Field Mission 6: A Day in Thay, Part 1

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oh man best of luck out there dudes NAVIGATION Click here for the RNG thread! Ready or not, rested or not, it's time to get moving, Reclaimers. You've got a very, very long day ahead of you. And another one. And another one. And, you get the joke. Early Friday morning, with the Director there to see them off, the Reclaimers load up into the Bureau's transportation orbs for the sixth time since this whole ordeal began, and make their way to about a mile or two outside of Thay. It's important to try to stick to the story, at least — that you're all visitors from a faraway school, here to spend some time with the students and faculty of Boarbumps. As much as Lucretia would have liked to join you, she can't. None of the other leading members of the Bureau of Balance can. Whoever enters Thay, after all, is entering a bubble, after all. A time trap. Nobody will be able to leave until the Relic, the Lamp of Undoing, is either retrieved or destroyed. Someone needs to be able to continue if you all can't. 1. SEVEN O'CLOCK ALREADY As we noted in the OOC post, prompts on this log will be a quick few sentences of specific things happening during each hour. It's expected that Reclaimers will be seeing all of these events multiple times! So feel free to play with them as you see fit. If you're not sure if something you want to do would warrant a roll, please ask us in the RNG thread. ○ The Reclaimers have arrived in Thay, much to the curiosity of the highly intelligent, occasionally highly ... suspicious ... residents. Nevertheless, they recognize you as visiting, esteemed students, and, though perhaps still suspicious, welcome you into their fold. Also, as a note: Every time the relic is used, time is reset to this moment. ○ Boarbumps Academy for the Magically Inclined opens its doors to the Reclaimers. This is your first opening to explore the school — afternoon classes begin in an hour. ○ Rainer Arunsun, The Regent of Thay and Highest of the Hermetic Order of Red Wizards, can be seen watching the new arrivals by the entrance to the Red Keep. It's difficult to discern any emotion on her face. Shortly before 1 p.m., she retreats back inside. ○ Afternoon classes at Boarbumps begin, starting with a lecture on the magical circuits of the common toad. If you happen to sit in on this one, as a visitor from another school, you may be asked to assist in the dissection. You will be heckled by the rest of the class as deemed fit. ○ Erinne and Adriel can be seen within the hallways of Boarbumps arguing in a very heated manner. Some... less than choice words are exchanged between the two before one, or both of them take their wands out and begin throwing magic missiles at each other. No one knows why the fight starts, but the two have had bad blood before, and this isn't the first quarrel to happen at Boarbumps between them. A staff member arrives on the scene and is accidentally paralyzed by a misfire. ○ The town proper, surrounding the Red Keep, is open for a farmer's market. A bountiful harvest of goods are on display, but in particular, Thay is known for its amazing quality of medicinal herbs and magical reagants, many of which are rare without travel to the area. The merchants typically shoo students off, unless they have a hall pass provided to them by the faculty to retrieve something of import for class. ○ The second afternoon class at Boarbumps begins. Are you three or four time loops in and in desperate need of a nap? This class, The History of Boarbumps, is for you. You will be treated to a long and droning lecture about how the students attending during Boarbumps' very first semester banded together to stop a particularly plucky troll. Which you'd think would be an interesting tale. It is not. ○ Someone's enchanted several books at the library to begin rattling and shaking from the shelves themselves. All over the racks, spines pop out from their homes and fall to the ground, magically lift up and return to some other, non-Dewey decimal approved locale. Other books begin dancing — yes, you've read this correctly — dancing on the tables. Leon would be going into cardiac arrest at the moment, but it looks like someone's playing a prank in here. Again. This librarian looks far less tilted by this. It must be a somewhat normal afternoon for her. ○ Over in the center of town, music, a single violin playing a mournful tune, begins to play. It's unclear where exactly it's coming from. ○ The third and final afternoon class at Boarbumps — Fighting with Fire — begins. The professor, known to be slightly more unorthodox in her teaching methods, will recruit any Reclaimer who happens to be there to defend themselves from the students' incoming fireball spells. The potency of the fireballs themselves range from the tickle of a candle, to that one time you ate a ghost pepper, to one particularly fiery spell that might actually hurt you. ○ There's a scream in the girls' bathroom on the 3rd floor of Boarbumps. Anyone who enters realizes, very quickly, that no one is actually in there. Apparently, this particular lavatory is haunted. ○ Szass Astrosz dips class to go visit the local shrines within the town of Thay. He's been known to skip class before, so his departure from the halls of Boarbumps is rather nondescript. He spends time there praying quietly to his god. ○ There's a slight catastrophe over in the Town Square. That is to say, a giant spider seems to have escaped from Boarbumps and is terrorizing the vendors, to everyone's surprise. Subdue or dispatch it, it's up to you. ○ There's a scheduled council meeting to take place within the Red Keep, a usual weekly affair where Rainer, Casariel, Onerion, Gromph, and the rest meet to discuss matters of the town. Today's is canceled, as Gromph is called out to take care of the arachnid chaos currently convening around the Town Square. ○ Someone places a standing mirror around the corner of Boarbumps. If you happen to stand in front of it, it doesn't show your reflection — rather, it shows the person that you desire most. The mirror is gone by 5 p.m. ○ Cleanup of whatever damage the spider did is underway. In the meantime, the faculty of Boarbumps and the Hermetic Order of Red Wizards invite the Reclaimers to a small dinner in one of the public meeting rooms at the Red Keep. Every member of the Red Wizards are present, aside from Onerion Wyvernspur and Brian Darling. ○ The shops around the town of Thay begin to close for the evening. People are somewhere between annoyed and blase — the spider escaping was new enough, but weird Magic Things are, as you can imagine, pretty commonplace. ○ Over at The Sleepy Willow, cozy, fluffy pillows are arranged on the floor around a large fireplace. The owners will also serve you dinner, if you decide to skip the meal at The Red Keep. This may be one of the only peaceful moments you have to study everything that you've learned thus far. ○ No matter where you are in Thay, you'll feel the ground rumble underneath your feet. The residents largely pass it off as an earthquake, but will note that they have become much more frequent lately. ○ Towards the latter half of the hour, the rumbling within the school grounds causes several of the animal cages used in Onerion's Wondrous Beasts class to come unfastened as they begin to escape. Shortly thereafter, various beasts of all shapes and sizes are set free and begin running for freedom. None of them seem intent on hurting students, but they look to make an exit out of town in the quickest way possible. ○ Droves of the skeletal undead that are used around town seem to freeze in place, no longer retaining their animation. Whatever they're holding currently falls to the floor. Whatever task they're working on comes to a halt. No one understands why that is, but even the best necromancers around town can't seem to wake them back up. ○ With a sudden loud roar, the ground of the town square suddenly begins to split. People, shops, and everything else begin to drop into the chasm, despite the Red Wizards, and everyone else's, attempts to save them. ○ In the last split second you remember, if you happen to look down in the chasm, you'll notice a pair of bright, glowing eyes. Whatever exactly is down there begins to claw its way to the surface. ○ And then, just as suddenly, your vision turns white, and you're briefly overtaken by dizziness. When the haze clears, you are standing at the entrance to Thay. The sun hangs directly overhead in the sky. You have returned to 12 p.m. 2. OOC: A SPECIAL SHOUTOUT You are welcome to keep track of how your character experiences these time loops as much or as little as you're comfortable with — we'll also be tracking what you all are doing! Our Minato player Kel came up with some extremely snazzy coding if you would like to track how each loop plays out for your character more closely. Thank you, Kel! Of course, this is completely optional. Keep up with as much as you'd like, have fun as you see fit, and we hope you enjoy this mission! blurb code by photosynthesis

Comments

RNG

[balancemod]

A few notes to keep in mind!

○ You have a limit of three investigation rolls. Please use them wisely!

○ If you would like to interact with one of the NPCs who do not have a thread below, it counts as an investigation roll. Please keep requests to this thread.

○ DCs on average will be lower than they are in Wonderland — however, death in Thay is highly likely and largely meaningless. You will not incur a death penalty if you die during this mission, unless specifically told so. There's more info on that on the OOC post under time loop mechanics.

[rockymountaindie]

Let's break this baby in with two rolls!

1. Alex is first of all going to try and get some information from the Raven Queen...which he won't be able to do. Whoops. In realizing that, he'll try something new, while at the local shrines. It's time for baby's first prophecy attempt. ICly he's trying to use this to get any kind of connection to the outside world possible, and maybe the shrines will help boost that? Probably not, but you know, he's trying.

2. As mentioned here, Alex is going to try and flex those research muscles, this time hopefully without starting another cult. Please. Dear fucking god, please. Ferran's going to help with his Academic and INT bonus, and Maya's going to help with...her sparkling personality.

Whether he can find something in the library or not, he's going to definitely sit in on that history class at least once, to see if he can glean something. And likely fall asleep, but, ya know.

Also any DC is good I'm sorry for the edits

[aceso]

1. Okay, totally changing this roll because Christine is teaming up with the Feys for Ghost Hunter shenanigans. Instead, she'd like to investigate the local shrines. She'll head in while Szass is in there, and quietly look at all the shrines without disturbing him. Once he's done and is leaving, she'll ask if it's okay to ask about his god because she isn't familiar. Depending on how talkative he is, she'll ask about the other shrines, and say she's from very far away if it's odd she doesn't know this. RE: the shrines themselves, Is anything amiss or out of place? Do some have offerings while others don't? Any wear or tear to some while others are pristine? Any DC is fine, and I'll save rolls 2 and 3 for after I see how this one goes because maybe I can further this after the time resets if she gains info.

Re: RNG

[wrightingwrongs]

Befitting his nature as an Adventure Game protag, I'd like to spend an investigation roll to see if Phoenix can possibly make his way out of dinner early and track down the location of Onerion or Brian during one of the 5 PM timeframes.

EDIT: Actually, this is gonna be some tag-team efforts by Nick and Maya as a duo! Nick is going to try and look for Onerion specifically while Maya (assisted by Nick Junior) looks for Brian.

[feytality]

Maya is going to Dimension Door herself and Ferran directly into the chasm as it opens to see what's up!! Ferran will be casting Haste on them both beforehand, has a grappling hook and Levitate if they need to make a hasty (wink) exit, and Maya also has Misty Step and Dimension Door!! Nick Junior will be around (but a healthy distance from Ferran) in case there needs to be a distraction, Agate too!!!

Ferran also has Detect Magic and Light to illuminate the situation, and Maya can cast Moonbeam if there's any magical disguise shenanigans going on!!

We're good with any DC

[motherfucking_ghost]

So. The mirror of derised nosrep. Dooooes anything hinky happen if Church were to maybe possibly perhaps break it? Besides seven years of bad luck, that is. And is it apparent in any fashion who the owner is (like if they come running to fix it or something)?

[ribticklers]

Sans is going to take advantage of his being a skeleton and spend a few loops blending in with them to see if he can get information. He spends three loops practicing to make sure he's got it down. If the skeletons are in use inside the Red Keep, he'll definitely check things out in there, but in general, he's going to try to spend some time around every area listening in. He does this for at least three loops--he does this for three loops because his secondary objective here is to check out and see if anyone is showing signs of remembering this loop without saying anything. Sans can do this in his canon without even retaining his own memory of loops, so I'm confident in saying he's extremely proficient in this kind of observation. He's not trying to specifically interact with anybody right now, so unless something really crazy happens with someone he's just here to listen in on info/observe.

Any DC is fine!

[mccreehaw]

1. McCree's going to try and find the source of the violin music and he'll dedicate several resets to it. He'll walk all around the town center and will pull out his guitar to try and accompany the tune to see if it keeps going or not. I'd like to throw a little Bardic Inspiration at this one to see if he gains any followers he can question about the music, such as do they know where it's coming from and has it played before or only today. Any DC is fine and like with Christine, I'll save my other two rolls for possible follow ups.

[doubledsofjustice]

Christine, Maya, and Mia are going to put their heads together to investigate the girl's bathroom!

Christine's got her canon power Sunlight to shed some light on the situation, and Maya's got moonbeam in attempts to reveal any shifty mysteries. And should any ghosts be present, Mia may try to use mystery of death on them- assuming that's possible on ghosts.

Any DC is fine!

[seasaltkeys]

1. Roxas would like to track down Onerion, perhaps after the meeting has been cancelled. Mostly he's curious about this Bahamut character and would like to know more. But if things go well, he'll probably poke at what's been going around in the school and if there's anything he should know about (being new here and all). He's trying to channel Angus as best he can. I don't know if it will help here, but he also has Divine Sense

2. Roxas and Maya would like to investigate the shrines. Roxas is still new to this whole religion thing, so he'll mostly be poking around seeing what he can find (maybe some more research on Bahamut). Maya will be offering a few prayers (a hi to Silvanus from Will and general prayers for the reclaimers' safety), tidy it up if it needs it (and Roxas will help), investigating it for spiritual presences. And if all else fails Summoning a golem to see what happens. Roxas also has divine sense for this, but it's basically a very thorough investigation.

[royalresearch]

1. Zelda will definitely be attending the class on the magical circuits of the common toad. Since frogs and toads back home have special properties, why not learn about the ones here? She would be more than happy to assist even if it gets her heckled.

[protegge]

1. first loop. while the red keep is emptier during spidergate, mista, shinjiro, and sayori will try to investigate it. mista will attempt to cut the power to the red keep during this window by hunting down a fantasy janitor and using command to instruct them to cut the power. if not that's okay, but if so they will be Extra Sneaky because shinjiro has dark vision. regardless, mista has insight to use for liars, command to tel people who are bothering them to go away, and mage hand to throw objects loudly and cause distractions; shinjiro has natural explorer and rustic hospitality, a first resort before command gets pulled out; sayori has CHA stat, sleep, and message in case she needs to split off from mista and shinjiro to do a separate investigation, plus prestidigitation to help with mista's mage hand distractions. mista and sayori are also oathed.

2. first loop. not sure if this counts as a roll or just a question: if mista casts divine sense on the eyes in the chasm at 7 pm during the first loop, will he be able to tell if it is undead etc? again not sure if it's a roll but if so, go ahead, i think it's important enough.

3. second loop. mista, natsuki, and maya will immediately start investigating the thriller music video backup dancers aka spooky scary skeletons. mista will use emphatic duty/command on them experimentally to see if it has any effect/if control over them can be taken by someone else. maya has force distrust just in case, moonbeam (for snagging zombies), and dimension door in case the reanimated dead try to get frisky. natsuki has danger sense so that during any experimentation she can warn them and they can hopefully get the hell out of dodge. other than trying to see if he can wrest control of the undead, mista and the competent women will be trying to glean what information they can from the things vis a vis what could cause them to stop working like they did at the end of the first loop.

[philoxenia]

1. Mira and Monika are going to check out the library! Every loop, they'll do this. Are they the same books over and over? Do they go to the same places every time? What sorts of books are they? Is there anything Mira can sort of perceive from what's going on here--any notable magic indicators, if that's a thing? Is there anything hiding in the bookshelves, additionally, that they might be able to find? Monika will also use Identify to check out the books, so is there anything she'll be able to find by using that?

[napstar]

Minato and Kaede want to investigate that sad violin music!! It's SAD and it's VIOLIN it's basically his whole motif since coming here. First they're going to write down the song they hear as accurately as they can so that they can learn it. Kaede's canon power, SHSL Pianist, means she's good at picking out sounds in general so she should be able to do this. On another loop they're going to play along with the song on their own violins.

If that doesn't do anything interesting they'll spend another loop finding the source of the sound: Kaede will investigate the area and Minato will cast Silence around randomly to try and pinpoint the source point. If none of this produces anything they'll take what they wrote down to the school and ask around to see if anyone knows the piece.

They're both maxed out bards, so they have Prodigy and Bardic Inspiration. Kaede additionally has Insight and Emphatic Duty for asking around the academy if someone's being cagey about the music. Minato also has Zone of Truth as a last resort, preferably to be used towards the end of the day so he doesn't have to sit in the Principal's office for hours and hours and hours.

[myliteratureclub]

1. Most likely on the second loop, Monika's gonna be a pest in the marketplace. She's the only merchant so she's gotta step up! She's gonna use that natural charm to try and win some of the sellers over so students can shop there if possible. She'll also use Insider Trading to find the best deals and pass on that information to anyone who may need it. Let my people shop!

[oculusriffs]

hi!

1. About a loop or two in, Dave is going to Wild Shape into Davebirdsprite and chill out on one of shrines from 3 to 5 p.m. — hopefully a very anxious, flapping-his-wings bird isn't accidentally an omen for anybody. He's just waiting to see if something interesting happens! Does it?

2. A few more loops in, Dave is going to get some more degrees of anxious, and will pull out any books the library that might be written in primordial, so he can use them to try to translate this book. He is aware there may be consequences.

Any DC is fine!

[noblegarnet]

So. That mirror? Ferran is going to try Detect Magic on it, wearing a pair of sweet sunglasses, because he learned at least part of a lesson with Yggdrasil.

Any DC is fine!

[snyaiper]

I don't know if we have anything in the way of like... path use slots, but if either there's no limit or the uses reset, he'd like to use a few loops to put his Hunter's Mark on a few people and track their movements. If he can only do this once, He'll track Adriel, but if he can do it multiple loops I'd like to repeat it with the other three students as well as Ranier.

Also more a general question, do people with Darkvision get more of a view of the thing in the chasm or no?

[spacerock]

At the beginning of the day during the second loop, Rose would like to use Animal Friendship to ask a bird to stop and alert her when it starts feeling signs of the earthquake. Since animals tend to feel things like that sooner than people, it might give them more of a heads-up to when the Mysterious Underground Earthquake is starting!

Rose would want to ask multiple animals to check this, but I'm not sure if animal friendship only works on one animal at once. If only one, then just the bird. If more than one, a few birds and a few squirrels, to maximize the chances one of them will notice something.

Any DC is fine!

[epistemologies]

1. Battler is going to run around trying to use Detect Magic in various places around Thay in various loops, because his whole MO is if at first you don't succeed you keep failing over and over and unjustifiably expecting things to go better next time. He's going to try it in front of the mirror at exactly 4:59 in let's say the third loop. ALSO if it's allowed as a non-roll, I generally want him to try Detect Magic in various locations across multiple loops and fail a lot and I'm curious how exactly this will backfire on him the other times.
NOTE: if Ferran's roll is successful, I'll change this to during the initial earthquake at 6 PM!

2. Regardless of how the above goes, Battler would be remiss as a seacat not to at least give Human Culprit Theory a whirl here, which is where the NPC stalking plan comes in! He, Maya, Alex, Wash, and Erika will be sending their familiars to follow Rainer, Casariel, Onerion, Gromph, Erinne, and Adriel. Each NPC will be followed by one familiar only in order not to draw attention or suspicion, and they'll switch up which familiar stalks which NPC across various time loops and compare notes.

[gotyourbach]

On one of the 1PM lööps, Kaede is going to try a bardic approach to befriending some of the people in the Academy. Namely, she's going to grab Minato by the arm and drag him into that concert hall. They're both maxed Bards, so they'll be trying to use their respective instruments (piano and violin) for Bardic Inspiration to put on a performance in an attempt to gain followers, make friends, get information, etc. We're in a concert hall(!!), Kaede's SHSL Pianist abilities to make friends through performing for an audience should kick in!

[ryuji]

Starting off with a bang, I guess?

1. after the first few loops of the ground breaking up and Ryuji realizing that death is kind of meaningless here, he's going to observe and try to figure out where the biggest crack is and.... make a dive for it. he wants to know what it is that's destroying everything, so he'll do his best to dive. he has darkvision to see down there, and natural explorer so he can gauge terrain type as he falls to get a sense of what it might look like. other than that, he can take a fall if he lands on something hard before getting deep enough: indomitable might lets him survive with 1hp, once. and lastly, if he even gets a whiff of what it is, or anything down there at all, he's going to apply hunter's mark on it if he can.

EDIT!!!! HE ALSO WANTS TO THROW A MAGIC BEAN DOWN THERE IF SHIT GOES TO HELL.

EDIT2!!!!! fuck that, even if shit is going well, let's throw a freaking bean down there.

it's time to use one of those things

2. Ryuji's had a weird relationship with god for a long time now, and it's time to bury the hatchet in a way that doesn't... you know, actually involve burying a hatchet in there. he'll visit the shrine for a little while, and while he probably knows a good deal of buddhist principles from his upbringing, he'll kneel down before a shrine and (think he looks really stupid - anne voice: THIS IS A CHURCH RYUJI), just try to spell out some shit that's been on his mind through prayer. assuming nobody's got time for that, does he notice anyone else there or anything worth noting?

3. ANIMALS!!! at 6pm when the zoo gets off of work, he's going to try and do the dumb thing to figure out what's going on with them. he has speak with animals which can let him communicate, but he can also calm them down with feral instinct and aspect of the beast. please tell me it's a majestic centaur. please.

[quiescis]

1. Yuri will be very interested in what those enchanted/dancing books are and what information they hold! She would try to sneak one out of the library/classroom to keep for herself. She's going to try to attempt to take one with Roxas. What are her odds of sneaking a book out of Boarbumps to keep? She'd like to identify and read any information she can in these enchanted books, what will she find!

Ferran can also copy books so once she finds out about that she will attempt to have Ferran copy a book as well.

[eudaimonikos]

In the third loop, Michael is going to station himself in the hallway where Erinne and Adriel fight and attempt to prevent that teacher from getting caught in the crossfire with Shield of Faith!

If he succeeds, he'd hang around to commiserate with them about students and their bullshit, and ask them about those two in particular. He's a visiting professor! He totally knows how this shit goes!

[diffidentive]

A few loops in, Shuichi is going to try investigating the mirror. But he doesn't have any useful spells or items to use on it (aside from the +1 from his SHSL talent and anything his INT class may provide), so it'll just be examining it in a completely mundane detective way: looking for anything about it physically that seems noteworthy or odd. He'll also be sticking around until 5pm to see why/how it disappears.

But most important test here: what happens when someone who has no "most desired person" stands in front of the mirror? It WOULD have been Kaede, but since Shuichi has spent the past month under the (completely false) impression that she and Minato like each other/are dating, he's completely given up on his romantic feelings for her. And there's nobody that he desires in a platonic way either, as his desires with regards to his best friend are to make up with him after their disagreement (which he has no idea how to even do and shows 0 initiative towards actually doing in canon), rather than a desire for Kaito himself.

Any DC is fine.