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

[epistemologies]

ALRIGHTY for my last roll now that we've seen who puts out the mirror and who takes it away, Battler and Mira are going to try to steal the mirror so it can't be set out in the next loop and/or see if they try to get hunted down for it.

They'll wait until about 3:10 before making their move; Battler has Levitate and Mira has Telekinesis, and their story if they get caught is that they were fetching it for Professor Gladys' class; Mira will be using Allure and Master of Faces to try to convince anyone hassling them that they Definitely Are Supposed To Be Out Here Nothing Suspicious Going On At All. If all else fails, Battler will be using Mage Hand to trip them and knock some things in their path before he and Mira try to beat a VERY hasty retreat.

If they manage to get the mirror without anyone stopping them, they're going to try to hide with it in the forest, keeping up levitate/telekinesis to shove it in a tree. One of them will stay with it /hold onto it in the hopes it will reset with them, while the other keeps watch to see if anyone comes after them.

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We think that there's about 2-3 rolls happening here, so we'll lay it out as follows:

1. DC 14 to move the mirror to begin with. It's kind of enchanted, as you can imagine, and it'll take some effort to get it to move in the first place.

2. You're going to need to avoid being detected if that doesn't work out (DC 13), and then another DC 14 for getting your way out of it. We'll give a +2 to the latter attempt considering your mixture of skills.

Sound good?

[petsthedog]

Let’s roll!!

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With a 16 and a little bit of elbow grease, you're able to get the mirror upward and out of the chamber without too much of a difficulty.

The problem arrives when Onerion finds the lot of you (4, just casually vandalizing and stealing Boarbumps' property without a seemingly good enough reason. And while you do well enough at weaseling your way out of encouraging his ire (16), you can't quite seem to feel as if you're being watched, even after you've left his countenance and proceeded to Get Out of Dodge.

Near the end of the loop, you're confronted by Onerion himself, who's used a scrying spell on you to determine what the hell you were actually up to.

He'll confront your party, and with arms crossed, wants to know what's really going on.

[epistemologies]

WELP not as planned.

Once they're caught again by Onerion, Battler and Mira figure the jig is pretty much up so they decide to just come clean. After all, the reset is coming soon so even if it goes bad there's always next loop to try again.

They'll tell Onerion that there's strange things going on in Thay; the city is repeating the same day over and over again, and at the end of it every evening a giant black dragon destroys everything before it all resets. In this, they have reason to suspect Casariel's involvement; Mira saw Casariel causing the ruckus with the books that afternoon, and found this journal. Shortly thereafter, Battler knows Casariel puts out this mirror. Their fellows have seen Rainer and Casariel arguing in the dragon's chamber before everything reset. So...basically, their plan was to see if she came after them for stealing it, or if anything would change if they did.

If Onerion catches up to them before the 6:18 earthquake, they can further try to prove they're not lying by mentioning it will happen and asking him to wait until then and see.

[balancemod]

To be blunt about it, Onerion ain't having none of this bullshit.

He's flabbergasted. As someone who is insanely to the letter about proper ordinance and following the laws of the school down to a T (he was, after all, scolding the shit out of Brian for unleashing a spider, as discovered by another Reclaimer), he takes a look at the journal that you guys have. His eyebrows furrow.

"What in the world... did you steal that from the library?"

Two mage hands appear out of nowhere and tug on both of their ears, reprimanding them.

"This has gone on long enough. Regent Rainer and Headmistress Casariel, I'll have you know, are incredibly close friends who have a sacred bond between them. Their relationship is the pinnacle of what this town stands for: a handshake of ideals between governance and scholasticism."

God, Onerion is such a blow hard, no-fun piece of work, ain't he?

The earthquake strikes right on queue, and with he doesn't look terribly impressed, but understands that he has a duty to protect the school and the students, and sighs.

"I don't need to tell you this twice, young man. Young lady. Return the mirror to the hall and don't disrupt Divination class again. I need to go check on the students. That earthquake seems dangerous.

I'll be watching you, you better follow through with what I told you to do or else I'll have to contact your headmistress myself."

[epistemologies]

They tried their best rip.

Since Onerion is leaving to go deal with the earthquake, will anything interesting happen if they remain with the mirror until the reset as they’d originally planned?

[balancemod]

We don't offer what-if's in these here parts, pardner.

Are you committing?

[epistemologies]

yes!

[balancemod]

Interesting!

We rolled a percentile dice to see if Onerion would wander back into the scene to check in on you ruffians. We had about a 40% chance in mind that would happen, but as luck would have it, you passed on it.

You stay with the mirror up to the point when the world starts to shatter from under your feet. You think this is going just swimmingly; that you've found a way to break the cycle in a meaningful way, but--- unfortunately, when you come to at noon there's no mirror in sight.

You can surmise that there's something else going on here.

Comparing notes with other Reclaimers might help, but we'll also be happy to tell you that while Casariel is attuned to the mirror, it has no chance of not being stuck in the time loops as well.