13A:Play/18 “Why prep a session?”

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Starring: 📜Elistheren, 🌲 Qistis, 📚 Annalana, 🐾 Kaelon, Steinar
Guest Starring: Professor Greydove and Selfie Moontingle Arianna (Qistis' parents)
Challenge: Locks and Wards; Animated constructs in the wizard tower (shard monsters, gargoyle's with brooms, knife-throwing hat rat)
Location: Silver Spire Conservatory in Horizon; Professor Greydove's Office; Inigo's home address (Wizard tower
Date Played: 2017 Aug 31

After the Combat with the Plants

📚 Annalana: Selfie sees Qistis after the combat and rushes her for an embrace and asks if everyone is alright. She dotes over Qistis. We tell Selfie about Inigo and she agrees to take us to records.

Steinar: Those plants and that weird shadow elf... It is a new story to me! I haven't heard of any attack or effect like this in all of the chronicles I compose! There is usually some sort of parable I can pull from our encounters, but this is one of the first times I've come up blank.

In my haze, I almost didn't notice Qistis' friend, Selfie, come to great her. I didn't even know she had friends; did you?!? Today is just full of shock and awe!

📜Elistheren: It is purported that in the third age, the world was ruled by walking plants. It is ALSO purported that the third age was an era before ANY plants, and all creatures were carnivorous, even cows. Especially cows. I wouldn't go too far in trusting accounts of the third age, but plants may have been involved! We need to find records.

Silver Spire Records Room

📚 Annalana: Student records let us in, while she excuses herself to Proctor a class. It is obvious that she loves her daughter, however, Qistis seems to be distant.

Everything is well organized and we’re able to find Inigo’s records. Home address here in Horizon, poor grades, and signed off for graduation because of a Chancellor Radiance Glorikrest’s overrule. He was good in one course, getting perfect grades, oratory. Inigo has a large rap sheet for violations. Alumni did track him down and got a small donation but they have a note that the companion gift exploded.

Steinar: Ugh, records. These are the worst types of stories. It's just like sex without the foreplay... or so I'm told. I don't know, these human things are all new to me.

Evidently Inigo was quite the bad studnt. But what's the context!?! Give me motive! Give me characterization! People are so boring at times...

📜Elistheren: It is here, in the minutiae, that one learns about life in a given age. The great sagas are exaggerated, retold and twisted, but a trader's ledger, even if the numbers were fabricated (and they often are!) gives us a sense of the goods that were traded in a bygone age. I love records like this. They tell a story that no narrative could ever convey, and they tell us something important about Inigo: he's not a genius. He's a con-artist and a liar.

Greydove’s office in Lick Toad Hall

📚 Annalana: Greydove’s office. Qistis threatens the secretary, who resigns on the spot for being threatened so often, handing Qistis her key ring as she leaves. Qistis opens the door when there is no response. The office has a well-organized library and is extraordinarily clean. There is a billiards table, where Greydove is currently playing against himself.

When Qistis touches one of his books, Greydove knocks one of his balls near Qistis, and Annalana catches it. We ask him about Inigo and it is obvious that he doesn’t want to deal with us.

Steinar: Qistis' family is great! They remind me of all of the evil step parents from my stories. But wait, can I human have both of their birth parents be step parents? Eh, this is beginning to sound like lazy writing.

📜Elistheren: Greydove's office is the sort of place I could spend months, except for that whole little "booby trapped" thing.

Greydove Leaves

📚 Annalana: When he leaves, Annalana brutally smashes a vase. Steinar notices a sprite under the desk. Elis gets it to come out from under the desk. It wants to clean up the mess.

Annalana tries to grab a book to destroy and is blown back by an electrical discharge. Steinar then tries to pull a book that wants to come off of the shelf and manages to get Greydove’s food journal from when he was a young adult.

Qistis takes us to Greydove’s private bookshelf, where Annalana tries picking the lock only to have her lock picks melt in acid. She decides to forgo stealth and starts smashing the lock, which shocks her with electricity. She keeps at it and we get the bookcase open.

Steinar pulls out Greydove’s journal from when Qistis was born. Qistis immediately dives into the journal and is disappointed by the fact that it is in code. She asks Annalana to decode the book and she agrees.

We leave, quickly, and Steinar realizes that we stole some books and loses his shit.

Steinar: When you need to find a book, ask for a book to guide you. My atonement to the old tomes brings me to a lot of great reads in the place. The food journal I find is kinda interesting. It doesn't tell us much, but I feel like we may be able to find something between the lines. Also, I find a bonus sprite! For some reason, I think its name is Roomba. Just a hunch.

There is some sort of prison that keeps books in a case. I'm told we need to get a book out of there, so I help Annalana with her more... aggressive... approach to getting them out.

I'm able to attune myself to the tales of Inigo and pull a book we need. We also find a journal that is from when Qisits is born. They lead me to believe they are borrowing the book, as this is some great library and leave.

Well, imagine my surprise when this is a theft. Of a book! This is the worst kind of theft! We are stealing stories and knowledge with no intention of giving them back! I've never felt an emotion like this, and I can feel myself being taken over by what I can only imagine is the white hot rage that I've read about in tales of berserkers.

📜Elistheren: And, once again, Annalana's first instinct is to destroy something. The cleaning sprite- a captured fairy- is like many of their kind- an obsessed monomaniac. Our attempts to manipulate it come to nothing. But we find journals, ALSO a valuable record.

Visiting the Retainer Lockpick

📚 Annalana: Elis and Steinar visit a lock pick, who turns out was also stiffed by Inigo. The lock on the vault that Elis wants to open was created by Inigo.

Steinar: An errand that could lead us to The Priestess. I haven't seen her in ages. I also have many gifts I wish to bestow upon her. I know lucidity is flighty with me, so I urge us to make haste. Maybe a clear direction will guide us to take action for a change.

📜Elistheren: And Inigo connects to the vault. It's all connected, so much so that were this a historical record, I wouldn't believe a lick of it. No one person leaves so many threads behind- unless that person is trying to forge a myth of themselves. I am more and more convinced that Inigo is a conniving liar and has no real technical skills.

Visiting Inigo’s Original Home Address

📚 Annalana: Horizon has floating clouds and buildings that change locations over time. Navigation around horizon is a bit challenging as a result.

As we travel the city we literally run into a group of orcs, who are upset, however, Elis starts to talk to them about religion.

It is a 4 story round tower, with smoke, Moz the Magnificent on the name plate. Annalana pulls the bell rope and hears a voice yell, “Help me!”. The second floor is living quarters. The third floor is study area and a small library.

On the top floor, there is a chaotic mess, where the wizard of the house is hiding from shard creatures from a failed experiment and a gargoyle dual-wielding brooms. Several books fly around the area. We manage to defeat the misfit army.

Steinar: I feel like I am surrounded by a gross mockery of myself. Animated garbage with a retarded native sentience. It puts all of the troubles we encountered to get to this tower behind me. I want to break them all. I want to remove these abominations. I want to cleanse all of the false life, and those that practice such a dark art.

📜Elistheren: Occult magic can create great wonders, but also carries massive dangers. In this case, it's the dangers that crop up. When I wandered the streets after leaving the Cathedral, I spent aa few months sleeping in the basement below a magician's laboratory. Well… drug lab is probably a more fair statement- he was communing with creatures of the Diabolist to produce drugs which he sold to the agents of the Lich King- I don't really understand it, but I spent three days utterly convinced I was dead.

But yes, we destroy the runaway magical creatures and hope to talk to Moz…