Bay 12 Games Forum

((He's offline.))

((Argh. Can we just auto Vivian to sit in #4?))

Almost done. Will edit in rest later.

Merlin examined the soul in the jar in front of him. It was rather standard as souls went - in the jar it had assumed the form of a drifting greyish cloud of smoke like material. Rather duller than most of their ilk, which usually had some sort of color in them. Lack of any distinguishing colors or marks usually indicated either a lack of imagination on the soul's part or lack of memory. He set the jar down on the desk he was sitting in front of and stroked his beard in contemplation. Matthew had brought the amateur ghost catcher he'd made a few days ago to him, filled with the soul. He'd been rather surprised, to say the least. But where had the soul come from? Who was it? These questions he wanted to know the answers to, but the only way to get to them was either via communicating with the soul - an option he'd tried, to no success - or by inserting one's mind into the soul and riffling around in its memories, which was both rather unethical and dangerous. 'But,' Merlin thought, 'on the other hand, keeping it in this jar is  just as terrible an act. If I can free it by doing this, it's worth it.'
His decision made, Merlin stood up and picked up the jar as he moved towards the door of his study. He scratched his ass as he moved - Matthew had convinced him to get more modern clothes than his robes for purposes of blending in, and after a little looking around a catalogue, he'd whipped up a few pairs of cargo pants absolutely festooned with pockets, several khaki shirts, some leather shoes, and (he'd gone out and bought these) an absolutely marvelous pair of fuzzy slippers adorned with decorations that made them look like goldfish that he now wore everywhere inside the house - and the unaccustomed tightness of pants was itchy. Opening the door, he scurried downstairs and toward the door that led to the shop. He looked in and saw Matthew shuffling around the store, placing some items on the shelves. He walked in and knocked on the counter to get Matthew's attention. I'll be doing an investigation into that soul you brought me. Shouldn't take more than an hour or so, but feel free to close up. It's getting late.
Matthew nodded and said All right, as Merlin bustled out of the store and toward the lab he'd installed in the other end of the house. It wasn't much as of yet, just a room with several beakers, other glasses, and metal apparatuses resembling clamps. He put the jar containing the soul on a desk in the corner of the room and attached a clamp to it, then sat down in a chair next to it and placed a metal circlet with wires connected to it on his head, and attached the circlet's trailing wires to the clamp on the jar.
It must be explained at this juncture that magic was an inexact science by nature, having more to do with symbolism than with facts. Often the intent of the caster is far more important than whatever gestures they perform or incantations they mutter; the will of the caster makes the ritual important. This is the reason Merlin connected himself and the soul using wires; they gave him something tangible to focus and grab onto if anything went awry.
The connection formed, Merlin closed his eyes, focused, and took hold of his mind. He forced it down the wires as though he were going down a drain.
       down down down down down
                down down down
                         down
                           do
                           w
                            n

Coming back to awareness, he cast his gaze about. His surroundings were not what they were before, instead being a rather indistinct grey background of sorts. Being rather familiar with this sort of thing, he manifested himself a body and stepped into it. He shivered a bit. This place - this mind - was chilly. For Merlin had forced his mind out of his body, down the wires, and into the soul in the jar. Now then, he thought, let us find what I'm looking for. He gazed off into the distance, attempting to orient himself in which part of the mind he was in.
...childhood...
...secret wishes...
...aspirations...
...self profile, that was it. He stretched out a hand into a bank of fog ahead of him and grasped what his hand found there. He pulled out a long row of filing cabinets. Sighing and not desiring to waste time rifling through all of the papers, he flicked his wrist and sent all the papers within whirling about him. Those with the information he wanted landed in his outstretched hand. He shuffled through them, frowning slightly as he overlooked the information.
Ryan Duffey ... son of an Irish mob dealer ... rather cocky ... participated in many drug deals ... repeated murdererer ... and then got his soul sucked out over a period of months by a lady in red.

Shuffling through the rest of the sheaf of papers, Merlin didn't find much else of importance - they were things Duffey had done, people he had been, women he had wooed (dissapointingly few) whores he had bought (concerningly large), the effects on the world that had made Duffey Duffey.
Havinf found what he needed, he relaxed his mind and felt himself being pulled backward, felt weight imposing itself upon him again - and with a whump that coincided with a beat of his heart, he was back in his own body. Th first thing he noted was that he didn't feel as stiff as he usually did after these things, which was a good thing. Checking his watch (the cheap kind bought in a dollar store; Merlin still knew how to navigate by the sun and stars, he didn't usually need them) he found that only one hour and six minutes had passed since his entrance into Duffey's mind. Speaking of which, he thought as he disengaged himself from the wiring and picked up the jar, what to do with him?
He could kill him right here, but Merlin made a point not to kill anyone who hadn't the same intention.
He could make him a body, let him go again ... but he'd been 'dead' for several months now, and Duffey was not the type of person he wanted to let run free.
He could perhaps recruit him as a servant, but again his personality got in the way of that.
...
But what if his personality were no longer a factor?, thought he. And so Duffey's fate was decided.

---

Matthew walked into the shop a few days later, looking for Merlin. Seeing the wizard's pointy hat (that he'd refused to replace with something more pedestrian) bobbing up and down behind the counter, he walked over to see what he was doing, and paused when he saw.
Merlin was on his hands and knees, busily scribbling away at an array of chalk sigils covering the majority of the floor. Looking up and seeing him, Merlin exclaimed, "Ah, Matthew! It's good you arrived; I need to get the walls and ceiling done today and I need you to finish the floor. Think you can handle it?"
Matthew scratchd the back of his head and put a confused expression on his face as he said, "Er, what exactly are ya doing?"
Merlin grinned at this question. "It's quite simple really. These symbols right here on the anterior portion of the inital arc are those of purging, purging of a specific kind that I don't think I've taught you about yet. Those particularly jagged ones next to them are ones of, of amplification, of spreading, boosting if you will. The ones opposite the circle, if you'll look, are hooks, designed to weigh the essence of the work down in that spot by accumulating magical energy and condensing it on that particular point. There's a lot more, with the arrangement of the intersecion of the loops and the spacing of the rings and whatnot, but the Auto will take care of that for you. Think you can do it?"
"Doesn't seem too hard. Mind if I have that chalk?"
"Certainly."
And with that short pattering of words that may have seemed short and crude to some but were laced with subtext for the two of them, Matthew began. Crouching down where Merlin, now clambering all over the counter, had been, he extended his awareness into the Auto and began incribing the pattern.
The Auto was the name of a magical technique Merlin had developed in order to help Matthew with learning the insane variety of runes he utilized. It was essentially a fractal stencil of sorts; Merlin would cast the spell and imprint the shape of the rune that needed to be traced into it, and lt it run. The next person who began drawing there would have their arm drawn into the pattern and begin tracing it for as long as the spell was put to run for. Various other settings could be altered with mastery of it, including whether one wanted the pattern to be replicated in more than one spot, how many times this replication was to take place, and so on.
Matthew liked to listen to music while he was Autoing. In this case, he'd turned on a rickety old CD player he'd found in a back room and put in the Crashers' fourth album. Nice stuff, really - the lead guitarist really knew how to shred those solos. He began bobbing his head lightly as the Auto took him.
Na na na na na na
One two one two
blah blah blah sheep pig hill
Da da da da da da
Deer neeeer neeer Imma swallow pigeon fear
Y'know, I never really could understand what the hell Whiz Crankcorn was saying, even during that one speech he gave.
...
Matthew came out of his semi trance on the subject of music and if it could be applied to magic and just what the hell type of weed was Gandalf smoking anyway several hours later to behold the entire shop covered with iteration after iteration of the pattern he'd been tracing. Standing up, noting the sore pain in his knees, Matthew idly stretched as he looked around for Merlin. 'Where was he? Last I remember was him saying he was going to do the roof, which he apparently did. So where's he now?'
His musings were interupted by the man himself, scurrying into the shop in full wizard attire, carrying a jar with ... was that the soul that he'd caught in the soul projector a few weeks ago? Deciding to find out, he strode toward him, saying, "Hey Merl. Whatcha doing with that soul thing? I thought you said you were going to let it go."
Merlin paused slightly, a miracle in itself, before replying, saying, 'I've looked into it - turns out the person this soul was doesn't exactly have a body to go to anymore, even if I did release it. Additionally, it was a ... rather unpleasant person in life, who I'd not like to see become a poltergiest or some such. That's why I've decided to employ him, so to speak. Would you mind moving off the runes? This room is about to become hazardous to be in.
Matthew quickly scurried off the markings and out of the shop while Merlin went into a circle that seemed desined for him to be there, as it was larger than most of the ones in the shop. He placed the jar in a circle directly outside the one he was in and unscrewed the lid, though strangely enough the soul didn't immediately fly to freedom. Merlin, taking his staff in hand from where it leaned on the counter, carefully placed it in the open jar, setting it down on the bottom of the glass with a thunk. Matthew was then grateful that he'd pulled down the blinds because Merlin's staff suddenly lit up with a rather eerie green glow. This seemed to excite the spirit, for it immdiately began expanding somehow, began coursing up the staff and undulating around it. Matthew could see the bottom of the staff glowing brighter and brighter, until it melted through the bottom of the jar and touched the floor. Immediately the soul was forcibly pulled down the staff somehow and into the floor. The circle around where this had taken place turned a dark purple. Withdrawing his staff from the jar, Merlin tapped the circle on the four points where it intersected with other circles, and the purple began to spread, growing fainter and lighter in color the further away from the circle it got. However, whenever it impacted a jagged rune of amplification, it deepened in color once again and began spreading with more fervor.
That must be the soul, Matthew thought as he watched the process. He's bound it into the markings and is forcing it to spread throughout them, but it can't - not the whole way. So the amplifying runes are boosting it somehow, so it can reach all of them.
He proved correct in this, and soon all the markings in the store, even the ones on the ceiling, were dark purplish. Merlin, seeing this, dipped a finger into one of his many pockets and pulled it out shining ... silver? 'Er, do I want to know what that stuff is, Merlin?'
'I can explain it later - has to do with charges - but for now just watch what it does.' He bent down and touched the mercurial finger to a ring, and the effect seemed to drain out of it and into the markings, quickly flowing to all the circles, leaving them somehow distressingly ... white. Blank, even. Seeing this, Merlin nodded in approval and lifted his staff, the tip of which began to glow a dull black color, which Matthew wasn't exactly going to question. Touching it once again to the circle, he waited until all of them were fully black before pumping charges of greenish magic into them - one, two, three - and with each charge, a black mist seemed to ooze out of the carvings until the entire shop was clouded with an impenetrable black fog. It wasn't long before this strange substance began churning and thrashing, as well as emitting an eerie howl that sent shivers up Matthew's spine and frankly made him glad he wasn't the one in there. He could hear Merlin doing something in there - something was being bellowed, and brief pulses of white light could be glimpsed from inside the howling tornado of darkness. These increased in frequency until one final pulse came out, and the mist rapidly began to retreat into the walls. When it was back in, Matthew noted that there were no markings left.
'What just happened, Merlin?'
'I ... let's call it installed a security system. I've set it to recognize me and you, so it won't harm us, but speak a code word - he suddenly barked out something that sounded like sesh and immediately a series of dark tendrils seemingly made out of thick clumpy mist poured out of the walls and began moving about as if searching for something.
'The code word spoken, and the security system activates and throws anyone not us in the store outside - and I've recently installed a charm that erases their memories of their time in the store should they exit when the security system is active. Then, when the assailant is dealt with, speak the deactivation word - he barked out bek, and the tendrils immedately sank into the walls without a trace - and it retreats until you need it again.'
'But what if there's only one person in the store who's trying to rob the place or whatever and two people who're just looking? Kicking out all your customers is bad for business.'
'Never fear, I've thought of that as well. The process I just showed you was more or less automatic - speak the word, robbers thrown out, deactivate, done. But if you need to target someone specifically, all you need to do is fix an image of them in your mind after you've spoken the initial word, and utter the word 'fash'. Then they'll be thrown out but no one else. If you can manage to fix an image of multiple people in your head, they'll be targeted. Essentially, switching to automatic. Later I'll teach you how to control it more precisely, so you can hold someone or something in the air at your desire, adjust the lighting to make it more sinister if necessary, etcetera. For now, though, we should go. Tis dinner time and making that thing gave me an appetite. Come on!
And with that, the old man strode out into the mansion, and Matthew followed, privately relieved that he wouldn't have to try to Force Lightning anybody who was dumb enough to rob a magic shop.
Full Act: Merlin creates a security system in the shop, using Duffey's soul as the framework for it. It manifests as a thick black fog in the store that can be summoned or desummoned, normally appearing in the form of tendrils extending from the walls that throw anybody not Matthew or Merlin out the door, the frame of which is equipped with a charm that erases the memory of the offender's time in the store. It can be targeted at specific individuals by placing a mental picture of the person in one'm mind, then speaking the code word 'fash', which will cause the targeted person to be evicted. This effect can be applied to groups of people. The soul used to power this has been wiped of any memories or past experiences, effectively killing Duffey but leaving his soul as a blank template to act as a power source. This system can only be activated by Matthew and Merlin.

…
Apricots. An endless field of apricots, sweetly sour and smooth and covered in honey and chocolate extended outward to the horizon. Laughing with joy, he took a leap into the air, twirling, came down among them. He reached out with trembling digits, themselves the prepice he sought to throw himself over, stopped only by his ingrained decency and common sense; fruit didn’t work that way, even in dreams. Ephemeral fuzziness tickled his lips as he grazed them across the cold surface of the apricot. Finally, after an eternity contemplating perfection, he started the most holy of processes. Muscles in his jaw flexed, brought the catalyst of his teeth together to target the most holy of catalysts, he could almost taste the anticipation-

The door suddenly gave out a resounding thud and Matt woke up slumped over the desk in a puddle of drool. Still half asleep, he lurched off the desk, nearly falling over as he did, and stumbled over to the door, absentmindedly wiping the beard of drool that had formed off of his face.
Opening the door, he glanced up – nobody looked up nowadays – left, right, nothing. Down, however, was a rather large duffel bag on a little trolley thing. Looking a bit farther on, he could see many others piled up in a little heap against the corner of a building. There was a gold envelope with purple embroidery stitched around the edges – fancy – with two lines of text on it. Looking at it, it read thusly:


Huh, he thought. Someone important, then.
‘Hey, Merlin!’ he yelled towards the back of the store.
‘What is it?’
‘Were you expecting a package today?’

A pause.

‘I’ll handle it, lad! Er, could you organize these vials on my desk in the lab?’ he asked, bustling in. ‘Wouldn’t do to have them be destabilized now.’
Matthew shrugged.
‘Okay.’

As his apprentice moved off, Merlin quietly sighed in relief and magicked up some colorful substances for the boy to sort with a  flick of his wrist. He then went to examine the mentioned packages.

---

In a short while, Merlin stood among a pile of bags, reading the letter that he’d received. He frowned as he read the text, which was a brilliant green, an irritating color to read text in. He muttered under his breath as he read the list of what exactly he’d received here, his face brightening on a few items. When he was finished reading the letter, which wasn’t all that long, he looked over his new items. If his contact was correct – and he knew he was – these items were of great value to his work. However, as with most things, checking for hidden catches was always a good idea.
‘Matthew! Come down here. Need your help with something.’

Null Merlin/Full Matthew Act: The supplies are investigated for any suspicious properties (beyond what they naturally possess) or evidence of modification by the giving party. If they are found to be tampered with, they are discreetly stored in a cabinet in the shop. If not, they are used to create artifacts, more potant than the spoon ones, though nothing really powerful.

Merlin flipped through yet another page of the catalogue and sighed. Would this never end?
Why sell machines to cut your grass?
Well that sounds useless.
Oh lord no.
Er. I think I'd rather not get that thing.
He continued muttering in a fashion like this as he looked through the book, which if one would look on the front was a birthday catalogue.
Merlin had been pleased with the progress of Matthew in recent weeks, and knowing that his birthday was coming up, had decided to abide by this strange tradition and get him a gift. But what gift was the unanswerable question.
A toy truck?
A toy truck animated by magic?
A cat - no, that wouldn't do.
...
What the hell do I get him? There's nothing appropriate for the apprentice of a wizard that he'd actually be impressed by, except maybe my staff. But of course I can't give him mine -
Merlin froze in his realization.
Of course! A staff of his own!
It should work. I just need to get an appropriate branch...
Null Act: Merlin begins planning for Matthew's birthday, and begins searching for a suitable branch to make him a staff from.
He doesn't alert Matthew to this due to surprise party rules.

Aww, that's a shame. I was looking forwards to seeing more of the lovely fantasy world hinted at by the intro.

Same.

Darnos goes to the middle of CG3.

Quote from: Xantalos on September 02, 2013, 05:28:50 pm

Quote from: ragnarok97071 on September 02, 2013, 05:27:19 pm

Quote from: Xantalos on September 02, 2013, 05:19:43 pm

Quote from: Xantalos on September 02, 2013, 05:02:54 pm

((...could I also have an enchantment check on Darnos' armor?))

This armor appears a deep bloodred with leather wrappings around the arms, with crawling golden decorations all throughout it. It seems to drink in magic directed at you, making it less potent (+10 to MAG when countering a spell).

(())

((Trust me the downside may be worse... But that would be spoiling.))

((Lemme guess, it saps my life force/steals my soul/gives me amnesia/makes me obsessed with it?))

((You guys do know the scene ends when we go in the elevator, right? Your martial trance is going to last about 10 seconds.))

All the same to me.
Let's get going; I want to finish this and go back to the academy.