15a Waiting Room

Erastus 26, just after midnight

Marona the event planner was sent to meet me when I arrived, though initially I didn’t recognize her. In my defense, in our first meeting she’d been wearing a conservative dress and had her hair pulled back in a simple braid. When I met her in the lobby the second time, her hair was in an elaborate bun, leaving a few curls to frame her tastefully made up face. That wasn’t the only difference. Either she’d been wearing some kind of compression bra before, she was using magic to alter her body, or she was wearing a black and yellow marvel of tailoring capable of making average sized breasts look like they were straining the fabric. She didn’t quite look like a porn parody of herself, but she might have been headed to a hot date after work.

Send the person I’m already familiar with, but you just couldn’t resist dressing her up. Well, that or she just likes dressing up sometimes. Or, I suppose, it’s peak business hours so everyone needs to look their best. That would require the world to not revolve around me, though. Inconceivable. I showed up a whole month ago.

I rushed to open doors for her as she escorted me to a small waiting room. It wasn’t one of the ones we’d been allowed to use for Pepper’s lessons, but I assumed it had the same accoutrements. Once there, she pulled a brown bottle down off a shelf and poured me a small glass of dark liquid.

“I hope it’s not too much trouble.” She said, cocking her head at me with a small smile, “I’m afraid you came at a bad time. Do you need anything? We have a very skilled masseuse.”

“No matter when you visit, they will make you wait.” Cog’s voice echoed in my mind. “They’ll apologize profusely and give you nice things. Probably food and drink. It’s to soften you up, as well as gauge your reaction. If you bring anyone along, they will do whatever they can to separate you.”

I relaxed into the chair nearest the glass and smiled back at her pleasantly. I sipped the rum politely, maintaining a blandly pleasant smile throughout. It was damn good rum. (Bluff 3+12=15)

She smiled slightly, pleased. Perhaps approving?

Hmm. Nonverbal bluff didn’t get the silver tongue bonus. I’d better remember that.

“No, I think this will be fine.” I said. “I’ll just meditate until it’s convenient; I’ve been looking for an opportunity to get my thoughts in order.”

“Of course, Captain. The high priestess will be with you shortly.”

Marona curtsied and exited the room. For my part, I relaxed in the chair and did some admin work. After all, I’d finished a mission and leveled up. To the priests watching me through the portraits I’d be sitting around stoically, occasionally sipping good rum.

By this point, leveling was a fairly standard affair to me. Certainly good, but I wasn’t going to get excited over the small things. Everyone became harder to kill, I still had all the durability of a cardboard box, and everyone became marginally better at everything they specialized in. I focused on the new and interesting abilities.

As a spellcaster, obviously I scrolled down to my spells first. Invisibility had already proven useful, so I was curious about the rest: Shadow Claws, Night Blindness, and Vacuous Vessel. The first was a combat spell, allowing me to summon a pair of magical claws onto my own hands or those of my Shadow Puppet. They tore both flesh and spirit, draining the strength of my victims.

Translated from edgy, they reduced someone’s strength score by one with every hit. In a long fight, that might be worth quite a lot.

Night Blindness, a curse I was given due to my drow heritage, was niche but I could see it being useful. It made someone incapable of seeing in the dark; darkvision was shut off, and even strong moonlight would be as good as pitch darkness. It was only first circle, at least, so the opportunity cost was comparatively low. Finally, I had the unfathomably niche Vacuous Vessel cantrip, which allowed me to make a container seem empty as long as I was right next to it.

Both of them are spells I’ll probably need to engineer uses for. Hey, I’ll probably be glad I have them. Eventually.

My one feat was far more interesting: Craft Construct. It gave me the ability to reproduce any kind of construct, artificial creatures animated by magic, that I have seen before. Of course, so far that was a fairly slim library: Poppets, Trompe De l'oeil, and Pact Poltergeist.

Poppets seemed to be baby’s first construct, and came as part of my library without me needing to have seen them before. Small, near mindless servants the size of dolls. Trompe De l’oeil were the formal name for Melku’s painting servants. Finally, I was fairly sure that the bust possessed by Cave Mother was a Pact Poltergeist; a spirit possessing an inanimate object, capable of using all of its powers. The bust seemed to be a fairly shoddy one, since Cave Mother didn’t seem to be able to move herself.

All three presented intriguing possibilities, but they were also expensive as hell. Poppets, the cheapest thing I could make, were 160 gold. The most expensive thing I could imagine creating with these blueprints, an animated and fully functioning painting of an adult dragon, would cost 289 thousand gold to enchant, after I found a masterwork painting of a dragon. A slightly more plausible yet impressive option, allowing my ship to be possessed by a spirit, would only cost 38 thousand. Too rich for my blood at the moment, but one hell of an asset if I found a spirit I trusted that much.

When I moved on to Sandara’s character sheet, I was reminded of the injustices of the world. I was a magical trust fund baby who sacrificed hit points and good saving throws on the altar of magic, but Sandara got third circle spells before me. Ah well, she was on my side. Her spell list defaulted to curses, it seemed, allowing her to either massively debuff someone or give them a crippling phobia of water. In addition, she could either make someone invisible to magical detection of any kind, or allow them to walk on water.

To be fair, those are all definitely on brand for Besmara. Plus her healing got stronger.

Syl and Cog both got better at fighting, in very different ways. Syl could now make things bleed even if they didn’t have blood, though not as well as normal things with blood. I will freely admit that I immediately started wondering how she would make a skeleton or an animated statue bleed, and no answer sprang to mind. Given how much of her damage came from bleeding, I approved. Cog became even tougher. He was now able to effectively heal himself by attacking; if he hit someone, he could undo damage he’d taken in the last round.

Rowe learned how to make a “stealth suit” for herself, for reasons that seem obvious. I’d want to have active camo too if I’d been through what she was. It was pretty damn close to invisibility, too, though it wasn’t too hard to track her movements once you already knew where she was.

Sosima had a few new tricks, both impressive in their own way. Inspiring Pose was a boast that allowed an ally to try to throw off a status effect; anything from poison to brainwashing was allowed. The only drawback was that it only worked while she was in a fight.

No infinite free status restoration for me, I guess.

The other feat she picked up was called Ritual of Inquiry. Long story short, she could call up a spirit and ask it some questions. Given that binder spirits are multifaceted immortal entities that can be summoned to empower anyone on the planet, they probably knew some very juicy information. I approved.

Dierdre still wasn’t a combat powerhouse, but she’d be damn hard to kill. She had both magic resistance and DR/10 vs cold iron now. If someone tried to hit her with anything but a rare, magically laced variant of iron they’d find that it did fairly little damage. That, and she was both invisible and sneaky. After all, no one had noticed that she was here with me, or at least they hadn’t elected to call me on it. It probably helped that I’d opened and closed all the doors on the way here.

I'd like to pour her a drink, but that would be counterproductive.

I yawned and stretched my arm out to check in with my permanently invisible companion, and she gave my hand a quick squeeze. I straightened slightly, and folded my hands on the table in front of me. She tapped on my hand four times, two clearly spaced out double taps, then drew her tiny fingernail from my knuckle towards the edge of the table. I surveyed the room with a bored gaze, my eyes sliding past the painting of an elven woman in the corner that lined up with Dierdre’s signal.

Two people watching me beyond that painting. Strong chaotic auras, neither evil nor good since she didn’t poke me with her nail or kiss my hand. Probably clerics of Callistria, and she didn’t squeeze my hand very hard so they probably aren’t heavyweights. Nothing unexpected so far.

Pixies could see auras, which generally meant that she could see if someone was broadly aligned with the forces of law, good, evil, or chaos. People connected to extraplanar beings, like clerics to their gods, tended to have much stronger auras. Strong enough for a pixie to sense through a wall, if it were thin enough. For example, if it were actually a one way window. The more powerful an individual, the stronger their aura, allowing Dierdre to loosely gauge their relative strength. It wasn’t much, but it was something to go off of.

I settled back, and checked my missions. I was in no particular danger of completing any of them at the moment; I just wanted to get a picture of my current mission pack.

Conclusively Defeat Hyrix Snowfeather

Reward: 2 exp, Companion Boon

I had no idea who Hyrix was and neither did Autopilot (Knowledge Nobility: 6+2=8), but had a creeping suspicion that Varossa might. It would be risky to confront her with a name I knew nothing about, but I had a whole party worth of knowledge checks to draw upon and Sosima might be able to make Inquiries. Once I had even a vague idea, I could imply I was far better informed than I really was.

Fulfill one of Emrys M’Dair’s greatest sexual fantasies. Bonus if you can manage multiple in a 24 hour period, the timer starts when you finish one.

1: 1 exp, courtesan’s secret

2: 2 exp, Body Control Talent: Perfect Parallel

3: 3 exp, drow courtesan conjuration companion

Well shit. Autopilot, fill me in.

There are three, each focused upon a woman in my life. I will tell you no more until you gaze upon them.

What? Seriously, just tell me. I can plan on it.

No. You don’t know them. You wouldn’t understand.

Uh… okay. Well, we are going to be in the area anyway I guess. We can figure it out then.

Personally meet a member of the pirate high council.

Reward: 1 exp, Neckcloth of Alluring Charisma (+2)

Well that’s not even a mission. It’s just good sense. They’re the law of the land; meeting one means I’m moving up in the world.

The door opened and a bulky half orc woman poked her head inside.

“Hey, you’re Cog’s friend, right?” She said. “Priestess Osgri asked to speak with you before your meeting.”

“Sure.” I said, smiling, “better than sitting around.”

“If they don’t think you’re taking the bait, they might change tactics.” Cog had said. “Even if they look like they are making concessions or dropping the formality, don’t be too eager. Say yes once, and it’ll be harder to say no later. They know it. Now you know it. Drive a hard bargain or they’ll never respect you.”