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wildestlogs2021-10-01 09:11 pm
wildestmods) wrote in wildestlogs2021-10-01 09:11 pm
TEST DRIVE ※ 1
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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!
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?
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.
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...)
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?
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.
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!
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!
❧ 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
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: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.
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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.
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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.
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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.:
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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.
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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.
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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.:
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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:
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: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.:
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: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.:
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: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.
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But then he quiets himself and lets the memory unfold, waiting in calm anticipation for whatever instructions Need might have.
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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.]
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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.
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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?:
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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.:
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: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.
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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.
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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.
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:It's not lost in my world - just exceedingly rare, and absolutely forbidden by the Council of High Sorcery: Which has never stopped anyone trying - though, to Raistlin's knowledge, no one in living memory has succeeded. Of course, if they had, the Council would be highly motivated to conceal it. :The White Robes consider it a blasphemy, most of the Red consider it too great a risk to take out of the theoretical, and while Nuitari isn't generally concerned with blasphemy or risk, he would also never permit his followers to rival him in power.:
Flashes of association come with this: Solinari, the White Moon, god of benevolent magic and good-aligned magic users; Nuitari, the Black Moon, his brother and counterpart, master of evil magics and evil mages. And Lunitari the Red Moon, sister to both, goddess and mistress of all who study and adore magic for magic's sake, who mediates her brothers' endless conflict.
I confess, the idea that a lich is not necessarily one who seeks to blaspheme against heaven and defy the gods is intriguing: he says, with thinly-veiled contempt for the hysterics of White Robes. :If the sacrifice of innocents isn't required...:
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Someone else would probably get twitchy about Raistlin's disdain for the self-proclaimed side of benevolence. Need has always found that evil done in the name of good is evil, good done in the name of evil et cetera, and will withhold judgement until she knows more. A lot more, really; other worlds have other rules.
:There's nothing blasphemous about me. If anything, I'm sanctioned. I was a lay Sister, a priest with more of a focus on the material world than the spirit, but I had a relationship with the Twain. They gave me my name and outlined my purpose, though I'm the one who set it, however unintentionally.:
Need pauses and decides that she is not against teaching him this, or at least about it. It's the kind of thing that takes years, but he's young, and she's not likely to die, and she can cut him off if he suddenly reveals he's wildly unsuited. Of course, the bulk of her magic is unusable right now, so it's really only theory anyway.
:Understand, the transition from life to this quasi-life is foundational and marked by how you make it. Sacrifice a pack of other people, whether that's innocents or followers, and most of the power you're using is blood magic. Easier for you, and you're not bound in quite the same way, but your personality and abilities start to degrade within a few hundred years. In the end you end up just like every other wretch who got there through slaughter; cruel, incapable of nuance, interested only in the pleasures of the moment, and increasingly stupid.: And her enemy, comes the intimation, along with a certain dark satisfaction.
Time's running short. They have another moment, and she'll try and make a space to tell him what her purpose actually is before they have to join the chaos.
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She could, of course, be lying. But for some reason he feels strongly that she's not - a feeling that comes from within him, the still place where magic is, not from any external voice or gesture. Which is why he trusts it.
It also makes sense, the way - well, the way it hadn't made sense when, fifteen years ago, Antimodes had asked him why he wanted to be a mage. As if magic were something that could be had by wanting and not simply part of you, either there or not. It would also explain the nature of the lich, described in most texts as obsessive, fixated, unreasonable. He had assumed a level of melodrama, given that the only accounts he could easily find were written by White Robes who would view them as archenemies and cautionary tales, but perhaps there was a grain of truth there.
And in the very, very back of Raistlin's inner self, in a place he is not aware of and which Need can only catch peripheral flashes of now and again, something very old indeed understands what the satisfied hatred in her mindvoice means for it, and crouches a little lower in its den.
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:If you want to bear me, I can grant you strength and skill beyond what you've ever known. If you want to learn from me, more than a trick or two, well. We'll see,: she rasps. :Either way, there is the cause that shaped me and the requirement that you help me fulfill it, or you get nothing. It is now as it was then, the reason I exist as this.:
In the dark of the tent her blade flares with light the same red-gold as the sun through closed eyes, that writhes and settles into blazing words. They're in a writing system immediately familiar to Raistlin, the lettering as fine and legible as a scribe's. WOMAN'S NEED CALLS ME, AS WOMAN'S NEED MADE ME. HER NEED MUST I ANSWER, AS MY MAKER BADE ME.
:It's not unyielding, not when I'm awake. Nor is it only women, or all women, though more are women than not. It's those who were in my position, my Sisters' position. Those disdained and hated by the people with power, the set apart, the discredited, the different. When they are desperate and have no recourse, when they are killed and will go unavenged, when they are steps on the road to some monster's greater power, I am driven to their aid. Think on that, not just the magic.: She can prioritize when she has to, she can ignore the call especially if it asks more than she and her bearers can give. She can outright decide to keep herself from caring and answering. It would be easier, and when has she chosen the easy road?
The letters fade, and as they do Need starts to turn his hearing back up. :And one way or another it's time to go, boy.:
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The price she sets, he listens to carefully. For the first time, doubt creeps in. It's a fine speech, and full of praiseworthy sympathies, but no one and nothing is ever that straightforward. And he's about the raise that point when he hears the clamor outside.
:You're right. We should discuss this further, at a later time.: