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“Even though the Lifting Oil that is Refined out of Sea-Shade Ichor is of a middling grade, and laborious rendering at sea is needed to strip the Ichor from the gelatinous mass of their corpses, Sea-Shades yield more Ichor than comparably sized beasts, and pose magnitudes less risk to Oilers and their crews than comparably-sized prey, such as a juvenile Serpent, or a Lurking Loomer.

That is not to say that Sea-Shades do not pose any risk. While they typically do not survive the raising process, there have been many reputable accounts where specimens made it to the surface alive, and in a fearful rage have set upon Oilers with a veritable forest of grasping and pummeling pseudopodia, killing crew, and damaging or even sundering ships. In the particularly grisly case of the Stiff Breeze, as accounted for by the captain of her surviving tender, the Periwinkle, the entire vessel was swallowed up, only a matter of seconds after the Shade breached the surface alongside of her. Once fully subsumed inside of the Sea-Shade, the ship and her crew were dragged down, into the blackest depths, all the while being digested – though had they been lucky, they may have been fatally masticated or otherwise crushed before they were suffocated or killed by the acid. That self-same acid can make Sea-Shades dangerous even after they have died. There have been several accounts of dead Shades being accidentally raised directly underneath the Oiler, where that acid ended up eating through the hull.”

- Leonid’s The Oiler’s Abyssal Bestiary

Your name is Chlotsuintha, and you are in the process of steeling yourself – for at this very moment, you are slowly but inexorably following two sets of Strange footprints which lead straight through the front door of the public house you right outside of. On its own, there is an inherent danger to doing something like that, but here, there are two compounding factors. The first is that while two people with Strangeness on their boots have entered the public house, no one with Strangeness on their boots has left the public house – at least, not through this door. Now, it could be that the men who made these prints have left the place already. These prints could be days only by now – in fact, for all you know, these prints could have been made at different times. Maker’s Mercy, for all you know, they might have been made by the same man. On the other hand, it is just as likely that these prints belong to two different men, that these prints are fresh … and that they are still in there.

As alarming as all of that is, it is the second compounding factor that is fraying your nerves. The footprint, visible through your Strange-Scarification Glyph, is only partial – and there are only three possible ways that you would get a partial print. If the sole of the boot was shielded, if the sole of the boot was made from an inert material, and … if the sole had been incompletely Mitigated or Remediated.

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Of those three explanations, the only one that holds any water is the attempted Mitigation or Remediation. You just can’t shield boots like that, and it does not make any sense to make completely irregular portions of a sole of a boot out of an inert material like lead. So someone correctly deduced that the boots were Strange, at managed to at least knock down some of that Strangeness. To be sure, you don’t need magic to Remediate or even Mitigate something – and people who do not have some equivalent to your Strange-Staining Glyph can correctly deduce that something is in fact Strange. Those poor, damned Coroners managed to do that, for all the good it did them.

Without even realizing it, you are turning to head into the public house. Upon realizing this, you hesitate for a moment … until you realize that even if those boots might have been too small for your father to have been the one wearing them, he has professional friends, living in Scrimshaw Mount. It is possible that one or both of these men could be one of them.

That is all it takes to settle it. You set your back to it, and haul your cart up over the public houses stoop, and straight through its front doors. There is a bit of vestibule, so as long as no one comes in behind you, as long as you stay here, you figure that no one can see you. Immediately before you is a common dining room, larger but with notably fewer customers then there were at the Blue Boy. That suits you fine though, just fine! You don’t even want to think about how poorly things went there, not to mention how much worse things could have gone, for fear of distracting yourself. You can’t have that – and you cannot get complacent like you did back in the Blue Boy as well.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Hold off on following the footprints for now, go find the proprietor and get a room first.
>For all you know, these men could be right around the corner. Stay on the trail.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>You need to be prepared! Take a moment in this secluded spot to pull out one of your knives to hide in your sleeve.
>Hold off for now, someone might come to see what is going on, or they might wander in behind you.

>Previous threads:
>https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Eternal%20Rome

>Also, somehow I completely missed our one year anniversary! Thanks to everyone who has stuck around.

>>5383089
>For all you know, these men could be right around the corner. Stay on the trail.
Try to avoid renting a room here under our own name if possible.

>Hold off for now, someone might come to see what is going on, or they might wander in behind you.

>>5383089
>>Hold off on following the footprints for now, go find the proprietor and get a room first.

>>Hold off for now, someone might come to see what is going on, or they might wander in behind you.

>>5383089
>For all you know, these men could be right around the corner. Stay on the trail.

>You need to be prepared! Take a moment in this secluded spot to pull out one of your knives to hide in your sleeve.
Can we ready our wand instead of the stiletto?

>>5383294
Sure, but the sleeves of the domestic dress you are wearing are much tighter than the ones on your typical, ragged dresses. While concealing the wand is still possible, it will be harder - and a fair bit more awkward and painful to move with as well.

>>5383318
I vote we try for the wand then. It's the non-lethal option, and while a guy suddenly collapsing in a bar will certainly cause a commotion, it is far less obvious then straight out shanking a mofo.

>>5383089
>Hold off on following the footprints for now, go find the proprietor and get a room first.
Just to put our shit away first.
>Hold off for now, someone might come to see what is going on, or they might wander in behind you.
As tempting as getting the knife prepared is, I’ll hold off until we either establish the rooms first or confirm that there isn’t one available. My biggest fear right now (other than getting into a fight or cutting our Red Thread short) is losing all the shit we just bought, or worse- our more questionable items.

>>5383361
No, if we get into a fight, it’ll have to be to the death. Besides, the Wand is Strange anyway, it’s unstable and it’ll spread Strangeness everywhere. Best save it for a proper ambush instead of trying to fight in front of a crowd.

>>5383089
>>Hold off on following the footprints for now, go find the proprietor and get a room first.
>Hold off for now, someone might come to see what is going on, or they might wander in behind you.
Get a room, get your things situated, and prepare yourself there, where no one can see you.

Also there's no reason to bring the wand to a meeting in a PUBLIC house. In PUBLIC.

>>5383361
Our eyes glow like flashlights after using magic for a good while, don't they?

>>5383089
>Hold off on following the footprints for now, go find the proprietor and get a room first.
>Hold off for now, someone might come to see what is going on, or they might wander in behind you.

Stepping inside is such a bad idea, how did anyone think that this is fine after the incident at the public house

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After a few solid seconds of agonizing over it, you decide that you better get a room before you continue to follow those footsteps. No matter what you do, you are going to attract a lot of attention, so it behooves you to establish your right to be here by taking a room for the night. More than that, if you were just to start wandering through this place with a creaky cart and alarmingly squeaky boots, you might get asked to leave for being a nuisance - or worse, they might call the Guard. Having settled on that, you turn to an even more agonizing decision; should you arm yourself before setting foot in the common room? The sleeves of this dress are tight on your wrists, tight enough that concealing a blade in there would be difficult, if not impractical. Similarly, the Oilers that you are wearing have straps to keep them water tight, but that means that they are not particularly well suited for stashing knives in. The apron you are wearing does have pockets, but they have the opposite issue - they are large, and deep, to the point that you would have to fish around a bit for the pin-stiletto. Or your wand, if you wanted to go that route.

But setting aside how you would carry the fraying thing, there is the equally pressing question of how you are going to get your hands on it, as right now, it is buried somewhere, deep in the cart. No doubt, it would be much easier to just forget it ... but can you? For all you know, the two men that made those prints could be sitting in that room right now, and it is possible that they could have some means to 'see' Strangeness, either a Glyph like yours, or something like the hermaphrodites like the Inquisition uses.

And right now, you are still Strange.

If the roles were reverse, and you were in their shoes - or rather, their boots - and someone covered with Strangeness just strolled into the room you were in, you would be wondering if they were a Witch, or at least were in service of one. And you would be seriously considering making the first move. Now, there is a lot of conjecture here. First off, you don't know if they are even in the room. More than that, you don't know if they have anyway of detecting Strangeness. But are you willing to take those bets?

The floor creaks, and you damn near jump straight of your skin. Even once you realize that it was the floor above you, your heart doesn't stop hammering away. Fraying Hell, you need to calm down.

Deciding that you need to move now before you start making a scene here, you leave your knives and your wand where they lie. You are going to find the proprietor, or whoever is running the place, and you are going to -

>Please choose ONE of the following:
> - have to weave some tall-tale, like you did with the Cobbler. It worked for you there, it will work again here.
> - try to bribe them, as the longer you are talking, the longer your back is going to be to the room, and the front door.

>>5383698
> - have to weave some tall-tale, like you did with the Cobbler. It worked for you there, it will work again here.

attempting bribery is more risky in my book. We're a pretty good liar.

>>5383698
>- have to weave some tall-tale, like you did with the Cobbler. It worked for you there, it will work again here.

>>5383698
> - have to weave some tall-tale, like you did with the Cobbler. It worked for you there, it will work again here.
We need experience in speaking to others, even if it’s just lies.

>>5383698
>> - have to weave some tall-tale, like you did with the Cobbler. It worked for you there, it will work again here.

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- have to weave some tall-tale, just like you did with the Cobbler. If it worked for you with him, then you have to believe that you can make it work for you here too. Of course, you were able to speak to the old man alone - which you cannot count on here. Would the Cobbler have still sold you those men's boots and stockings if there had been witnesses? Probably not ... but all you are doing here is just renting a room for the night - nothing scandalous or untoward. You take a series of deep breaths in an attempt to steady yourself, but to be quite honest, you don't find them particularly fortifying. The prospect of walking through the common room, potentially revealing yourself to the men who made those prints is too harrowing.

You take one last, longing look at the bundle on your hand cart, right where you figure your knives are stowed, wishing that you were able to at least have something at the ready. For a second, you start to reconsider the whole thing, but you shake yourself out of it, and before you waste any more time with second thoughts, you straighten your back and head out of the vestibule and into the common dining room. As you had feared, your boots and your cart are raising quite the ruckus - squeaking and creaking, respectively - and while your first impression of the room, that it was mostly empty was right, unfortunately everyone in here is now staring at you. As much as you want to, you cannot allow yourself to advert your eyes and look at the floor - for fear that someone might think you were looking at the prints. So, trying your best to keep yourself from shivering, you force yourself to stare back. The first thing you notice is that the custom here looks notably rougher than it did at the Blue Boy. There does not seem to be a bard, or any sort of entertainment playing here, and there certainly isn't anyone that you would stake as a merchant, foreign or otherwise. If you had to guess, you would say that these men are all sailors of some stripe or another. None of them stand out in any particular way - though of the seven men you can see from here, four of them are sitting together. Two pairs.

One by one, the men start to look away, until everyone but one of the pair in the back have returned to their meals. Pattern's Perdition, are those the men? You cannot see any footprints with Strange-Staining at the moment, but they are sitting well outside of the Scarification Glyph's range. If they had just walked to their seats along the back wall, then ... it is possible. Neither of them has taken their eyes off of you, either. Fray it all, is that because you are staring at them like a struck veal-calf, or is it because they -

With a hearty thud, you smash your cart into an exceptionally inconsiderately placed table, and once again, everyone in the room is looking at you. Your cheeks blazing red, and feeling as if you are on the verge of tears, half out of fear and half out of embarrassment, you force yourself to look away.

>>5383698

>> - have to weave some tall-tale, like you did with the Cobbler. It worked for you there, it will work again here.

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You can still feel the room's eyes all over you though, making you feel naked and vulnerable. And of course, it is not just out of the fear that among these men there is someone who can 'see' the Strangeness by one means or another, there is also the concern that one of these presumed sailors has heard the description of the prowler that knocked down the Euthyphro and trussed her captain up like a pig. Still, you have to take what little heart you can - none of these men here have made a move against you. If they actually had recognized you for what you are - a Strange Witchlet and a thief (technically, a pirate) - then they would have set themselves upon you at the first opportunity, wouldn't they? No, no. As much as you wish it didn't, that rings hollow. You are still relatively close to the front door, and for all you know, you might be walking straight towards another exit. A smart foe would hold steady, waiting until you got into tighter quarters. It is just like father always said - if you count on others being foolish, then it is you who are the fool. Maker's Mercy, you miss him terribly. Why couldn't he just have taken you with him?

After what feels like an eternity, you finally make your way to the counter, where the aged, fleshly-looking man you take to be the proprietor sits, sharpening a quill over some ledger. It is only when you set the push cart down and let go of the handles that you realize just how tightly you were gripping it, and how clammy and sweaty your hands - and the rest of you - has become. Hoping to push past that, as well as the sensation of eyes roaming up and down your back, you do what you can to compose yourself, partly by just breathing, and partly by distracting yourself with mentally running through the story that you are going to feed him - which will be basically the same one that worked wonders on the dry goods merchant. But before you can get a word out, he starts the conversation.

"So you got too big for the beds, and the mistress kicked you to the curb - is that the way of it, now lassie?

"What, no - "

"Well, disregardless, we don't need no more help here. And even if we did, my wife would kick me to curb if I went and hired you. Sorry."

What in the Heights of Hell does he mean by that? Anyway, you have to get this conversation back on track - the sooner you get out of this common room, the better.

"Sir, I'm already employed - I'm just looking to rent a room for the night, for - "

He interrupts you with a grunt, squints his eyes and then sets his book down on the counter.

"You know, I should stop you right there, say that this isn't that kind of house, that we don't want your kind of custom, or the reputation that comes with it. And that should be the end of it. That is what father-in-law would want me to do, may he find the Wisdom, and that is certainly what my wife would want me to do."

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Suddenly, his mouth breaks into this leery, animalistic grin.

"But that bastard is stuck on the Heights - if he is lucky - and my wife is in Princeport. Its a good place for here. The 'Port is so damn miserable, no one will notice that she is making it worse just by her being there."

He pulls a key out of a pocket, glances at it, then slaps it down on the counter.

"Fourth room on the left. Go get yourself situated. Whenever Bertram gets back with the shopping, I'll be dropping by to collect, and then to discuss the terms and conditions of your stay tonight. Until then, you don't make it with anyone, you understand?"

Pattern's Perdition! This ... this doughball of a sot thinks you are some manner of prostitute! But as hard as you are seething, and as much as you are offended, you have stumbled into most of what you were after without any effort at all. You wanted to get out of the common room as quickly as you can - well, here is your out. More than that, you wanted a reason to be in the public house, and a room to stash the cart in, and you got both of those now. So long as you are able to finish your business here before this Bertram gets back, everything should be fine ... though no matter what, you have absolutely no intention of 'making it' with anyone here. And now that you think about it, it probably would be for the best to find another public house to stash the cart in, one that does not have Strange footprints leading straight through its front door. Still ... it equally galling and inexplicable as to why this louse-laden cad thought that you were ... that kind of woman. Maybe you should stick with your original plan, after all?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Accept the misunderstanding
>Try to clear the air here

>>5384618
>>Accept the misunderstanding
Does Chlot look that much like a prostitute?

>>5384641
No, not at all. But there is a lot of assumptions about young, unchaperoned and presumably unwed girls who go out to rent rooms for themselves. Chlotsuintha would probably have realized this sooner, had she not had so much on her mind.

>>5384618
lol that's a conundrum. If we just run with it, we'll have to deal with this lecher trying to "collect" later. But this might just be solved by a hearty kick into the groin? I'll roll with it for the lulz.

>Accept the misunderstanding

>>5384618
I’m absolutely livid, and if it wasn’t for the possibility of Chlot playing off the clueless innocent damsel later to get out of this mess, I would probably vote to turn around and try another venue. ‘Collect’ better just mean the money you fat fuck.
>Accept the misunderstanding

>>5384618
>Leave immediately.

Its a trap.

The duality of anons;

>>5384723 This is funny!
>>5384733 This is disgusting!

and for good measure:

>>5384739 This is a trap!

>>5383072
What of Reginald? Seriously should I give up on it

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As scandalized as you are by this long-in-the-tooth trencherman's assumptions, at this time, you cannot afford to look a gift horse in the mouth. More than anything, you need to get out of this common room. Trying to keep your composure, you snag the key off of the counter, and start to turn away without another word ... until you think better of it, and decide to ask when this Bertram is going to be back - obviously, so you can conclude your business in this house and have quit the place before that time.

"I-if I may, when is this, this Bertram going to be -"

"Haven't the foggiest."

Of course he doesn't. It takes a great deal of willpower to not let your brow furrow and your shoulders slump in defeat at that, but you try ... figuring that if you were to make it obvious that you really wanted to know, this gutter-gate gargoyle might just puzzle out that you do not intend to keep your end of this "bargain". Your business with him concluded for now - and hopefully forever - you gather up your push cart, and make your way towards the section of the house where the lodging is located. Almost immediately, Strange Staining picks up the footprints. In fact, for all you know, you were standing right on top of them at the counter ... a disconcerting thought, even though they clearly are not communicable.

However, as you approach the hallway where your room is, the two sets of footprints turn away and head up a set of stairs. It is only when you get to your room does it occur to you that there was no third and fourth set of footprints heading down the stairs. Pattern's Perdition - if the men responsible for those prints are still in their damn rooms, how in the Heights of Hell are you going to be able to do this? But before you can go and disenhearten yourself, you get a grip. First, find the room. Then figure out how you are going to get inside. And then, and only then, worry about who - or for that matter, what - is actually in that room at the moment. Don't let yourself get mired and bogged ... time is of the essence here.

You lengthen your stride for the final stretch of hall between you and the room. While you do, you try to settle on what you should bring with you when you head upstairs.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>The pin-stilettoes should be enough. While carrying them is technically a crime, they are not anywhere near as incriminating as a fraying wand.
>Take the pin-stilettoes and the Wand of Head-Knocking. If things go wrong, you could be going toe-to-toe with two men. Knives alone are not going to cut it, ironically enough. Accept the risk of discovery, as well as the risks of getting Strangeness everywhere, and of a misfire, as well as the impediment that a Socketed Wand poses on the arm that it is Socketed into.

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>Please choose ANY of the following:
>Swap out your squeaking Oilers for some of those Used Footwraps. Keeps the good boots from getting soiled, and they will be much quieter, though they will provide next to no protection
>Switch out of your Domestic Dress and into you Ragged Dress. Keeps the good clothes from getting soiled, though the change of outfits might attract some attention.
>Remove your apron. Will keep it from getting soiled, though it does mean forfeiting some really great pockets.
>Throw on the Red Riding Cloak. It has cavernous sleeves to aid in concealment, and thanks to its color, it might not show blood spatter immediately. The change of outfit might attract some attention.

>>5384951
I'm going back to Debouche, don't worry. When the Graverobber's Daughter reaches a point where a timeskip is warranted, I will make a new thread for Collapsing. Hope to see you then, anon.

>>5385006
>>The pin-stilettoes should be enough. While carrying them is technically a crime, they are not anywhere near as incriminating as a fraying wand.
>Swap out your squeaking Oilers for some of those Used Footwraps. Keeps the good boots from getting soiled, and they will be much quieter, though they will provide next to no protection
Keep the apron on, as it's meant to protect the far more valuable textiles underneath, and stay in these clothes, the Ragged Dress is...still stinky, even if it got rinsed a bit, and also 'hot', as it's what Chlot wore during her piracy episode.

>>5385021
>Take the pin-stilettoes and the Wand of Head-Knocking. If things go wrong, you could be going toe-to-toe with two men. Knives alone are not going to cut it, ironically enough. Accept the risk of discovery, as well as the risks of getting Strangeness everywhere, and of a misfire, as well as the impediment that a Socketed Wand poses on the arm that it is Socketed into.
>Swap out your squeaking Oilers for some of those Used Footwraps. Keeps the good boots from getting soiled, and they will be much quieter, though they will provide next to no protection.
>Throw on the Red Riding Cloak. It has cavernous sleeves to aid in concealment, and thanks to its color, it might not show blood spatter immediately. The change of outfit might attract some attention.

>Write-in: Also bring a clay lamp full of olive oil and go buy an ale. The lamp can be thrown as a weapon and worse comes to worse the ale can work as liquid for that Ice Lockpicks spell we know.

>>5385021
>>>The pin-stilettoes should be enough. While carrying them is technically a crime, they are not anywhere near as incriminating as a fraying wand.
>>Swap out your squeaking Oilers for some of those Used Footwraps. Keeps the good boots from getting soiled, and they will be much quieter, though they will provide next to no protection

>>5385006
>Take the pin-stilettoes and the Wand of Head-Knocking. If things go wrong, you could be going toe-to-toe with two men. Knives alone are not going to cut it, ironically enough. Accept the risk of discovery, as well as the risks of getting Strangeness everywhere, and of a misfire, as well as the impediment that a Socketed Wand poses on the arm that it is Socketed into.

>Swap out your squeaking Oilers for some of those Used Footwraps. Keeps the good boots from getting soiled, and they will be much quieter, though they will provide next to no protection

>Throw on the Red Riding Cloak. It has cavernous sleeves to aid in concealment, and thanks to its color, it might not show blood spatter immediately. The change of outfit might attract some attention.

Do we need to bring water to do this ice lockpick trick?

>>5385083
>>5385032
Clarification on the Ice Lockpick - you don't need straight water, but whatever you use for the working material, it has to have a similar freezing point. Luckily, beverages with low alcoholic content only have freezing points that are a few degrees colder than water, so they will work well enough. You just need to get your hands on one - easy enough in a public house.

I'll wait for a tiebreaker on the arming question.

>>5385006
Can you be upfront with the Wand’s effectiveness at the moment? If this does end in a confrontation, I’m wondering what would cause more Strangeness, the Wand or two Strangers dying.

>>5385021
>Swap out your squeaking Oilers for some of those Used Footwraps. Keeps the good boots from getting soiled, and they will be much quieter, though they will provide next to no protection
>Throw on the Red Riding Cloak. It has cavernous sleeves to aid in concealment, and thanks to its color, it might not show blood spatter immediately. The change of outfit might attract some attention.

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>>5385829
Wand of Head Knocking, Second Degree. Kinesiology. Stable. Silent. Targets known living organisms with brains, causing the brain of the target to vibrate violently, causing concussions, disorientation, nausea, and potentially unconsciousness or even death. Can be blocked by lead. LIMITATION: The tip of the wand must be in an unobstructed line to head of the target. Range is up to six yards with casting, up to twelve with overcasting. Catalyzed with eighth-charge of salt with casting, or a fourth-charge with overcasting. Fueled with eighth-charge of an ounce-nodule with casting, or a forth of an ounce-nodule with overcasting. Some Strangeness produced on caster and on fuel source with casting, Strangeness in the Second Degree produced on both with overcasting. One-in-one-hundred chance for some Strangeness produced on target with casting, one-in-five chance for some Strangeness with overcasting. Base DC 5 for hammer cast. Base DC 10 for hammer overcast. Base DC (2+1pC) for each standard cast of a chained casting. Base DC (4+2pC) for each overcast of a chained casting. LIMITATION: Chained casts of Head Knocking, Second Degree do not have cheaper casting costs. LIMITATION: Chained casts of Head-Knocking can target up to three separate targets with seven total separate casts – any more than this requires a second action. Hammer casts and overcasts of Head Knocking has a nineteen-in-twenty chance to completely knock the target out cold for thirty seconds or so, and each chained cast or overcast of Head knocking has a thirteen-in-twenty chance to completely knock the target out cold for twenty seconds. The duration of unconsciousness stacks with subsequent successful casts of Head Knocking that also manage to fully knock out the target. Each successful cast of Head Knocking has a one-in-two-hundred-and-fifty-six chance to kill the target, determined independently from the target getting completely knocked out. For every subsequent successful cast of Head Knocking on a target that is currently concussed, the odds of outright killing the target are halved, and then run again. Example: Chlotsuintha performs seven standard casts of Head Knocking, in a chained cast, all at one target, with no bonuses or maluses effecting her cast. She rolls seven d100 dice each with a DC of 9. She succeeds at six of them, meaning that the spell reached completion six times, and that the target has become concussed. She rolls six d100 dice with a DC of 2 to determine if any Strangeness is produced on the target. She succeeds at all of them, meaning that no Strangeness is produced on the target, though Strangeness is produced on herself and on the wand’s fuel nodule. She rolls six d20 dice with a DC of 8. She succeeds four times, meaning that the target is out cold for eighty seconds. Then the QM rolls one d256 die, one d128 die, one d64 die, one d32 die, one d16 die, one d8 die and one d4 die, all with DCs of 2. Two of the tests fail, target dies.

>>5385829
>Can you be upfront with the Wand’s effectiveness at the moment?
I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for, but I'll try to articulate some points - things that Chlotsuintha would know.

As demonstrated in the past, the Wand of Head Knocking is capable of dealing with multiple hostiles at once. Given the fact that you are in doors, odds are that whatever fighting you are going to do is going to be within twelve yards of one another, possibly even six. Overcasting with this wand extends its range - with one of the costs being that Second Degree Strangeness is produced, instead of just First Degree Strangeness.

As far as the Strangeness released on the hypothetical death of the two men responsible for those prints, that really depends on them. It is possible that they could have walked through something that was Strange in the Third Degree, their boots became Strange in the Second Degree, and if they had any skin contact with the boots, they could only be Strange in the First Degree - assuming that they had not been exposed to serious amounts of Strangeness before this (or if they had, proper Cleansing had taken place) they would not be able to release dangerous amounts of Strangeness upon death. Of course, all of that hinges on what Strangeness they have sequestered into themselves over the course of their lives, which is something that Chlotsuintha has no way of knowing about. And it could be that they themselves became Strange in the Third Degree, making their boots Strange in the Second Degree ... which means if you were to kill them then quite a bit of Strangeness would be dumped out into the world. Of course, considering that Chlotsuintha has not seen any other Strange stains, odds are that the men themselves are not yet Strange enough to be considered Strangers.

If you or anyone else has any other questions (about this or anything else), please, just ask.

>>5385889
What of the risk of discovery and misfire? I already know the Socket impediment.

>>5385924
While unlikely, there is a very small chance that the wand misfires. If the 1d100 comes up lower than the stated DC value for the cast: Base DC 5 for hammer cast. Base DC 10 for hammer overcast. Base DC (2+1pC) for each standard cast of a chained casting. Base DC (4+2pC) for each overcast of a chained casting. The term 'misfire' covers a bunch of possible outcomes.

Misfires:
1: The cast does not initialize. In the end, nothing is wasted but time.
2: The cast initializes, but because of some external issue, like with range, or line of sight, the cast cannot reach completion on the target. Fuel and catalyst may have been wasted.
3: The cast initializes. but because of some magical vagarities, the cast cannot reach completion on the target. Fuel and catalyst may have been wasted.
4: The cast attempts to initialize, but due to the strain experienced, the fuel nodule discharges or is damaged in some way. The wand and the socket could be exposed to Strangeness.
5: The cast attempts to initialize, but due to the strain experienced, the socket corrupts or is damaged in some way, potentially to a completely unusable state. Wand and caster could be exposed to Strangeness.
6: The cast attempts to initialize, but due to the strain experienced, the wand degrades/fails (specific outcome is dependent on the type of magic and quality of wand/fuel), potentially rendering wand unusable. Fuel, socket and caster affected.
7: The cast attempts to initialize, but due to the strain experienced, the caster is affected (specific outcome is dependent the type of magic, quality of wand/fuel, skill of caster) potentially injuring or incapacitating caster. Fuel, socket and wand affected.

Now, the absolute worst of these only are possible when either the equipment or the caster is pushed hard, right to the operational limit, by either overcasting a long series of chained casts, making too many casts over too short a period of time, or if you were to get a misfire while you were using the wand while in Strange Fever, attempting to surpass the limitations of the wand with raw power.

As for the risk of discovery, all I meant by that is if Chlotsuintha was just wearing her domestic dress, she would have a hard time keeping her wand hidden while simultaneously at the ready ... or that the Strangeness that the wand might produce could be detected by the men she is following, or someone else.

>>5385982
Thank you, that has eased my fears significantly. Originally I was going to leave the Wand, due to it’s obviously Strange nature being more of a hindrance than an asset, but given that we’ll be confined to close quarters combat and that the odds of a disastrous misfire are comparatively small, I think the Wand is more of an asset than not during this small Trial.
>Take the pin-stilettoes and the Wand of Head-Knocking. If things go wrong, you could be going toe-to-toe with two men. Knives alone are not going to cut it, ironically enough. Accept the risk of discovery, as well as the risks of getting Strangeness everywhere, and of a misfire, as well as the impediment that a Socketed Wand poses on the arm that it is Socketed into.
Sorry for taking so long, I’ve been extraordinarily busy these past couple of days.

>>5383072
So Ichor is used for locomotion by the beasts of the abyss huh. Seems to me that the unrefined stuff might actually be more useful than lifting oil to a competent witch with the means to interface with it.

>>5385006
>Stilettoes and wand
>Footwraps
Guessing they're ordinary folks who got exposed to Strangeness when the refinery blew. Still, can't hurt to be careful and if we have to kill them a public house is slightly better than the street.

>>5386288
Excuse me, but if you’re voting for the wand, can you also vote for the cloak as well? As Trash previously said
>As for the risk of discovery, all I meant by that is if Chlotsuintha was just wearing her domestic dress, she would have a hard time keeping her wand hidden while simultaneously at the ready
and keeping her wand hidden and at the ready sounds very useful to us.

>>5386288
>So Ichor is used for locomotion by the beasts of the abyss huh. Seems to me that the unrefined stuff might actually be more useful than lifting oil to a competent witch with the means to interface with it.

Do we have a license for this much Stacy energy?

>>5386288
>>5386524
I wouldn’t discount the uses of Lifting Oil, especially if we can distill a couple tons or apply the fundamentals in a unique way, but I wouldn’t mind experimenting with the unrefined Ichor either, though we’ll need a Coven to actually capture the Abyssal Beast.

>>5386601
Is Lifting Oil toxic to drink? What if we drank it and then got into a Strange Fever... noooo we'd probably die or best case scenario shart ourselves to death.

>>5386622
To drink? Sure. To consume? That’s a different question entirely… and given that magic burns flamable material as fuel, and that Lifting Oil is flammable, it stands to reason that you can use it as an adhoc fuel source for magic. What properties would result? I haven’t the faintest idea. Like, would the oil lift us up as we burn it as magical fuel? It would be an interesting experiment.

Alright, we have our majority. I will get to writing as soon as I can.

>>5386288
>So Ichor is used for locomotion by the beasts of the abyss huh.
Yes, though many use it to supplement more mundane means of movement, like flippers. For that matter, it is not only abyssal beasts - Dragons and some other terrestrial animals use it as well, though they don't produce as much, and they are too rare and largely too dangerous to hunt regularly.

>Seems to me that the unrefined stuff might actually be more useful than lifting oil to a competent witch with the means to interface with it.
When the capability of the two is compared side by side, Lifting Oil is a poor substitute for Ichor - though that misses the point of Lifting Oil, which is that anyone can use it on anything, while Ichor is synthesized and controlled through poorly understood biological and magical process, and can only be used for its intended purpose when it is inside the animal that made it ... at least, not without the aid of magic. A lot of the work on the topic has been lost, but from what Chlotsuintha knew of her father's work, he was trying to design a sub-construct that was capable of synthesizing and utilizing Ichor, so it stands to reason that he can work with Ichor, or at the very least, he believes that he can work with Ichor.

>>5386274
>Sorry for taking so long, I’ve been extraordinarily busy these past couple of days.
No problem anon - I always appreciate opportunities to answer questions.

>>5386622
>Is Lifting Oil toxic to drink?
Yes. There is information on this in The Humors of Industries

>>5386657
>Like, would the oil lift us up as we burn it as magical fuel? It would be an interesting experiment.
It certainly would be, wouldn't it?

>>5386906
The past week in game and in general, has the sky been filled with smog or clouds?

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You get to your door, and setting the cart down and allow yourself a surreptitious glance – first over your shoulder to make sure that you have not been followed here, and then around the hallway to make sure that you have not overlooked any Strange stains. Once you are as satisfied as you are going to be under your current circumstances you unlock the door, noting with surprise just how smooth and well-oiled the lock feels. Honestly, given what you had seen of this establishment – the name of which you still don’t know – you half figured the locks were going to either be broken or just for show. But instead, they are well-made and well-maintained … which funnily enough means that they are more vulnerable to an Ice Lockpick with your Cold-Touch Scarification Glyph. So long as the lock that you need to pick is as smooth as this one, with a comparably sized keyhole and keyway, then you should definitely be able to get this to work.

You haul the cart inside, then close and lock the door. Alone, you allow yourself a strained sigh of relief as you look over your room. There is a moderately lumpy looking bed pushed right up against the wall, with a simple nightstand by the head, and a well-worn sea chest by the foot with a lock that is clearly not original. Presumably, the key to this room will open the chest as well. Besides that, there is a tiny fireplace, and to the left of it, a simple wooden table, with a really uncomfortable-looking stool tucked underneath, and a washbasin on top of it – bone dry, unfortunately. No towels either. The only other thing in the room is a decent looking Arachne-woven Devotional hanging on the wall. This slender tapestry pictographically depicts the life and the Glory of a Saint as a font of worship and intersession … but to your deep shame, you cannot recognize which Saint. Your mother taught you your basic prayers, and you have been saying them your whole life – and while serving as a pallbearer, you have gotten to listen to the verses in funerary services – but beyond that, you have never actually had a copy of the Compendium to read for yourself, or written Devotionals about Saints or anything else, or even histories of the Priests, or secular commentaries. And you can count the number of times you have actually been to a proper service in an actual Temple on just one hand … and still have fingers left over.

Father always insisted that it was not safe to set foot in Temples, as Inquisitors and Cleansers go to the services on Titheday, and in some places, the local Chapterhouse is adjacent to or even part of the Temple complex. All of this is true, to be sure, but … you have blessed with magic, and on top of that, you have been blessed again with exceptional stability. Even before this latest string of Trials, you have had nagging doubts that you haven’t been demonstrating your gratefulness properly. Now … no, you cannot. You cannot think about this stuff now. You have to keep moving.

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But before you can do that, you need to change. In a matter of minutes, you are going to be sneaking around, possibly even climbing – and with your life at stake here, these bulky, squeaky Oilers just aren’t going to work. You never actually intended to wear the damn things but considering that your less squeaky and less bulky boots are with the Cobbler right now being repaired, your options are either go barefoot – and with the way your luck is running black, get fraying gangrene from a splinter – or use the battered and stained fabric as originally intended. You get your hands on them quick enough … but getting them wrapped around your feet is another story all together. All your life, you have worn boots with stockings or serbula without. Eventually though, using the existing creases, you are eventually able to approximate the proper folds. As you tuck your stockings inside of your Oilers, you quietly pray that your folds – and the wraps themselves – hold up long enough for you to conclude your business here.

You have decided that you are not going to take any chances here. If this does come down to a life and death situation, and there is a fight between you and the two men, you are just not comfortable enough to bet everything on your pair of pin-stilettoes carrying the day. After all, your experience with blades begins and ends with chirurgery, and what’s more, these are folding knives. No, you are going to need your wand – and for that, you are going to need to undress. As you strip down, it finally occurs to you that this room has no window – and you shiver a bit at the realization in spite of yourself. Maker’s Mercy, if you get cornered in here … no, you are not going to let that happen. Still, if there isn’t a second entrance, how are you going to get out of here without that lump seeing you?

You find yourself glancing at the Wand of Head Knocking. Hopefully it does not come to that. Ass that he is, you don’t want to kill the man – or risk exposure if you can help it. You clean the Socketing Needle as best you can with one of the rags, then you get it set back into the crook of your left arm, leaving your right hand free. You then pull your Domestic Dress back on, wincing as the tight arms and sleeves of the dress press against the socketing site and tug intermittently on the Conduit connecting the Socket to the wand. With the wand just dangling out of the sleeve, you get the apron back on, then you rummage around in your old Ragged Dress for the fuel nodules. On the off chance that someone breaks into the room while you are away, you take all of them, along with enough salt to catalyze them. If you could, you would take all of the talents that you have brought with you – but in addition to being heavy, their merry clinking and clacking could give you away. If it came to it, you could leave the money – and the rest of the cart behind. Right now, everything that you absolutely need is with you.

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After going back and forth on it for a moment or two, you decide to throw on the Hooded Red Riding Cloak. Obviously, a bright red cloak is not well suited for sneaking, and the combination of a hooded cloak over an apron looks … odd, to say the least, but in the end, you figure that it is more important to make sure that the Wand of Head Knocking is hidden as well as it possibly can be while still socketed and at the ready. You go through everything in your head several more times, trying to see if you have forgotten or overlooked anything, but when nothing comes up, you pack the cart back up, hiding the talents – as well as the men’s clothing – underneath all of the sundries. You leave the footlocker untouched. After all, if someone is able to defeat the lock on the door, and assuming that the lock on the locker is the same, what protection will the chest provide? All you would have done is made it easier to rob you by putting everything of value into one place.

Obviously though, you are far from comfortable about leaving all of this money unattended in a place like this. Not to mention that you are burning through time here. As ready as you are ever going to get, you leave the room, making sure that you have the key, and that the door is locked behind you. You begin to retrace your steps to the counter, figuring that you could ask that bletted lecher for some water to wash up with – that you would actually use with Cold-Touch to pick the lock. But as you draw closer to the counter, you get another idea. Obviously, as the man running this public house, he has to have either a master set of all of duplicates for all of the keys, or a skeleton key that opens all of the doors. What if you were to go to him, and say that you had accidentally locked your key into your room? He would have to fetch it and unlock your door for you – which means that you would see where the key or keys are. Then all you would need to do is pickpocket them off of him, use them instead of Cold-Touch and then return them to him.

Obviously, that is a tall order. But you are no whobody to sneakthievery. You spent years picking pockets before you and father came to Outremer. Sure, you might be a little rusty – but consider the alternative. If you use Cold-Touch, your eyes are going to positively glowing for at least a couple of minutes. Not to mention, that Cold-Touch dumps Strangeness into the water that is used as the working material for the spell – and you cannot count on having enough time or privacy to Mitigate or Remediate that Strangeness away. So then, what happens if the men that made the prints are in some way or another able to see the Strangeness, and they come back and find that there is a bunch of Strangeness pouring out from inside the lock of their door? Obviously, they are going to know that someone has been investigating them – with magic.

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That is not to say that pickpocketing the proprietor is a great option. Obviously, if something goes wrong with the either the lift or the return, then you are truly and certifiably frayed. And if he notices that the key or the keys are missing while you are using them, then unless he is a complete fool, he should be able to figure out that you played him to show you where they were kept. No doubt that he would send for the Guard, and even if you were able to get away, completely clean, with your cart – which you cannot count on – odds are they would tie this to the Euthyphro knock-down. All you would have managed to do is give the Guard a better description of you to disseminate.

Perhaps that is the best way to consider this. Look at how both options could go wrong, and then ask yourself – what are you more scared of? The proprietor and customers of this custom house, along with the Guard … or these two potential magical users?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Use Cold-Touch to pick the lock on the door.
>Steal the House’s keys/key to unlock the door.

>>5387046
Stickport is always sort of smoggy, as all industry has been remanded there to spare the rest of the Mount, but the rest of the skies have been bright and clear.

>>5387314
>Use Cold-Touch to pick the lock on the door.

those two dudes are more likely to kill us, but I have a feeling they are not the type to alert the authorities. Last thing we need is more heat.

>>5387314
>>Use Cold-Touch to pick the lock on the door.

>>5387314
>Get the water to do Cold Touch but knock first and loudly ask, "Dad, are you in there?" Get ready to prepare to bluff that you got the wrong door.

>>5387314
>Use Cold-Touch to pick the lock on the door.
The last thing we need is more heat, and I ain’t about to put our fate in the hands of that leacher if I can help it. If our luck is white (ha), these may just be refinery workers or sailors, or maybe one of the morticians, Pattermaker willing.

Also, why get changed and then ask for water/steal keys? Wouldn’t it make more sense to get those items before we fraying changed?

>>5387610
Anon, a bluff ain’t gonna work, it’s pretty much all or nothing.

>>5387314
>>Use Cold-Touch to pick the lock on the door.

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In the end, you decide to go with Cold-Touch. No matter what, pickpocketing is always going to be a risky endeavor, especially considering that you are years out of practice. On the other hand, using Cold-Touch is only ever going to be a risk if the men who made the prints are actually able to ‘see’ the Strangeness – which is far from guaranteed. For all you know, the men here could be just like the Coroners; after somehow figuring out that they were accidentally exposed to the Strangeness, they attempted to take matters into their own hands by Remediating or Mitigating their own boots. More than that, a goodly portion of the risk with using Cold-Touch can be sidestepped by pulling your hood down low, over your eyes. You might look odd, but at least you will not look Strange. If you were to move ahead with pickpocketing instead, there would be no comparable way to minimize risks.

Having settled yourself on a course of action, you continue on to the counter. Blessedly, approaching from this angle, you are screened from most of the common room, but at least one or two of the customers notice you come in. Even though it couldn’t be helped, your stomach starts to sink once again. You also have no doubts at all that those who can see you are noting your change in outfit, but you could not help that either. With potentially two hostile magic users in close quarters, you had to go out armed – and really, the only way to hide the wand comfortably was with the cloak, as garish as it might be. Anyway, if you are apparently a prostitute, then some more colorful dress is probably expected, right?

While you can understand how someone would get the idea that an unchaperoned, unwed woman looking to rent a room would be … a whore, with this bastard didn’t even get a chance to ask him for a room! Do you really look that much like a prostitute that someone would just jump to a conclusion like that? Sure, you suppose you look odd enough, considering your height, but women in that line of work are usually a bit poxy and homely as well, aren’t they? Oh, Maker’s Mercy – does he think you look homely? Do you look homely? You never really thought so, but on the other hand, you have spent the last eight years of your life wearing a mask amongst other mostly masked people, some with disfiguring medical conditions. So you suppose your really don’t have a decent frame of reference for things like this. The proprietor would have to know better than you.

You push these thoughts to the side for now – though it occurs to you in passing that this might complicate your plans to present yourself as the daughter of a wealthy Subject if you look so uncanny – and approach the counter, again feeling the eyes of the room behind you running up and down your back, making your hair stand on end.

“Pray excuse me, but I was hoping that I could get some water for the washbasin”.

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He raises an eyebrow at you, presumably on account of the change of clothes, but beyond that he does not immediately respond. Only after some seconds have passed, does he stir himself. The chair or stool suffering underneath the proprietor groans in protest as he sets aside the ledger that he was consulting and shifts the whole of his girth forward. Eventually, the counter stops him, so he has to roll a bit of himself on to it, grunting with the effort as he braces himself with both arms, one resting on his elbow and the other resting on his palms. With his breathing sounding a little bit wheezier for all of this strenuous exertion, he finally cranes his neck out enough to peer over the height of the counter. Staring straight at your crotch, he takes a series of deep sniffs, then looks you right in your eyes.

“I’ve had worse.”

And without another word, he shifts back to his more comfortable reading position, the unseen chair or stool whinging away once more underneath him. At this moment, it is all you can do to not start crying in shame and frustration. It would have been galling enough if he had said it as a joke, or worse, loud enough for the other men in the room to hear – but there was no mirth, nor malice in those words. It was simply a flat declaration of fact. When you were pilfering the wedding band and the locket off of the dead Comptroller, you did not feel half as filthy as you do right now. What does he smell? Did you get something on you from the Mitigation of the Glyphed Gull? Do you just … smell, and no one has ever told you? You are about to leave, when you realize that you still need the water, and you force yourself to try again, unable to the sound of tears from your voice.

“Sir, please, I’d really like to clean up.”

He looks at you with this blank gaze, his head cocked to one side and his mouth hanging open as he breathes in and out. After a couple of moments of this, he finally deigns to give you a proper answer.

“Bertram gets the water.”

Figuring that this is not going to go anywhere, instead of grasping at straws, you decide to take an entirely different tack. Cold-Touch just requires a liquid that freezes at a temperature close to the freezing point of water.

“Then, perhaps I could have a drink? Some … ale?”

He looks at you again, same as before – until his face breaks into this impish little grin. You had not even noticed, but sitting to far side of the pile of ledgers that he was looking over was this battered looking tankard. Without a word, he picks it up and places it on the counter right in front of you, and then resumes flipping through the pages of the ledger seemingly aimlessly. You are certain that you are start crying any second now - and though you don’t consider yourself an impulsive sort, you have to physically stop yourself from throwing the damned thing at him.

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To make sure that you don’t do anything drastic, you turn away from the man, and look out into the common room. From here, you can see pretty much everything, save for the vestibule by the front door. There are no new arrivals in the room, and more importantly, everyone who was there when you first came through here is still at their table.

From your current vantage point however, there is clearly another way in and out of the dining room, on the far back side – and if there is a second set of stairs somewhere in this public house, which is possible, given its size – then the men who made the prints could be among those down here right now. Racking your brain, you try to decide which makes more sense – to check to see if the men are among the those at the tables right now, running the risk of revealing that you are after them, if in fact they are down here and they are able to somehow detect the Strangeness, or to go find their room first, risking that if they are down here that they leave while you are busy upstairs …

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Check the common dining room first
>Find their room or rooms first

>>5387806
>Check the common dining room first
could have done this before this whole water/ale drama actually.

>>5387806
>Check the common dining room first
Honestly can’t decide, because I’m certain that these are witchlets, but even if they weren’t, wouldn’t they assume we were a whore as well, and got contaminated that way? Why suddenly jump to the possibility that they serendipitously met another witch in a crappy bar in a middle of a town suffering under the effects of a refinery explosion and their own irresponsible fuckery with Strangeness?

>>5388183
>>5388540
Though I normally like to wait for three votes, seeing that this is unanimous, and that it has nearly been two days now, I will close this, and get to writing.

>>5387806
>>Check the common dining room first
Here's your third vote

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You decide on taking a sweep through the room – and in a small turn of white luck, everyone is sitting close enough together that you should definitely be able to check all of their boots in one pass. Before you do though, you compose yourself as much as you can, then you quickly turn and snag the tankard without another word – doing your best not to even look at that bloated, libidinous slug. While you are able to avoid afflicting your eyes with the sight of him, your ears don’t make it away unscathed, as you hear him cackling at you, for taking his leavings like this.

Desperately wanting to be done here, you let your head fall as you make your way out into the common room. Immediately, you start scanning the floor. At the moment, Strange-Staining is still inactive, but the floorplan here is fairly open – it is possible that there could be prints further in. Even though you are getting increasingly anxious, you do your best to keep your face as neutral as possible – though irregular throbbing jolts of pain from the crook of your left arm are making this difficult. At some point, well after you have left the Mount, you should see about getting these dresses outfitted with adjustable sleeves. It is not just the pain, you are worried that if you make the wrong move, the tightness of the sleeve will somehow manage to pull the needle out of your arm – rendering the wand useless.

Finally, your meandering path through the dining room gets you within range of the first customer. Your breath catches in your throat and your hand tightens on your wand … but Strange Straining does not activate. You keep moving, trying to be unobtrusive – which, for various reasons, all of them painfully obvious, is practically impossible. Regardless, you try. It is at this point that you realize that you have not salted your wand, and you can actually feel your heart skip a beat. You still should be able to cast Head-Knocking without catalysts, but the efficiency of the wand and the efficacy of the spell will suffer. For half a second, you seriously consider salting – though you come to your senses quickly. You are in the middle of the fraying room right now, so all messing around with your pockets is going to do is just draw attention to the fact that you have something stowed in them.

You keep your hands where they are. From a certain perspective though, it seems kind of pointless. Even after your Self-Salt-Remediations this morning, you are still Strange, presumably Strange enough that you would register on a dosimeter, or similar implement. If one of these men happens to be the person who managed to at least half-successfully Remediate those boots, and he has such an implement with him, or some other means to ‘see’ the Strangeness … well, maybe they wouldn’t jump to conclusions. But in circumstances when there is a chance – even a slim one – that magic is involved, father taught you to jump to conclusions. Specifically, the worst ones.

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You tense up as you get within range of the next table – the closer of the two pairs in the room. When Strange-Staining does not activate, you relax, just a little … until one of the men starts trying to proposition you.

“Ya working here tonight, lassie? Tending the sheets? Here to tuck us all in?”

With your head down and eyes on the floor, you can just barely make out that the man is making obscene gestures. As a Leper, you are used to getting shouted at in the streets, as well as having warding prayers directed at you. Sometimes, people will spit at you, or throw things. And on occasion, you will even see very young children start to cry at the sight of you. Over the past eight years of wearing the Spotted Cloak, you have gotten to the point where none of this really phases you. So you find it odd just how deeply the assumptions, words and gesticulations of this man – and the proprietor as well – are affecting you. Perhaps it is because you haven’t been exposed to this kind of abuse before. Or perhaps it is simply because these men are certain that you are a whore.

Whatever the case, you are getting a little worked up, and more than a little distracted. Focusing on the task at hand, you keep your head down, even as you feel the heat radiating off of your blushing cheeks. There is enough to be worried about here already, you cannot let this affect you. You continue your sweep through the dining room, your eyes darting across the floor in front of you, the fingers of your left hand wrapped firmly around the handle of your wand, and the Socketing needle throbbing away in your arm. Unfortunately, your silence does not go over well with your gentleman caller.

“Oi, you poxy cunt!”

His shout actually made you jump a bit, and now you are certain that the whole room is looking at you once more. Again, you do everything you can to take it in stride, no matter how deep it cuts you – or how filthy it makes you feel. But when even that fails to get a response, the spurned sot goes and spits at you. It either misses or it hits a thick enough spot on your cloak that you couldn’t feel it, but either way, you are starting to get scared. This man keeps escalating things – and he doesn’t sound drunk either, just angry. Maybe ignoring these sorts of things only works for Lepers. After all, it is not like anyone in their right mind is going to grab or beat on or even touch a Leper. But you are not a Leper, not here – you are a woman, or in the mind of this bastard, a disrespectful prostitute. Is there any compelling reason why he would refrain from grabbing or beating on you? You can’t think of any. And as for touching … well, inexplicably, it is quite clear that he wants to touch you.

But as soon as you have become more worried about this whoreless-whoremonger than the prospect of potential hostile magic users in the room with you, his dining companion intervenes in hushed tones that you are just close enough to hear.

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“Would you lay off? Stars above, we paid good money for room and board. You keep this up and we’ll get thrown out.”

Blessedly, that is enough to shut him up, though you swear you still feel his eyes on the back of your neck – hot and angry. At the very least, you can stop panicking about him trying to accost you and get back to panicking about the possibility of one of the three remaining people out in the room being a magic user of one stripe or another. As you come within range of the next man, your grip tightens on your wand, and you hold your breath … only for nothing to happen. Now all that is left is the that one pair in the back. And one of them was looking at you when you came in – well, everyone was, but he was really staring. Or that’s what it felt like to you.

As you draw near to their table, you are able to take a little solace that there are still no Strange prints on the floor. But the real test will come once you are in range of the back entrance to the room. If these men were the ones who left those prints, you would only be able to tell once you were right on top of them. You take a series of deep, steadying breaths, and shift yourself up right a little more. If anything is going to happen here, odds are it is going to be now. You swing around one final table and start down the final stretch. It is at this point that you see that both of them have these large cloth sacks. The one with his back to you has his on the ground, with the drawstring tied shut, but the other – the one that was staring earlier – his is on the bench next to him, with its mouth wide open, pointed right at him. Now, there is nothing to indicate that those sacks are anything but sailors’ seabags – and no hints that they have anything more dangerous than old laundry in them. But the sight of them is enough for you nearly trip over yourself. You know that you jumping to conclusions, but you can’t help it.

Eight years you lived in Scrimshaw Mount, without any imminent risk of getting caught or killed – by anyone, be they Inquisitor or Witch. But in just the past three days, the ground under your feet has crumbled away, leaving you struggling for balance on a precarious and rapidly expiring spit. And of course, things went so much worse than you possibly could have expected the last time you were in a public house. At this point, no matter how slim the actual risk, it feels like it would be more irrational to not be panicked and afraid.

Only a matter of steps away from being within of the floor under their feet and their boots, one of them tries to talk to you.

“Puella.”

Unsure if he is trying to solicit you, or trying to get a better look at you, you keep your head down. Every fiber of your being wants to lengthen your stride and hasten your gait, but you cannot. You have to keep steady, for fear of … of what, you are not even sure. Do you really suppose that a fight is going to break out, right here in the common room?

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He tries again to get your attention, keeping his temper much better than the last man.

“Hey, puella.”

Your heart is rising into your throat and your stomach is sinking into your ass. You grip your wand and make what you judge to be the final step before you get in range of the table – and nothing. No stains. You cannot help yourself, and a small squeaky sounding sigh slips through your lips. To be sure you take another step, then two more. Still nothing. No Strange prints, and no Strange boots.

“Puella, that doesn’t go anywhere – it’s the kitchen.”

And sure enough, he is right. What you figured to be another half of the dining room, or a hallway leading to rooms for rent and perhaps a second staircase does in fact turn out to be the kitchen. You can see a harried looking cook tending to something on a stove, while an assistant runs ingredients over to him. You are not in range of either of them, but as there are no Strange prints leading into the kitchen, you figure that you should leave well enough alone, at least for now. Quietly thanking the man, you reverse your path and retreat from the room. As you pass the table of the man you upset, he starts in on you again, but blessedly, his dining companion is not having any of it, and you are able to leave the common room without further incident.

The one person who you were not able to check on was the proprietor, as his boots and perhaps half of his mass were behind the counter … and while you are just noticing now that there is in fact a door in the shadows behind him, it looks like it leads to an office or some manner of storeroom, not anywhere that would lead outside. Beyond that, he seems to be enfeebled by his weight to the point that he does not do a lot of walking. If you can get a chance later, then certainly, you would like to check his boots – and for that matter, the boots or shoes of the cook and his help – as well as this Bertram. But right now, you have eliminated six out of … uh, ten? That is counting everyone you have seen so far, plus one for Bertram. The cook could have more help though, and there has to be other servants kept on to tend to the rooms as well as the guests. You just don’t have any idea where they are at the moment.

Anyway, right now, you need to find the room that the prints lead to. Once you get to the staircase, you make sure that no one is coming, and more importantly, no one is watching. When you are as certain as you can be that the coast is clear, you climb up the steep stair, onto the second floor, following the prints. They take you down the entire length of a hallway and around a corner before they come to a door in a jumble, with some on top of others. In addition to the footprints, there is some Strangeness on the door and its frame as well, as if someone brushed up or leaned on it. It is the first Strangeness that you have seen here that was not a partial footprint – but it is not the last.

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There is also this tiny patch of Strangeness a small distance from all of the footprints at the door. You temporarily suppress your Strange-Staining scarification Glyph, hoping that you see what made that particular stain, but unfortunately, you cannot see anything. The shape of the stain itself is irregular enough to make you think that it was a liquid, so it is possible that whatever it was dried – or was blotted away. But looking into that is going to have to wait.

Because there are no prints leading away from the room.

>Please choose ONE of the following:

>Cold-Touch is silent – and if this lock is anything like the one on your room, the lock is fairly quiet as well. Get your wand salted, have it at the ready, then pick the lock. Whatever happens, you will have the Initiative.

>If someone is in there, perhaps it would be for the best for them to come to you. Get your wand salted, have it at the ready, then knock on the door, pretending that you are looking for … your father. You are effectively announcing your presence, however, and you cannot expect to keep the Initiative.

>Some of the rooms in this house had windows, right? You aren’t sure if this is one of them, as by your best guess, you are in the half of the house that you didn’t see, but if you were able to find this room from the outside, you might be able to see something – or get in that way. Doing so would take time – which is precious right now – and there is no guarantee that anything would come from it.

>Them being in the room changes everything. Breaking in, with or without magic, will almost certainly instigate a fight – and even if you attempt to talk your way in, at the very least, they are going to have to remember you, surely. As much as it kills you, you have to walk away. Maybe you can come back here later to see if they have left the room, but now … you need to go.

>>5391110
>If someone is in there, perhaps it would be for the best for them to come to you. Get your wand salted, have it at the ready, then knock on the door, pretending that you are looking for … your father. You are effectively announcing your presence, however, and you cannot expect to keep the Initiative.

I feel good about this.

>>5391110
>>Them being in the room changes everything. Breaking in, with or without magic, will almost certainly instigate a fight – and even if you attempt to talk your way in, at the very least, they are going to have to remember you, surely. As much as it kills you, you have to walk away. Maybe you can come back here later to see if they have left the room, but now … you need to go.

>>5391110
>Cold-Touch is silent – and if this lock is anything like the one on your room, the lock is fairly quiet as well. Get your wand salted, have it at the ready, then pick the lock. Whatever happens, you will have the Initiative.

if it comes down to it I'd change to knocking over walking away, but I really prefer the silent approach.

>>5391110
Can we put our ear to the door? Knowing if they’re up or not would help us come to a decision.

Changing to:

>Cold-Touch is silent – and if this lock is anything like the one on your room, the lock is fairly quiet as well. Get your wand salted, have it at the ready, then pick the lock. Whatever happens, you will have the Initiative.

Let's take a look!

>>5391140
i was this guy

>>5391614
I honestly didn't even think of that. Alright, pausing the vote in >>5391110 do you want to listen at the door first, understanding that if you did poorly, you might convince yourself that you hear (or don't hear) something, or if you do poorly enough, you might draw attention to yourself somehow?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Take the risks and listen at the lock.
> Do not bother with listening.

To prevent this from stalling the quest, I am only going to leave this vote up for the next hour. If there is a tie, then I will roll for it. If no one votes for an hour, then I will leave it open until someone does.

>>5391732
>Take the risks and listen at the lock.
It can’t be too hard, right?

>>5391732
>>Take the risks and listen at the lock.

>>5391732
>Take the risks and listen at the lock.

Alright. I'll get the rolls up in a minute.

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> DC 40: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is not Keen of Ear, making a moderate Hearing Test like this [Moderate]
> + DC 3: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Tired I and is not as perceptive as she might be otherwise.
> + DC 5: [Public House] has a few guests in the rooms on the second floor, and Witchlet Chlotsuintha must work to avoid being seen by them.
> - DC 20: [Public House] occasionally creaks and groans, but beyond that it is very quiet in the halls.
> - DC 5: Locked Door does not seem to be insulated for sound.
> - DC 2: Witchlet Chlotsuintha’s position by a corner can act as screen against curious eyes, allow her to listen longer than she might otherwise be able to.

> DC 21: Anything lower is a failure. [Re-rolls and auto-passes are available. No hostile re-roll(s)]

>No Passes: False start. Chlotsuintha is interrupted by the approach of someone from the main stair.
>One Pass: Low confidence. Chlotsuintha is unsure, but she thinks she has heard what there is to hear in that room correctly.
>Two Passes: High confidence. Chlotsuintha is almost certain she heard everything there is to hear in that room.
>Three Passes: Absolute confidence. What is there to be heard in the room, is heard. Perfectly.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2) then Chlotsuintha is caught listening at the door by the approaching interloper.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99) then Chlotsuintha notices something significant about the Strangeness on the door and door frame.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.
>Criticals and Near-Criticals cannot be reversed by a re-roll or an auto-pass
>You are STRONGLY encouraged to roll again after twenty minutes if more rolls are needed, to keep the quest moving.

Rolled 80 (1d100)

>>5391817
Oh boy. May our luck be White.

>>5391817

Rolled 56 (1d100)

>>5391817

>>5391834
Damn, you’re lucky I updated, I was just about to roll. I’ll wait 20 minutes after your roll lad.

Rolled 29 (1d100)

>>5391817
Time for the obligatory momentum roll. May our luck stay White.

Good rolling. I will get the scene up in a moment.

>>5391860
quick feedback Trash: I'd prefer if these kinds of clever write-ins/observations would give us a bonus to our DC instead of triggering another vote/roll.

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You go back and forth on what you should do here for a few moments, until it occurs to you that you might try listening at the lock. If this room is anything like yours, it is small, small enough that you figure you should be able to hear if anyone is inside … unless they are staying stock still, of course. As subtly as you possibly can, you look over both of your shoulders to check to make sure that no one is coming down the hall, or out of their rooms. Then, you peer around the corner, to make sure that no one is coming from the stairs. Praying that your Oilers don’t start squeaking again until you are done here, you pull back your hood, set the battered tankard down carefully, then very deliberately, you get down on your knees – thankful for the cushiony protection of your apron.

Your chief concern here is that if you move too fast, something is going to make a noise – either your boots or the floor underneath you – and it would give the game away to anyone listening inside. That is on top of the risk that someone inside heard your footfalls as you moved through the hall and noticed how they stopped right in front of their door. But that is not something that you can address at this point. Committing yourself, you settle into position slowly, noting where you are relative to the prints on the floor and the patches on the door and its frame. Those patches – as well as the small one off to the side on the floor – could be in a communicable state, though they are not showing any signs of spreading.

Once you get your ear up to the lock, the first thing that you hear is the creaking and groaning of the floors above you. You are not sure if that is from the building settling, or it is from someone walking or pacing on the floors above – though you would guess that is building, as the sounds are irregular. On this floor, you can hear your clothes rustle as you lean in, as well as your own breathing. Beyond that, you can hear vague noises from the kitchen and the dining room below. But nothing from the other side of this door. You hold your breath and strain, listening harder than you have ever listened before – but there is nothing. And when you press your ear straight up against the lock, the only new sound that you can hear is the warm rustling of blood through your ear. Nothing from inside the room. No moving, and certainly no talking.

You then get the idea to look through the lock, to see if you can see anyone or anything, but the cut of the keyway is against you. The only thing that you can make out is a portion of the wall on the far side of the room, no matter how far left or right you strafe and shift. Taking another tack, you straighten up a little, trying to look down at the floor – but all you end up seeing is the inside of the lock’s mechanism. On a silly whim, you do the opposite – scrunching down and trying to look up at the ceiling – but again, you cannot make anything out but the tumblers in the keyway.

>>5391960
>Praying that your Oilers don’t start squeaking again
By the Patternmaker, the stress had frayed Chlot’s mind!

>>5391994
Thought we changed into the footeraps... but ok.

>>5392019
That’s the joke! We did!

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You go back and forth on what you should do here for a few moments, until it occurs to you that you might try listening at the lock. If this room is anything like yours, it is small, small enough that you figure you should be able to hear if anyone is inside … unless they are staying stock still, of course. As subtly as you possibly can, you look over both of your shoulders to check to make sure that no one is coming down the hall, or out of their rooms. Then, you peer around the corner, to make sure that no one is coming from the stairs. You start to pray that your Oilers don’t start squeaking again – until you remember that you made a point of changing out of them into your footwraps. Simultaneously feeling pleased at your foresight and like a fraying idiot for somehow forgetting what you were wearing on your feet, you take up position in front of the door. Once ready, you set the battered tankard down carefully, well away from the door, then very deliberately, you get down on your knees – thankful for the cushiony protection of your apron.

Your chief concern here is that if you move too fast, something is going to make a noise – either your boots or the floor underneath you – and it would give the game away to anyone listening inside. That is on top of the risk that someone inside heard your footfalls as you moved through the hall and noticed how they stopped right in front of their door. But that is not something that you can address at this point. Committing yourself, you settle into position slowly, carefully noting where you are relative to all of the prints on the floor and the patches on the door and door frame. Those patches – as well as the small one off to the side on the floor – could be in a communicable state, though they are not showing any signs of spreading.

Once you get your ear up to the lock, the first thing that you hear is the creaking and groaning of the floors above you. You are not sure if that is from the building naturally settling, or it is from someone walking or pacing on the floors above – though you would guess that is building itself, as the sounds are too irregular. On this floor, you can hear your clothes rustle as you lean in, as well as your own breathing. Beyond that, you can hear vague noises from the kitchen and the dining room below. But nothing from the other side of this door. You hold your breath and strain, listening harder than you have ever listened before – but there is nothing. And when you press your ear straight up against the lock, the only new sound that you can hear is the warm rustling of blood through your ear. Nothing from inside the room. No moving, and certainly no talking.

You get the idea to look through the lock, to see if you can see anyone or anything, but the cut of the keyway is against you. The only thing that you can make out is a portion of the wall on the far side of the room, no matter how far left or right you strafe and shift.

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Taking another tack, you straighten up a little, trying to look down at the floor – but all you end up seeing is the inside of the lock’s mechanism. On a silly whim, you do the opposite – scrunching down and trying to look up at the ceiling – but again, you cannot make anything out but the tumblers in the keyway.

Well … if anyone is in that room, then they are basically making no sound whatsoever. So, then that means that they would have to be sound asleep … or, what, what else? Dead? Or is it possible that after all of this, there is no one in the room? This is only the second floor, after all – if there was a window for this room, they could have gotten out that way. But why would anyone do that?

The answer to that question is as obvious as it is unsettling. They were being followed, or they thought that they were. Still, renting a room just to bail out of it seems to be a real convoluted way to lose a tail. Feeling more confused for having done all of this, you realize that regardless, you are going to have to make a decision. The longer that you look and listen, the more likely that you are going to make some potentially revealing noise or be discovered by either the custom or the help of the house. In the end, you decide -

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>You are going to go ahead with using Cold-Touch to get the door open.
>You are going to go ahead with trickery to check if anyone is in there, and possibly get them to open the door for you.
>You are going to go ahead with stepping out of the house and trying to figure out if there is a window for this room, and potentially enter it that way.
>You are going to call this off.

Finally got this dumpster fire of an update out. Deleted it accidentally, then after I had rewrote it as best I could, I went back and put in the line about the Oilers. And of course, you cannot delete old posts for some asinine reason.

>>5391994
Someone's mind has frayed, certainly.

>>5391939
Good advice, thanks.

>>5392079
>You are going to go ahead with using Cold-Touch to get the door open.

Lolololol

>>5392079
>>You are going to go ahead with using Cold-Touch to get the door open.
They ded

>>5392079
>You are going to go ahead with using Cold-Touch to get the door open.

Alright, consider this closed. I will get to writing as soon as I can.

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Obviously, you can’t just walk away from this – and after all of the effort that you have put into being sneaky, it just seems like a mistake to announce yourself now by knocking on the door. No, you are going to stick with the original plan, and use Cold-Touch to get into the room. You just have to trust that you will be able to hide the glow from your eyes with the hood of your cloak – and that you have enough ale or beer or whatever the Hell you have in the tankard to perform a proper Ice Lockpick. Realizing with a sinking sensation that you have not actually checked to see how much working material you have in there, you bend towards the battered cup from your kneeling position to peer into its mouth.

At first glance, there seems to be quite a lot of foam in there – but when you carefully stick a finger in to check, you are relieved to find that there is less froth and more beverage than you guessed. Now the only question remains is how much of it do you want to use? If you were a sparing as possible, you figure you might get four or maybe five attempts, though you would need to freeze just about all of the ale – and keep it frozen for the duration of the cast. That would give you plenty of chances, at the cost of making all of those attempts harder than they would need to be. Alternatively, you could use half of the … whatever … in a single attempt to open the lock. This would be closer in line to how the spell was intended to be used. You would of course only get two attempts – but both would be relatively easier then if you were to be stingy with the working material to get four or five shots at opening the door.

Or you could go for the whole hog and drain the entire thing all in one go. Doing so would make the cast trivial – but if something was to go wrong, then you would have no recourse but to find more working material.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Be as stingy as you can with the working material, allowing for the most possible attempts.
>Follow the requirements of the spell as closely as you can, allowing for two attempts.
>Make it as easy as you can for yourself by using all of the working material in one attempt.

>>5392596
>>Follow the requirements of the spell as closely as you can, allowing for two attempts.

>>5392596
>Make it as easy as you can for yourself by using all of the working material in one attempt.

There is a chance that whoever is inside will detect the attempt. Best to get it right the first time. I think.

>>5392596
What % chance is considered trivial? Is it going to be like the previous magic DC (60 Full success, 30 partial failure, etc)?

>>5392596
>Make it as easy as you can for yourself by using all of the working material in one attempt.

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>Cold-Touch I: Bottoms Up!

>Critical Success: DC 99 and higher. Not only does the cast go flawlessly, you figure out how to account for irregularities present in working material that is not just straight water, permanently lowering the DC.
>Complete Success: DC 20 and higher. You made the right decision by using all of the working material at once. Additionally, you are able to keep yourself and your clothes safe from the now communicably Strange spent working material.
>Partial Success: DC 8 and higher. It was a little trickier than you expected, but you managed to get the door open - though you made a little noise in the process, and a little more than a little mess with the spent working material.
>Partial Failure: DC 7 and lower. If you just hadn't forgot to account for the foam when you poured. Because of this, you were not able to get the keyway frozen. At least you were able to stop before you wasted everything!
>Complete Failure: DC 4 and lower. You don't even know what went wrong, but the spell just snuffed itself out halfway through. The working material is all spent ... and oddly enough, you feel woozy all of a sudden.
>Catastrophic Failure: DC 3 and lower. Somehow, instead of targeting the beverage, you targeted the lock with Cold-Touch - and have managed to freeze your finger inside of it!
>Critical-Catastrophic Failure: DC 2 and lower. Inexplicably, instead of targeting the beverage, you targeted your own fraying finger with Cold-Touch, and have managed to give yourself some serious frostbite - in the Growing Season!

>May I please have one roll of 1d100?

>Remember, there are re-rolls and auto-passes available - but they can only be used after the dice are rolled, and only if those dice do not come up with a Critical.

Believe it or not, I didn't save the thumbnail of this picture. It is simply that small.

Rolled 74 (1d100)

>>5393095
Cool.

>>5393103
Good rolling! Anyway, after the fiasco last night, I'm going to get a full night's sleep before writing the next update. I will put an update in the general once I get it posted. I hope to see you all then!

>>5393104
Sleep tight, QM. :)

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While the locks are fairly quiet, they are not silent. There is a real risk that if there is someone sleeping on the other side of this door, the noise from picking and then turning the lock over might be enough to rouse them from their slumber. So, it follows that the most sensible course of action is to make sure that the first attempt is successful – and quick as possible. To that end, you are going to use all of the working material all at once. But before you do that, you take a few seconds to get your wand salted down properly, then you take a pinch of salt for yourself. Salt-Remediation and Salt-Mitigation are able to use excess salt from the mounds as the catalyst for their reactions. Cold-Touch, on the other hand, does not target mounds of salt, so it cannot skim a little off the top to be used as a catalyst. Instead, catalyst has to be drawn from the caster, just as the fuel is. To be sure, salt occurs naturally in the body, but while it would take a concerted effort to cast so many Cold-Touches that the bodies stores would be completely depleted, you know from experience that the harder the spell has to work to draw that salt out, the more strain there is on the caster. Wanting to avoid that at all costs, you get the pinch of salt in your mouth, under your tongue. The coarse grains are really irritating, and that is to say nothing about the taste, but it is better to deal with this now than once you are actually casting.

Embarrassingly, it is only once you reach for the tankard that it finally occurs to you how difficult it is going to be to have your wand out and ready while you are performing Cold-Touch. The way that you are going to have to cast the spell to pick the lock requires you to have one finger in the keyway while you are pouring the working material over it. Getting increasingly flustered, you experiment with different combinations of holds and hands until you settle on holding the tankard with your left hand, using your right pointer for the pick and holding your wand in the remaining fingers of your right hand – which is not the side that you have the wand socketed into. The conduit is trailing out of your sleeve, and try as you might, you cannot help but wince as the Socketing Needle waggles and pitches in your arm as you adjust yourself. You try to remember you were ever told to not do this, but for the life of you, you cannot.

As ready as you are ever going to be under the circumstances, you heft the tankard upward. From your cramped position right in front of the door, you cannot see into the tankard – you are going to have guess just how much is left off of weight alone. You try to take a deep breath, but quickly realize that doing so is dislodging the salt under your tongue. In the end you have to satisfy yourself with a less-than-deep breath through your nose. Before you can waste any more time, you start the pour. The moment that the working material hits your finger, you initialize the cast.

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Immediately, your finger goes completely numb, and the salt under your tongue starts to heat up. Neither of these sensations are pleasant, but you are smiling broadly in spite of this – and yourself – all the same. The strain from this is magnitudes less than what you would get with Salt-Remediation or Salt-Mitigation, to the point that you cannot immediately feel it, or the drain. The difference is moon and sun, really. As the first of the working material begins to freeze, you tremble a little – but that has more to do with kneeling in an uncomfortable position for so long, and less with the spell. Done properly, the caster should experience nothing more than a slight drop in temperature, right on the focal point of the cast, and nowhere else.

You start your mental count. Without pushing yourself or the Glyph, the spell should only last twenty seconds, which should be more than enough time to get a simpler lock like this opened up. Angling the pour the best you can, you get as much of the working material into the mechanism as you possibly can. The Cold-Touch Glyph that you have can freeze up to a tenth of a gallon, enough to freeze the entirety of the keyway … maybe half a dozen times over? Maybe less. Either way, in this case, it makes more sense to do everything you can to get it right the first time. And one of the big benefits of using everything at once means that you can push the ice – or if you are being pedantic, the frozen beverage – to its limits. Ice made by Cold-Touch is slightly stronger than mundane ice, but the real boon here is that it is also more flexible, making it suitable for, well, something like this. Of course, even the magical ice – or rather, the magically frozen beverage – has limits, but if you keep pouring more and more working material in, you can fix hairline cracks and weak spots the moment they develop.

Really, it is a remarkable little spell, especially considering that it was developed as ‘parlor magic’ – belonging to an entire informal school that is comprised of magic that is deliberately very easy to learn, flashy by nature, causes next to no strain, poses no risk to the caster … and ultimately provides them with nothing of value. Father had told you that the book he had gotten the spell from was written by a ‘founder’ of this spurious little school, and he claimed that his entire intent in developing this kind of magic was to impress and entertain friends, dinner guests and wide-eyed serving girls. It is really hard to wrap your head around that – just, going out and casting magic, for fun. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last time, you wonder what it must have been like to have been a Witch or a Magician before the Strangeness.

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Realizing that you have gotten distracted, you haul yourself out of your daydreams, and stare intently at the lock, illuminated in the light from your now beaming eyes. Once the keyway starts to flood, you slowly start to back your finger out, and more of the working material freezes, until there is a stud of ice sticking out of the lock. Careful to keep your pointer finger in constant contact, you get your thumb on the stud as well, then you turn it, just as you would turn a key. It is a bit stiff, but with a faint click, the tumblers open. You set the tankard down, get clear from the lock and snuff out the spell. Instantly, the frozen working material melts, dumping communicable Strangeness throughout the lock, on the door and on the floor – but blessedly enough, none on you, save for your right pointer finger.

Despite the faint click, and the fainter splash, you cannot hear anyone stirring on the other side of the door. You steel yourself, and before you can lose what little nerve you have, you wrench open the door, and basically throw yourself through it, wand first.

The first set of boots looks like they were kicked off, right by the door. The other set is together, tucked right up by the foot of the bed.

Why did it not occur to you that they simply could have taken their boots off? By the Heights of Hell, you are such a fraying idiot! You somehow manage to resist your urge to slam the door shut, and keeping your head in the room, you reach your arm out into the hall, grope around for a second or two until you get your fingers on the tankard. Snagging it, you bring it inside, and then you close the door as quietly as you can, locking it behind you.

Well, congratulations are in order. You have successfully managed to break into an empty room. Feeling more than a little defeated, you self-sequester the communicably Strange working material on your pointer finger. You find two things – that it is definitely ale, though perhaps a bit watered down, and that it does not go well with the now mushy salt you kept under your tongue to catalyze the cast. You wash it down with some of the ale remaining in the mug, which makes you feel a little better – at least, until it occurs to you that you might need to perform another Ice Lockpick before you leave here.

You are just about ready to start pulling your hair out, when you actually get a good look around the room. Immediately, you notice …

> DC 40: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is not Keen of Eye, making a moderate Sight Test like this [Moderate]
> + DC 3: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Tired I and is not as perceptive as she might be otherwise.
> - DC 20: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is well aware that she should be looking for Clues in this room.
> - DC 5: Witchlet Chlotsuintha knows specifically what kind of Clues she should be looking for.

> DC 18: Anything lower is a failure. [Re-rolls and auto-passes are available. No hostile re-roll(s)]

>No Passes: Chlotsuintha is immediately interrupted by someone knocking on the door.
>One Pass: Chlotsuintha finds some of the Clues, but it takes so long that Bertram will surely have returned.
>Two Passes: Chlotsuintha finds all of the Clues, but it takes so long that Bertram will probably have returned.
>Three Passes: Chlotsuintha finds all of the Clues quickly.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2) then whoever is at the door has a key and begins to unlock it!
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99) then Chlotsuintha finds an additional Clue!

>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.
>Criticals and Near-Criticals cannot be reversed by a re-roll or an auto-pass
>You are STRONGLY encouraged to roll again after twenty minutes if more rolls are needed, to keep the quest moving.

>May I please have three rolls of 1d100?

Rolled 94 (1d100)

>>5393810

Rolled 94 (1d100)

>>5393810
May our luck stay White, cause I don’t wanna deal with this leacher and his friends after this.

>>5393812
>>5393814
Holy Patternmaker! Do these high dubs create something special? I literally rolled the exact same dubs in Escape from LA Quest, surely it’s a sign for God and the Patternmaker!

>>5393816
They are pretty remarkable. I'll think of something to commemorate them. .

>>5393827
Thank you QM. For reference, this is what I rolled in the other quest.
>>5390806

Rolled 62 (1d100)

>>5393810
Well, time to keep the quest moving. May our luck stay White!

Okay, I'm going to pull together a late dinner, and then hopefully, I will be able to get an update out tonight - without either falling asleep before I finish, or making a fool out of myself again.

Rolled 80 (1d100)

Rolling for Trash's ability to update.

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… that oddly enough, the bedsheets have all been torn up and stuffed into the fireplace. You make your way over to the little stone hearth, avoiding all of the Strangeness all over the floor, on the off chance that one of those patches is not from the boots, and could potentially be communicable. The fireplace in here is identical to the one in your room, except of course, the sheets – and the fact that it is absolutely smothered in the Strangeness. From a safe distance, you squat down and suppress Strange-Staining temporarily to get a better look. With the shifting white-then-gray-then-black-then-gray-then-white again stains out of the way, you are able to plainly see that someone has attempted to burn the sheets. Considering just how full the hearth is, that seems kind of dangerous. But what really gives you pause here is that the job was left undone. Did the flames just not take, and they gave up? Did they light them up, only to change their mind? Or did they light the fire, and then leave, never thinking for a moment that the flames would die out?

Out of those three options, the last one makes the most sense – but of the three, that one also gives you the most pause. Obviously, someone in this room really wanted these sheets destroyed. The fact that they would just leave it to chance like that makes you think … that they weren't just pressed for time, they were in some sort of danger. That they were -

Oh, Hell, what do you know? You are just projecting. And setting aside conjecture, you really don't know anything. And without any way to track these men, odds are you are not going to learn anything either. In fact, it is entirely possible that right now, at this very moment, the men who made these prints are sitting downstairs in the common room … well, maybe. For the sake of argument, say that whoever lit this intended it to burn but at the same time felt pressed enough that they couldn’t stick around to ensure that the rags were taken down to cinders by the flames. So why would they stick around?

An ambush.

Pattern’s Perdition, have you walked into a trap? No – no, think, you fool, think! If this was a trap, then it would have sprung by now, especially with your eyes glowing like lanterns under your hood. And there would be something in the room to keep you here – more than just the mystery of why there are fraying rags in the fraying hearth. There is nothing stopping you from going out the window … isn’t there? The shutters are closed – but their latch is dangling open. This is only the second story. If someone had a mind to, they could have gotten out that way. Ah, you are getting ahead of yourself here. Finish with the fireplace, then investigate the window – and if you can the alley that you presume that it overlooks.

>>5393851
I want dat 80 back

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Returning your attention to the rags, you go back to your assumption that whoever tore then up and then attempted to burn them has left, without intending to return. That makes sense – but it hinges on all of this mess being made recently, as in either earlier today, or maybe yesterday. Public houses, at least the ones that you have experience with, check the rooms of guests before they leave, to make sure that … well, things like this don’t happen. For this room to have been left in this state, then that means one way or another, the men who rented this room and tore those sheets have not checked out. They could still be here, sitting in the common room – or they could have left without checking out, possibly through the window. Suddenly, it clicks! The men have almost certainly left for good, because they have left nothing behind in this room, save for their boots and the rags, one which they want to get away from, and the other they want to destroy. You breathe a little easier at the realization, but you keep your wand at the ready all the same.

Still, you cannot help but be pleased with yourself as you turn your attention back to the burn pile. Your first thought is to use your key to probe and pick through it, but as soon as you get the key out of your apron, you realize that this is actually a terrible idea. The key was given to you specifically. If the worst was to come to pass, and Strangeness was found on something that you were specifically known to have been touching … no, things are already bad enough for you. Likewise, the tankard is disqualified for the same reason, and you don’t want to get the Strangeness on your knives if you can help it.

It is only at this point that it occurs to you that if the men have well and truly left the room, then they might have left their key behind. You stop suppressing Strange-Staining, get to your feet, and head over to the nightstand. Sitting half-hidden in a shadow cast by the much taller bed, you find the key – surprisingly free and clear of the Strangeness. The bed, on the other hand, is a complete mess. On an impulse, you deactivate Strange-Staining once more. And as soon as the magical stains disappear, you can see the mundane ones.

Bloodstains. More than you would get from just some small accident. They are noticeably darkened, and browning, to the point that you would say they are three or four days old. Whoever rented this room must have got it for the week. Your sense of urgency restored, you get back to the hearth, and start poking around. Sure enough, once you get through the first layers of rags, you start to see rags that have been used as bandages. Some with blood on them. Your mind is absolutely racing, coming up with all sorts of explanations as to why someone would need to make bandages like this … but what you don’t get, is why someone would go to the trouble of tearing up the entire sheet – most of them in sizes too big to be used as bandages.

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Understanding eludes you – at least, until you shift your position a little, and feel the unpleasantly crusty fabric of the wraps give and slide under your feet. The rags in the fireplace are not just bandages, they are footwraps and bandages! Now this whole affair here makes sense.

There are two men. One, possibly both of them, are injured, but only one of them gets it bad. Around the same time, they are exposed to the Strangeness. They feel the need to get off of the streets. They come here and arrange for an extended stay … possibly to ensure that no one checks in on their room for a good long while. They go straight to the room. The non-injured or the less-injured man gets his boots off immediately, while the injured man goes walks around a little bit before getting his off. The two of them make bandages and do their best to tend to their wounds. Once they have done what they can, they make footwraps – but … no – how does that work? The footwraps are still here, and the sheet is not big enough that they could have made four sets of them, on top of all of these spent bandages – and the bandages that the injured man was presumably was still wearing when he left here.

Well … how about … if the more mobile of the two of them went out wearing the footwraps he made to go buy proper boots for them to wear! Great! Now, the injured man is still injured – and obviously, these two are not going to hire a professional. So is it possible that they left here – just to go to another public house? Clearly, they knew about the Strangeness on their boots, otherwise they wouldn’t have left them behind, and were worried about being tracked on account of it, otherwise they never would have left the boots behind. But once they had replacements, they could go … fray it all, just about anywhere. And if your read on the age of the bloodstains is right, then you are already three or four days behind them.

It is agonizing, honestly. You are certain that you are on the trail of something important, but even if you could figure out where they went, you are so pressed for time that you don’t know if you are going to be able to follow –

Hold on, now! You don’t know where they went from here, but you certainly can figure out where they were coming from, possibly even where they were exposed to the Strangeness. And in that vein, if one of them was injured, and they did want to go to another public house to recuperate, they probably would not want to go to far. If you were to check at nearest handful of public houses, you might be able to pick up their trail again after all.

But before you do any of that - or check the alley outside - you should really finish poking through the burn pile. In your excitement Strain-Staining reactivated, so you suppress it once more and start prodding around the back of the bundle, where the fire was set. You turn some half-burnt rags over. Huh, is that some rope back there?

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Understanding is slow to dawn on you. Embarrassingly slow. However, it does eventually occur to you that you are looking at a fuse. You are so startled by the realization that you actually have to steady yourself. Your heart absolutely hammering, you move the rest of the rags away, to reveal a long slender tube, made out of what appears to be vellum, folded over on both ends and sealed with wax. The fuse makes you think of ‘peter-pomegranates, but you get the sense that this is an incendiary, not an explosive. It is not easy to see in the back of the fireplace, but it looks like some sort of power is coating the outside of the vellum. While it is currently Strange from contact with the rags, there is no other sign that it is magical … though it was clearly made by someone with chemical knowledge, and at the end of the day, chemistry is just mundane Alchemy. Any full-fledged Witch worth their salt could have made this.

More than that though, the men who were in this room were so damned serious about preventing anyone from following their trail, that they were willing to use something like this. And you thought they were being reckless by walking out on a burn pile. That said though, if it really has been three or four days, and they had just moved to another nearby public house, wouldn’t they have realized that their nasty little candle here didn’t do its job?

Either way, you should decide what the Hell to do with it.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>In addition to being Strange, you have no idea if it is stable, if it is safe to touch, to smell. Leave it.
>This is not something that you can just leave lying around. Find a way to take it with you.

>>5394276
>>5393851
I don't know how I keep doing this. I'm sorry guys, truly. Sorry enough that I will count that eighty the next time we need a roll.

>>5394387
>This is not something that you can just leave lying around. Find a way to take it with you.
This must be our dubs at play. This will inevitably be useful.

So, witchlets confirmed. What fun. Question is, are these Father’s friends, or strangers? And did these lad have anything to do with the Refinery Explosion, what with their wounds and propensity towards incendiary devices? And whether these knuckleheads are even bigger idiots than we are.

>This is not something that you can just leave lying around. Find a way to take it with you. Also, restart the fire to burn the rope and cloth. Inspect the boots more closely for clues. Give them a sniff in case you can identify anything on them.

>>5394432
Actually, we need to be thinking of our exposure here, and an exit strategy. If they feel compelled to ditch their Strange shit and run, that means they’re paranoid enough to think they’re being followed. We should move on without messing with the crime scene, this only diverts suspicion away from us and Father.

>>5394387
>>This is not something that you can just leave lying around. Find a way to take it with you.

>>5394449 #
Excellent point but I can't help but think that inspecting the boots will be worth our time.

Changing to...

>This is not something that you can just leave lying around. Find a way to take it with you. Inspect the boots more closely for clues. Give them a sniff in case you can identify anything on them.

Okay, closed and writing. Chlotsuintha will also poke around - and smell - the boots as well.

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I don't quite have the update finished, and as I am fading fast, I think I will going hold the vote for what comes next, after Chlotsuintha grabs the Strange Incendiary and checks the boots (which actually do have a minor Clue inside).

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>You have lingered here overlong. Return to your room, and find someway to get out of here without making a scene.
>You may have lingered a bit, but this is a good time as any to check the window and the alley that must lie underneath it for Clues.
>You don't know why you are even considering this, but it might be worth it to ask that toothless rake of a proprietor about the men who rented this room. [Requires Deception Test]

>>5394849
>>You have lingered here overlong. Return to your room, and find someway to get out of here without making a scene.
I would rather not that that man come to collect.

>>5394849
>You may have lingered a bit, but this is a good time as any to check the window and the alley that must lie underneath it for Clues.
Just check underneath the window before we boogie, the ally can be done when we’re out, but anything window-related should be done while we’re near the window.

>>5394886
support

>>5394886

Also supporting +1

>>5394849
>>You may have lingered a bit, but this is a good time as any to check the window and the alley that must lie underneath it for Clues.

>>5394849
>>You don't know why you are even considering this, but it might be worth it to ask that toothless rake of a proprietor about the men who rented this room. [Requires Deception Test]

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Even though you have begun to make it a habit, you are not happy, nor comfortable about just walking out of the door with all of the Strangeness in this room, and throughout this house. Under the time constraints that you are, and with all of the potential witnesses around the building, it simply is not possible. But … confiscating a dangerous and Strange Incendiary – that is something that you can do. Understandably, you are not thrilled at the prospect of keeping something like that on or even near your person, but removing any Strangeness from the premises is a good thing, right? A good deed? And more than that, while the Guard would probably not bestir themselves over a pair of malicious travelers running out after ruining some sheets in this barn of a public house, they would almost certainly be interested if they heard that the men attempted to set off a presumed incendiary. They might even wonder why someone would go to such great lengths to burn those sheets – and the absolute last thing you need right now is for the Inquisition to get involved with this too.

Getting closer, it looks like someone thought they were lighting the fuse, but instead were lighting the fraying end of other of the rags. In the dark, cramped corners of the fireplace, you could see how one could pass for the other. Next, you allow Strange-Staining to reactive, and you poke at the Strange Incendiary with a portion of the tankard that has not been covered in the Strangeness yet … and you sigh in relief when the Strangeness does not spread. If this was communicable, on top of everything else, it might have actually been. Moving more cautiously than you were before you found it, you use the tankard to go through the rest of the pile of rags, to make sure that there is nothing else of note that the previous occupants have left behind in the fireplace. It takes you a solid minute of probing to work through all of the rags in the hearth, but by the end of it, you are completely satisfied that there are no more surprises – dangerous or otherwise in there. In fact, there is nothing but rags. Some clean, some with blood and grit. For a second, a terrible thought crosses your mind, that these men might have had something to do with the disaster at Gothorum-One … but then you remember that the assumed age of the blood on the rags puts these men in this room three or four days ago – not last night. To be sure, that does not exonerate them, but at the very least it means that you are not going to learn anything new about what happened on Oiler’s Wharf in this room.

Satisfied that you have seen everything there is to see in the hearth, you set down the now thoroughly Strange tankard, and you delicately pull the Strange Incendiary out of the fireplace. The powder is rubbed into the vellum somehow, so it feels rather coarse to the touch.

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As it did not react to your prodding with the tankard, and it does not react now when you lift it up, you assume that it is at the very least chemically stable … which you suppose is vouchsafed by the fact that someone lit rags that were directly on top of this on fire, and it did not go off. Now, where in the Heights of Hell to carry this thing? You don’t want this near the fuel for your wand, as you have no idea was is in this, and how they could react with the nodules – or the wand for that matter. Or even the conduit or Socketing needle. That means the big pockets on your apron are out. Even though one of them is empty at the moment, you want to keep it reserved for spent fuel nodules – which will get Strange during use, potentially even communicably Strange. There are smaller pockets on the apron, but the thing is too long to fit in them comfortably.

In the end, you decide to hide it in your boot – or more specifically, in your stocking. You figure that keeping it constrained, as uncomfortable as it might be, is better than having it moving around all over the place while you walk – and as soon as you get a chance, you will transfer it out of your boot and into the cart. As you get your Oilers situated again, it occurs to you to look over the boots the men left behind. You pick up the tankard again and relying on Strange-Staining to avoid the patches on the floor, you make your way over to the pair strewn by the door. You hit both of them a couple of times, to make sure that nothing was in them, then you use the tankard to flip the over, just to make absolutely sure.

It is only then that you see it. The portions of the soles of the boots that are not communicably Strange are not Strange at all. That is something that simply cannot be done with mundane methods of Remediation or Mitigation, at least, with any mundane method that you know about. Magic had to have been involved. Your immediate response to this revelation is to offer up a quiet prayer.

Magic-users. You are on the trail of unknown magic-users. Now, going off of the size and style of the boot, these are both men, and He-Witches are apparently exceptionally rare, so you doubt that both of them are Witches. It would make more sense that they are both simple, mundane men who have been trained to use mundane-operable magical implements by a Witch or Coven, to serve her or them as Men of Arms. The other thing that you notice is that dead center in the middle of the three clean and clear portions of the sole, there is a puncture mark, with some discoloration in the hole. That is the only damage to the boots … beyond the stock-standard wear and tear one would expect. Whatever made that hole had to have been responsible for Remediating these boots. You have no doubt whatsoever.

File: The Maker's Mark.png (547 KB, 679x600)

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There is a final thing of note on these boots. They have a very large, unique maker’s mark, which depicts a masked badger, of all things. When you make your way over to the foot of the bed with the aid of Strange-Staining and knock them over with the tankard as well, you are not surprised to see the exact same sort of punctures in the clear spots … though admittedly these punctures are not all dead center in these areas, and when you temporarily suppress Strange-Staining to get a better look at the boot itself, you find one in an area that has been completely covered with the Strangeness. Perhaps these boots were partially cleansed, and then were exposed to more Strangeness? It would make sense – as this was the pair that was closer to the bed, which is absolutely smothered in it.

Keeping Strange-Staining suppressed, you get a good look inside of the boot, and you take note of some dried blood inside. Not much, no where near enough to explain all of the rags in the fireplace, but its presence suggests that whoever was wearing this boot took an injury on the leg that this boot belongs to, the … the right leg. Beyond that, the only other thing that jumps out at you is this pair of boots carries the same maker’s mark. Perhaps it is a long shot … but as you are going to have to go back to the Cobbler at some point, it might be worth it to mention it to him, see if he knows anything about it. Obviously, bringing up a competitor unprompted is going to make for an awkward conversation any way you slice it, but … if you assume that these men are not from around here, which squares well with them checking into a public house, instead of heading to a prepared hideout, then getting the city or the town where they both bought their boots could potentially be the best lead that you get out of any of this.

Before you quit the room, you decide to check the shutters and the window. With Strange-Staining reactivated, you can see that there are some prints on the sill and patches on the shutters themselves, as well as one on the wall by the window. That one on the wall appears to be a print of a left hand, with the pointer finger absent. Judging from how lightly the hand must have touched the wall to make the print, it is possible that the pointer finger just never touched the wall. Or it is possible that the pointer finger was cleansed. Or in some sort of splint. Or had been cut off. If you had to guess, you would say that the man who was in the bed made that one.

Of course, you are assuming that these were men, based off of the size and style of the shoe. That is not definitive, by any reason. Stars above, you are wearing Oilers right now. You peek through the shutters and see that the window of this room overlooks an overhanging piece of roof as well as the expected alley. The spit of roofing slopes fairly gently, gently enough that someone could walk along it, hugging the building.

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It leads in both directions. One towards the main street, and the other, towards the back of the building – though the one that leads towards the back of the building goes around a corner. After sticking your wrist right in front of your eyes to check to see if they are glowing, you cautiously open the window, and stick your head outside. In a few places, you can see some more indistinct patches of the Strangeness, but nothing more substantial. Still, it is enough to confirm your earlier guess that the two men left by the window. From your vantage point, you try to peer down into the alley, to see if you can spot anything – but as you are on the second floor, you are too far away for Strange-Staining to activate for anything on the ground. More than that, you really can’t see anything from up here – the alley is narrow enough, and this public house is tall enough that it is fairly dark down there, even at this time of the day. Playing it safe, you are going to withhold judgement on there being anything of interest in the alley until you are down there on your own two feet.

Your business in the room concluded, you head to the door, waiting a moment and listening, to make sure that no one is in the hallway. Once you are as satisfied as you can be, you take one last look over your shoulder, making sure that you have not missed anything, or left anything behind. Satisfied on this front as well, you listen again at the door, just to be sure, then in one quick movement, you swing it open and get yourself out into the hallway as fast as you can.

It is only once you close the door does it occur to you that you are leaving it unlocked. You can lock it from the inside, but then you have to unlock it to open it. As you see it, you have three options. You could use what remains of the ale to perform a second Ice Lockpick, this time to pick the lock closed, instead of picking it open, you could lock the door from the inside, then leave through the window and find some way back into the public house … or you could simply forget about it. Walking away is the most sensible option, but if you lock the door, that will hopefully keep people out of the room for the longest amount of time, which in turn, will mean that at least some of the Strangeness in there will have dissipated away, or at least become noncommunicable.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Lock the door using Cold-Touch to perform a second Ice Lockpick
>Lock the door from the inside then leave through the window
>Do not bother locking the door

>>5395998
>Do not bother locking the door

The Strangeness in there isn't even that bad. It'll make out eyes glow whilw we're locked out, leaving us defenseless. Climbing out could be worth it, especially for clues but we really gotta get our stuff out of here. Maybe climb once we're out?

Needle marks in the boots. Are these mom's men?

>>5395998
>Use the key to lock it from the outside
It’s not like these guys are coming back, nor is the leacher likely to think anything strange of the missing key considering the state of the room, just hide it and then dump it somewhere else.

Btw, we didn’t use the tankard to prod, we used the key, and we aren’t wearing the Oilers atm, we were wearing them. Clearly Chlot needs some rest…

>>5396206
For the life of me, I don't know why the fuck I keep making these mistakes.

>>5395998
>Use the key to lock it from the outside

>>5396206
I totally missed that we got that key. Good eye for detail, anon. Changing my vote to this +1.

>>5396091
I was this anon.

>>5395998
>Do not bother locking the door

I also want to remind Trash again that we are currently not wearing our oilers.

>>5396206
I'm also switching to this, dont see any disadvantages

>>5383072
Man, I haven't been on qst in months but I'm glad to see this quest is still running. Loved it back when we were in threads II and III

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Just wanted to keep you guys in the loop. I'm working on the revisions for the past few posts, then I am going back and get Chlotsuintha's inventory updated - both what she is carrying, and what she has on the cart. Then I am going to double check to make sure that I have all of that right, as well as all of the injuries that she has taken (slash from the Spot-Dosimeter, cut from the Refinery roof falling on her, the wound from the Socketing-Needle, her missing fingernail). Then I am going to figure out some sort of system that works for me so I never fuck up this bad ever again.

Once I have all of that set up, then I am going to figure out what the vote should have been here (considering that this vote is moot because Chlotsuintha had the key to this room the entire time), then I am going to write that.

When all of this done, I'm going to make a new thread, reposting everything from the start of this one, and then it will be like none of this ever happened. Look for it either tonight or tomorrow.

I get that most - if not all - of you will feel that this is an overreaction, but I simply cannot stand making mistakes like this.

>>5396973
I appreciate that anon, thank you.

>>5397736
You gave us a push cart and we turned it into Fleckers farm store haul all over again.

Don't forget the sump pumps! ;P

>>5397736
I figured errors were mainly down to tiredness. I was hoping for another update, I guess it can’t be helped.

>>5397736
Do we really need to repost the entire thread? This feels a little excessive. Everybody mixes things up sometimes, don't stress yourself too much man!

>>5397806
Maker's Mercy, don't even remind me of that mess. I'm working on it, but it is slow going - and whenever I made headway, inevitably I get the idea to improve or change the system some how, and then I need to rework most of my work.

>>5398080
Tiredness certainly has been a factor, but there is not too much that I can do about it.

>>5398270
Maybe I shouldn't. It is just that I can spend hours writing a single post, and then I see these mistakes - be they misspellings or misrememberings - and I just want to pull my hair out.

Whatever I do, I am going to need a little a more time. And to hold myself to it, right now, I am giving you guys an auto-pass, and will give you another if by this time tomorrow I don't have either the new thread up or the edited passages posted in this thread. Thanks for putting up with autism, and apologies for the continued delays.

>>5399215
Granularity is a bitch. Take batteries for example.

Do you have
x count of 30 different relevent types of Batteries and true to life some are obscure and some devices require obscure batteries? Welcome to spreadsheet hell.
Or
Do you cheat a little and simplify batteries down to 10 types you keep track of. Usually by class of device being powered. Slotting devices into these classes is easier but less true to life or gritty, passing up a potential post-apocalyptic problem that is very much in-genre to be solved? Some extraordinary power sources could still be treated as singular items. Comfy but at a cost.
Or
Are all batteries lumped into an abstract Battery Resource that you roll to deplete charges from(and more charhes can be scavenged for) as it is used if a roll is failed with DC getting higher for rarer/bigger types of batteries and only a few power sources kept as unique items you keep track of. More of the crazy junk piles around the house style of inventory with spoilage and accidents accounting for bad rolls or something? Definitely makes scarcity real.
Or
Do you get even more abstract but simplified and measure resources in how long they'd normally supply a person and divide by persons supplied. Additional or unusual use of those resources being kept track of by draining an appropriate chunk of time. Again, a few truly exceptional batteries are seen as individual items. This is more like organized shelves of items that are suspiciously almost always right for the job.

Paralysis by analysis with trying to keep track of Base size logistics is nothing unusual.

Inventory for a modern setting is insane. I see why settings with a lot of scarcity or some convolution as to why your inventory is limited to a backpack and maybe saddlebags are so popular.

>>5399474
yes this. Try and make a list of all things you own - even if you're a minimum wage employee living in a shoebox apartment it will be a surprisingly long list.

That is some really good advice guys, thanks. Just to keep everyone abreast of developments, I'm not going to be able to get the update out tonight after all. Sorry about that. As soon as I can, I'll get it up.

>>5400131
you OK boss?

>>5405726
I think I broke him

Hope you're ok, Trash.

I'm fine, and more than that, I should be ready to run later today. Thanks for everyone being so patient with me.

>>5405738
Nah, it just took me a while to find the time - all of a sudden a bunch of small stuff came up. Nothing important.

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One last update for this thread. I am basically done editing the passage, correcting what I have already written in this thread, but I am still working on the new passage and vote. Rather than rush it out and risk running into the same problem again, I am going to take a little bit more time.

That means the new thread is either going to be up after midnight, or sometime tomorrow morning or early afternoon. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to get it out today after all, but I hope to see you all tomorrow!

I’m sorry to y’all for causing this, next time I’ll keep my big fat mouth shut.

>>5409310
Unless Trash made a plot critical mistake keep your pretty mouth shut.

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You ok, Trash?

Anons have successfully driven Trash insane

i am so sorry

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Sorry about all of this. Once I started editing, I really couldn't stop myself from tweaking the same passages over and over again trying to get them perfect - then referencing older passages to make sure that I didn't mess anything up with the changes, then tweaking the older passages when I saw similar issues. Basically, I have been doing a lot of tweaking.

...And then a bunch of other unrelated stuff started eating up my time. Considering that I can't seem to keep to deadline to save my life, I'm not going to commit to anything, but I just wanted to jump back into the thread, thank everyone that is still here for putting up with this madness and assure you all that I haven't been carried off by the QM curse. There is a thread coming soon*.

*I promise, really.

>>5422016

Nothing sucks you in like worldbuilding. Oh yeah :)

>>5422016
Trash please

>>5429220
He's probably populating overland travel encounter tables and statting up and populating the likely stops along the way for when we escape the city
Not to mention our destination will be likely more effort than building the current city we're in.

>>5429220
i just wanted to help

>>5429867
>implying that we’ll survive long enough for it to be relevant

>>5429886
And you did help - these delays are all on me.

>>5429867
I have worked on the tables a bit, but you are right, a lot more time has been spent on figuring out the branching paths through Outremer. I didn''t want to have to figure things out post by post again, as I feel that was a huge part of making all of these mistakes.

I'm so sorry that the thread got so derailed like this. I've got the edits done as well as a a lot of future planing. I have also done some play-testing of the combat system I cooked up, and then did some tweaking with it.

I'm just waiting for a time that I can start a run and keep it going. My schedule is in flux right now. Depending on the news I get today, I could be busy the rest of the week, or I could have nothing but time on my hands.

Fingers crossed. Thanks again (again) for putting up with this - and me.

>>5430775
Time well spent preparing for this Excellent Journey.

*air guitar*