Field Mission 6: A Day in Thay, Part 1

[balancemod]

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

[slieght]

Since Kokichi is Kokichi, he absolutely tried to steal something and got his ass executed in his third loop. But afterward, realizing that you just pop back up like normal at noon, he's going to dedicate a good chunk of loops to trying to successfully steal from the Red Keep.

His first target is something on the smaller side, so it's easier to hide on his person but not something that's necessarily easy to steal (as in an item deeper in the keep, rather than one right by the front door) and has those sweet rogue skills to help. Namely thieves' tools for locks and potential traps/triggers for alerting guards, cat burglar and mage hand legerdemain here. If he gets caught and thinks he can lie his way out, he has silver tongue and his +2 to lying as well. If things seem a little more difficult than he expected, he's got the riveting rod and smaller metal rod to smack it with. Giving it his all here.

What he wants to do is learn if you can adjust your plans successfully enough through the loops, using knowledge from your previous loop, to make even a difficult plan a success and how long it'd take, OR if there just so happens to always be something standing in your way no matter what you try! And he'll stop if it seems to be the latter. On the flip side, if he does have relative success, he'll attempt to steal a somewhat larger item to retest and cement his theory. (And partially because crimes are fun.)

He's also paying attention to see if anyone happens to show any signs at all of recognizing him between loops as well. If this is a separate roll, I'll take it! And any DC is fine.

[balancemod]

Hi there! Apologies for the delay.

To double-check: A failure on attempting to steal something/smooth talk his way out of getting caught will result in Kokichi being executed, per the OOC post. Are you okay with this?

[slieght]

Yup! For as many times as he's allowed to try and fail!

[balancemod]

You rolled a 3 on the attempted theft — oof, not good. Kokichi does manage to get his hands on a nice pen that automatically takes notes for you, but he's almost immediately spotted by an administrative wizard at the Keep.

The wizard is not happy, as you can imagine. He begins to immediately drag Kokichi out by the collar, intent on demonstrating to Kokichi exactly what happens when one steals valuables from The Red Keep.

And with an 11, he just barely manages to convince the wizard that it was an honest mistake from a visiting student. Kokichi is turned loose, minus the pen, and minus a success at stealing — but he is at least still alive.

Note: We know you said he would try again, with a new strategy! If you do decide to go ahead with it, let us know what it is — since he's trying to steal valuables, though, it will cost another roll.

[slieght]

First hint of grape soda and now this. He used up all his luck in Wonderland...

But that doesn't deter him after just one attempt. His next attempt and strategy is to, first, go at a different time of day in the hopes that a wizard without such a keen eye is there. Or, preferably, none at all. He'll go for the pen again, sticking still to something small and easily hidden.

His grand escape this time, whether it be stealthily because nobody has caught him or in a hurry because someone's on his tail, is to use Cat Burglar to try and scale the nearest wall with a window to escape through and then, if he makes it out, book it. However, if it seems he won't make it, he'll give the Riveting Rod a try here to buy himself a little more time. And he aims to blend in with and disappear into the crowds of Thay.

He is absolutely aware that they have got to have at least one wizard with Detect Magic, and is just going to hope his hide and seek skills will help him avoid them, looking for, well. Part of any crowd that seems like they might have their own magical valuables on them to use as decoys. Once again, any DC is fine!

[balancemod]

This is not going well. That is to say, unfortunately, you rolled a critical failure.

While Shuichi is able to scramble his way into the Keep just fine, and he is able to locate a magic item to pilfer just fine, he unfortunately discovers too late that the item isn't stored out in the open for the taking, it's heavily booby trapped. This is one of Rainer's, er. Less conventional methods of gathering case studies for her necromancy.

There's no clear indication of how he tripped the trap, and it happens instantaneously and without pain — Shuichi is more or less incinerated where he stands. Later on, a skeleton sweeps him up and brings him to Rainer's private study, but thankfully, she is too busy to be reanimating anybody before the loop resets.

On Shuichi's end, it feels as if no time had passed at all. In one instant, he is taken out, and in the next, he is standing, disoriented, right where he was at 12 p.m., in a brand new loop.