I've survived the great sickness of 2020 and beyond. Now, I need to figure out what I'm supposed to post. Might be a day or two, but I shouldn't be long.
Sorry, I'm still here. Just a bit of being busy with IRL and poor time management on my part. I have a post more-or-less formulated, but I just wanted to confirm a few things:
Where are Faetalis and Cormac? I know they're at a window, but is this window in Mór Brionnú? I'm asking because it doesn't seem tactful for Gammaton to just barge into Mór Brionnú without reason nor invitation, given Cormac's general surly attitude.
Also, is there instant messaging within the guild, and can the overseers use it? I assume not, since Faetalis has had to send couriers to relay messages. Would there be a guild-based way for Gammaton to simply 'find' where Faetalis is located? I supposed Gammaton can use her heightened bug senses to trace Faetalis but I wanted to know beforehand if that could be avoided since it seems disrespectful to 'sniff out' your creator.
Fae and Mac are in a location entirely of Guess's fabrications, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll pull a fiat, and say the are within the premise of Mór Brionnú, as Cormac does not seem the type to wander without cause.
As for instant messaging, the Players were nerds of high caliber, and used handcrafted gamer headsets for multi-channel conversation - usually crafted in one of there personal effects; an earring, a ring, a necklace, or what have you. It functions as a multilayered [Whisper], [Locate], [Monitor], and [Sending] spells of Fae's design to keep track of members, find them, and speak to them during Siege Wars.
There is a better than good change that Gamma can find her Creator's lying around. But, sniffing her out, so to speak, wouldn't offend Fae in the slightest. It would probably offend Gamma's sensibilities first before hers.
Fae sends couriers to deliver messages, because she's conserving MP, in case she needs to pop off.
Hopefully the small changes to Szilard and Riny weren't too aggressive. No lie, they helped with the set up immensely with their diametrically opposed stations, yet similar lifestyles.
Anzelgard, the Shelled Kingdom. First and foremost, this was the start of the tale that Riny would tell, and Szilard’s memory would reveal.
A glorious kingdom, laid almost to waste by the now ruling power of the Nyll Empire. The seated King, Synval, was the unspoken half-brother to the Castle Groundskeeper, the bastard son, Szilard, and arranged husband of the youngest daughter of the Nyll Empire, Meryl. Gammaton would be painfully assaulted by the bitter old, unclaimed royal’s memories and hatred, his grudges and acknowledgments as he was edged out of any claim by an infant niece born into unspoken slavery.
An emotional swirl that had congealed into a shell of antisocialism and begrudgement. Szilard kept to himself - never able to reach his birthright, never able to achieve his goals; allowing jealousy and animosity to drive him. Yet, he kept his attention on the kingdom that was never his to rule, the castle that was never his to keep, and the government that would never return to its pinnacle.
Synavl was a puppet, strung by his wife, Meryl, and denied everything from decision-making to simply skinship, once he’d sired a future Nyll. Gammaton could feel Szilard’s contempt for Meryl, his disgust for Synval, and even his willingness to commit infanticide and regicide in a one fell swoop.
A plan fully formed, yet would never see completion, as Szilard was drafted into the Expedition.
As such, Gammaton had several dozen years of personal knowledge of the half-ruined castle, the guards, their training regiments, and the comings and goings of the castle staff. Her mind brimmed with the government, an Autocracy, underneath the Nyll Empire - one of seven families under the name Nyll, ruled by the six brothers and the lone sister with nothing to gain and everything to lose, if not for her father becoming impotent and her mother entering menopause in their old age, allowing her eldest brother to ascend the throne.
Another nail in Szilard’s coffin of hatred.
A nail that would have similarly boarded Riny’s own, if she hadn’t fallen victim to Mae.
However, Riny’s story was less personal than Szilard’s - a native of Anzelgard, born after The Shelling that gave birth to the nomer that Anzelgard was known for. Spoken from her lips, not her memories, Riny’s story would be one of a woman that grew up impoverished and orphaned, hunting for meat and fur to trade, earning a name for herself as a huntress, and a reputation for herself as unmarriageable.
An outcast in a town of outcasts.
Unable to rely in full on a society that cast out her lot - independents, rebels - for more than trade, Riny kept to the forest that grew across the mountainside like moss upon their trees. Her knowledge of the flora and fauna would pique Mae’s interest more than her heresy knowledge of Anzelgard’s ruling power and commerce - a simple coinage system with brass, tin, and duralumin from the vast deposit of copper that the Nyll Empire was built around. It would provide Mae with the information that Infactorium was sitting upon a reservoir of aluminum, and the Expedition was designed to see if Anzelgard’s only purpose was under threat.
It was solely because of her pathfinding ability that someone as insignificant to her own hometown was chosen by those that cast her aside in a vain attempt to maintain their own insignificant existences.
Like Szliard, Riny spoke with an exploitable disconnection; a discontent that was a mix of self-loathing and plain old hatred - as well as a distrust that could be mended with Mae's own brand of unnatural, monstrous kindness.
Especially when Riny disengaged herself from a tangent by mentioning that it was breeding season for the beasts that lived in the forest, so she could only gather berries and herb, which would slow down her meager profits, if she hadn’t been drafted by the royal guard with a handful of other disposable bodies - said disposable bodies included Szilard, whom she knew from the occasional stayover at an ailing tavern that would take her coin and presence and wouldn’t snitch on a member of the castle staff wasting his guts over a pint of piss-poor lager with the low-class.
Information that would give Mae an idea of how to keep members inside the village without attracting unnecessary attention, if so required.
In their own ways, Gammaton and Mae had achieved clear pictured of the inside and outside of their current neighbors, and a bit of the outside world beyond them; establishing a clear threat and power that they could hold by keeping control of the mountain, but that which would be rallied against them if they didn’t keep Anzelgard in the red with the Nyll Empire.
It was up to them to decide if Anzelgard was worth the trouble to keep safe by how they intended to inform Faetalis of their discoveries.
Gammaton’s report would be colored by the phantasmal guilt by the discarded old man, while Mae’s report would be colored by her empathetic nature bleeding for the outcast huntress.
In the meantime, Levia’s controlled destruction and corrosive nature worked in perfect conflict with Tungsten’s conduction. The rumbling would be heard and felt across the factory and down the mountain, but the landslide would not cascade out of control; settling in large, but stable mounds that would shift slowly, and become new ground as time wore on. However, that was rendered less important, as Levia would smell the heady scent of iron oxide in great quantities, while Tungsten would be able to shift his focus on scanning for what had been blocking his radar scans in strange lumps.
By simply looking under her feet, and digging a little, Levia would find a large chunk of bauxite ore; the primary source of aluminum metal. By scanning more precisely, Tungsten would be able to locate said ore in several dozen rather sizable chunks within the mountain - it was easy to surmise that their sudden presence was likeable considered a potential threat to a clear means of profit and livelihood for whomever was down there.
Meaning, its existence was a clear and present danger to Infactorium, as a whole. If their mile-wide gap was ever overcome, there was no telling what force would wage an assault against them, and, with no understanding of the military they could bring to bear, there was no way of telling if that was a battle that Infactorium could survive without issue.
Thusly, the tactician was brought to an impasse: he could outright destroy the bauxite ore with Levia’s power of corrosion and Infactorium could control the Humans through a clear act of power, or he could devise a way to take control of the ore and Infactorium could the Humans through an act of diplomacy. Levia’s eagerness to destroy would make the former decision a mere trifle, but her power was useful for excavation in the latter, as well.
It really was just a matter of how he intended to formulate his after-report.Meanwhile, Faetalis took a seat on the sil of the window, and rested herself both in and outside of the room that Cormac was in. “Yes, I do,” she says. “I have a task only one such as you can accomplish. I need you to be the Ambassador of Infactorium.”
Apologies ahead of time, but there are a few small tweaks to the big collab that will come my next post as necessary retcons to preserve the actual nature of what lies below the mountain.
I'm not changing everything you two did, but a few thing will, while maintaining the positions and intentions put to paper.
I'm actually looking for something similar from Riny. She won't have been as social as most people and thus won't know things as in-depth as Szilard did, but as a hunter she's probably traveled a much wider area. So a broader but more shallow set of knowledge.
That's doable. I assume Mae is "interrogating" her anyways, so I can roll that into the post as well.
Hey all, sorry for the wait. I had some busy weeks, but I'm back.
@Enkryption Even though Gammaton now has Szilard's knowledge, I as a player, do not, so I hope you don't mind if I pester you for information. So if Gammaton is like, "Ah yes, this town is named..." or "This country borders that country, which they are at war with..." I'm probably going to need to ask you. I also hope I'm not like forcing a lore dump from you. I'm also perfectly fine if you say, "Szilard was an ignorant country bumpkin and wouldn't know that", but given his proximity to the Mayor as Groundskeeper, my intention was he would be just a little bit more knowledgeable than the typical bumpkin.
S'all good. I was worried you'd dropped, no joke. I was just talking to Tree about it.
As for information, I have zero issues with lore dumps. However, I can tailor what is known to what Gamma wants to learn, and then supply her with the information that would be most likely for her targets to know.
The more probable a target would know the information, the more likely she'll get that. That is to say, the Captain of the Watch would know the escape routes and watch schedules, while the local baker most certainly would only know the general comings and goings of the guards passing their shop.
Iwannabeyours,
Crusader Lord,
Restalaan,
Neziul,
Bacon