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

I'm not sure, but it wasn't a normal mirror.

[She's pretty sure, at least. 2B confirmed that she definitely imagining it... since others saw something different in it, too.]

It showed someone else. Someone... special.

[That does not surprise Roxas. Nothing here is really normal by any standards.]

So, it's a mirror that shows special people? And that's it?

I guess. Nothing else happened while I was there. I don't know what purpose a mirror like that would serve.

[Other than to hurt the person looking into it.]

It showed something different for someone else, too.

That's...weird. Like, you can't even talk to them?

Would it show them doing things?

[He's trying to figure out a purpose.]

I don't know. I didn't try.

[Speaking to him, that is. It hurt enough to see him, but being able to hear him? 2B isn't sure even she would be able to handle that.]

He just stood there, smiling... but I don't know what others saw.

Huh.

But if the person you saw was smiling, that's probably a good thing, right?

[So, probably not for communication.]

Maybe.

[A good thing... His line of questioning has her wondering about that.]

Though, I can't seem to recall the events of the day that I arrived here, so I won't ever know if he's alright.

I think it's fuzzy for everyone. I'm in the same boat.

But if we're doing the right thing, then maybe we can get everyone else back.

I hope you're right.

[While she never really talked about it, 2B spent a long time before coming here wondering if she was doing the right thing. If the choices she was making meant something, or if they were even the correct ones to begin with... She didn't think she'd be asking the same questions in a whole other, unfamiliar world, and about something much bigger than her, no less.]

Is that the goal of this mission?

[She still doesn't quite understand what they're doing in Thay, besides retrieving some kind of "Relic", but she isn't sure how it ties into the whole "getting everyone back" thing.]

Maybe overall? For now, we just need to track down and retrieve the relic.

I don't really know. But I know getting the Relics is going to help in some way.

[At the very least, it'll save Faerun, and then they can cross the next bridge.]

[If 9S were here, maybe he would be able to track down the relic. He's able to find just about anything, and his knowledge exceeds everything she could ever hope to know... but 2B simply nods, with a sad note to the noise of affirmation she makes.]

Whatever the outcome is, I hope that we can all return things to the way they should be.

[Roxas is conflicted about that, since the way things should be means that he's not part of it.]

Or at least, something that works out for everyone.

There is never an option that makes everyone happy.

[Her world and the duty of being a part of Project YoRHa have worn her down... She's just trying to be realistic, but for once, she feels like maybe she's being a little selfish in wishing that if it had to be that way, it would be something that would work out for her.

On that note, 2B shuffles in her seat, trying to get up from the set of pillows that she so unceremoniously fell into earlier. However, her inability to do so makes her attempt at an exit awkward that all she can do is sit there, halfway to her feet, staring at Roxas expectantly, as if waiting for his help......]

Maybe. At the very least, I just hope we can find a good one.

[Even if there's not a happy ending for everyone, Roxas still wants to believe there's a way. Even with all the destruction he's seen, he's seen a lot of good come to.

He smiles, before standing up and offering his hand to help her up.]

Got stuck in the pillows?

Yes.

[She stares at his hand, unsure of whether she should take it or not, but she's already sunken into the pillows far enough that even a little help would go a long way. 2B reaches for it but pauses just as her fingers reach his.]

... Are you sure you'll be able to?

[Every other human who's helped her out of a predicament like this has had more troubles than she expected them to have. Doesn't help anyone that she's built like a steel beam.]

I can try. I've got Athletics.

[It's a path action that's kind of easy to forget about, but thanks to it, he's stronger than he looks.]

[Not one to undermine anyone's abilities, 2B's lips curl into the tiniest of smiles and she grabs on to Roxas' offered hand at last.]

Thank you.

[She'll help him a little bit, using the strength in her legs to help hoist herself up, but it helps to have someone as an anchor so she doesn't fall right back down again!]

[It takes a little bit of bracing, but Roxas is able to stand firm and help her up.]

Yeah, no problem.

[There's a sense that he wants to say something more, that there is a question forming but he's too polite to actually say anything.]

[Pod hovers up next to her as 2B straightens herself up and brushes herself off. With her visor in hand, she slides it back over her eyes and ties it behind her head, feeling much more like herself again.]

I will leave you to it, but please be sure to get proper rest.

I'll do my best. You take care to.

[It's definitely hard to figure out when to take a rest though, with all the resets.]

Field Mission 6: A Day in Thay, Part 1

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