Monday, January 24
Today dawns the first without clouds in four days. It’s the rainy season in Fainsport, and the new sun reflecting off the damp surfaces makes the whole city look cast in metal. From your second story window overlooking Crocker Street, you can down to the docks, where workers are settling into the shipyards early. The sea is calm for now, but looks chilly and uninviting. Today is a market day, and Crocker Street is full of cows dragging wagons, people carrying wares, and beggars brandishing cups as they head down to the Blue Market. The air is a bit nippy, and a breeze steals in through the cloudy glass window of your room, but you suspect the day will turn warmer as the sun rises, and you might not even need a coat. The smell of fish, as usual, rides the wind, but accompanying it is an unfamiliar scent, a bit like burned hash, but sourer.
You’ve been staying in John Carvinghouse’s Inn for two weeks now, after having been kicked out of Madame Genine’s halfway home before that. Mr. Carvinghouse is a short, irritable man who you hear used to be a barrister before his practice went south and he bought this inn. He speaks little to his tenants, and spends most of his days reading enormous hardbound books with no titles along the spine, only numbers. Olives and chickpea mash are served with unleavened bread in the morning by Mr. Carvinghouse’s cook, a flustered woman named Joline, and should be waiting for you downstairs.
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| John Carvinghouse |
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| Joline |
What do you do?
Why HALLO there, Joline. What a lovely morning it is, love. Now, there's a small matter of this inn's payment policy that's been bothering me. You see, I've been saving up to start my own company, and this Mr Carvinghouse is sucking my purse hollow. How about you have a talk with him and make an exception in my case, in exchange for some shares in whats going to be a very profitable venture?
ReplyDeleteJoline blinks.
ReplyDelete"You stay in the room, you pay the keep, and, God above, them's the rules. You want to beg for a free room you can do it yourself, I'm not in the mood to get a tongue-lashing. Layabouts..." she mutters, before dropping a plate of quickly prepared food in front of you and going off to serve the other tavern-stayers.
The communal room of the inn is large, roughly square, and has a thick support pole in the center, which is carved into a bas relief scene of hunters chasing wild boar -- the work is shoddy and clearly done quickly. There are six other guests currently occupying the room. Two men are playing a dice game while a large knife lies on the table between them. Another is sitting in the only reasonably comfortable seat in the room, an faded-red overstuffed armchair, and flipping through a pamphlet. There are a young man and woman sitting near a corner and looking nervously about while eating their food, and there is a fairly enormous man in a thick and filthy leather coat smoking voluminously from a pipe and refusing to take his eyes off Joline while she ignores him.
I roll to make my hair look lush and frizz free and shiny and gorgeous in order to increase my charisma. (I rolled 5)
ReplyDeleteBefore you cast that spell, let me talk to you about magic for a second. Magic is always obvious while being cast. Your hands are moving, your mouth is making unnatural sounds, and you're concentrating intensely (it's fairly easy for someone in close proximity to fuck up that concentration). If you do this in front of someone, they KNOW magic is happening.
ReplyDeleteMagic is not directly illegal, but magic users are required to have paperwork allowing them to cast spells (at least in this city) and you do not currently have this paperwork, so discretion is your friend.
Furthermore, magic is quite rare. Most people will have seen maybe a spell or two in their lives, and it's a story they'll tell people over and over. Fear, amazement, hatred, fawning, and confusion are common reactions to seeing a spell cast. Given this information, do you still want to proceed?
As far as the actual mechanics of spell casting goes, I want to make sure you're rolling the dice correctly. You get 1d6 for free, trying to hit the PL of the spell. You can add an extra 1d6 by spending a fatigue point (if fatigue points meet your threshold, you collapse). What dice did you roll? If you rolled the right ones, then you HAVE succeeded in the spell.
(OOC: now that my birthday's over and wills back I'll be able to post more frequently. OOC Means out of character)
ReplyDelete