balance_logs | Field Mission 6: A Day in Thay, Part 1

	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.

12 p.m.

○ 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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

5:00pm multiple loops

[She’s honestly so glad to be able to see Monika at The Sleepy Willow near the fireplace after a very long day. Looped or not. It was so strange riding down to this place without Monika with them and she’d been fidgeting the whole time and wondering how Monika was doing. For Natsuki’s sake, she didn’t make too much of a fuss on the ride down but it’s still on her mind...]

Monika, there you are.

[Yuri comes up to the other girl. The fire is warm and cozy and after being on her feet all day it’s nice to be able to find a place to sit and rest and talk with her friend. They have some catching up to do, don’t they?]

It’s been a long day...

Edited 2019-11-10 21:17 (UTC)

[ Monika flops down next to her on the second loop. She had tried her best to enjoy herself on the first route... but now she's kinda not in a great mood. This loop she's worked a lot harder and made herself pretty tired from it. ]

Hey Yuri. How's your mission going so far?

[ The fire does feel pretty nice actually... ]

[Wow, Monika looks more tired than even Yuri feels. That must be saying a lot.

She scoots a bit closer to the warm fireplace for the warm and to make some more room for Monika. Yuri's familiar, a tiny purple and black butterfly, flutters up into the air before landing gently in Yuri's hair.]

It's troublesome. [She sighs.] But you look worn out. Was it worse the second time around? I know going through books in the library was twice the pain.

It was uh... not too terrible actually. I'm just hoping we don't have to keep redoing this too often. [ Haha oops. ] I spent the whole day in the market this time. I was trying to see if I could help out there at all. Oh here-

[ She reaches into her pocket and holds out a toothbrush to Yuri. ]

A gift from 2B.

[... A toothbrush? Yuri looks at Monika as she slowly takes it.]

Um. Why is 2B giving us toothbrushes?

She's trying really hard to be helpful, and somehow got the idea in her head that this was the way.

[ She shrugs with a small smile. ]

I promised to give some out too. Maybe thank her if you have the chance. I think it'll make her pretty happy.

[That's kind of adorable? An android doing her best to be helpful to the humans. She really is very kind.]

I'll do that when I see her again, then. I met her while she was trying to teach herself how to fish. She really wants to do her best here doesn't she...

Fishing huh? [ She lets out a laugh. ] I'm kinda surprised; that doesn't seem like her thing at all.

[ Still... ]

We need to work hard too. These time loops... they need to stop...

From a first glance, no...

[She sighs softly.]

I've never felt anything like this before. The time looping is really exhausting... I've stopped going to repeat classes. But I ... I did take this from the library?

[She pulls out her stolen book on two types of dragons. The book looks old and heavy, bound with leather. It has a crest of two battling dragons on the front.]

[ Oh Yuri. You have NO idea. ]

It's... a lot. I was excited about the classes on the first loop honestly, but I'm doing about the same now. Just trying to find a way to be useful and make this stop.

[ An eyebrow raises as she glances over at the book. ]

Can I take a look at that?

I hope staying here like this doesn't have any lasting effects on us.

[She gives a quiet nod and passes the book over. It doesn't have any magic cast on it now but it did. The remanents of that might be detectable. Other than that it's a normal book talking about different types of dragons and how they oppose each other.]

Yeah... same.

[ Wow haha wouldn't that be awful?

ANYWAY Monika picks up the book and flips through it quietly. ]

Huh... it still feels unreal to be in a world like this. Like I know we have magic and all but dragons? Crazy.

It does seem like something out of a book coming to life...

[She seems a little interested, though. Like she likes that.]

Honestly, I'm wondering if I could conjure a dragon of my own with a book like that. Seems unlikely, doesn't it.

[ Monika smiles as she hands the book back to Yuri. ]

You never know! Maybe with some practice you might be able to. Well... a lot of practice actually!

[She chuckles softly.]

A baby dragon at first, then.

Field Mission 6: A Day in Thay, Part 1

closed to monika

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