>>24846015
Drop the delusion on Vern, find one of the blacksmiths that wasn't hit by Vern's crazy, delusion him that "all the blacksmiths would profit greatly from Grists work if Vern would stop trying to drive him out of business." Hopefully at some point during the day he'll actually have conversations with some of his colleagues and have the balls to bring up his opinion of this. From there, the opinion might just spread.

>>24846171
Yes, that's practically a copy of my post in previous thread. Nothing has changed my view since then.

>>24846171
No, we were trying to wait and let the paranoia of Vern's delusion build up until people are convinced he's getting out of hand. Keep the delusion going and wait for his next move.

>>24846171
Seconding this.

>>24846331
I don't think maintaining the same delusion is the best way. He responded very quickly to the first one, why not see if we can if we can get him to hit even more of his guys with "searches"? If he keeps hitting more and more people, the idea that his actions have any merit at all will be killed nicely. If he only hits a handful, the rest may just believe they deserve it.

We should do that tomorrow though, not today. For now, getting some rumors started would do well to supplement our actions against Vern.

>>24846171

Alright, this one has more votes it seems.

---

You hit one of the other blacksmiths with the delusion, but there's no immediate response. Hours pass and it doesn't seem like anything's happening yet.

>wait longer or try something else?

>>24846708
Well I already want to wait until tomorrow before hitting Vern again, so let's support it with "Your fellow blacksmiths can be trusted not to turn you in to the guild."

>>24846708

Punch them in the face.

>>24846787
Mm, how about we let the delusion we've already got grow and take root before we start layering more on top of it? If we even need to add another delusion.

I mean, ideally we'd support the delusion long enough that it grows into an actual belief, independent of our Talent, but that's a longer-term thing that we don't really have time for.

>>24846911
This, it's easier to maintain one delusion and let it grow than it is to try and speed up the process and burn out your energy in the meantime by throwing a second on. We have time to make this work.

>>24846911
>>24846938

Several hours should be enough for the delusion to settle. Either he's actually going to talk about it but just hasn't had the opportunity yet, or he's too afraid of repercussions to talk. In case of the former, my suggested delusion will do nothing, and maintaining two delusions for an hour or so shouldn't be too exhausting. In case of the latter, my suggestion will solve that problem right there. So really, what's to lose?

>>24846985
Eh fine, let's try it then.

>>24846899
While it might be somewhat fun, it doesn't really solve anything and I don't really feel any particular desire to punch this individual. It's just not our style.

>>24846985
>>24847051

You set up the second delusion on the blacksmith. It sinks in, but it's a while before he does anything with it, and you're beginning to wear out from maintaining both delusions by the time he does (you feel sore). Guy's got a job to do, after all.

When he finally does go and talk to a few of his colleagues, though, it's more in the form of muttered complaints. His colleagues response is mostly a shrug of the shoulders and something along the lines of "we've got a good thing going here, so leave guild business to guild leaders and don't rock the boat."

>wat do?

>>24847326
Oh well, was fully expecting it might not amount to much, but at least it's a start. And it gave as a peek into the general feeling among the smiths. I've got nothing more for today, since I'd rather wait until tomorrow and see if we can turn Vern against a brand new set of blacksmiths the same way we already did.

>>24847460
Agreed, let's head back to camp and get some rest. Fill in the others on what transpired.

>>24847547
>Lark complains that we're wasting time here
>Girdin is confused by the idea of perceiving time as a limited resource

It WOULD be nice if we could put them to work doing something..

>>24847635
Got any ideas? I'm not sure what all we can make Girdin do besides putting him in "Think for us" mode, which I'd rather not. Lark could like, set things fire if there's some way we could use that to frame Vern for some arson related business. I dunno.

>>24847697
Trouble is, these guys have no subtlety whatsoever given their forms, so a lot of the stuff we do they're completely incompatible with. Though, if we could get blood or hair etc from relevant targets (Vern, I guess?) we could have Lark make a potion of killing them dead. That'd give us a convenient way to murder him, if we need to.
Girdin probably doesn't mind being on standby. It seems like his natural state.

>>24847788
Here's an idea. We could be very patient progressing through the city and use Unnoticed and Hidden Party to walk ourselves and Lark to our burn target, then we have Lark light it up and carefully leave.

Before we do that though, we frame one of the blacksmiths that got stolen from by the Mercs as retribution and to give a spark to Vern's paranoia about them being against him. That way once the fire is set we can delusion Vern with one of your blacksmiths set the fire, he searches, and we get him to freak out.

Potential?

>>24847943
It could get the ball rolling. And we've certainly wanted to start fires many times during the Dorrik campaign, so why not now. What did you want to burn, though?

>>24847978
That's something worth debating. It has to make sense in a way, but yet also arouse the suspicion among the blacksmiths that he planted the evidence for some reason when he does catch the "perp".

>>24847547

Girdin, as usual, starts mulling things over. You assume as much, at least. He doesn't respond, just stands there, the sand pooled up around his feet, the tides occasionally washing it away. He'd probably end up buried after a few centuries if someone else wasn't around to remind him that mortals move at a scale where years matter.

Lark, on the other hand, is playing chess with Mari on a crude set he sent her to buy to alleviate the interminable boredom some time ago. "I still say we're wasting time," Lark says, "if this Vern fellow is such a trouble let's just assassinate him and be done with it. Pop into his room while he sleeps and slit his throat, or see if you can delude him into suicide, or I could find a nice tall tree to get his house in sight and then set it fire, have Mari sneak into his office while he's away and grab a stray hair and then offer him one of my potions to drink. Even if he refuses, just smelling it will kill him. Really, the possibilities are endless." Lark makes a move on the board.

"You can't...My pawn was a space away you can't capture him," Mari says.

"You moved two spaces last time so I can catch him as he moves. It's called en passant," Lark says.

"You made that up," Mari responds.

Lark rolls his eyes and turns back to you. "If you're opposed to the murder we can just take this blacksmith with us to the mainland and get him a better deal there. He can't afford passage on a ship, but we can."

>wat do?

>>24847996
So something that belongs to him? His office, or even his house?

>>24848148
His house could work.

Ask Lark if he's got any ideas about what sort of evidence we could plant to frame someone for starting a fire. And we dig the house-burning idea, but we have a few things to do first. He can feel free to find a tall enough tree to get a good view of his house though.

>>24848040
"Murdering Vern is definitely still on the table, but I don't want him dead just yet. The ideal outcome is to put him in charge of these blacksmiths and in our debt. That way, we could end up with a small army of blacksmiths forging arms and armor of the same quality as that which Golgoth uses for whichever faction we want to kick them out of Margell. Better armed mortals would help a lot against an army of well armed mortals"

>>24848300
"Also, that's totally a valid move, Mari."

>>24848227
Placing something belonging to them on the site could work? Like, if they have a favorite hammer with their name engraved or something would work especially well.

>>24848300
Uhm, I just realized that was poorly worded. The ideal outcome is of course to put GRIST in charge, not Vern.

>>24848227

"How should I know, micromanaging mortals is your hobby, not mine," Lark says, "the extent of my interference with mortal society is occasionally sticking a dire tyrannosaur nearby and seeing if they can kill it."

>>24848366

Mari sighs with frustration and says "it's really not fair when you don't even tell me what half the rules are before we play." Lark ignores her.

>wat do?

>>24848778

Use a delusion on Lark to make him think moving his queen in range of an enemy pawn is an ideal move. Then just stare at him with a big shit-eating grin.

>>24848889
And never, ever, go corporeal in sight of him again.

On a serious note, ask Lark to find the hypothetical tree from which he can see the correct house. I'm guessing he'll need us to mark which one it is. We should go see if we can find anything in the workshops of the blacksmiths that could be planted on the site and traced back to them. Mari can help with the stealing once we've found something..

>>24849054
Yeah let's just go with this. The framing plan is the best we've got thus far and should set Vern off once we see it through.

>>24849054
>>24849077

Well, there's plenty of things that are unique to this or that blacksmith lying around. Many of them have personal tools, especially hammers, and several of them also still have their masterpiece or an equivalent, a great work forged to prove their capability and which can often take some time to find a wealthy enough buyer.

Of course, these personal items are also extremely valuable and thus tend to end up in locked chests whenever not in use. Plus the workshops are valuable enough that the town guard tends to keep an eye on them. They don't have the men to keep a guard posted at every door, of course, but still, the security is nothing to laugh at.

>wat do?

>>24849227
Well, these masterpieces and such certainly won't do. That's just believable at all that an arsonist would have accidentally dropped such an item at the scene of the crime. A hammer should be more plausible. Are these also locked away? And are the workshops all indoors? I don't know too much about smiths but it would seem the kind of occupation that it would be nice to perform in places other than a small enclosed space.

>>24849521

Many smiths move part of their workshop out into a small side yard when the weather permits (which, currently, it does), but they always keep their tools locked up inside regardless of the season. The city has plenty of thieves, after all. Even then, the immobile parts of the workshop, like the forge itself, must necessarily be inside all the time, since you don't want to be working outdoors in the middle of February.

>>24849600
Well, then, getting past a locked door should be simple enough, but if the tools are also locked away once inside, that makes things more difficult. Unless we actually know how to pick a lock that is. If we do, or if we find a place where the tools are just left hanging inside the workshop, we could just shadowform under the door, take the tools, open a window and sneak out, or hand it to a Mari waiting outside the window.

>>24849719
We could delude the 'smith during the day into leaving his door unlocked, then just stroll in like we own the place at two in the morning.

>>24849771
That might work too. If it's already night, though, I'd hate to waste another day waiting.

>>24849771

I have to run for a bit (which, my life being what it is, may end up not being a bit at all), but I'll go ahead and respond to this.

---

You delude the smith into thinking he's already locked things up before he actually does so and slip in later, while meanwhile Lark heads off to find a vantage point for magical arson. Waiting until the guards attention is elsewhere, you slip into the unlocked workshop while the smith sleeps and pilfer the hammer from its unlocked chest.

>how are you going to get this thing into Vern's house before Lark sets it fire?

>>24850102
We could just leave it by a window. That seems a plausible place to have dropped something while setting a fire.

>>24850102
I'd suggest smashing a few things with the hammer then tossing it in the grass outside, away from the house itself. Using it to just create evidence will make it very obviously planted.

The first line of questioing anyone will have is "who has something to gain from this arson?" and the answer is almost obviously nobody; the recent deal going down with Grist and the trader though might be enough of a link - tenuous as it is - to make them blame Grist for it. They already call him a counterfeiter to anyone who asks; adding vandal/arsonist to that list isn't too difficult for the men who make the records. The last thing we want to do is something which can reflect badly on Grist; we really should be sabotaging the guild's products and trying to turn their smiths on the guild. Although, if Vern's house burns down we could delusion him to tax the blacksmiths more in order to fund reconstruction, which they will not be happy about.

>>24850394
Vern could have bigger enemies we dont know about that could be responsible/paid off someone to do it. A long shot but plausible. The taxing plan actually sounds quite good.

And yes, smash a few things first.

>>24850394
This arson would be an absolutely horrible idea if we couldn't delusion Vern that somebody else did it. Though I suppose that doesn't prevent them from putting the blame on Grist regardless, but if Vern genuinely believes someone else did it...

And I am back. Not quite on time but I guess that could've been worse.

I don't think anyone's really agreed on anything yet, though.

>>24850502
The problem is that Vern could blame it on Grist anyway. Even if he believes its his own smiths, there's much greater benefit in blaming Grist. Accusing his own smiths, meanwhile, leads to problems within the guild where he has to find the perpetrator and oust them. It makes the guild look unstable and while we want that, Vern will likely take steps to make sure that doesn't happen.

What we need to do is undermine Vern's effectiveness as head of the guild, while simultaniously but unrelatedly helping Grist make sales. If we just kill or scare off Vern, someone else will step up as a guild lord, and that won't be Grist until he has considerable control over the market. Right now, the guild still has a monopoly; we need to break that for Grist first and boost his status and reputation. We also can't do something that damaged the guild and directly benefits Grist because it will pin suspicion on him.

This arson is a drastic move but it won't actually do much to further our goals unless we aim to capitalise on Vern's reaction to it, like deluding him into taking his blacksmiths harshly. Making him go on a witch hunt for the arson will only steer himv towards Grist, because he's an easy target.

>>24852236
Perhaps then placing a delusion on Vern saying something along the lines of 'This will happen again unless you punish your smiths, they're responsible.'

>>24852236
This is a fair argument, I'll give you that it would be a tempting target for Vern to simple oust Grist over this, and he may very well be angry enough to take drastic measures.

Perhaps we should cancel this arson plan for now and continue to undermine Vern's authority. Preferably in ways that doesn't take weeks of time if we can manage it. We could start with injuring his smiths or messing up orders, he can't pin that on Grist and it will weaken his hold on the market at the same time.

>>24852381
So, on that note lets go find Lark and tell him now is not a good time. We need to delay the plan for now until the situation is more in our favor.

How about we sneak around afterwards into Vern's offices and see what orders he is currently fulfilling that are important, and what other useful sabotage information we could find.

>>24852539
This could work. If we can infiltrate Vern's office and read his office files, then we can learn where he's getting most of his money and supplies and work to disrupt that

>>24852653
>>24852539

Sneaking into Vern's offices isn't hard. He's not in them all the time and security around here isn't shadowproofed the way the Golgothan military camps were.

The records inside are not super well organized and many of the traders are just a name, not any kind of organization. His materials come from traders from the mainland, and his money mostly comes from the products he sells back. So he basically acts as a middleman between the traders who bring in the ore and the blacksmiths who actually make stuff with it. He hasn't actually picked up a hammer in years.

>wat do?

>>24853159
Look for some important orders that are either due soon or are small but high-demand items like a couple swords. Preferably lets find weapons/armor orders.

>>24853311
Also make a note of any trader names that might be important. We'll want to see who's spending the most money and who's making the biggest orders and screw with them as much as possible.

>>24853311

There is an endless stream of orders for weapons and armor, mostly bulk orders of cheap helmets and halberds (presumably they're getting some leather armor made elsewhere in the city). There's a few orders for proper swords, chainmail, and laminar armor.

There's also the orders for arrows, which number in the thousands.

None of these stand out as being especially important, though. There's a war on and it seems most people would rather arm lots of their soldiers than dump a large chunk of their resources on a single exceptional work for themselves.

>>24853514
Is there some spare paper and a pen we can use to copy down some of the more substantial orders like the swords and quality armor? If so then we can carefully copy them, bundle them up, and drop them out a window or something when nobody is looking.

Then we can slip back outside and use Unnoticed judiciously to sneak out of the area, and we'll pay Grist a visit in the morning.

>>24853682
I should probably clarify we collect the package we dropped before leaving the area.

>>24853701
>>24853682

Sorry for the delay, computer crashed. Back online now.

There isn't exactly a pen and paper, but there is parchment and quill, so that works. That said, parchment isn't like copypaper. It's valuable and someone might notice if some of it is missing.

>>24854297
We'll copy it down, and book it at the first sign of someone coming.

>>24854297
Yeah let's take the risk. The alternative is stealing all the orders anyway, so its probably safer.

>>24854385
>>24854401

Alright. You drop the packet of parchment outside the door, then shadow out to pick it up.

>so now what?

>>24854673
We're going to go wait for Mari and Grist to wake up. We'll quickly explain to MAri we copied these from Vern's office, and we're going to take them to Grist. Once we've shown him the list of traders, suppliers & current orders we'll ask him which would hurt the guild most to lose and which would benefit him most to have in his pocket. Then promise nothing directly but say we'll do something about it.

>>24854807
Yeah, if we can get Grist's opinion on what he thinks is valuable as a smith it would be of benefit.

>>24854807
>>24855030

Grist looks at you and Mari suspiciously. "Where did you get these?" he asks.

"Trade secret," Mari says.

"Is it legal?" Grist asks.

"I dunno," Mari says, "just tell us which of these orders would work best if they went to you instead of them."

Grist looks at it for a moment. "The guild makes their money from bulk orders, mostly," he says, "these men have far more arrogance than skill, only fools would make custom order from them. Fast talking traders, they convince some young knight they know excellent smith, charge a premium for his works, then come here, buy cheap sword, sell it back to gullible young knight. That's all this is. That, or desperate warriors for whom poor craft is better than a rusted blade." Grist shakes his head. "The guild makes money from bulk orders, but I can't fill bulk orders. I make money from the special orders. I can make them weapons and armor worth the trip. But not for these prices. These prices are for junk."

>wat do?

Thread seems to be just about dead anyway and I am feeling alarmingly drained. I'm off for the night. As usual, Thursday is D&D so quest will resume on Friday.