

For those that don't own their own armor and lances, some light armor and lances are on loan but the armor is all dinged up and the lances are easily broken, putting someone using them at a disadvantage.

e) Everyone's a Comedian
You (and maybe your threadmate) are being teased by a pair of funnymen doing a bit, be they jesters, Punch and Judy style puppets, or a pair of washing well wenches. The audience is delighted, but are you? What are you both going to do?

f) Wares, If You Have Coin
You're here! You have some gold! Time to get yourself some "period appropriate" (for varying values of both words) gear. Have you found a shopping buddy? What if you resell some goods you just picked up at a slight markup? Are you suspicious of the quality of a vendor's goods? Maybe this item over here is the last of its kind, and you and this stranger want it!

g) Stop! Thief!
Someone picked your pocket or snatched something out of your hands! It might even be your thread partner. Do you give chase? If your threadmate isn't the thief, are they helping you chase the thief down or getting in your way?

h) Archery Range
Are you taking the chance to start learning a new skill on the practice targets? If it's any incentive, several fair maidens and handsome young fellows are hanging about, flirting with the best shots. If you're already good, you might be competing in the archery competition for a prize! The targets are close enough you can make conversation with the person one target over.

i) Fortune Told
A stubborn young blonde woman in a long purple robe with a pointed hat - one that looks more than a little bit witchy - is determined to read your fortune for you. Loudly. Whether you like it or not. She has to demonstrate her skills to drum up business, you see! Now please hold your hand still, she just needs to get a good look at your fate line...

(Note: Players will have to npc the fortuneteller says in their thread and can go absolutely wildly wrong. However, sometimes the fortuneteller suddenly gets more intense and guesses a few things closer to the truth...)

j) Out of Water
You draw attention to yourself with your behavior, or by how strange your manner of dress is (according to the faire folk, anyway.) Perhaps you have a still-functioning small electronic like a smartphone that's unlike anything they've ever seen. People are starting to give you the stink eye or ask you invasive questions. Will your threadmate help you out?

k) Bargaining With the Fae
There are some faeries here that are different from the sunny, cheerful summer faeries running the fair. These are the winter faeries, more ethereal and elegant, more immaculately dressed in finery that's a little too fancy for the event. Despite their beauty - or maybe because of it - these faeries are...colder. Many of them are busying themselves with maintaining magical lanterns around the edges of the faire. If asked, they tell your character they're handling security and to bug off.

But some of them maintain stands in shadier-looking areas of the faire. They're willing to offer more in exchange for greater payment. Warm, durable clothing to cut through the slight chill that comes at evening and night time. Swords made of much stronger metals than can be found elsewhere, of better make, with edges that take forever to dull. Bows with strings that rarely ever break.

Their deals are definitely backhanded though. For payment, they might say something like "we could really use your view on something, just a half hour of your time" and instead of having you participate in conversation where your insight is welcome, you lose your ability to see for a half hour.

These effects are unpleasant but usually temporary, lasting no longer than a half hour or so - but it's not like they'll tell you that. And if you try to go back to the stall afterwards to confront them, they'll have mysteriously disappeared. You'll at least get to keep whatever your bought and it will be of good quality, but the joke is definitely on you.

l) Wild Card!
You can make up anything your character might reasonably see at a normal Renaissance Faire, or place an encounter in the woods nearby! Go wild!

OOC DETAILS
❧ This counts as a plot and is part of game canon! This means that new players aren't the only ones that can make top-levels. Current characters can be thrown in like it's any other plot or event. The default for threads is that they're game canon if all characters involved are apped in or already in game, but prospective players may opt out and consider a thread non-canon if they're not happy with it.

❧ Feel free to play around with powers. If your character has powers from canon you want to play around with, go for it. If you'd like to test out possibilities for game powers, also go for it. Feel free to change it up from thread to thread if you need to. If you want to keep a thread as canon this can be handwaved as the magic making characters' powers shift a few times before settling.

❧ Potential players may use test drive threads as their log samples. However, at least one post in their thread must fit the requirements for apps, and in quality and length (200 words). If you do plan on using a thread as a sample, please make sure the writing throughout your threads is a good example of your writing skills and has some solid examples of the character's voice.

❧ Players can count TDMs towards AC, with the same AC rules as any other threads.

❧ The game is invite-only. Players without invites are allowed to tdm since some of them may know someone in game to ask for one, and since some people enjoy TDMs just for fun in games they don't plan to app into. But an invite is required during the apping process.

❧ The game is at a starting cap at 30 players. Right now the current number of invitees is likely to not exceed the game's 30 slots, but if we go a few over they will still be allowed to app during this first round. Future apps will be rolling apps and will have a wait queue if the cap has been exceeded.

❧ Invites at game start are limited to current and former players of the mods' previous game Piper90 (piper90), former players of the first incarnation of Wilderlands (wilderlands, and people friended to the main mod's plurk. If any of those individuals want to invite someone outside those pools in the first app round, they can request it when the mods make a headcount of potential appers. If the game will be under (or only slightly over) 30 players to start, some extra players may also be invited, but the mods want to limit it to exceed the player cap too much.

❧ The first game round will be apps only, no reserves. Apps open: 10/15/21. Game start: 11/01/21

Comments

[hasapoint]

Need is familiar with injuries to and disease of the lungs and this has things in common with consumption, which is a hard sentence to live under. She tastes the blood in his mouth and the strong loathing to have this fit noticed, and so Need says nothing, allows nothing but a patient receptiveness show in the tenuous, fragile link between them. She can wait. She does not comment, does not get bored, does not reveal pity.

Figuring out what's actually wrong promises to be complicated, because while this is like consumption there are some things that don't fit, like that twist and squeeze that she half missed (it isn't at all the way she would draw life-energy away from someone) but she knows she could ease the symptoms. She does not do so. Need has no arrangement with Raistlin and owes him nothing, and unlike, say, Jadrek with his chronic pain, he would notice and not appreciate it. She's familiar with that, too. Pride isn't just something for the healthy and wealthy.

:You don't have to... speak out loud,: she says when he's ready to talk again, as if there had been no pause. :As long as you aren't... blocking me out, I see your thoughts. As long as they don't hold... the intention to rape anyone... or prey on the vulnerable, then I don't... care.: Need is very old and has been touching minds for a long time. She's long, long past being shocked at passing fantasies and how petty people are in their own heads. She's past being shocked at most things. :But I could teach you... to block out spirits, all the same. Most of them aren't as... kind as me.:

She doesn't think of herself as kind, so that word is layered with sardonic amusement, a kind of scoff, the backhanded admission that there is cruelty in her.

[hourglasshalfempty]

"I see," he says aloud, then tries it internally, shaping the words with unnecessary clarity and force. :I see. I have no such intentions - sir? Madame?:

Indeed, the brief flashes his inexperienced mindspeech grants give her the sense that he finds the prospect of consensual sex daunting enough. The idea of forcing himself on someone is repulsive and, frankly, undignified. Then he quite forcibly takes his mind off the subject.

:And as for preying on the vulnerable,: he adds dryly, :I find that the powerful tend to have more worth taking, and you feel less guilt about it:

Though one may end up nearly burned at the stake is the underthought he can't suppress. There's a deep emotional well here: memories of fire, and smoke, and a tear-stained young mother reaching for him only to be swallowed by a jeering crowd.

:I would be grateful if you shared your skill with me, master: he concludes, ignoring the memories. :What could I offer in return?:

[hasapoint]

:I don't need honorifics, boy,: she says, amused. He's laying it on thick in a novel way. Maybe she's spent too many generations among mercenaries. :'Need' will do, or some... creative insult, if the moment feels right. And I am, I was, a woman.:

There is a strongly feminine quality to her, even if most of the signifiers would seem outwardly masculine. Her Mindvoice is low and gravelly, here sounding like an old person who's breathed much smoke, here like metal scraping metal. And, well, she's pinned to a sword. It's not a large sword and the crossguard resembles multiple crescent shapes, but this is a weapon more associated with men.

She presents a calm front to that underthought, as though she didn't see it and it didn't spike a reaction. Need's old. She knows the world is full of suffering that she can do nothing to ease, and if she lets herself be carried away by all of it, or goes to know every thought and moment of someone's history, it will consume her.

:I'm blind and deaf... not to mention every other sense and ability that comes... with having a body. I can only see through others' eyes, hear through their ears... so on.: She's not at all bound to only the senses of whoever has her at the moment, but that is a central focus. And yes, it does mean always having temptation at hand, always taking the tiniest, slowest sips when she could be gulping. That's the way of things. :If I can't touch people and talk to them... I fall asleep. As I was asleep, but I'm normally... slower to wake. I'm different when I sleep. I join my soul to another's and I stay with her until she dies or grows old and passes me on. In that time I support her with magic or physical skills, I heal her when she's hurt, and I call on her to act for me and fill my purpose. When I'm awake I don't need the soul-bond and I expect to spend time with more than one person, but my purpose remains.:

She is absolutely building towards revealing the letters that can form on her blade. Look, sometimes fire and drama are highly enjoyable.

[hourglasshalfempty]

:Honorifics are traditional, in the Orders of Wayreth.: Particularly if you wanted someone to teach you. :But I shall call you Need, as you request. I assume it isn't the name you were born with - I thought at first you might be a sentient artifact, but it seems more accurate to say you are a soul trapped within one?:

Raistlin can talk and think at the same time, a surprisingly rare gift. As he makes small talk, his mind is racing, turning over the implications of what she's saying. Oh, yes, there is danger here, and hunger, too - but no malice. He's sure of that, though he can't put his finger on why. Perhaps it's only that her mind seems too disciplined for malice. No - if she destroyed him, it would be because she deemed it necessary.

He can live with that.

:If you have a purpose, then can I presume you chose this fate?:

[hasapoint]

:I've probably had multiple names, but I've forgotten them. Which I'm aware is a sign of senility,: she says with a dry, mordant chuckle. :And part of living after death, for that matter. Old names become less important.:

It is a rare gift! Need can multitask and follow and hold multiple conversations at a time. She was less able at it when she was alive, though she knows that once her meatheaded fighter days were over she'd had to develop her until-then latent intelligence. She's a little impressed.

...and Raistlin is correct. If she kills him or does something irreparable to his psyche, it will be on purpose. Even when she's asleep and acts without thought, she has bound herself too well to drift far. Though, in her sleep she is more likely to kill bearers for reasons that later don't seem as sound. Asleep, Need has some trouble parsing that women, like anyone else, can be evil, and therefore her bearer killing one isn't automatically a betrayal.

:Yes and no. I chose it in less than ideal circumstances. If you find somewhere more secure, I can show you.: Need would prefer to be inside solid walls, where people can't see someone lost to the world and take advantage of that as easily. There doesn't seem to be an inn here, of course. And sure, it doesn't take as long to relive as it took to live for the first time (demonsbane, that would be terrible) and she can respond to interruptions, but it's just bad operational security. :Or I suppose if you're skilled enough with warding and have... how do you measure time, anyway?:

[hourglasshalfempty]

:Such wards as I can cast require continual focus, unless I make certain preparations in advance: he says. :Unfortunately, I arrived here with little more than the clothes on my back. And we measure the hours of the day, dividing them into minutes and seconds. How long would I need?:

[hasapoint]

Instead of asking, Need reaches for how long any of those measurements are. It's like being pickpocketed, in and then out with smooth ease, the sort of thing people who aren't paying careful attention miss. She always has to adjust to measurements and money and a thousand other things that don't remain the same from place to place or century to century. It doesn't bother her.

:One hour, maybe one and a half,: she decides. :The memory won't take very long from the outside, but it will feel longer to you, and you may find it jarring and something to stop and recover from. Don't worry too much about that. If something happens, I'll protect you. Just don't get to expecting it from me.:

It's not that Need knows that there's an attack inbound. She does not, having only a vague and dreamlike recollection of anything the Winter Court Fae was thinking when she was in his hands. But she is exactly paranoid enough to know that danger is always a possibility, and these circumstances are strange.

[hourglasshalfempty]

:I have never expected protection from anything other than my own wits: The thought is full of pride, puffed with it, rather like a lizard flashing its frills. It's also not entirely true. Caramon had always been there, an unwanted and necessary guardian, a constant, quiet reminder of his weakness and physical inadequacy.

But he had the magic, and Caramon did not. That was something to cling to. He stands, taking the sword with him, and tips the barmaid on the way out.

The place he finds, a short walk later, is a private tent one can rent for sleeping and, judging by the smell and the proprietor's polite amusement, other purposes. But it's safe, quiet, and charges by the hour; he could give a damn what the plummy little man he hands his coin to thinks.

If Need uses his senses as they walk, she notices something extremely horrible. Raistlin doesn't see the world through normal eyes. Quite literally: in his sight, the faire is a barren winter wasteland, populated by walking corpses and rotting shells of threadbare tents. No life, no bright colors, no living things. Just desolation and death. That's not what the faire is - popping over to passerby will confirm - but it is what he sees.

Once inside, he ties closed the flaps and sits cross-legged, Need naked across his lap.

:We are as secure and private as I could manage: he informs her.

[hasapoint]

Need approves of people being independent to a point that many completely reasonable people would find a bit much, so this doesn't seem as bad as it probably should. Still not ideal; people should be able to ask for and accept help, and not resent it. Not that she lets this on.

That visual distortion is extremely horrible, and Need takes several other perspectives as they go just to make sure she hasn't ended up somewhere very different. There's a lot of subjectivity to what people see, colored both by details of the actual eyes doing the seeing and by the brain that processes that information. Most of the workers see their surroundings as far more mundane than the visitors do, for example, and to a particularly aggravated one there's no beauty in this at all.

Whatever's happening with Raistlin's sight is a lot worse than that, and it's not even really registering to him, so it isn't new. She could probe for what it means, but she stops herself. This seems bigger and more important than checking for what an hour is, more like something that requires an actual conversation. Also, it's probably not good to just reach into someone's head every time she's curious. It will be more satisfying if she draws the process out anyway.

Which is probably also not a good sign.

:I'm not confident of that. Tents are neither secure nor private,: she says as he settles. Whatever the visual effect means, it doesn't put new visible holes in the tent, or not this one, anyway. Afternoon is shading to evening outside, and it's dark in here. :My shields aren't working right. Magic is different here, and I probably won't figure out how to get around that for some decades,: she says gloomily, as if talking about a year or two. :Best I can do right now is put up one that keeps anyone outside from sniffing us out with magic or mind gifts. Might reduce visibility too.:

So she makes a shield. Spellcasting, for Need, is a process, the creation of a structure that obeys various laws of physics. It's like building a simple arch bridge out of stone, each piece shaped and positioned with relation to the pieces around it and the total shape, with her will for mortar. Throwing the shield up takes her about half a second. She's not satisfied with it.

[hourglasshalfempty]

:Neither is a clearing in a forest. There are no buildings around, and at least the usual purpose of this tent makes preventing interruptions a priority for the host:

He watches as she throws up her wards, trying to understand the shape and nature of her magic. His own has been - not changed, but redirected by this place. For one heart-stopping moment on arrival, he had thought it lost. But the absence of Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari from this realm had not extinguished the arcane fire in his heart. Which was really quite interesting, when you thought about it. Either the gods of magic were even greater than he realized, or magic itself was greater than them.

...and how strange it is, to seek such answers and not feel Lunitari's warm and cryptic smile.

:My magic has also been affected by this place. I am still trying to understand exactly how.:

[hasapoint]

She doesn't respond to that justification, which, from Need, is the same thing as saying "You're right." Maybe she is too cautious. She's certain that no one noted their entering the tent with any particular interest, and it doesn't stand out. Just in case, and because he's close enough, she stretches out and nudges the proprietor's short-term memory, smearing the details of who he saw. There. The situation is now as secure as she can reasonably get it.

Need's shields are things of ridiculous intricacy, making a number of component pieces that each on their own, even all at once, would have barely a whisper of effect on the world. They have friction and tension with each other that gives them cohesion and structure and makes the whole thing much more efficient, lets it use less power. To be sure that's not the only way to make a shielding spell that does the same thing. Young mages learn to fling such things out with will alone at first, burning spectacularly through reserves to do so. Practice and understanding of the theory lets them refine the process so they can make more and more deliberate constructs at speed. Need has had a lot of practice.

:Your gods and your magic are very different from mine,: Need observes, and then she calls up the memory and opens it to envelop them both.

This world goes away. In its place is somewhere else, curiously distorted - like most things are covered by fine, gauzy veils that erase detail. The things that do have detail are sketched out in an odd way. Such is, comes the certainty, the nature of old enough memories shared again and again. It feels real, despite the oddness, and the perspective comes through so clearly and completely, with such inexorable force, that after long enough in it Raistlin's own identity and sense of self will quietly go dormant, unless he objects enough to struggle out of full immersion.

Her name is (lost). She is the daughter of a fighter, and once a fighter herself, whose Mage-Gift woke unusually late and was barely relevant to her when all she did was swing a sword; she developed it, and found her calling, after suffering that injury that was too much to be Healed entirely(what was that injury exactly, and how did it happen? All she remembers is that it was one of her legs, and she needed a stick some days, and she was never again able to run). Combining forgework and spellcraft, combining two fascinating disciplines into becoming a mage-smith, is enthralling. Filled with challenge and reward, and almost no getting stabbed or stepping in a friend's viscera.

After a few decades of it (did she put a hand into politics? Stars, she'd been young) she joined a religious enclave that shared reverence for the gods of her people (who were her people? She thinks some of them became the Kaled'a'in, who became other things in turn) and supported and taught women in a nation (an empire?) where women were disdained. Here they learned trades, and combat, and those with the ability learned High Magic. Here, with time, she found great respect and authority, and the peace she had not asked for and likely didn't deserve.

That all comes as things that are known as she gives a finished spell-sword a last polishing with oiled goatskin and slides it home into its sheath, satisfied.

[hourglasshalfempty]

The flood of memories does quite sweep Raistlin away, until he sees the hands polishing the sword and panics. They're not his hands - too old - he's not young - why are they pale and pink and not golden - why would he think they were golden - why can see the leaves on the trees, and not just dead branches - why would he believe he couldn't -

He erupts out of her identity like a drowning man making it to the surface, on the edge of a genuine panic before he remembers what's happening. He grips himself with an iron will, gathering up the stray edges of his identity to sit behind the eyes of her remembered self and simply watch.

:You could have warned me: he thinks, with some rancor.

[hasapoint]

As soon as he does that there's a change. The scene in the cold forge is no longer all of the world. The dark musky-smelling inside of the tent comes back, partially. Past and present don't quite overlay, but it's like hearing a completely different conversation out of each ear, seeing a completely different scene from each eye. It's possible to focus on one and try to ignore the other, but neither version can be as clear and immediate. The thoughts and feelings in the memory become barely a murmur and the sense of context falls away entirely. It would be possible for him to pull all the way out of the memory if he wanted.

What is clear is that Need's initial response is irritation, outrage even. She's not used to being thwarted. Laid across Raistlin's lap that annoyance throws hints of something he'd noticed before into sharper relief, just for a moment - there's a sense of such power to her, held back and controlled, the way a mastiff would handle a day-old chick. He has more power over the situation than the metaphorical chick would, but that's the prevailing image.

Then whatever window into Need's thoughts and feelings was open closes, and the sense of great jaws becomes less strong. She ponders for a good long moment. In the present, soft pops sound from somewhere outside and overhead as a fireworks display begins, an early preview to the show planned for full dark. In the past, the old woman-who-was-Need nurses swollen, aching joints and arranges twelve plain, sheathed swords in a bag. There is a vague sense that they are magic, that there is a thirteenth hidden somewhere in the forge and that one's special somehow. Some thought about ornamentation?

Finally, Need capitulates with less than perfect grace. :Fine. If it's that important to you. Look, boy, this kind of thing doesn't hurt or even change people. They'll forget who they are, maybe, but then it ends and there's a little confusion and they'll remember again. I've fed people years before and the most it's done is get them over fear of crowds and that kind of thing.: A trace of dry humor creeps into her Mindvoice. :For that matter, it's close to how I end up when I'm asleep. If you hadn't woke me up I'd have dreamed I was you finding me. The horror.:

[hourglasshalfempty]

:That would be more a nightmare, I think: he mindspeaks, equally dry. :And I can't speak for others, but when I become aware that a mind has unexpectedly subsumed my own, I don't generally stop to ask why. If I'd known this would happen, I wouldn't have been quite so alarmed when I noticed.:

Not frightened. He'd never admit to fear, especially not now, when the sense of pressure and not-quite-threat is only just receding. His hands are shaking, a little. The conversation had been interesting enough that he'd forgotten the sheer power lurking at the heart of - whatever she was now.

:That being said, I would prefer to remain awake for the process. If that's possible and feasible:

[hasapoint]

She knows it scared him even as he tries to claim it as 'alarm', and holds tighter to the part of herself that feels that and wants to bite hard. It comes with being what she is, and with all the long years of fighting and taking advantage of any opening. Metaphorically, she takes a breath. :There are some things I have forgotten,: she says with a bit more patience. It's not an apology, but it's as close as she's going to come right now.

:To a point. You can maintain a sense of being yourself and who I was, at least for a while. But you've still got to think what I thought or the only thing you'll get from it is sensory, and I'll tell you now, this period is so long ago that most sensation is fragments held together by patches from more recent memories.: It's a disgruntled admission. This sequence of memories is so foundational to her that she feels like it should have been impossible for any of it to slip away into the Void.

:The longer a memory is and the more thought and emotion it takes the more likely you'll lose your awareness of yourself as it goes. I can make some elisions, I suppose. And I can remind you of yourself when it ends.:

[hourglasshalfempty]

He feels the pressure of her power. And he feels it ebb away, punctuated by a grudging self-awareness as she doesn't quite apologize. And he wonders why he feels inclined to trust the power that holds him so carefully in its palm. Perhaps because he has no choice. And neither, really, does she. There is the balance, he supposes.

:I will follow your instructions to the letter, whatever they may be,: he assures her. :In the study of magic, such things are life and death. But let me make the attempt.:

[hasapoint]

She can't sigh or raise an eyebrow, but there's a sense of both.

:Child, I hope you haven't forgotten that you're the one who took me when I was handed over. You could have left me on the table when I stirred. You can actually put me aside right now and go. Oh, I'd keep you from dropping me into a well or something like that-: There's the hint, just the barest and most fleeting suggestion, of deep dark water as something that genuinely unsettles her. :But I haven't bonded your soul to mine. Even if I had, it's been such a short time that walking away wouldn't hurt you. You have a choice. All that keeps you here is curiosity.:

Mindspeech is filled with tiny intimations of imagery, sensation, and emotion, the way the air above a campfire is filled with heat distortion and smoke and sparks. Mostly it's all too fleeting and partial to easily track, beyond emotion. This time it contains flashes and particles of a mercenary in pain and her whole Company stopping to search a river, and of a rueful reflection on that. Need doesn't like people to depend too much on her, and that includes 'dying if they get too far away'.

The scene of the forge has started to reassert itself over the inside of the tent, becoming more 'real' and relevant, much clearer and more coherent than the fleeting impressions of that river and those mercenaries. The old woman who would become Need is completely unaware of interruption and quite content.

[hourglasshalfempty]

:Do I? I am a stranger to this place, as much as you appear to be. I arrived here alone, with no money and no possessions save what I had in my hands and on my person. None of my allies: - he doesn't say brother, not out loud - :came with me. And my magic is behaving strangely. You need a bearer. I need an ally. Mutual necessity, I've found, can be a very strong bond.:

But then he quiets himself and lets the memory unfold, waiting in calm anticipation for whatever instructions Need might have.

[hasapoint]

:Very pragmatic,: is all she says, showing an amused resignation. Need does not feel that she really needs him. Oh, sure, she has to have a bearer to be able to think, but she's been asleep often enough to not find it distressing. He could, she feels, also get on without her. But it would be harder, and unlike her he can be harmed and can die, and... she didn't choose him, but she doesn't want that.

The memory opens back up and once again becomes the world. All in a few seconds the following context comes: Who she had been - part of who she is now - worked on many projects and supervised as her smithing students, of whom only one was another mage, did their own work. But she was best known in her semi-retirement for these spelled swords, each a month in crafting, each made with a spell she associates with the season, as well as enchantments that keep them from breaking or rusting. They are powered by drawing in magic unobtrusively as it's exhaled by the life around it. That's a difficult, finicky piece of work all by itself - most enchanted items have a limited power supply - but over her career she's worked with lyke-blades and even the lyke-library and seen the way magic keeps their spirits more or less whole and rooted indefinitely. It's rare for magic to outlive the one who cast it, and satisfying to think that these will. Nothing... Little of what she makes is truly unique or has been kept secret, but it takes a time and patience and level of skill that she's quite justifiably proud of.

Spring swords were made with the spell of Calm. It's been a long time since she saw a battlefield, but she remembers how important it had been to keep her head, and it's continued to be important since. That she forges swords with it is a sign of her skill because calming magic can easily induce passivity, and that's the typical use. It takes a deft hand and a spell with a lot of if/then variables included for it to be a steadying influence instead.

Summer swords were made with the spell of Warding. It's an invaluable enchantment, even limited as it has to be. No one carrying a Summer sword will be caught by spells of sleep or deception, or a few other common hazards. It does mean that if a Summer bearer wants a spell for sleep or a pleasant illusion they must put their sword aside, she's had some complaints about that and no patience for them at all.

Fall swords were spelled for Healing. It's the most prosaic of the sword spells. Anyone can walk into a marketplace and find items enchanted to heal. Some even work! It's just rare that they work this well, or this indefinitely. After various scares about counter-Healers these are in high demand as reliable methods of treatment.

And the Winter swords have that most subtle and difficult spell, Luck. She had had to work out how to create a sort of primitive mind that could evaluate a Winter bearer and their deepest desires and the world they live in and create small changes when it counts most. Just the fact that people see her mark and buy these is a sign that she's earned respect, because Luck is usually invisible.

Every month, she forges a new sword. Every four years, she only sells eleven of that year's swords and makes one with all four enchantments on it. These year blades are never sold. When a Sister she really likes - an intelligent woman, with intentions to travel and come to something, a woman with a moral compass who thinks beyond herself, and also has a bit of spine - decides to leave the Enclave to make her way in the world, the woman-who-was-part-of-Need gave her the year-blade in secret, only telling her of the healing charm. Why allow these chosen to get dependent on her magic? She's heard from them since and they, not being mages, have never mentioned discovering the other enchantments.

She comes out of the forge and watches the young Sisters at their exercises with a critical eye. All in brown linen trews and tunics, those with long hair keeping it bound and braided for this, they are a diverse group of diverse origins, as all her Sisters are. All who can are required to commit to a certain amount of warming up and healthy physical activity, though only the fighters have to train and practice a great deal. She likes virtually all of them, but no one interested in leaving soon meets her criteria. No fighters do. She watches her apprentice mage-smith Vena and wonders. The girl is powerfully built - she has to be, smith work takes plenty of labor - but doesn't have the interest or reflexes for swordplay. Still... still. She could learn. And if not, there's nothing about her sword spells that require the blades to be used as by warriors.

[I'm gonna skim a bit more from here and not retell the whole chapter, but I wanted the season spells and What Need Likes In A Person brought out.]

[hourglasshalfempty]

[lmao skip all you want, I can review canon myself if need be]

The story Raistlin sees confirmed much of what he'd concluded on his own. Need is - was - a master craftswoman, and mage besides. That's rare in Ansalon; most mages prefer to work magic on something ready-made, since magic itself requires such absolute focus that there's little room to learn anything else. But he can see the advantages, if you have the trick. Working magic in on every level of the item's creation, until the magic is as much a part of the blade as the steel itself. He wonders if her technique can be applied to other items. He also wonders if she'd teach him how, but it's a very quiet wonder, just a "to be raised later" asterisk on his internal list. Mostly he's giving his full attention to the memories she's showing him, and to keeping an ear out for instructions.

He does find himself drifting, settling into thoughts that come almost as easily as his own. It's a bit eye-crossing, actually, the double-vision of it, and with a certain reluctance he finds it is easier the more he lets go of himself and allows the memory to take him. But he still doesn't quite let himself slip under. A very small piece of him remains awake, and watching.

[hasapoint]

It continues. There's one bit of context that her observer might relate to- women of the Sisterhood are celibate while in the compound. That has never been a problem for her - with her scarred, foreign face and heavy musculature, she has never been an attractive woman. Her Mind gifts keep her aware that with very few exceptions anyone who has much mutual attraction for her thinks of her as a man. Oh yes, she could have spent the time and effort it took to get past that problem - hells, if she'd felt desperately enough she could have used illusions - but she is who she is. The fascination of combining magecraft and smithery was always more compelling anyway. She's cynical reflecting on it, but not bitter.

In the memory she leaves the compound and returns, worn out by a journey of a day, to find it burned, bodies everywhere, not all of them women. There are emotions, but they're buried under a cold clarity as she thinks and analyzes. When Vena, the one survivor, comes out of the forest, filthy and tear-streaked with pine needles in her hair - that image is the clearest yet - she holds the girl as she cries, but she does not weep, and she asks questions and reaches into her apprentice's mind, and she discovers what had happened.

The local heshain - a governing position filled by a mage-lord, given command of parts of the army - had come with his full force, killing older adults and younger children outright, setting fire to the buildings to drive everyone out into the open, lining up the young women, having the apprentice mages bound and taken into carts as the others were killed. Vena couldn't imagine why, but her master knew it was to augment his own powers. She could think of several ways to use so many young mages for this purpose, though they are all delicately elided from Raistlin.

These thoughts are very strong and very stark: The apprentices have to be rescued, or if that's not possible, killed. For their sakes and the Sisterhood, and because if the heshain is able to make the use of them that she suspects, he will become a major power in the world. A man who will betray people under his protection as he had - it can not be permitted.

He has to be stopped.

Right! He has to be stopped! By an old, crippled woman, and a half trained girl, because she already knows that they can't take the time they'd need to find a champion. This will take a truly expert fighter and a mage who's at least the heshain's equal. And she's his equal or better, but she is not a healthy mage, one who can ride and climb and run. Here there is bitterness, old and dried up but powerful for all that. She knows a way, and she does not want to take it, and even the idea frightens her, but it is the only hope she has.

Need's voice comes as a whisper. :I suppose you want to see how I did it. Do you need me to warn you for how it feels to die?:

[hourglasshalfempty]

The terms are unfamiliar to him; the general arc of the tale is not. Wherever there's power, there are also men who want that power for themselves, and will do whatever is necessary to obtain it. That neither shocks nor offends him. Power is a bit like money, in that the only people who claim it doesn't really matter are people who've never had to do without it.

What does offend him (he tells himself, and if one of the women's faces blurs and overlaps with the young mother he'd nearly failed all those years ago, Need will surely never notice) is the waste. All the young mages could offer him would be raw power, untrained and untested. And oh yes, you could get a lot done with raw power - but not for very long. And when it runs out, then what? Pantomime villains aside, mages must live and move in the world like anyone else. Too much bloodshed draws attention.

No - the accumulated knowledge of the sect was the real prize, in Raistlin's eyes, and this fool had gone and put most of it to the sword. It's easy to back good people into a corner, especially if you have their children. The girls would have been better used as hostages.

As it is - was - Need was quite correct. The man had to be stopped, if only for being an embarrassment.

:I have been made to believe I was dying before: he tells her. :Thank you for the warning.:

[hasapoint]

They didn't have any secrets worth much, Need is sure of that. They were not rich and nothing taught to their students or held in their archives was anything too unusual. The enclave wasn't old. There was a half-emptied reservoir of magical energy fed by her and all her Sisters who were able, as with every place where mages school together, that he hadn't even bothered to try and suborn.

:This was a bad death,: she whispers. Now the old woman is alone, having sent Vena on a busywork errand that would keep her out of the way for long enough. Her forge is one of the few mostly intact buildings, resistant to fire, but she absolutely notices the shattered door, the bloody drag marks where someone had been found hiding, that her best hammer was missing. The pettiness of that realization stings.

Even now, banked embers still glow in the forge. She feeds them with wood and efficient traces of magic that pull air in and as the fire builds she works on the year-blade, which glows intricately with the spellwork she's already put on it. First she cuts her forearm with the point and bloodies the steel - it's blade lore, the context comes, to be the first person to bleed on it marks her as the true owner. Then she pulls power from the reservoir and elaborates on all of the season spells. More. Much more, she tells Calming and Warding and Healing and Luck. She layers in spells that reflect all of her own gifts and wraps them all in enhancements, though she hesitates over Empathy, which presently she has only weakly. No, she'll need that one, she decides, it will help her track them. She improvises, she does things to the sword that would make it the next thing to useless to anyone else, would make it drag them in odd directions and fill their heads with strange input.

She makes a space for herself too, as she had seen done once. Not a room. Not even a cell. A tiny space, a crack, a crushed coffin that touches every other piece of magic in the blade. Distantly she can feel her heart jump and squeeze. It won't fit in there. She knows how even an untrained person who suffers a violent death can use the power released by it to linger as a spirit, for a little while. The more shocking and violent the death is, the greater the power, as all blood-path mages know. The old woman has forbid herself blood magic as a cheat that rots mages out from the inside, but she finds that the one time it's acceptable has come.

The fire is ready and she lays the sword within. The wood and leather of the hilt go up in smoke immediately. She takes a few steps back and prays, which from her, to these gods, is a song. What she sang, she keeps back. She spoke to the Twain about this, the four-and-two twin gods, Healer and Fighter, Crafter and Hunter, but she doesn't remember if it was here, standing in her despoiled forge, or immediately after her death, or later, and she keeps the specifics of that meeting back too. In time, she sees that the blade is glowing white hot and she removes it, clamps it to a work surface at a good angle, and keeps herself from taking a last long look at the world.

Her first attempt, a breathless desperation to not have to think about this, isn't right, not fast or hard enough. The point glances off a rib and she instinctively throws herself backwards, doubling over, crying out and holding the wound. A sizzling dark smudge shows on the luminous point of the sword. She has depleted her reserves and the reservoir and the ley lines she can reach from here, so she pulls magic recklessly from her own blood and pain - easy, it's so easy, just like they say! - backing away, calculating, calculating. Not through the heart, that would kill her too quickly. The last spell she casts shoves her body forwards at running speed and the sword slides home between her ribs.

There are a lot of impressions of how that felt, assembled like the shards of a broken ceramic piece. The smell and taste, the feel in her mouth as the water in her body responds the way water always does when it quenches a length of hot metal. Her sight cutting out into meaningless noncolors. The way her body arches, out of her control, a dying animal that doesn't understand why she's done this to it. The pain that's so great that it rapidly becomes something else entirely - Need is kind and leaves some of that out. The way she tries to fight against her mind whiting out, scrabbling the girls! - Vena! - kill him - have to - I need!

:Get ready for the worst part,: Need whispers with just a trace of malice.

Then there's the fading, and something worse than pain and worse than what the pain became. A wrenching, absolute dislocation; like she's falling, and part of her is caught and clings, and part of her is gone, utterly disorienting, a flash of wild impressions like the world is rushing past and tearing pieces of her away as it goes. When the world has passed there is nothing.

Truly, nothing. No pain. No sight or sound, smell or taste, touch, not even proprioception, not even magic, not even really able to think. Nothing. Nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing and Nothing and Nothing and Nothing and Nothing and Nothing and NOTHING and NOTHING and NOTHING and NOTHING AND NOTHING AND NOTHING AND NOTHING AND NOTHING and this, this is the one absolute clearest part of the memory, the utter and profound panic and horror she felt. Need as she is now is here in it and gives Raistlin two wordless things - that this is a memory that he exists outside of, and that she's only sharing a taste of it.

And then - touch. Connection. She follows it in a rush with all the thought of fire catching on kindling, and sensation floods back in, so sharp edged it seems raw, a sense of being half collapsed on the floor, weeping and moaning, tugging at a warm blade embedded in a corpse too tear-blurred to see clearly. Gradually she realizes that these aren't her tears. This is Vena's body, her senses, and she takes stock, and knows in a strangely giddy rush that it worked! All of her abilities are intact. All of her skills and knowledge are preserved. She reaches and controls Vena's hand as if it were her own and oh, but this is a young hand, without pain, with a speed and suppleness she's long lost. She grips the naked tang of the sword - of herself, her anchor, her focus, her phylactery, whatever she wants to call it - and pulls it easily from her body, the burned blood and soft tissues falling away.

Good. Her skills are here, and her ability to use them. With Vena's body she can be what she never really was in life, that rare ideal of refined, powerful mage and skilled physical combatant, that can accomplish things an army cannot. From here she will only grow more formidable.

She wants to hang on to that triumph, but she can't ignore that Vena is in such a state that she hasn't even noticed what her body is doing. Her poor apprentice is overcome with grief and despair, filled with I have been left alone. The sword who was a woman tries - ah, yes, she has Mindspeech, and so much stronger than before, even if she forms it without a brain now - and says, :Not... exactly... alone,: and... the memory ends.

[hourglasshalfempty]

Raistlin does not enjoy experiencing the old woman's death.

It's the answer he'd never wanted to the question he asked every time his lungs convulsed: what if this is the time I never catch my breath again? What if this time the darkness clouds all my sight, forever, and the last self I ever am is this moment of terror and pain?

Need's presence isn't precisely a comfort, but it is an anchor. If she is here then he is not her, and therefore he is himself: there can be no self without an other to define it. It helps to become clinical, ticking through exactly what she did to herself.

:Lichcraft: he says quietly. :You are a lich, are you not? Of a sort.:

The associations he has with the word are - interesting. He's aware of it as an evil act - one made possible by vile acts and blood sacrifice. But that awareness is clinical, remote, a sort of "but of course, it would be wrong" almost drowned out by his intense admiration for the pinnacle of magical achievement that it represents. And a deep, deep desire to have, himself, that kind of mastery.

[hasapoint]

With the ending of the memory the scene of the forge as it is through Vena's senses stops moving and gradually desaturates and loses focus, going to indistinct grays and shading into black, and from there becoming nothingness. There's no horror to it now, not for her, and without that there'll be less for him. He gets to be able to think and remember, and to sense his body, distantly, and to sense her all around him.

Need doesn't bring him up to the surface right away, even though by now she's been able to spare the attention to realize that there's some kind of invasion going on out there in the present. It's not here yet. If she rouses Raistlin right away, then for a few seconds his body will believe that it's dying of a sword through the lung. She's going to have to bring him up quickly enough that he'll have to shake disorientation as it is, which she's more confident in him being capable of than that physical effect. Need does not, of course, let any of that on. There's no convincing lying in Mindspeech, but that doesn't mean she has to fully disclose everything all the time, and she can keep an eye on the situation and the countdown and talk at the same time easily enough.

:When I was alive the term was lyke-mage,: she muses, using a word that means dead and also bound, depending on the inflection. :Language changes with time and, yes, now that I think of it, it did become 'lich'. That term fell out of use too, as we became more rare. It's such a lost art now that people don't even remember it's possible. Oh, mages are still finding ways to live beyond death, but they're having to reinvent them from first principles instead of building on the tradition as I learned and improved on it.: Need is not immune to admiration.

:And it doesn't have to be an evil act. Terrible, yes. It takes a dreadful amount of power that has to come from somewhere, and your own death, and something you want enough to hang on for afterwards. Too many lyke-mages got there by, for example, sacrificing others and choosing a fast, easy death for themselves. But if you sacrifice yourself - or, if you put your trust in someone who knows what she's doing and allow her to sacrifice you - and if your reason is good enough, the taint is much less.: Unsaid, but clearly present: Need can and has bound and transferred souls other than her own before. She is... very smug about this.