Feudal Quest

To Dita and Kat:
If Earth Magic is corruptive because of the link to the earth but Fire is not, what about Flesh Magic Force Magic? What steps one can take against such corruption?

 

And someone to go to her is also worth nothing when you don't have any means to find her.

 

IIRC, the armsmen are with us right now. Can we manage to ask this question where they won't overhear?

 

Earth sorcery is problematic because the Earth itself became tainted by evil about two thousand years ago during the Fall, when a wave of disasters and monster invasions swept the globe and toppled a lot of the ancient empires. It's hard to do a lot of large-scale earth magic without exposing yourself the the ley lines and their leakage, which is the source of the problem.

Fire is actually a cleansing element, and tends to burn away corruption. But powerful fire mages tend to be mentally affected by their element - it tends to make them passionate, emotional pyromaniacs, and the more powerful they get the stronger the influence is going to be.

Other elements will have their own characteristic emotional influences, but flesh and force are both unusual enough that Kat can only theorize about what they might be. She does observe that using flesh sorcery on someone tends to open you up to any magical influences that might be affecting them, so you'll want to be careful not to use it on magically evil creatures or corrupted humans.

I normally assume you're smart enough not to discuss sensitive topics where the wrong people will overhear them.

 

Can we learn how to purge corruption from ourselves?

Is it possible to purify leylines in theory or is it simply too hard?

 

Yes, Kat could teach you some techniques for that (it's a Wizardry 1 application). But the more corrupted someone is the harder it is to purify them, and someone deeply tainted by dark magic can easily be impossible for any mortal power to cleanse. So it's vital to stay on top of it, and make sure you never develop any significant level of corruption.

Or, I suppose you could dive into evil on purpose and have fun with it. There's nothing that says Dominic has to remain a good guy.

The problem is more a matter of power than skill - the ley lines carry such an immense amount of energy that human magic normally can't begin to have any effect on them. Realistically it would require divine intervention, or the use of some artifact that works on the same scale.

 

So it does seem that having Dita with us while we talk to Atalya can tell us how far down she is gone- while i don't think killing her out of hand if she is a Witch is the best idea, keeping her around if she is too far gone is probably a receipe for her trying to steal someone else's youth later on and maybe getting the church involved in our lands.

So the solutions are probably either trying to get her to lay quiet as long as we believe she won't go on random killing spree (DarkLight's option work well for that), getting her to run away (dangerous, might get the church involved which we aren't too ready for given Kat/Dita) or having her have an 'accident' (probably very risky too as it can fail easily and put a lot of collateral damage as well as bring attention of the church).

So, yeah, i feel like Darklight's plan is probably the safest one for now, at least unless we believe she will go on random killing spree- and given how worried she was when Kat killed the baron's son (if it's the truth, but her being worried about whispers of witchcraft is probably the truth) then she should be well versed in not getting out of bond.

 

Why exactly are you so willing to leave someone who's apparently practicing evil magic in our fief and alive? Kat didn't want to drag in the Witch Hunters because they'd likely attack her as well. Killing her ourselves negates that problem. Additionally telling her not to get out of hand will only ensure that she doesn't do anything to obvious and try to get rid of us. It solves nothing and leaves us with more problems should a priest come here.

 

First, 'being evil' is no reason to kill someone- the majority of those characters could be considered evil one way or another by our 'modern' standpoint. Doing evil things, however, might be such a reason. Hence, if we believe that the witch can't stop herself from doing evil things, killing her will become a necessity.

However, she has lived years under the radar, and she seems to have attacked Kat at first because she was worried that not bringing the hammer on her would mean the witch hunter will come to this neck of woods- and later on, because Kat realized she was a witch. This hints that she is well able to live without making waves and without doing evil things.

Second, i am worried about how difficult it would be to kill her- if she escapes or if she does enough collateral damage it might make Witch hunter coming (and even if we don't care if Kat gets killed by them, we do care about both Dita and ourself).

Furthermore, the Baron believes Kat to be the witch, and suddenly killing the person who helped against Kat and coming to our court with Kat might mean that some people could bring the attention of the church to us, either as a Witch practitioner or as being mind controlled, something we do not want.

Lastly, Atalaya was nice to us- she helped us on our hints that we will pay her back, and that seems like it's possible we can have a working relationship with her as long as she doesn't go killing or hurting our people. Killing her for helping us is a dick move.

Now, sure, it's possible she is readying a trap for us right now in case we didn't kill Kat, but that would be foolish as hell given we are not only the current lord of the place but also the son of one of the most important men in the country (she might not know the latter though). I am basically counting on her willingness to survive and hide over her want to randomly murder people.

 

My reasons for wanting her dead are less to do with her being evil and more to do with the fact that her actions negatively effect our position. And we already know she was willing to try shit with Kat and has a reputation for cursing people. Not something we want around our territories.

She attacked her because she didn't want another sorceress stealing her influence on the villagers and to steal her looks. The witch hunter was a secondary concern. As for her not making waves I'll note that the peasants already say she's a witch and staying undercover in the ass end of nowhere isn't much of an accomplishment.

You're forgetting that magic in this setting isn't the overpowered crap of most settings but the more subtle variety, which means that while she likely will have some tricks collateral damage isn't going to be as much of a worry.

The Baron is unlikely to find out about Atalya and we can give decent enough an excuse to the Baron if need be. As for drawing the attention of the church, I'd argue that having a witch who does stuff that's blatantly evil on your fief would probably look worse on you.

She helped us because she wanted us to get rid of a potential threat. She essentially used us dude. Regardless we wouldn't be killing her for helping us we would be killing her because of her other actions.

While survival likely is important to her, what would you do in her position? Would you rely on us having killed a potentially convincing, beautiful sorceress who knows you're evil? Or would you take precautions in case we get convinced by her? As to us being the son of someone important it is preferable to piss off that important person and still have a chance to live and escape then to not do so and wind up dead.

 

My understanding is she attacked her because she was making waves, and waves are dangerous.

She possibly has controls of dozens of people- collateral damage is certainly an issue.

No, she wants to live- so she either would have a failsafe to help her run, or will agree to payment and work for us from time to time. Killing us is detrimental to her running or living, and unless she is much younger and dumber than i think she knows this.

 

She also attacked to steal her looks and because having another sorceress around would mean that her stuff would get detected very fast.
Those dozens are going to do what exactly? Die horribly going up against actually trained fighters? Even then they don't even qualify as collateral damage and that's assuming she even has that many people under her direct control.
In which case she can try to run, I'm unwilling to leave someone like her in our territory and quite frankly what she can offer us is unlikely to fly with DIta and our other NPCs.

 

If people want to set the precedent that Dominic will kill people over possible future annoyance, I'm cool with that. But only if we go all the way evil.

 

Can we not bring retarded modern belief into this? Someone is using Evil Magic in our backyard. Kill them. Kill them now.

 

Are you seriously strawmanning to that degree?
We have reasons to kill her beyond that. That's just one for not deciding to let her stay in our territory. Besides which I'd hardly rate an angry church as an annoyance, particularly in our circumstances.

 

Well, it looks like the majority vote is to leave Atalaya alone (and maybe use her services in the future) while the runner-up is to quietly investigate her before taking action. So I'm going to assume Dominic takes no action against her immediately, and finish up the turn results.

 

[X]Investigate, then kill.
God, people can be dumb

 

[X]Investigate, then kill.

 

[X]Investigate, decide upon appropriate response.

 

[X]Investigate, then kill.

 

[X] Investigate, decide upon appropriate response.

 

And updated vote

 

Update - April 1, Year 1​

Project Results

Dominic - Proclaim Lordship
You make a circuit of all the settlements in your fief, proclaiming your lordship and meeting the local leaders in each village. During your journey you note to your dissatisfaction that the peasants in Corzu are desperately poor compared to those back in Kolarovo - there are few livestock, the houses are mostly small and poorly built, and public facilities like bridges and wells are rare and mostly quite old. Tamasi is significantly better off than the other settlements, but none of them could be considered prosperous.

The elders in both villages seem wary and guarded, as if they’re afraid of what new demands your presence will bring. The farmers in the hamlets are more welcoming, possibly because they’re more at risk from the growing bandit and beastman problems.

Your visit to Sir Ditrik’s hamlet goes well enough. Ditrik doesn’t especially impress you as a leader, but he seems to be a competent swordsman and keeps his gear and warhorse in decent shape. He also has a couple of men at arms, although their equipment is poor. Ditrik seems a little embarrassed about that, and complains that the hamlet really doesn’t have enough people to support a knight’s retinue properly.

He seems a bit suspicious at first, but after some conversation he apparently decides that you really are who you say you are. After that he has no problem swearing fealty to you.

You note in passing that Sir Ditrik’s villagers seem rather afraid of him, especially the three local girls who live with him. But that’s his business, right?

Dominic - Training
You significantly improve your body sensing ability. You can now get a good evaluation of a subject’s health with a brief touch, detecting injuries and at least some diseases. You’ve been using your mistresses for a lot of this testing, and you’ve also made the somewhat intriguing discovery that you can sense arousal and get a pretty good idea when a woman is faking an orgasm (Mira never needs to, but Aldona sometimes fakes it if she doesn’t get there for real).

Unfortunately you’ve failed to reach your goal of developing a birth control technique. While you feel confident that you could now detect pregnancy, you’d need at least one more action to reach the point of being able to do something about it. Of course, since Kat already has a warding spell that prevents conception it may not be worth the time to develop your own version.

Dominic - Adventure
You return from your adventure with all party members alive, and gain a bit of skill in diplomacy from the experience.

Congratulations, you made it through the easiest Diplomacy & Intrigue adventure you’re ever likely to encounter. With this experience under your belt you now see several new leads for adventures of this type (see Adventure Leads), although you’ll need to get a lot better at handling people if you plan to make a habit of this sort of thing.

Bialas - Recruit Archers
As farmers begin to prepare for spring planting Bialas identifies more than a dozen lads who think soldiering sounds more exciting than tilling the fields for another year. He sends a couple of the most experienced hunters over to Jaroslaw to round out the rangers, and integrates the rest into the archer squad to bring it up to a useful size.

Dita - Training
Dita continues working on her Light Sorcery before, during and after your little adventure together, and makes good progress on increasing her power level (now at 3/4).

Jaroslaw - Train Rangers (Skill)
No problems to report.

Traian - Update Tax Rolls
Your accountant visits all the known settlements in Corzu with you, and updates the tax rolls while you talk to the village elders. He reports that there are about 10% more households in Corzu than were originally on the books, but almost all the new households are electing to pay in additional harvest tax this fall. Still, he calculates that you can expect to collect 935 SP in cash this month.


Other Events

You receive a letter from Baroness Lala inviting you to visit her and her daughter Chesna at Castle Pisch this month. Reading between the lines you suspect she wants to meet you and get an impression of your character before she decides what to do about riding the border.

You finally receive a reply from Baron Rogatica, offering to ride the border with you in May.

Reports of the season’s first pirate attacks have reached you. Several boatmen on their way to Eztergrom to buy their licenses for the year have been intercepted by pirates, who beat them and stole both their money and their boats. One boatman drowned in the frigid waters of the Sava, and the pirates (described as three boats full of ragged-looking men armed with spears and clubs) escaped unscathed.

Jaroslaw reports his men have found more beastman tracks than expected in the woods west of Corzu Keep, and he expresses concern the creatures may be numerous enough to attack your hamlets this year.

 

Advancement Point

Now that you've completed your first adventure you have an opportunity to spend one of the two 'untapped potential' points on your character sheet. Please choose an option:

[ ] +1 Soul - Magic is the solution to your problems!
[ ] +1 Charm - Who needs magic when you've got a silver tongue?
[ ] Don't spend anything yet - wait for the chance to put it into something else

 

[X] Don't spend anything yet.

 

[X] +1 Soul - Magic is the solution to your problems!

 

[X] Don't spend anything yet

I'm still holding out hope for those Body stat points, I imagine we might get an opportunity for those after dealing with those pirates or beastmen, that said I could somewhat see charm as a decent option but I'm not enthralled with it. Soul, considering we already have two other casters I'll pass on.

 

[X] +1 Soul - Magic is the solution to your problems!

 

I'm happy pushing for a +1 Body, +1 Soul build

Going 4 Body (5 with flesh magic) 3 Mind, 4 Soul, 3 Charm makes Dominic a very synergistic fighter mage

[X] +1 Charm

 

[ ] +1 Soul - Magic is the solution to your problems!