- Pooncha
- Feb 15, 2014
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Making the impossible possumable
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Alright, we're not changing anything.
quote:"Always thinking. I like that about you, Wen."
"I've never deposed a goddess before," you say. "Not personally. I've read records. I've worked through the theory. But the two of us, alone--we don't have much intimidation value."
Ngabe tugs on the lapels of his jacket. He checks the alignment of his pocket square, and ensures the cuffs of his shirt peek out a coy millimeter from his jacket sleeves. He removes a peck of lint from the left side of his trouser crease. "I'm glad. If one of the senior partners came down here, Varkath or Nebuchadnezzar or even Stone, then Ajaia would be on her guard. Her priesthood would close ranks. We have a chance to surprise the goddess and her followers. To hit them where they don't expect. I'm glad for the opportunity." He bares teeth in a broad, predatory smile.
1. "You don't like gods very much, do you."
2. "I agree."
3. "We shouldn't let personal vendettas shape our strategy."
4. "This goddess isn't the same as the ones you grew up with."
Pat, you may have bad experiences with gods, but let's not hold a vendetta over it at the expense of our performance.
quote:"Of course not," Ngabe replies, "but motivation is vital to strategy. If we do not understand our own motives, we do not understand our own limits. The more motives at play, the harder it is to serve them all. We're already trying to get the information we need to win this case, and win respect from the bosses while we're at it."
"You were born in Kath," he says, and you nod. "In the New World, in the liberated territories, Gods have never been a problem for you. For me, not so. In some parts of the Old World there is peace, but in others the God Wars never ended. The rise of Craftsmen disturbed old balances of power, created new vacuums, and now gods and their followers make war. I left the Northern Gleb when I was ten, with my parents: left the crawling fires and the night raids and the screams across the sky behind. I have made a life in Shikaw. I have a good wife, and strong children. They grow in safety. I feel no sentimentality for the old order and the death it brings."
"We'll do the job," you say. There may be a better answer to him, but exhausted and half-buzzed on bad whiskey in a cheap glass, you can't come up with it. You fly south over the Fangs of Kath, into the deepening dark.
You land in Tassadon sometime after one in the morning. Flying south you don't fly into the future, or the past--no illusions of chasing the sun, only the deep dark and your aching back and legs and shoulders to drive home that you've spent the last eight hours in a too-small gondola seat, so far above the ground that you cast no shadow.
You can't see much of the country on approach, only what moonlight and gaps in clouds reveal. Tall trees, thick leaves a rich wet shade of black you expect the morning will repaint green. Roads, a few of them, appear as razor-gash in the forest from overhead, bleeding light. Some patches of the jungle shimmer smoky jade from underneath, the colors of a wine bottle placed over a candle flame, only bigger--a sheen the size of cities. The stars are clear and bright overhead. You're not used to seeing them back in Shikaw.
The landing ground itself is the largest unforested patch you've seen, and torn by dragon claws. Mooring docks for blimps needle up into the night, not quite as tall as the great trees. You stand with a drum solo of popping joints, gather your bags, shuffle through the ghost-lit insanity of baggage claim to the taxi stand, and--at last--to your hotel bed, and a sleep haunted by dreams.
But which dreams?
1. Nightmares of failure. The goddess Ajaia tearing me to pieces while the partners laugh.
2. I'm a rat running through mazes--mazes within mazes, and the center of each maze only leads me back to the beginning.
3. Demons and blood, broken bargains, a shattered tower and a man aflame.
4. Um. Well. I'm, you know, naked, and there are other naked people there too, and it's quite nice, actually. 
Liang Wen's Stats posted:Charm: 71%
Craft: 82%
Cunning: 86%
Determination: 55%
Sleep: 53%
Gunner/Socialite: 67%/33%
Soul: 4240
Debt: 9488
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#
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Dec 11, 2018 08:41
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 3, 2024 09:13
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- wedgekree
- Feb 20, 2013
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A Rat
We carefully wrok through the system, plan and maintain it.. All of our cunning going to complete waste and leading us in circles perpetually seems like something we would be terrified of
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Dec 11, 2018 09:45
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- achtungnight
- Oct 5, 2014
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I get my fun here. Enjoy!
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Rat dreams sound good to me too.
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Dec 11, 2018 11:24
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- The Lone Badger
- Sep 24, 2007
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B
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#
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Dec 11, 2018 12:24
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- Double Plus Undead
- Dec 24, 2010
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drat, maybe we should be spending more money on sleep. But yeah, rat time.
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#
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Dec 11, 2018 12:33
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- Pooncha
- Feb 15, 2014
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Making the impossible possumable
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quote:Oh, so it's this dream again. At least it's not the other, with the sweater you keep unraveling only to find you're actually made of wool and have been unraveling yourself along with the garment, but you can't stop because it's not done yet, and the holes in your body get bigger and bigger and you can't breathe because you've unraveled gaping rents in your chest and lungs and you're spilling out everywhere...
Really, your subconscious gets so predictable at times.
What the hell kind of dreams have we been having that this counts as predictable? 
quote:You were too out of it last night to notice any details about the hotel, but waking, you find that it's a tree. The hotel's many rooms corkscrew up a trunk as broad as an ullamal stadium, with huge spreading leaves overhead. The whole city looks like this, from what you can see out your window: buildings woven through trees, resting in giant bark. Roads winding between groves, suspended by thick steel cables, society spread between different layers of canopy.
Ngabe doesn't seem to notice or care, but you've never seen anything like it. Unfortunately, you've no time for tourism. Tomorrow's the first day of your deposition, and you have to prepare. This time you're on the defensive: Ajaia's suing Transdimensional Thaumaturgics (and your old friend John Smith) over water rights connected to that project you worked on way back with Cass and Vega, the one with the demons. No partners here, though, no backup. Just you and Pat, in the goddess' territory.
So, how do you spend your day?
1. Rehearse with Pat.
2. Ask around about Ajaia and her priesthood.
3. Review the theory of divine interaction.
4. Try to find weaknesses in the goddess herself.
Liang Wen's Stats posted:Charm: 71%
Craft: 82%
Cunning: 88%
Determination: 55%
Sleep: 53%
Gunner/Socialite: 73%/27%
Soul: 4240
Debt: 9488
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#
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Dec 14, 2018 19:48
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- achtungnight
- Oct 5, 2014
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I get my fun here. Enjoy!
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4. Try to find weaknesses in the goddess herself.
This sounds good to me.
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#
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Dec 14, 2018 20:07
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- Pooncha
- Feb 15, 2014
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Making the impossible possumable
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Hmm. Would a goddess have any weaknesses?
quote:Ajaia may claim to be ineffable, but most things that are can be effed quite easily if you know where to look and keep your wits about you. You visit the local library, a nestlike structure of glass and hardwood that grows between the leaves of a nearby magisterium tree, and devote yourself to the study of this goddess.
She is a lady of nature, which seems obvious enough from your surroundings. But, despite her people's idiosyncratic architecture, she's not technically a tree goddess. She moves through water: the water of the great rivers, the water that flows in the blood vessels of her subjects, the water that rises to the top of the trees. But she's not the only deity in this region. You uncover a whole panoply of Southern Kathic gods, connected to a range of tribes and villages throughout the greater Ajaian River basin. One in specific, a nature spirit reputed to be the goddess' niece, shelters her people near the Transdimensional water project. A coincidence, maybe, but you're not in the business of ignoring coincidences.
Regardless, you've learned all you can here.
Somewhat informative, I guess. Anything in the theory of appealing with gods that can work for us?
quote:Gods aren't like people. They are larger and more elemental: emergent from the interaction of communities, and shaped by the actions and transformations of those communities. They obey different rules. Fortunately, those rules can be known, studied, and codified.
You spend the day reviewing Gerhardt and Schatten and Ghalbrisi and Xu, along with the books of horn you lugged all the way from Shikaw. You know this stuff already--or at least, you were supposed to have learned it back in the Schools--but it always helps to revisit. Helps more than you expected, in fact: you discover a few points on the nature of sacrifice and the properties of divine intelligence that you must have missed back in the Schools, or perhaps are better-understood now than they once were.
Hm. Hopefully, this'll help.
quote:The next morning's sunrise slants the shadows of branches and spears of pink sunlight across the suspended road. The Temple Grove rises above the lesser trees, trunks fat and thick and scaled with ancient bark. Branches broad as houses trail sleeves of moss. A stairwell woven out of vines leads from the road to the dark arch of the temple entrance.
"Impressive," you say. Craning your neck back until your muscles spasm, you still can't see the treetops. They vanish into canopy.
"I've seen better," Pat replies, and rather than climb the ladder he rises through the air under his own power, wreathed momentarily in shadow. You follow him.
A hood-eyed priestess leads you mutely up a tunnel of interwoven branches, from which nightflowers bloom. After a long climb between levels of this turning maze you reach a bare broad platform of woven living branches. The inner ring trees of Temple Grove tower around you, and the air's the gold of the underside of leaves.
The priestess retreats into the shadows from which she came. You and Pat stand alone in the center of the sacred platform.
"It seems opposing counsel decided to sleep in today," Pat says.
1. "Maybe they're running late."
2. "Good sign for us."
3. "I guess we just wait."
4. "Running scared, I guess."
Are the prosecutors running late? 
quote:No, the leaves say, and the wind, and the silence of trees shaped into a word.
You jump half out of your skin, and spin around, seeking a source for the voice. It comes from everywhere at once. The goddess. Of course.
"Lady," you say, tone respectful, turning still in search of a place upon which to rest your eyes. Vines tremble. Flowers open. A gem-blue bird springs from a branch overhead and climbs toward the canopy, wheeling tight circles in the clearing. "Are your Craftsmen due to arrive soon?"
There are none, the goddess says. I stand for myself, in the heart of my own power.
"That's..." Inadvisable, you're about to say, but Pat stops you with a glare. "Fine. Shall we proceed, then?"
Yes.
The goddess falls silent. Pat sets his briefcase upon empty air, spins the combination dials, clicks latches open, and raises the black lid to reveal within arrays of silver and steel and crystal implements, knives and wands and bowls and candles, sextants and compasses and protractors, scalpels for cutting flesh and soul, thread for sewing it back together.
From within, he produces a silver bowl and places it on the floor. Each of you sheds a drop of blood in the bowl, and they mix. You scribe a circle on the floor with a sharp-billed pen, and Pat completes the interior details, the wards and charms needed to support you through the deposition. Then, when it's ready, you both stand in the center and raise your hands.
The world goes dark. The blood-circles take fire. The sky peels open like the petals of a flower, and you hang in boundless green-charged space, within the light of the goddess. She curves above and beneath you and to all sides, her face the sun and her drifting hair the sky, her arms horizons, the earth an arch of belly and swelling thighs. Her skin's a translucent green-brown, and sap moves within her to the rhythm beat out by her heart.
Pat meets her galaxy-eyes without a hint of awe. "Goddess, we have come to ask you questions. And we bind you to answer honestly." His words change the space in which you hover: it acquires sharpness and solidity that remind you of wheels and gears and pulleys and levers. The goddess hisses.
And so the battle's joined. What's your strategy?
1. Go easy on the goddess. Try to lull her into complacency.
2. We press her with question after question until she breaks.
3. We trap her in a contradiction.
Liang Wen's Stats posted:Charm: 71%
Craft: 83%
Cunning: 89%
Determination: 55%
Sleep: 53%
Gunner/Socialite: 73%/27%
Soul: 4240
Debt: 9488 Relationships posted:Cassowary Chen: 76%
Ashleigh Wakefield: 70%
Pat Ngabe: 59%
Halcyon Vega y Alatriste: 71%
Golan Varkath: 30%
Damien Stone: 86%
Angelica Nebuchadnezzar: 67%
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Dec 17, 2018 09:31
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- Fat Samurai
- Feb 16, 2011
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To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.
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Representing herself... not a good idea. Let's go with 3, that looks cunning-like.
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Dec 17, 2018 10:04
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- wedgekree
- Feb 20, 2013
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We are reasonably charming, ergo we -might- be able to lull her into being nice.
We are NOT determined, so going to get in her face full frontal is probably not going go end well.
We ARE cunning ergo we can probably scheme to entrap her.
Honestly torn between cunning and charming responses just as we could probably stand tow ork on being nice a bit more? But not sure we are nice neough to pull it off.
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Dec 17, 2018 10:05
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- achtungnight
- Oct 5, 2014
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I get my fun here. Enjoy!
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3. All religions have contradictory stuff that can be prodded. It just has to be found.
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#
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Dec 17, 2018 11:12
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- Pooncha
- Feb 15, 2014
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Making the impossible possumable
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Getting ready for the holidays and being sick do wonders for an otherwise regular update schedule. 
quote:Human depositions are an exercise in wrestling: straining against particular points and claims, one side pressing against a perceived weakness as the other side resists. With gods, the process works differently. Ajaia builds her own reality; her truth changes the world observed. When she describes her original negotiations with Transdimensional, that agreement takes shape before you, around you, binding and limiting the course of your questions. The wrestling match becomes closer to outright war, in which forces, terrain, and severity vary with each engagement.
An ounce of cunning here's worth a pound of strength. The truths she creates, the creches of rules and arguments and deals, seem sound at first, but may contain within them impossible structures and logical contradictions. Or, if you're careful, you can make common sense contradict itself.
It works. Barely. You trap her in a claim about the final contract, and no matter how she tries to revise the world she's built, to re-weave the web of her story, you hold that single contradiction in place while Pat follows through.
You may have missed some more opportunities, but you've scored a major victory at least.
You return to the hotel with Pat, and without a word you both head for the bar. You order drafts of the local lager, toast one another, and drink for a while in silence.
"That was a near thing," Pat says.
"Close," you agree. "I'm sure we missed something."
"Of course. We're not partners."
"She's representing herself," you say in disbelief. "I didn't think anyone actually did that. Not at this level. I mean, she's strong, but she has to know sheer strength won't help in a Court of Craft. Varkath, or someone equally nuts, would tear her to pieces in five minutes."
"Of course," Pat says. "Why do you think we were sent?"
1. "What do you mean?"
2. "Oh. I get it."
3. "Because we were the best for the job?"
4. "Because they needed to give us a chance sooner or later?"
Why were we sent by ourselves to fight a goddess, anyway? Unless...oh.
quote:"Because they don't want to scare her off," he says. "The partners knew, somehow, that Ajaia planned to represent herself. Maybe they've dealt with her before. Maybe they have spies in her priesthood. If one of them came down here and showed her what Varkath Nebuchadnezzar Stone can really do, she'd understand--she'd have no choice but to seek representation. As it stands, even the points we score, we score narrowly. She won't encounter Craft of the name partners' level until it's too late to bring her own advisors on board."
1. "Do you think this is right?"
2. "So we're being set up to take a fall for the good of the firm?"
3. "If the odds are against us, that will only make our success sweeter."
4. "This isn't right. Fact and Craftsmanship should determine who wins an engagement--not tricks."
Basically, we're a diversion. Our presence is just to make the goddess lull herself to a false sense of security, so she can't hide behind advisors or representatives when the big guns are brought out. Bring Varkath to the field and there's no contest.
Of course, this is assuming that we lose. And even our bosses assuming we'll lose just makes succeeding all the better. Right, Pat?
quote:"I'll drink to that. If we do succeed at this deposition, however narrowly, the partners will take notice." He grins, baring teeth. "I plan to show no mercy."
"So we're stuck here, fighting a superior enemy with inferior tools, in order to achieve an unearned victory."
"Welcome to office politics," Pat says, before he finishes his beer and calls for another.
The two of you drink until the buzz hits; after that, Pat turns in early, with plans to write his wife on the nightmare telegraph. You're left alone in the bar. You settle up your half of the check, and go for a walk.
Outside, the suspended sidewalk sways gently in the breeze, and night birds sing from branches overhead. A fleet of bats flit by, dark and fast in the dim streetlights. Far below, the eternal night grinds ashes into the carpet of the forest floor.
A lone star glints through the leaves above--or maybe that's a dragon, high up, flying west. They volunteer for aerial transport service, dragons do--young ones that haven't yet accumulated a hoard. The work, the routine, the whole exercise amuses them. And when it ceases to amuse, they stop.
You wish humans had it that easy.
1. We're on the wrong side in this case.
2. We're doing what we're paid to do.
3. We're tiny gears within a grand machine.
4. We're being used.
I think beyond this question, we should look at how we want to approach this case. So we know that we're essentially patsies; Transdimensional doesn't expect us to win. They just expect us to pave the way so that they can catch Ajaia with her pants down.
So, we can let things go as planned. Lose this case so that the big guns can win.
Or, we can say gently caress that, and win the case ourselves. If the goddess had representation this might be a trickier hurdle, but she's by herself. She's in a prime position to be beat down. However, this isn't going to be easy. We're small fry compared to our bosses.
Alternately, while Ajaia is definitely on the arrogant side (since I'm sure gods and goddesses better than her tried representing themselves and failed), she deserves a bit of pity that she's not going to be brought under by fair representation, but by courtroom trickery. We can side with the goddess, warn her of the duplicity going on, and sabotage our case (and we're not expected to win anyway). That might not put us in the partners' good books once they find out, but maybe we can make use of a goddess in debt to us.
Pooncha fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Dec 21, 2018
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#
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Dec 21, 2018 22:04
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- achtungnight
- Oct 5, 2014
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I get my fun here. Enjoy!
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I like Option 2. How many lawyers can say they successfully defeated a goddess in legalities? All the better that this is the Kobayashi Maru of cases.
For the options- 3,3,3 if they comply with the above.
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Dec 21, 2018 22:46
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- a computing pun
- Jan 1, 2013
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If we buy the argument that taking advantage of Ajala's self-representation and intentionally drawing her in to be taken down by our superiors is unethical, we're in a tricky position - caught between our obligation to the client and our obligation to professional ethics. Whether we lose to draw her in or lose to ward her off, we're still doing something wrong. The only choice is to thread the needle and win the case ourselves fair and square. We don't need to warn her about the trick if she never encounters it because we're good enough to beat her.
That said, we're totally being used.
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Dec 21, 2018 23:55
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- Double Plus Undead
- Dec 24, 2010
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If they didn't want us to win they should have sent someone else.
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Dec 22, 2018 01:21
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- wedgekree
- Feb 20, 2013
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Win the case
We're being used
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#
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Dec 22, 2018 05:52
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- Pooncha
- Feb 15, 2014
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Making the impossible possumable
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quote:Yes, you're an employee. Yes, you're supposed to do what you're told. But this is different. It's one thing for the firm to ask you to lose sleep for a month or three preparing documents for a case that will never go to trial because of a last-minute settlement, it's one thing to have your mental and spiritual faculties directed to make a handful of Deathless Kings even more Deathless, it's one thing to be more familiar with the dead and undead than with the living. It's quite another to be used as a duck blind. You and Pat were sent as distractions.
That rankles.
We may be used as mere distractions, but what better comeback than simply exceeding expectations and deposing a goddess ourselves? So let's give it our all.
quote:Phosphorescent purple flowers unfurl from vines in the canopies of magisterium trees, lighting the dark with false stars.
You're here to do your job, and you will. You chose this road a long time ago. Flinching now will soothe nothing but your conscience. The starflowers glare from the canopy, and you stare back, unblinking. You realize you're smiling when the muscles of your face start to hurt.
Those false stars stare at you in your dreams.
The next morning you and Pat return to Temple Grove together. Pat looks well-rested, excited for the day's battles. You wish you could say the same about yourself.
Again you draw blood and mix it. Again you scribe the Craft circle about yourselves, and descend--or rise--into the world of the gods. Again Ajaia takes shape above you, around you--again she gives the darkness form.
What's your strategy today?
1. I play good cop--distracting Ajaia from our aims, lulling her into false security.
2. I play bad cop--I press against Ajaia's version of events until it breaks.
3. I set traps for her, innocent openings that will lead to her downfall.
Liang Wen's Stats posted:Charm: 71%
Craft: 83%
Cunning: 91%
Determination: 59%
Sleep: 53%
Gunner/Socialite: 80%/20%
Soul: 4240
Debt: 9488 Relationships posted:Cassowary Chen: 76%
Ashleigh Wakefield: 70%
Pat Ngabe: 67%
Halcyon Vega y Alatriste: 71%
Golan Varkath: 30%
Damien Stone: 86%
Angelica Nebuchadnezzar: 67%
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#
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Dec 23, 2018 18:36
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- Deadmeat5150
- Nov 21, 2005
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OLD MAN YELLS AT CLAN
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3: Traps
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#
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Dec 23, 2018 19:05
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- achtungnight
- Oct 5, 2014
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I get my fun here. Enjoy!
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Trap her like a cult infiltrator/ deprogrammer!
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Dec 23, 2018 22:23
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- wedgekree
- Feb 20, 2013
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Traps
If the goddess didn't want to set them off, she would have an adventuring party with ten foot poles and a gazebo.
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#
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Dec 24, 2018 04:21
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- Pooncha
- Feb 15, 2014
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Making the impossible possumable
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quote:After a stiff battle yesterday, Ajaia's entrenched her position. Her memory palace has become a fortress, wound in poisonthorn vines. Why batter against it, why try to storm those formidable walls, when you can evade them?
You present weaknesses that aren't, encouraging her to move against you in ways that expose her to attack. Joining her vines, you wind between the bricks of her fortress, until it becomes a part of your being--and then you simply step through, and find yourself within, her secrets for the taking.
She finds you, of course, parallel consciousness having its advantages, and she chases you from her store of secrets--but that only gives you an opportunity to find a new angle of attack.
You don't win. You are wrestling a goddess, trying to out-trick a trickster. But as hours scrape into hours you make infinitesimal gains, not as much as a senior partner would have learned, sure, but enough to build a case. And more, you think, than Varkath expected when he sent you down here.
You and Pat manage to maintain your composure as you leave the Temple Grove, but in the taxi to the airport the two of you collapse. And Pat laughs.
It's a long, smooth flight home. Pat celebrates with whiskey and soda and a shocked wide smile. "I can't believe we did it. I cannot believe we did it. You know what this means. We have succeeded, though narrowly, where we were supposed to fail. What better proof can there be of our skill?"
"That's over, at least," you say as the dragon flies back north into the cold.
"I would not be so certain," he replies. "Nothing is ever over."
To the north, a storm gathers, and a bolt of lightning kisses cloud and earth at once. You shiver. Weather is destiny-sensitive--Cartoulli proved that, after all. But it's only destiny-sensitive when there's an awful lot of destiny at stake. You hope this particular storm has nothing to do with you.
1. Of course it doesn't.
2. I'm imagining things.
3. Can't be. Everything seems to be going well.
4. I order a drink to take the edge off my nerves.
Look, man. We're celebrating and we're not going to let a silly little storm ruin the mood. 
quote:You fly north, into the storm, and through.
Not all weeks are created equal. Some expand to fill months of subjective time--moving weeks, for example, in which each day raises a whole opera's worth of unexpected obstacles, miscommunications, unpleasant surprises and histrionic fits. Other weeks pass in a breath. A week devoted to a single massive task, finish this brief or perfect that outline or read these three thousand documents, evaporates as fast as a drunk's piss on a Badlands ghost town sidewalk at high noon.
The week after your return occupies exactly the length of a week. On Friday afternoon, bent over your work, you hear the silence deepen. You set down your knife, wipe the blood off your hands, and turn to see Varkath standing in your doorway. Burning eyes watch you through the holes in the mask of his face.
"Ms. Wen. I wanted to congratulate you on your success. Do you have a moment?"
"Of course, sir."
"How did you find it?"
"Find it?"
"The experience of combat with a goddess. And of victory."
1. "Enlightening."
2. "Exciting."
3. "I enjoyed working with Pat Ngabe."
4. "I know why you sent us there."
Liang Wen's Stats posted:Charm: 71%
Craft: 83%
Cunning: 92%
Determination: 59%
Sleep: 53%
Gunner/Socialite: 80%/20%
Soul: 4240
Debt: 9488
Relationships posted:Cassowary Chen: 76%
Ashleigh Wakefield: 70%
Pat Ngabe: 76%
Halcyon Vega y Alatriste: 71%
Golan Varkath: 30%
Damien Stone: 86%
Angelica Nebuchadnezzar: 67%
Achievements posted:Die: You died! Let's see you get out of this one... (15 points)
Go it alone: You fixed the Transdimensional case on your own. (50 points)
Pro bono: You helped R'ok achieve his dream. (25 points)
Consolation prize: You can't save them all. (25 points)
Depose a goddess: You have successfully deposed the goddess Ajaia. (40 points)
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#
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Dec 27, 2018 06:23
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- WLMortis
- Sep 28, 2001
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Nebulosis Defunctus
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Slippery Tilde
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1. "Enlightening."
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#
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Dec 27, 2018 16:40
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- achtungnight
- Oct 5, 2014
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I get my fun here. Enjoy!
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What better word for such triumph?
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#
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Dec 27, 2018 17:01
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- Pooncha
- Feb 15, 2014
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Making the impossible possumable
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quote:He nods. "How so?"
You choose your words carefully. "There's more to this business than I thought. More than the Craft, even."
"Many neophytes in the Craft make the error of assuming that mystic might has value independent of its effect. The Craft is a form of power. That is all. Other forms of power, applied correctly, are every bit as useful to the Craftsman, if not more. As you have seen."
"As I've seen," you echo. There are traps in his words, and you don't want to fall into one. "Or Craftswoman."
"Quite so."
You think you hear a hint of humor in Varkath's voice before he departs, leaving you alone in your office. The dissected chicken lies on your work table, pinned open by silver needles, insides wet and glistening. The entrails steam. If they tell of a future, they do so in letters you cannot read.
You lift your scalpel again, and its glass blade reflects the light, and the blood, and you begin once more to cut.
That's the end of the chapter, and another opportunity to change our spending habits. Should we spend more or less on housing? Transit? (Currently, we are moderate in both.)
And--wait, what?
quote:And so you reach for another shard of your spinning mind, another reflection of a screaming face you barely recognize as your own…
One sliver-moment shines from the cascade: the cold Secondday morning when you cut your final check to the soul-sucking bankers who held your student loans. A weight you hadn't even realized you carried lifted itself from your shoulders, and you felt, for a blissful, earth-shaking moment… free. The world was charged with life, and possibility. You saw colors you thought you had forgotten. You could do anything.
What you did, of course, was more work. But the possibility, that was worth a lifetime.
We also paid off our student loans!  
quote:You can see all Shikaw and half the lake from the partners' meeting room on top of Krieg Tower: your world for the last few years, laid out in miniature. There's Gillespie's, the restaurant where you played poker with partners and demons. Eddison Pier, where you confronted Wakefield when she was possessed, juts out into the gray waters of the lake. It looks so peaceful from this distance. You touch the glass, trust its cold to keep you awake, keep you sharp.
You can even see your apartment from here. You wish you could sit back and enjoy the view. But you're not here to enjoy anything. The Partners have summoned you, and you come in obedience to their will.
The Big Three sit behind a tall desk, Varkath in the center, Nebuchadnezzar on the left, and Stone on the right. Varkath clasps his hands. Nebuchadnezzar rests hers one atop the other on the desktop. Stone's folding a piece of paper into smaller and smaller pieces.
You have no idea why they've summoned you. You're on target, working according to plan. You even successfully deposed that goddess last year, when you weren't technically supposed to.
"You have made an impression," Nebuchadnezzar says. Her one eye is cold as a blade at dawn. You note she doesn't say what form of impression.
Stone speaks into the silence. "We've called you here because you have a significant opportunity. You remember John Smith, of Transdimensional Thaumaturgics."
"I think," Varkath says, "that she remembers."
Stone's chins quiver. "Smith has requested that you accompany him on a negotiating mission to Akargath. To the demon city."
And then they look to you for your answer.
1. "An exciting opportunity. When do I leave?"
2. "Why is Smith asking me?"
3. "I'm not an expert in negotiation."
4. "That seems oddly specific. With all due respect, I'm not sure I trust Smith."
Liang Wen's Stats posted:Charm: 71%
Craft: 86%
Cunning: 92%
Determination: 59%
Sleep: 53%
Gunner/Socialite: 72%/28%
Soul: 5940
Debt:
Relationships posted:Cassowary Chen: 76%
Ashleigh Wakefield: 70%
Pat Ngabe: 76%
Halcyon Vega y Alatriste: 71%
Golan Varkath: 44%
Damien Stone: 86%
Angelica Nebuchadnezzar: 67%
Achievements posted:Die: You died! Let's see you get out of this one... (15 points)
Go it alone: You fixed the Transdimensional case on your own. (50 points)
Pro bono: You helped R'ok achieve his dream. (25 points)
Consolation prize: You can't save them all. (25 points)
Depose a goddess: You have successfully deposed the goddess Ajaia. (40 points)
Repay your debt: You paid off your student loans! (70 points)
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Dec 30, 2018 22:44
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- achtungnight
- Oct 5, 2014
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I get my fun here. Enjoy!
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1. Demon City, huh? Sounds like fun!
Finished the books this game was based on btw. Sad to say, I didn't find them as good. Oh well.
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Dec 30, 2018 23:32
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- The Lone Badger
- Sep 24, 2007
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49
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Dec 31, 2018 02:36
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- wedgekree
- Feb 20, 2013
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Given we're totally zonking on sleep I think we should Raise our standard of living as we're at 50% and it's only going to get worse. We have mor eto spend that we're done with our loans.
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Dec 31, 2018 03:59
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- Heir03
- Oct 16, 2012
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Pillbug
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Given we're totally zonking on sleep I think we should Raise our standard of living as we're at 50% and it's only going to get worse. We have mor eto spend that we're done with our loans.
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Agreed
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Dec 31, 2018 18:21
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 3, 2024 09:13
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- achtungnight
- Oct 5, 2014
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I get my fun here. Enjoy!
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Not sure if it’s a choice but yeah let’s make a feline New Years Resolution and sleep more.
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Dec 31, 2018 19:11
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Dec 11, 2018 08:41
