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tomboxe · 4 years

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The Batman

It was a moment. A brief flash of the man he’d been for decades. It passed very quickly though, the massive, grotesque smile. There were lines around his eyes now he no longer used the over the top makeup that had for so long struck terror into the citizens of Gotham. He sat back into the gently whirring massage chair that was his almost constant companion, his back an entire citadel of aches. The years of taking on the Batman had taken their toll on him.

He spared a thought for his old enemy and chuckled at the thought of the sheer mass of injuries he must have lived through. How he’d envied the brute force with which Bane had literally broken Batsy on one beautiful, almost tragic occasion. The iconic rictus flickered on his face again for a moment.

He grabbed his cane, the one with the jewel encrusted joker head on it, the only bit of memorabilia he’d kept from the old days. It had been a gift from old Cobblepot, and it was worth an absolute fortune. Not that he cared that much about money anymore.

He walked out to the street, hobbling slightly. He wasn’t a particularly old man, but he was, physically at least, a broken one. He just wanted to live out the rest of his days with the rest of his wealth. He paused at a newspaper stand and looked at the headlines.

“Top of the morning to you sir!”

The vendor’s voice was bright and cheerful. Too cheerful. And who in Gotham used a greeting like that? He got halfway in character, and the grin came out to play. The vendor recoiled a bit.

“Good morning to you, kind citizen. I haven’t my glasses on me, so pray tell, what does the news say?

His smile didn’t shift as the vendor told about crime after crime that the Batman had foiled. If the vendor had any training in reading body language, however, he’d have noticed the clenching of both fists around the head of the cane, the slight twitch in the eye, and the way the seemingly harmless man had drawn himself up to his full height. He didn’t though, and it was just as well for him, as there’s no telling what might have happened if he’d been thought to be goading the Clown Prince.

“And he vouched for the Joker’s old broad! You know, Harley Queen or something! She’s strictly on the straight an’ narrow now.”

The Joker winced at the mispronunciation, said a hurried thank you and walked away. He was angry, and knowing why he was angry made him even more so.

He hurried back to the abandoned amusement park he called home. It was familiar, a safe haven for a clown in an un-mad, sanitised world. He’d had the traps removed and a few creature comforts installed, but apart from that it was a functional fairground. His functional fairground.

He often left the carousel spinning so he could waltz to the music - by himself, now that Harley wasn’t here. She hadn’t left Gotham, but she had refused to stand by him during his trial. He had deserved that, of course. She had been devoted to him and when she had needed him most, he had tossed her aside like an old toy. He’d always been abusive towards her, but the coldness with which he had rejected her had even stunned the Batman.

He remembered it well. It had been one of the things that had escalated his downfall. He had set an elaborate trap for the Dark Knight. It would have been hilarious. It was a pastiche of all the big villains Batman had ever fought - a coin deluge a la TwoFace, a Penguinesque attack by a genetically modified peregrine falcon, a physical and psychological pummelling by Bane, slow acting poison by Ivy - all part of an elaborate death trap maze courtesy of the Riddler which he was forced to go through under the Mad Hatter’s mind control. The Joker chuckled at the perfect plan. He’d even got Carmine Falcone and Rupert Thorne to team up to decimate Wayne Industries and leave the Batman penniless.

The Bat had survived.

He’d blamed Harley, of course. She must have done something wrong. It had been the perfect plan. So when Harley inevitably came running, screaming for her Pudding, he didn’t tell her to get lost. He delivered her to Hugo Strange at Arkham Asylum and had her remanded as a risk to society, staying to watch the initial shock treatments - not that they helped his mood much.

Still, he missed Harley somewhat.

He turned on the TV in an attempt to distract himself. Harley was on the news. Her voice had lost some of its pitch, but she seemed happy.

“Without me!?”

His anger was misplaced, he knew. It had never been Harley’s fault. If he really wanted to kill the Batman he should have shot him in the head at point blank range.

The thought calmed him somewhat. A dead Batman meant anarchy in Gotham. Exciting. He hadn’t been excited in years. He wouldn’t lead the brave new world Batman’s death would usher in, but he could be the catalyst. He could kill the Batman.

Kill the Batman.

“Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! Kill the Batman!”

It sounded amazing out loud. The thought reverberated in his head, filling every part of his psyche. Suddenly it was crystal clear. For the Joker to find peace, the batman had to die.

He spent the next few days plotting. There had to be a crime with all the hallmarks of the Joker’s devious mind to draw out old Batsy. He toyed with the idea of bringing Harley in, but decided against it. It had to be personal.

When the Joker’s ghastly visage appeared above the city, commissioner Sarah Essen hoped and prayed it was a prank. She had been promoted to Commissioner after her husband died at the Joker’s hand, and she had lived in terror until the Batman finally caught the Clown Prince and put him in a facility as far away from Gotham as humanly possible - the Phantom Zone.

It was harder for her to get up to the roof these days, and she was thankful the Batman had upped his game in the years following the Joker’s comeuppance. She rarely had to summon him ever, but tonight she had to know.

He was already there, brooding in front of the filtered strobe light that was casting the Joker’s face into the night sky.

“He wants me.”

The gravelly baritone Bruce Wayne assumed when in his Batman persona had never really deceived her, she liked to think.

“Why?”

“Why not? I ended him.”

The silence between them seemed heavy with questions.

“They shouldn’t have let him out,” the Commissioner said quietly.

“Doesn’t matter. I need to take him down.”

“Yes. But...”

The Batman looked in her direction for the first time that night. His cowl only covered the top of his face, and slight fuzz that covered his chin was flecked with grey. You may be in peak human condition, but nobody lives forever, she thought.

“But what?” He asked.

“Nothing, nothing. It has to be done.”

“Yes. It does.”

In the few moments she spent contemplating her next words, he left. She looked up and was relieved at the fact. There was a time she would have been furious at the abruptness of his departure. Now she just wanted it to end. All of it.

She hobbled back down the fire escape to her office and waited for the inevitable rush of activity that would signify a Joker sighting.

Gotham City Bank. The Batman had foiled more robbery attempts than he could count. All of his Robins had numbers. Batgirl had... he remembered what the Joker had done to Batgirl. To Jason. To Commissioner Gordon.

Every important building had a skylight with an external lock that opened with a digital key that only Batman, the Commissioner and the Mayor had. The real key to the city, Mayor West used to say with a rich little chuckle that often made the Batman half smile in spite of himself.

He slid down into the building from the bank’s skylight. He knew the Joker would be expecting it, but he didn’t have the patience for stealth. He wanted the Joker taken down as quickly as possible.

The little circle pressed into his temple the moment his feet touched the floor.

“Hello Batsy,” the Joker spat. There was mirth in his voice, but it was tinged with an incredible amount of bitterness. Batman shifted his weight and launched his right arm up, knocking the gun out of the Joker’s hand. It spun up in the air and he spun to face his old foe, throwing a black gloved hand towards the Joker.

He wasn’t there.

The Batman touched a pressure point on his cowl and murmured “switch to infra red.”

“Oh I’m not hiding Batsy, although you might want to wish I was.”

He closed the distance between them before batman had a chance to react.

“Goodbye, Batman.”

The first two shots flung the Batman back onto the floor of the bank, the Kevlar that protected his chest battered, his ageing heart beating against it like a marching band. He made to get up, but the Joker swept his feet out from under him. The former maniac sat on Batman’s chest, put the gun a couple inches above the horrified face, and pulled the trigger.

Tears filled his eyes as he walked away, but he wiped them and held his head high as he got into the chauffeur driven limousine that was waiting for him. He wiped off his make up carefully and changed out of the purple suit. Dark slacks and a fitted nude-striped shirt were offset by plain white sneakers, and he became a rich middle aged man about town trying to have a good time.

Essen sensed that something was amiss before the Joker’s signal went out. She ran into the dark bank. Her hands shook as she surveyed the scene in front of her.

She thought quickly, her mind moving faster than her feeble frame would allow.

Nobody had called it in, so she had time to do what had to be done.

“You, Conroy! With me. And you, Timms. The rest of you stay here and let me know as soon as the paramedics get here.”

Between them they hurriedly shrugged the cape, cowl and suit off the still warm body, and shoved them behind a counter. When there was no way of connecting Bruce Wayne to the Batman, she looked into her officers’ faces.

“One word of this gets out, and your careers, your lives as you know them, are over.”

The she raised her voice.

“Civilian down! Where is the damn paramedic!?”

The whispers started as the paramedics stretchered the still form out into the ambulance. Essen climbed in with the body and the vehicle moved swiftly through Gotham without its sirens. The Commissioner held a press conference as soon as she returned to the station. Bruce Wayne had been shot dead at point blank range earlier that evening. Police were exploring the possibility it was related to the sighting of the Joker symbol over Gotham earlier in the evening. Yes, the Joker had agreed to come in for questioning. No, there would be no further comments until a breakthrough was made in the investigation. As she hobbled back into the station, she wished for the first time in a long time that her husband was still alive. She considered calling Barbara, but they spoke too rarely to be any source of comfort to one another. She called Bullock instead. He’d been rough around the edges when he was an officer with her husband, but he was a good man, and one of the few whose corruption her husband had overlooked in favour of his other qualities. He lived on a farm outside Gotham these days, retired since Commissioner Gordon’s death. He picked up the phone on the first ring.

“Commissioner,”

“Harvey, did you see the press conference?”

He grunted dismissively.

“Wayne’s dead.”

Silence. Harvey Bullock had always been jealous of the Batman, unwilling to work with a vigilante but in awe of the undeniable effectiveness of his methods. He had grown to greatly respect the Batman, and one of the reasons he’d retired was the knowledge that the Batman was there to protect Gotham better than he ever could.

“I’m on my way,” he said, and hung up the phone.

Blood seeped from the deep gouges on Selina’s arm. In fairness, she had almost strangled Isis when she’d heard. The tears flowed freely down her face. After all this time, she still loved the Batman fiercely, and it was out of respect for him that she had stopped being Catwoman. He had paid her the courtesy of telling her he was going to take down Gotham’s criminals for good. She had laughed in his gorgeously sculpted face and then kissed it, but he hadn’t responded. It had been a matter of days later when the Joker had been sent to the Phantom Zone.

She picked up her phone. It emitted a whiny laugh that made her wince.

“Hey darlin’” Harley minced down the line.

“Harley, I think the Joker killed the Batman.”

For the first time in their shared existence, Harley Quinn spoke without a lilt to her voice.

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Bruce Wayne’s death was announced a few hours after the Joker’s signal went out over Gotham.”

“No. He wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“That’s not how it works. He’d kill anyone close to Batman, but he’d never kill him. He wouldn’t have a reason to go on.”

Selina paused for a moment.

“What should we do?”

“You need to sit tight,” Harley replied. “I’m going down to Gotham PD to offer them my assistance. I know the Joker better than anyone, and if he’s guilty I can get him to tell me. Just seeing me will make his blood boil.”

“What about yours?”

“Excuse me?”

“Harley, I know what he did to you?”

“It’s Dr. Quinzel, and I know what he did as well. That’s why I don’t wear a fool’s costume anymore. I’m done being anyone’s idiot.”

“Be careful.”

Harley put her voice back on.

“I pwomise, puddin’”

Jerome Napier didn’t like to be called Jack. He liked the sound of Jerome. It was round. It rhymed with ‘home’. He couldn’t at this point remember what his real name was, and every time the psychiatrists who had spent years curing the Joker had tried to induce the memory, the psychosis returned. In the end they reminded him he’d once gone by the name Jack Napier, and he’d allowed them call him that. He much preferred Jerome though.

He was in the precinct now, explaining how he couldn’t possibly have killed Bruce Wayne to an enraged Harvey Bullock.

“You’re not even an officer anymore, Mr Bullock,” he said quietly, interrupting an invective filled rant. “I don’t have to answer your questions, and I don’t want to.”

Commissioner Essen walked in and chuckled mirthlessly.

“You will answer all our questions, Joker.”

Jerome winced at the name. He’d only killed the Batman to finally set himself free, and he felt more at peace than he had in years. He was mildly surprised to find out Bruce Wayne was Batman, but then again he’d always hated the rich fool just as much, so it was no real loss. It did kind of ruin the whole Dark Knight aesthetic for him though.

He mused silently, unimpressed and uninterested in the discussion around him. There was no way they could tie him to this. A copycat must have done it. He was cured.

“Talia!”

After seven centuries Ra’s still spoke with the clarity and authority of a well tuned bell. Talia turned away from Damian and faced her father.

“Yes, father?”

“What will you do?”

“What can I do?”

The Demon Head paused for a moment. He looked at his grandson with a glint in his eye and malice in his heart, and spoke quietly.

“The boy will go.”

“What?”

Damian hadn’t been paying much attention to anyone, lost in his own musings and uninterested in anything but himself. He didn’t want to go to Gotham and he didn’t want to see his father. He didn’t even want to be here.

“You will go to Gotham.”

“Why?

“To honour your father’s legacy.”

“I don’t care about...”

He’d forgotten about his grandfather’s formidable temper. In a flash he was on his back, a sword at his neck.

“You will not disrespect me. You will not question me. Your father, although I despised him greatly, was a man of honour and you will keep his name alive.”

“I am not Batman.”

“You are the Son of the Bat and the grandscion of the Demon Head. You are more than capable.”

His mother’s voice still sounded like smooth, rich syrup over ice cream. He stopped arguing and started thinking.

“My costume will be comfortable, and white. I will have horns. I will be at once angel and demon and bat.”

Ra’s could see the homage and the individuality, and he respected it. He had his personal costumier and technicians work with Damian and ordered them to get him ready within days. As the straight faced young man left with them, he spoke quietly to Talia.

“It’s about time the brat started to do something worthwhile.”

Talia smiled. She didn’t agree with the Demon Head’s reason, but her heart was heavy, and she could think of no better way to honour her beloved than what he had come up with. And having Damian out of the way would make it easier to bring Bruce back to her.

The Joker almost jumped out of his seat when Harley walked into the room.

Let’s rephrase that, since they’re both civilians now. Jerome almost jumped out of his seat when Dr Quinzel walked into the interrogation room.

“Harley?”

The question was at once pure incredulity and infinite scorn.

“Come to gloat have you?”

“Awww puddin’” she fawned sarcastically. “No I haven’t. I’m here to find out why you killed Batman.”

“Why? Not if?”

“Don’t play coy with me, Jack Napier.”

He longed to wrap his hands around that neck and squeeze it till it snapped. How dare she gather the nerve to be anything but obsequious to him. He looked in her beautiful eyes and it hit him. She wasn’t asking him if he did it because she knew. He may have twisted her all ends up and played on her emotions to an incredible degree, but she was still a clinically trained psychiatrist, and she’d studied him for years.

“It’s the only way I can be free, Dr Quinzel.”

For the first time since he’d become the Joker, he realised that by killing the Batman he’d acknowledged that the game was over and he’d been beaten. He spoke then. He spoke about how he only wanted to be left alone, how he was tired of everything and everybody. He didn’t regret what he’d done, but he wasn’t that person anymore - or at least he didn’t want to be. How else could he prove to himself that he wasn’t the Joker anymore? The Joker would never have killed the Batman - it would be suicide. Harley let him finish and smiled.

Selina helped Talia because she didn’t know what else to do. Everyone else seemed useful. Harley had gotten a full confession out of the Joker, Bullock had started working with the new White Bat to keep the streets of Gotham safe, the Commissioner had taken Arkham in hand and the Joker was in a secure unit having the last vestiges of the Clown Prince stripped away. When Talia had come to her to ask her to rob Bruce Wayne’s grave, it had seemed disgusting and disrespectful, but it had given her something to do other than mope and nurse her broken heart.

Getting past the police stationed to control the crowds that had gathered every day since the murder was the easy part. She had considered putting on the old Catwoman costume, but even though she was still the same size she had been all those years ago, it didn’t feel right. She had squeezed into a comfortable pair of jeans and a turtleneck sweater, and she looked just like any other mourner. She had taken advantage of an understandable lapse in concentration to slip past the patrol and eased herself down into the Wayne Family crypt. Talia joined her a few moments later, and they made short work of opening the ornately carved coffin. When they emerged with the body, she noticed a neat pile of uniformed officers leaning against a nearby tree. She chuckled and looked over at her employer, who shrugged. A sudden gust of wind brought her back to the present, and the grin slid right off her face.

This was Bruce Wayne’s body they were carrying, the man both of them had loved above any other. The man both of them had loved not as the playboy billionaire philanthropist, but as Gotham’s gruff, taciturn guardian of the night. She knew Bruce and Batman would both disapprove of being brought back by the Lazarus Pit, but she was as desperate as Talia to see his face again, to smirk at him knowing her insistence on being Catwoman drove him crazy.

The drive to Gotham Airport was uneventful. They picked Harley up from the precinct and flew straight for Nanda Parbat.

Ra’s was expecting them, and did not try to stop them, only warning them that as the Batman had killed in his career and had lived in the darkness, his madness would be severe.

Four of his maidens prepared Bruce Wayne’s corpse for the ritual. He was anointed with healing and soothing oils, swathed in the rich black and gold cloth that only high ranking League of Assassins members were permitted to fashion into robes, and placed on a quickly assembled wooden platform.

“This part of the process is often harrowing to those who have loved the resurrected,” Ra’s warned. The three women looked at him, unmoving. He shrugged and raised his hands. The maidens disappeared, and four pallbearers took their place. They hoisted the platform on broad shoulders and walked over to the gently bubbling pit. Ra’s lowered his hands, and they lowered the platform carefully into the pit, careful not to touch the surface of the water. The Bat’s body lay just beneath the surface, and the water churned around him. Greens and reds erupted around him as the baleful life giving force made its way into his body.

All of a sudden the churning stopped. Bruce lay still, still just beneath the water, a beatific smile of his face. Moments passed, moments that seemed like aeons to the women. Talia had seen this before - with her own father - so she knew it was only a matter of time. Selina’s perfectly manicured nails were tearing into the leather of her jacket as she hugged herself.

“Nothing’s happening!”

Harley’s whisper was urgent, worried. She didn’t care much for the Batman, but it had been Bruce Wayne who had made it possible for her to return to her career after decades as the Joker’s accomplice. Even as Batman he had treated her with more dignity and respect than the maniac she had loved.

He only ever tried to stop me from hurting people

The revelation hit her hard, and her eyes opened in shock. The man she had antagonised for most of her adult life had consistently avoided hurting her and she had paid him no notice whatsoever.

Lost in her thoughts, she missed the moment when Bruce emerged from the pit. His leap landed him directly on on of Ra’s men, who stood no chance against the man Ra’s himself had trained. In a second a neck snapped loudly, and Bruce was crouched like a panther, ready to pounce on anyone. His jet black hair was streaked grey at the sides, his eyes wild and menacing, full of a cunning none of the women had seen in Batman. His smile was cruel and taunting.

The remaining three men jumped on Bruce. It was the last thing any of them did. Free of the usual restraint the Batman showed, the deranged person before them murdered the men with devastating efficiency. He stood up, his back still arched, and approached the women.

Ra’s, who had watched impassively from a nearby doorway, pounced. Sensing an equal, Feral Bruce stalked.

“That’s it,” Ra’s taunted as they circled one another.

Talia, quite sensibly, poked a syringe in Bruce’s neck as he passed her, and pushed the plunger as he turned to face her. He managed one wildly aimed slap that she easily avoided before he crumpled to the floor unconscious.

After Jerome Napier’s confession was made public, his trial became a bit of a circus. He was glad he hadn’t laid eyes on Harley since that night. She had gotten under his skin the way only she could - made him admit murder, and would probably be the reason he went away for a long, long time.

He chuckled at the thought. Funny enough, he felt no malice towards her. He no longer wanted to wring her throat and laugh at her as she suffocated under his ministrations. He was at peace.

I killed the Batman. The game is over. I’ve lost, but so has he, and so has Gotham.

Me.

The Jovial Conniver Commonly Called the Joker.

He laughed out loud, and someone in an adjoining cell yelled at him to shut up.

He laughed louder, elevating the hearty laugh to the chilling tone all of Gotham knew only too well.

Silence.

It was good to know people still had a little respect.

Three months.

That’s how long it took Harley, Talia and Selina to restore Bruce’s sanity. They weren’t helped by the fact he was furious at them for raising him. He almost killed Harley when she remarked drily that he could at least be thankful for a second chance.

“I’ve never seen him so serene,” she said after rubbing her neck for a few moments. “It’s weird.”

Her comment about Bruce had only been a response to a fresh bout of anger. He’d stormed into the room raging at Talia and Selina for subjecting him to the Lazarus Pit, interrupting Harley mid flow. She’d snapped at his rudeness more than anything.

“I’m sorry,” said Bruce.

“Not you.”

“Napier?”

“Yes. It seems the Joker has finally found peace in your death.”

Bruce sat quietly.

Not many people knew how to contact the League of Assassins, and even fewer could get a direct link to the inner chambers. When one of Ra’s men walked into Bruce’s room with a small, inauspicious looking phone, he knew who it would be.

“Damian.”

“Father.”

“How’s Gotham?”

“Father, the Joker helped me bring in Hubert Cobblepot and Edward Nigma, Jr.”

“What?”

“He worked extensively with and against their parents, so when they tried to hold the city to ransom as a sort of trial for me, Jerome Napier asked to see me.”

“And you went to him.”

“I’m not you, father. I have no personal agenda against him. If he has one against me, he hides it well. He didn’t lie to me once - you know I can tell.”

“And he helped you crack the case.”

“Wide open, as they say.”

Bruce let out a long, low whistle. This was a turn of events he hadn’t expected. Still...

“Did he help you as the Joker, or as Napier?”

“Both.” There was a familiar smirk in the younger Wayne’s voice. “He refuses to be addressed as the Joker, but he takes great pleasure in ruining people’s plans - only now he’s targeting criminals.”

“Hmmmmm...”

“I have to go. I merely thought this might interest you.”

“It does. Goodbye, Son.”

“Bye dad,” Damian said with an exaggerated flourish.

It was safe to say they didn’t have the best relationship.

When Bruce asked Harley to go with him on a trip around the world, Selina and Talia nearly lost it. He needed them to keep an eye on the Joker and Damian, and he needed Harley to keep an eye on his mind. If there were any other reasons, he kept them to himself.

#batman #fan fiction #fanfic #the joker #harley quinn #catwoman #talia al ghul

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avid971 · 7 years

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Queen X Division #inktober2017 #queen #division #afro #afropuff #jewel #creole #curves #twoface #emotion #sensation #bighairdontcare #curly #nappy #healthy #inktober #picoftheday #bic #kraft #girl #melanin #hairstyle #sketch #illustration #draw #drawingwhileblack #crown — view on Instagram http://ift.tt/2geQ98s

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theselkiesea · 7 years

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Remember!

Oh jeez, I didnae mean for it to be this long. Sorry about that doll! But I hope you enjoy it xxx

Fandom: Arkham AsylumCharacters mentioned: Twoface, Emily (oc), Cash and Doctor Chen

Twoface dropped his coin into Emily’s hand, a few of his masked goons gasped, surprised that he casually gave his most valuable possession over.

“I hope this helps you remember.”

The coin felt warm in her palm and it got hotter as if it had been lying out in the sun for a long time. It was filled with memories and it was hard to concentrate on just one. She closed her eyes and pictured her younger self and tried to match it with a memory.

It wasn’t long until one caught her attention. Emily focused on it and shortly she was no longer in Twoface’s office but back in Arkham Asylum, she stood in an empty hallway but heard footsteps coming her way.

Twoface came around a corner, two guards behind him and Cash was leading the way. They past by her and Emily followed them out of the penitentiary. Outside waiting for them was Doctor Chen along with another guard.

“Good afternoon Mr Dent. We’re going to try a different therapy technique today. If you’d like to escort Mr Dent to the dining hall with me, please.”

For a moment Emily’s vision blurred then quickly cleared and she found herself standing by the door that lead into the lunch hall. Doctor Chen was scribbling something on his clipboard then handed the pen over to Twoface and made him sign his name.

“The room is heavily guarded. If you hurt the girl I won’t hesitate to take you to the ground” Cash warned him as he took off the handcuffs. Doctor Chen then opened the door into the lunch hall and Twoface looked inside.

Standing up on a bench so that she reached the table was the younger Emily, she looked around the age of seven. Surrounding her were various cooking equipment and ingredients. She had already made such a mess with the flour.

“What the Hell is this?” he turned to Chen, voice rasping with confusion.

“This is the new therapy technique,” he smiled, “Step inside, please.”

He was hesitant at first but stepped inside, Cash followed behind and stayed by the door and watched. Twoface groaned, although a part of him found it amusing. Did they honestly think a child could help someone like him? He chuckled at the thought.

“Hi there, sir! I’m making cupcakes! They said that you would be helping me” the little girl exclaimed excitedly.

“Did they?” He took out his coin and flipped it then saw the result. He was going to help her.

“You’ve made quite the mess haven’t you, little one.”

“I’m sorry. Are you mad at me?” she asked worriedly.

“No. Do you have a recipe?

“Oh yes! I choose the chocolate one because that’s my favourite! Could you help me crack the eggs, please?”

He helped crack the eggs and mixed together the sugar and butter then prepared the other ingredients and then she put it into paper cases.

“Do you want sprinkles or marshmallows? I think I’m going to have sprinkles because I like the crunch noise it makes in my mouth.”

“We have to put them in the oven first” he told her. Cash called Emily over and she took the tray into the kitchen with him.

Twoface was still so confused. What was the girls purpose? Surely they were breaking some sort of health and safety rules having a child so close to him? What sort of ‘new therapy technique’ allowed a violent criminal to make treats with a little girl? He didn’t understand. What the Hell was going on?!

Twenty minutes later the little Emily returned with the cupcakes baked and quickly began to cover it in icing sugar. “Can you pass over the sprinkles, please?”

He handed the small bowl over and took a pinch and dashed it over his own.

“You’re a very polite little girl” he commented.

“Why thank you,” she beamed, “I don’t want to be rude to my new friend.”

That word stung more than he thought it would. Where these guards and doctors just as insane as him? No, no, no, I’m not your friend, he shouted inside his head. He had to clench his fists to control his frustration.

“Are you not scared of me, girl? Does my face not frighten you?”

Her eyes met his, they were bright and green and shimmered like pretty emeralds. Twoface looked into those innocent jewels and suddenly felt a warmth grow in his chest, it didn’t feel natural but it wasn’t unpleasant. He clutched his chest and looked at her in bewilderment.

“What…what did you just do to me?” he demanded but kept his tone calm.

“You don’t scare me” she smiled and ignored his question, “I think you’re very handsome. And finished!”

She looked down proudly at her cupcake, happy with how she designed it.

Cash walked over and told them that their time was up. He put the hand cuffs back on and guided Twoface back to the door were Doctor Chen stood and had been watching everything closely.

The doctor wore the smuggest of smiles, “Would you like to see her again?”

Harvey glanced back at the little girl sliding cupcakes into her basket. She looked up and caught him staring and smiled back and waved happily. He didn’t what to think. But he strangely felt…better? What had that curious girl done to him?

A small smile played on his lips but it was gone as soon as he turned back to the doctor who was waiting for his answer.

He stared at his coin but had no desire to slip it. “Yes.”

#jenjenwrites #arkham asylum #arkham asylum game #emily #twoface #ive thought about this wee scene for a long time

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itsbenedict · 6 months

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The eight teams in the Jewelwide Academic Warball Society, by very cool graphic designer Jessica Ninness. (Part of my ongoing RPG campaign, Two-Faced Jewel.)

#twofaced jewel

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itsbenedict · 1 day

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Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 25

Undercover at the Soup Kitchen

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party disarmed a large bomb, and set to work trying to take apart the big magical apparatus powering the death-field whosiwhatsit surrounding Dead Jane. This being difficult, they called in some outside help, who're set to arrive soon.

While Looseleaf and Oliver work on necromantic cleanup logistics, though, Saelhen- as "Sumiko Doe"- has infiltrated the Ashtray, and needs to solidify her cover and get the lay of the land in their territory. Let's see what she's up to!

Will-O tells Saelhen they're going to have a powwow discussing what to do about the EVIL MOTH NECROMANCER later that night- so in the meantime, she's got the run of the place due to Will-O's complete lack of regard for anything resembling operational security. What's she going to do first?

She starts by asking for directions from the nearest kid- who happens to be draped motionless over a fence because he's high and sick off some kind of weird bug he found in the woods. She administers some impromptu first-aid, and with a mixed success manages to empty the contents of his stomach all over her face. Great! Gross! Grea-oss! Gro-eat?

She asks for directions, and is led meanderingly around the place. As they walk, Saelhen notices that the kid, Too-Skinny, is not unusual vis-a-vis getting high on random psychoactive jungle lifeforms- and there are very few adults around supervising this Neverland-ass delinquency zone. There's a drug problem, and a hygiene problem, and a kids-throwing-dirt-at-everyone-in-sight-constantly problem.

Too-Skinny, leads her to a farmhouse slightly less ramshackle than the other ramshackle farmhouses around, covered in rude graffiti. It's got a sigil of Ccorde over the door- which is weird, because Ccorde is the goddess of Harmony. Hyper-lawful types you wouldn't expect to find on an anarchist commune.

There's a line outside the door, made up of slightly more serious-looking kids carrying baskets of fruit and grain. She gets in line to find out what that's all about.

Meanwhile, the backup Zzaiya rustled up for Oliver and Looseleaf has arrived!

The goblin, Busy-Hands, is majoring in hydraulics, and he's excited to get his hands on this ancient magic-pump situation. He's brought a small horned lizard with him that is apparently vital to the process. The dark elf, Say, Oliver recognizes as one of his classmates- an Epistomancy specialist who doesn't talk much. (She bears an uncanny resemblance to Vayen, besides the outfit, hair, and piercings. Some relation?)

As they head underground to the pump, Say begins casting a bazillion Epistomancy spells by incantation under her breath. The party doesn't take me up on the offer to roll Epistomancy to try and decipher what she's doing, so whatever it is she's up to, she does it unopposed! I smile about this.

Once they get down to the pump, and Busy-Hands has his lizard survey the situation (to unclear effect), it's time to bust out the tools and get to work turning this pump back on. The dice on these Fiddle With It rolls are extremely kind to them (plus big bonuses from calling in specialist support), so they pretty much identify all the problems.

One is- they were missing less than they thought, earlier, when they couldn't get it to work. Turns out this pump just sucks and is very slow even if you do get it working, because it's made of wood and wood is a terrible material for pipes. Black mana only sticks to dead stuff, by default, and is otherwise intangible- so the whole pump had to be made of a substance that its fluid adheres to. It needs a large power source to force this stuff through the tubes!

They identify the missing power source, which is almost dry of mana. There's just a little bit left to tell the death spell to be "on", since epistomantic array plus mana equals spell, even if the spell itself somehow doesn't consume the mana. Hypothetically, they could turn off the death field by just draining the "make the spell be active" mana without actually extracting the death goop itself.

Problem is... again, as soon as they turn off that death field and microorganisms show up, the bodies will begin to rot. So... they're going to need a plan if they want to resurrect people here. As soon as they do it, the clock begins ticking.

...But do they want to resurrect people here? Oliver is not bullish on the idea- after all, they resurrected Lydia and she tried to blow them up, and he's not expecting the rest of this criminal gang to really be worth the trouble to save.

That's about when Curly Fry shows up and collapses to the floor, out of breath. Has she been... running around the place in the death field without healing? She was supposed to be with Orluthe, right? Regardless, Looseleaf heals her.

Oh, right- the stumps aren't just gangs. They're also landlords, with lots of residents who pay lifeforce in exchange for a dry place to live. Looseleaf and Oliver leave the TMU people to work on the pump while they do a survey of the bodies to see how many lives are at stake here, exactly.

Their stamina rolls for this exhaustive search of a bunch of underground tunnels don't go their way, but they can make some estimates.

Ultimately, their decision is... this is a bigger job than they really have the time and willpower to do. But, they don't have to do it all themselves- again, they can call in backup. In this case... they have right here a very large amount of death essence, which the ecumenes need to do resurrections and will pay through the nose for. They could use this windfall to hire a small army of clerics to come in and do the resurrections for them.

They cut the power.

So that's mostly figured out! There's some more logistics to work through, still, but while they hash those out... what's Saelhen up to?

The line's made it inside the farmhouse, and Saelhen sees a lot of kids who look bored. With abundant farmland around, it's not hard to find things that are technically edible- but if you want an actual meal, you need someone with a kitchen who can cook, and those are in short supply. So the line is long, and kids don't have a lot of patience.

She spots the head of this operation- a halfling woman wearing weird stilt-boots to tower over the kids, wearing official Harmony clerical garb denoting her rank.

Saelhen offers to help, but this woman is not about to look past the fact that Saelhen is currently covered in goblin vomit, which is bad for working in a kitchen. Saelhen tries to talk her way past this, but the woman gets distracted by more kids making a mess pretty much immediately.

She opts to demonstrate her helpfulness via some child-wrangling, surveying the situation and trying to figure out the dynamic.

The kid apologizes and gets to work- and Saelhen then makes her dex save against getting whacked on the head with a ladle, because despite being helpful she is in the kitchen while covered in goblin vomit GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT. She's directed to a hose in the back, and makes an attempt to get clean.

Still, apparently having a ruined exploded sooty dress is also not kitchen kosher. Saelhen kowtows expertly with an effusive apology and a sob story about all her friends being dead, and the woman sighs and gets her a smock to cover up with.

Having infiltrated this nerve center of the operation, Saelhen sets to work both cooking and spying, trying to get everyone's names and figure out who's important.

Bettyanne Longthistle is the cleric of Ccorde here, who set up shop specifically to try and civilize these ungovernable rapscallions who keep causing trouble. She's not really on good terms with the Ashtray, who she regards as the source of all the chaos and strife in the area. Still, she's committed to building bridges, which means her strategy for combating them is to patiently serve the community and show that Ccorde's approach is superior to theirs.

Sid deWisp, a middle-aged halfling man, is the Ashtray's cleric of Eman. He's the one that provided the blessings that let them get into Dead Jane, and seems to have showed up just to argue with Bettyanne about liberty and authoritarianism. They have some kinda weird blackrom thing going on.

Caria Yard is a human teen with more acne than face, who's been self-studying a little bit of thermomancy- making her one of the Ashtray's few mages, since magic is mostly beyond self-taught teens.

There's a few others who in retrospect didn't really matter so I'm skipping 'em.

As Saelhen schmoozes, she's interrupted by Caria running in carying a body- some kid's been stabbed, because apparently the Lichen have attacked! (The Lichen are those guys who first ambushed the party when they made land in Thunderbrush- small-time thugs.)

Saelhen then meets the goddess Ccorde face-to-face, as Bettyanne channels to heal the kid. Ccorde is happy to heal the kid, but seems unhappy with the Ashtray for failing to figure out a diplomatic solution to their tensions with the Lichen. If they're being attacked, it's because they've failed to find common ground! She's kind of a dick about it.

Saelhen offers her negotiating services as Ccorde departs, and Caria briefs her on the complex political situation:

They're dickheads

They see kids who have stuff and want to take it

So they attack them and take it

Because they are huge assholes

Saelhen suggests a show of force- but apparently that's a no-go, because the actual complex political situation is that the Lichen are supposed to be abiding by a non-aggression pact as part of the mysterious conspiracy agreement they're supposed to both be in on. Counterattacking would break the agreement, and apparently this Tonnera-stopping plan is more important than taking revenge on the Lichen right now.

Why the Lichen are breaking the pact... might have to be investigated. But next time!

#twofaced jewel #tfj log

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itsbenedict · 1 month

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Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 22

Two? You Are Like A Little Baby. Watch This:

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party finally ran into the Ashtray butts they came to investigate- and it seemed like they were there to scrape a bunch of death essence/thanergy/black mana out of some big room-sized magic spell array, and box it up for unknown purposes. After scaring the everloving piss out of some of their noncombatants, the party moved to go take on Zeego, the group's terrifying tiger-man muscle. So it's time for an epic boss fight, right?

Well. Maybe.

After Ember and Scrap-King flee topside, the party sees Miriko and Curly Fry standing at the entrance to the west hallway. Miriko's holding up a shimmering barrier to protect the two of them and Oyobi, who's firing arrows down a dark hallway at an ongoing melee between Orluthe (as the ALPHA DOOMHOUND) and Zeego.

The party prepares to deal with this. Orluthe fails a strength check to throw Zeego off, Oliver prints a pneuma-sword, Miriko takes down the barrier, Looseleaf readies to fire off Soul Rend, and--

--Saelhen rolls double twenties on an attempt to throw a knife and stun Zeego. Yes, on the heels of Oliver rolling double twenties to investigate the spirit array powering the death field. What Oliver got out of that was a new skill for scribing spirit magic arrays. What Saelhen gets out of this is...

Saelhen didn't know she knew how to do that. Something in her just knew, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Ha ha! That's weird! Weird that she knows how to do that somehow!

Everyone is pretty alarmed by Saelhen paralyzing this guy with a single nerve strike- particularly Miriko, who begins to suspect that Saelhen is secretly affiliated with the Thorns, Thunderbrush's premier shadowy cabal of assassins.

Looseleaf runs to treat Orluthe, who was down to 6HP before the rest of the party even got to the fight. Zeego was going to be a pretty fucking scary boss fight! But now he's completely immobilized.

The party moves to cleanup step, and starts healing and restraining the fatally injured foes- plus interrogating them a bit. Zeego had a couple halfling goons with him (the players never asked, but the goons did have names- Hearth, Mason, and Roland deWisp), who mostly died. The party's able to heal them just fine, though- thanks to the field here creating necromantic tethers on people, they don't need a cleric to perform a resurrection. Just grab the hanging soul and use it to heal normally!

Unfortunately, none of them know that much about the purpose of the mission. They turn to interrogating Zeego, instead.

What follows is some discussion of the politics of Thunderbrush. Tonnera Mighty, notably, is a giant tree that towers over the entire city, which means she casts a shadow. This is bad for growing crops inside city limits, and because the jungle is an untamed nightmare of dangerous wildlife that must be constantly fended off by a fortified wall, inside city limits is really the only game in town for agriculture. It's hard to feed a populous city that way! Tonnera can shift her boughs a bit to give specific areas more light, but you need to be well-connected (like Oliver's family) to have the sunlight privileges necessary for agriculture.

What this means is that there's some social stratification to the basic means of feeding yourself, here. You either need to own a fishing boat and a place to store it (and risk your life fending off aquatic monsters), own land on the productive floodplain to the north (and get sunlight favors from Tonnera), or attempt to farm in the Stump-held territory to the south, outside Tonnera's shadow (and contend with inter-mafia turf wars). Growing cycles for crops on the Jewel are considerably shorter and more productive than those on Earth, which means it's possible to sustain a city's population on less farmland than residential land, but Thunderbrush is still a place running up against its carrying capacity.

There are also other concerns with Tonnera- a high-profile incident forty years ago where she apparently massacred a student protest, dubiously in self-defense, and an "accident" where a young girl belonging to a politically vocal family was killed in a scheduled building demolition.

Zeego believes that "fire will set us free", and that destroying Tonnera will solve all of their problems. There's a few issues with that, though- chief among them that there's a whole second city in her branches. It's not clear he's thought this through all the way.

Zeego also mentions that Red, the infernal teenager, is technically "in charge" of this mission, and might know more about how the black mana relates to the overarching goal- but also threatens the party that they'll be in serious trouble with "the boss" if they hurt his kid.

Vayen and Lydia went after Red! Uh-oh!

The party heads down that third hallway, resurrect another goon, and and find...

Looseleaf cheerfully explains the situation vis-a-vis killing all their friends and resurrecting them with necromancy, and offers to sit down and talk things out. It goes swell!

They let the kid out from Vayen's fucked-up tentacle trap, and try to have a civil conversation, but they're not having it. They do let on that they know something important about the plan that the rest of the butts don't know, but getting it out of them... it's not going well. There's a long conversation attempting to reason with Red and Zeego, but the fact of the matter is that they're a couple of angry anarchist teens who see the party as a bunch of bootlickers who can't be reasoned with.

Saelhen, realizing this, decides to take another approach. She signals to the team that she should be left alone to interrogate Red, and the party obliges. Looseleaf has an inkling of what Saelhen's planning, and plays it up.

Saelhen, finally alone with Red, starts signing in Thieves' Cant- pretending to drop the mask.

Her cover story is that she's been coerced into service. Her name is Sumiko Doe, just recently resurrected by a mysterious bug necromancer and her posse of miscellaneous scary elven freaks (plus Oliver and a werewolf). She brags about how easy it was to trick them into thinking she was on their side- which she had to do, because of how scary this evil necromancer is.

Red eats this up, excited to have a kindred spirit and an ally who can help them get out of this jam. They ask if she's "with the bird". Saelhen rolls a mixed failure trying to read into this, and just gets...

Yeah, Red is spilling. And recruiting! Wants "Sumiko" to join the Ashtray, now that her gang is dead. Even volunteers some useful information- apparently they're planning to replace Tonnera, take control of her through someone else. That's what the death essence is for.

Unfortunately, that's all they know as far as details- but their dad, Will-O, should know more, if Sumiko wants to escape and come with them back to base.

They rejoin the party, considering how best to engineer this "escape" back to Will-O to get information...

...when Lydia comes up the stairs nearby. And says there's a bomb.

A bomb?!

Yeah, a bomb. A really big bomb, downstairs. And everyone needs to run for their lives right now or they'll all explode and die.

Saelhen is skeptical, and rolls Something's Fishy.

Oh boy! Well that's a problem for next session, huh?

#twofaced jewel #tfj log

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itsbenedict · 1 month

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I guess. I will adjust the knob. And kill myself instantly with furious rays.

#twofaced jewel #tfj out of context

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itsbenedict · 1 year

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my birthday is tomorrow! if you want to do something nice for me for my birthday, one nice thing would be to check out the session logs for Two-Faced Jewel, my formerly-D&D fantasy campaign i've been running and writing summary posts for for the past couple years. i've put a considerable fraction of my time and creative energy into this for a good long while, and i think like, two people besides the players ever read them? (i very much appreciate both of you. 💙)

there's an index of all the posts here, and a fun short-form recap of the first twenty-odd sessions here. i think i've done a lot of cool and interesting things with it, am seeking sweet sweet validation, and am not above invoking Birthday Law to beg!

#twofaced jewel

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itsbenedict · 3 months

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Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 20

Dredge the Lost

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party made it through a moderately deadly wasteland of zombie parasite bugs and magical spirit deathification... into the corpse of Dead Jane, a mysterious ghost dryad mafia donna who's been killing everything within over a hundred meters of her for 102 years. Surely searching this place for criminals will be less dangerous!

They first find themselves in a hallway which has been pretty thoroughly stripped down. They aren't the first people to acquire magical protection and try to loot the place, and there's not much to find in this first floor. All that's left are things too broken to be worth stealing, like some smashed firefly lamps or furniture. A quick once-over doesn't reveal all that much, so they turn to Miriko for more information.

Not getting much from that, they check out the rooftop.

Rooftop's also pretty bare- looks like it was a garden, a hundred years ago before everything died and the place was looted.

Still nothing of value up here, so the party start getting serious. Earlier, they spotted a staircase in the floor going down, which was covered in a heavy iron grille with a padlock. Guessing that a place that was still locked after a hundred years wouldn't have been looted, they give it a shot- Saelhen popping the lock, and the party's physical fighters straining to lift the heavy and rusted grille.

On their way down, they hear a CLUNK from upstairs.

They go up to investigate, but don't see anything- the grille's still open, and they're not trapped or anything. They suspect they might be being followed, but they proceed back downstairs anyway. And at the same point on the stairs... the CLUNK again.

This time, Saelhen goes up to investigate alone, hoping to stealthily catch their pursuer off-guard. She again finds nothing... until Orluthe takes a couple steps back down the stairs, and she nearly gets pushed over by some large invisible rectangular floating object.

A little investigation later, involving a splash of ink from an inkwell and some risky climbing, they discover... hey, this is their garden box! The one they got from that vampire gardener, all the way 24 sessions ago. Apparently the way the "shrinking" works is that the "shrunken" box is an illusory projection, linked to the real box which normally floats in the air above, invisibly, just out of sight. (Since... spatiomancy no longer exists, and I needed to justify the existence of a shrinking garden box.) Mystery solved, they proceed into the basement level, leaving the box to clunk against the stairwell invisibly in a futile effort to follow behind.

Through a closed door, they find themselves in an armory, well-stocked with all sorts of conventional weapons. Anything made with wood is dried out and brittle, and anything made of metal is rusted, but it's all intact- as are, apparently, some corpses!

Looseleaf botches the roll to scan them with spirit magic, so Saelhen attempts a more manual autopsy by cutting them open. And she finds that... these corpses are infested with revenant bugs, but those bugs died somehow, leaving the bodies mostly untouched except on the inside. Gross!

After Oliver takes a pneuma blueprint of one of the armory's shields, they proceed deeper via a secret passage Oliver finds hidden under a rack of axes.

Inside is... a secret treasure room! Full of boxes of gold! Each box of gold has a label a name attached, each with the surname "Doe", followed by an amount and a brief description of the source. Some just say "won", others mention names of victims or descriptions of grifts. Each is signed off underneath by the same "Curly Fry Doe".

The party divvies up the old blood money, collectively 2400 gold. Not a bad haul!

They leave the secret room and head into what seems to be an old meeting room, with filing cabinets and a table covered in maps. There's a conure avian slumped over the table, differentiated from the other corpses by a weird distortion effect surrounding her.

Saelhen pops the file cabinets, and goes through some of these ancient documents, protected from rot by the death field, and finds a bunch of records on all the inhabitants of Jane's corpse. Names to put to the dead faces!

Looseleaf inspects the maps, which seem to describe a number of contradictory battle plans- some sort of big attack was being planned when everyone died, but it doesn't seem like they could agree on a target. She consults Miriko about them, trying to see what she can glean about who the Does- Jane's gang- were in conflict with.

The result is... the field seems very weak, being almost out of mana. It's projecting just enough of a field to protect her corpse from revenant bugs, leaving it nearly pristine- only barely different from an alive person.

All the other corpses are full of dead revenant bugs, and are of little interest, so Saelhen goes ahead and looks up this avian woman in the personnel records- a fairly new member with an exemplary combat assessment, fast-tracked to the Antler Division. One Lydia Glye, with a rough sketch matching the corpse.

Oh, sure! Why not do that last thing? They've recently learned some necromancy, after all! They carefully apply their knowledge and reel in whatever's on the other end of that tether- until it comes into contact with the body, which tries to eject it immediately. Luckily, they're holding tight enough to keep the cord from snapping- and they try again, after healing the body with Orluthe's divine magic. This time...

Lydia Glye freaks out, because from her perspective she was having a normal conversation with her gang and then suddenly everyone in the room was dead except for a bunch of strangers who appeared out of nowhere. They attempt to speedrun the exposition, which kind of overwhelms and confuses her for a bit- but she believes them, once she tries knocking on the wall and finds her boss, the dryad, isn't responding. Doesn't stop her from holding a knife up at them with practiced precision- she's ready to kill anyone at any moment if she decides she doesn't like what they're saying.

Saelhen rolls Something's Fishy to try to get a read on her motives, crits, and gets the sense that... she's not lying about being confused by all this, or being alarmed that everyone's dead... but she's also hiding something. She's worried they'll notice she's faking... something, but Saelhen has no idea what, even on a crit. She's worried this whole setup might be a trap to out her.

Lydia notices one of the nearby corpses has been cut open, and the party has to explain the whole revenant bugs situation- and Lydia, not quite trusting them, performs some sort of field autopsy on her own, to verify. Which... is not something normal that mafia thugs do! She's got some sort of medical knowledge she's not explaining.

Lydia claims she doesn't know anything about that necromantic tether on her, which Saelhen is pretty sure is true- but she does know that all of Jane's mages were busy working on some sort of secret project called the "cervix" deeper down, which she managed to learn about by tricking them into being a little more loose-lipped. It seems like she'd been doing some snooping on her own gang, prior to dying. Hm...

Also she doesn't like puns.

Lydia: "I'm holding a knife," she repeats. "I'm going to keep holding a knife." "It would be really dumb to murder someone over this." "So I shouldn't do it." Looseleaf: [I have come up with several ovary-themed puns that I refuse to make.]

Introductions are made all around once Lydia calms down, and she gives them a fake name- Erin Doe- which Saelhen immediately recognizes because she already read the dossier. (Oyobi also gives a fake name, which translates to "crotch fart", because she thinks that's funny.) Still, they agree to work together to try to find the cause of the death curse and put a stop to it. It takes some convincing to get her to let Looseleaf touch her to heal her, though.

They then proceed deeper, and find a sealed records room, which Lydia kicks down the door to. Inside, they find a corpse that Saelhen is able to identify as Curly Fry Doe, the quartermaster who originally wrote those dossier files. Her body is also intact, since the bugs couldn't get at it... and she also has the necromantic tether attached, which means the party can go ahead and pull her soul back into her body.

There's a crit 1 on the necromancy roll. At the last moment, the tether snaps- and they only have a moment to do something before the soul on the other end falls out of reach.

Looseleaf spends Luck on this last hail mary- and rolls a full success, allowing her to precisely euthanize the rat, ride its death-ejection, grab what's left of the tether, and bungee-jump into the Thanatic Sea after Curly Fry's soul.

Looseleaf returns triumphantly, with Curly Fry in tow.

With another poor innocent mafia henchman rescued, the session closes. Next time: the party finally runs into those suspicious Ashtray people they actually came in here to find!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

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itsbenedict · 3 months

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Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 19

Let's Get Zombies Out Of The Way

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party made some preparations for a trip to Dead Jane's territory, a circle of land centered on a long-since-incommunicado ghost dryad who emits a field of magical murder radiation that kills everything in like a hundred meter radius. Why are they doing this? They got a hot tip from an evil vampire who works for a gang of shady mafia information brokers that said some people from a conspiracy would be there. This is a good enough reason to go on a deadly adventure!

Anyway the magical murder radiation doesn't technically kill everything, and the things it doesn't kill might also kill them, so they've got a few issues getting inside.

First things first is getting there- though it's not as difficult as their prep makes it out to be. They've got to pass through three Stumps' territories- the Green Hats, the Oaken Casket, and the Gentle Chains- but for the most part, this isn't a real obstacle. This wooded area is still part of the city, with a lot of these trees having buildings built into or on top of them, and the Stumps really only care about defending their territory from rival gangs. Civilians like the party are mostly ignored, except by the various oversized spiders and other unpleasant jungle fauna that occupy these woods. There's a risk of getting jumped, but the party's stealth more than suffices to cover the distance.

After securing a safe route, the stealthy and invisible members of the party call in their backup- mainly Orluthe and his clanky armor and heavy backpack. While they wait, Saelhen proffers AMAZING DEALS.

Saelhen happens to have right here... a jar of honey! A jar of honey containing a weird prickly vine (weird, where'd she get that from? hasn't come up before...) and a good deal of extremely deadly neurotoxin pilfered from some of the evil stuff that bit her in her bracer dimension and extracted by Looseleaf.

The deer moves with an unnatural gait- its legs don't move in sync with each other. It's like it's playing QWOP with its own body. It's pretty horrific, but not as horrific as the bevy of deer puns that happen during this brief combat encounter:

Saelhen: [I suppose it's time to get to the hart of the matter.] [Though I suppose we won't need to rack our brains for this encounter.] Oliver: [You could also stop with the puns, doe.] Saelhen: [Oyobi, I'm happy to give you free rein here, dear.] Oyobi: [Don't worry- I can... h'antler.] [Uh, him.] Saelhen: [Boo.] [Hiss.] [Pathetic.] [I no longer trust you to do incredible violence.] Oliver: [You're the one who didn't want to part with the poison without making a buck first.]

As they're dealing with this thing, Miriko shows up (she wasn't initially with the group) and helpfully informs them that this is a revenant.

Revenants are the victims of revenant bugs- colonies of tiny flat bugs that slip beneath the tissues of corpses and use them to try and kill more living things to lay offspring in and infest. They use silk strands and incredible teamwork to animate their hosts, acting as a sort of auxiliary musculoskeletal system! Nature is amazing!

Saelhen decapitates the thing with knives, which makes a zombie deer a whole lot less threatening.

With that out of the way, it's time to actually enter the zone- and as soon as Looseleaf takes her first step inside, she feels like she's dying. She can't point to specific damage being done- she just feels sick. She's queasy and her head hurts and it feels like she hasn't eaten in days.

On using her spirit magic... she's able to determine that what's happening is that her spirit has been turned into a corpse, and her body is just taking a while to catch up. There's a spiritual force being exerted on it, just like her own magic.

She's able to manually make repairs to her spirit, since the actual difference, physically, between being alive and being a corpse... not that big. The cells of her body are being screwed with just enough to make them nonfunctional, and she can put them back easily enough.

But having to constantly re-heal herself and all her teammates in this place would be a giant pain in the ass- so she tries employing her own spiritual force to push back against this effect and stop it from affecting her in the first place.

She rolls a crit fail versus the effect's crit success.

The force of it doesn't seem to be pushing as quickly as Looseleaf can, but she can't just completely repel it- she has to let it do its thing and correct the damage as it occurs. What this means is... she has to constantly heal everyone, and nobody can stray too far from Looseleaf (or Orluthe, who has divine healing available), or else they'll just run out of HP. Ouch.

A side effect of this, though, is that Looseleaf and Saelhen get to make a sort of knowledge check about another tree that might know spirit magic:

Hm! Dryads can do that, huh? That's! Concerning!

This has some pretty grim implications for how much they can trust Evelyn, one of the few ghost dryads who isn't running a crime empire- but they've got a job to do here. They've reached Dead Jane proper- and there's a bunch more revenants to contend with.

It's time for combat! We've got two revenant panthers, three revenant halflings, and a GIANT revenant spider perched up on the staircase that's been carved into one of Dead Jane's roots.

Saelhen opens by throwing knives and slicing off a revenant panther's dessicated legs, immobilizing the nearest one and functionally taking it out. Oliver pursues the same general idea, dumping a bunch of pneumantic goo on the other panther to keep it from moving temporarily (until the goo evaporates into pneuma, anyway). Big cats are definitely more dangerous than humans as zombies, right? Take them out first and don't give them a chance to attack! And don't provoke that giant spid-

Oyobi has other ideas, because she loves nothing more than Leeroy Jenkinsing at the biggest baddest monster available. She splits from the group and charges the thing to slash at its face.

Miriko uses Mirage Coordinator, which basically just means watching the battlefield and granting teammates free dodge attempts. Orluthe chops at the nearest human, and cleaves it from its neck to its waist... which doesn't kill it, because those were not the parts necessary for locomotion. It's about to counterattack... but then Vayen does something unexpected: Helping At All. He fries it with lightning.

On the enemy turn, the giant spider is about to punish Oyobi for her hubris, right?

ha ha ha no she rolls a crit success on dodge

The spider does have a second attack, though, albeit a lot less dangerous- it tramples her and pins her to the floor under its weight. Everyone takes damage from the death miasma, and then...

Well, Saelhen throws some knives, and Iska-via-Orluthe throws a divine fireball, and the spider is reduced to half health. Which... triggers a special ability!

Luckily, Oliver has the perfect solution to a swarm of tiny monster bugs: an AoE attack! His pneumantic pressure bombs make short work of the swarm of baby spiders, at the cost of dealing a little damage to Oyobi, too. He can't do that and keep up his stealth spell though, failing the roll to maintain it.

The party continues throwing damage at this spider while Oyobi tries to extricate herself, because this thing still won't fucking die aaaaaaa, but it's not enough to take it out.

not that oyobi doesn't KEEP MAKING EVERY SINGLE DODGE EVERY TIME SHE GETS ATTACKED THOUGH. the only way she's going to get hurt is if the party's least helpful party member does something about it!

The spider is finished off, and somehow Oyobi still hasn't lost all her hit points from that.

Oyobi shakily gets to her feet and limps over to Looseleaf, brushing a smoldering hair out of her eye. "Roomie," she says, "I'm invincible." Then she falls down.

The remaining halfling revenants didn't seem to aggro the party throughout all that- and the party's able to mop them up pretty effectively. Looting the corpses... they find unfamiliar antler tattoos on their necks, but the only actual loot is an ostentatious gold necklace with a picture of a cottage embossed on it. Oliver feels a vague tingle putting it on, which is scary, so he has Looseleaf scan it.

With a success... it turns out this thing was supposed to be a protective amulet of some kind, but it's apparently been damaged. Currently it's doing nothing but slowly leaking mana from its battery all over the wearer.

Oliver attempts to repair it... and fails the roll. But... there's a Luck mechanic in my new system, see. You can spend Luck before a roll for free to boost it by 10, or you can spend it after the roll to get the same boost but take a Karma, which lets me sabotage later rolls. He takes two to boost his repair attempt to a full success. So... now he has a magic amulet he can turn on to grant himself +1 Armor, which is a big deal when a baseline basic attack usually does 2. It's a little awkward, though, since it's not permeable to air and doesn't let you breathe- you have to activate it when you're expecting to get hit and hold your breath.

...Unfortunately, the amulet repels physical blows, and doesn't do jack shit against the magic death field, which is probably part of why it was found being worn by a shambling corpse. Whoops!

Still, they've made it to Dead Jane in one piece, more or less- next time, they'll be exploring the ruins of a 102-year-old mafia hideout in search of loot, magical lore, and criminal conspirators.

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

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itsbenedict · 3 months

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Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 18

To Foil a Grave Heist

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party went to investigate the crime scene where Zzaiya's divine-energy-jamming orb thingy was stolen... but the investigation was inconclusive. And there are more pressing matters: a conspiracy is afoot between various ghost dryad mafia families, one of whom has been sent by the heads of the conspiracy to do... something, inside Dead Jane's territory.

Who's Dead Jane? Well, she's dead. Like, more dead than ghost dryads usually are. Like a lot more dead. Miriko will fill the party in on the details back at the boat.

Dead Jane used to be a ghost dryad like the rest... until one day, about a hundred years ago, she began emitting an instant-death kill field that killed everyone in her territory, including her entire gang and apparently her even though she was a ghost already.

Over time, the kill field has weakened, such that it's possible to venture inside briefly if you've got protection or a supply of magical healing on hand, but it's still a wasteland of unrotting ruins, populated by "revenant bugs" which form colonies and turn preserved corpses into zombies.

Will-O's gang, the Ashtray, has been sending people into Dead Jane's territory for reasons unknown to Miriko, apparently pursuant to some project that's made even this gaggle of belligerent teenagers call a truce with the other gangs. The same truce that involves sending slavers to attack the university. She doesn't know what they're doing down there, but the potential danger involved if they get their hands on whatever originally produced Jane's kill field... it can't be ignored.

It's a reasonable assumption- Miriko is assuming Will-O has access to a cleric who can provide some sort of divine protection against the effect.

Looseleaf asks a sensible question: how do we know that Dead Jane is actually dead?

Miriko doesn't have any maps of the interior, since the layout of a place where no one lives hasn't been a priority for her gang of information brokers- but she knows the epicenter of this effect is a couple dozen meters underground, and it's pretty typical for Stumps to have extensive underground root complexes. It's going to be a dungeon crawl.

Looseleaf assumes that the hardest part of this expedition will be crossing the gang-controlled territory between them and Dead Jane, but Miriko attempts to assuage these worries and steps on a bit of a landmine in the process.

"did you bring a lawful good kid to our secret crime war meeting??? what were you THINKING?!?"

Oliver isn't happy about the implications here, due to really hating the mafia, but Looseleaf assures him that Miriko isn't from one of the really bad ones, and while he presses X to doubt, he's willing to put that conversation aside for the moment while they have a common goal. But he and Looseleaf are definitely going to have a long conversation about this, later! Definitely! Nothing will get in the way of that!

The conversation turns to the nature of their opponent, here- who are the Ashtray, and what can they expect to be up against?

The party isn't too worried about the level of opposition they'll face, then- how dangerous could the most expendable people from an anarchist commune really be?

In putting together a team... well, there's no reason not to bring everyone. Orluthe, Oyobi, Oliver- even Vayen, creepily, offers his services, mysteriously changing his previously-stingy tune at some point. And the plan is to get moving as soon as possible- there's apparently a concert coming up during which the gangs are planning something, and they want this dealt with by then.

As Vayen opens up to helping with the mission, Oliver opts to push his luck- Vayen's very good at invisibility magic, and he'd like him to tutor him in it, to upgrade his skill. Vayen... is less interested in tutoring for free, and the best they can haggle him down to is 50 gold an hour, which is more than even a rich college student can casually throw around.

Vayen also floats the idea that Oliver's teachers should have taught him this stuff already- it's basic epistomancy- but that they must not trust their students with invisibility. Deliberately keeping them weak. It's a bit of a conspiracy theory, and Oliver (and the rest of the party, why not) rolls Read Into It to see if it's plausible, or if Vayen is just making shit up to troll them.

Hm. An ulterior motive for helping out with... a quest to stop a conspiracy whose immediate consequence is a truce that keeps the local gangs from pointless infighting? ...Naaah.

Anyway, back to specific tactics:

Looseleaf: "How many people can you keep invisibility up simultaneously on, Vayen?" Vayen: "...Without exhausting myself? One for each hand, for maybe an hour each before my mana shifted too much." "On a good day." "I'm better with myself. I know how I move." Saelhen: "...they're linked to your hands?" Vayen: "No. I need to maintain contact." Saelhen: "Ah. And we couldn't, for example, buy you something nice that exposes your shoulders or forearms, and 'hitch a ride', so to speak?" Vayen: "If I practiced channeling mana through my feet, perhaps I could raise it to four, for some sort of deranged invisible cheerleader pyramid formation." Oyobi: "I'm down for that!" Oyobi says. "I'll be on top!" Saelhen: "Someone write the cheerleader thing down." Oliver: "Wondering if I could just... use conduits." Vayen sighs. "Why is everyone stupid." Looseleaf: "It's entertaining!" Saelhen lifts a hand to conceal her smile. "My! Such honesty!" "Would you mind terribly if I said it was rather refreshing?"

As they discuss invisibility logistics, Looseleaf mentions to Vayen that she can use her spirit magic to stabilize his mana as he casts. Which he tells her is impossible, because you can't manipulate someone else's mana, period.

Except it's clearly not impossible, because that's apparently how Evelyn's magic lifeforce-draining membership tattoos work. Does that mean... she can use spirit magic, too?

On learning about this, Vayen excuses himself for unknown reasons, and naturally Saelhen turns invisible and begins stalking him.

Unfortunately, it seems like he's not speaking to anyone- just writing something, behind a closed door. She was quick enough to wedge an invisible knife in and keep it from closing, so she's able to peep...

After he finishes, he leaves the compartment, and Saelhen rolls a 49 to dodge some yo-yo tricks he subsequently does to ensure the coast is clear of invisible pursuers that he fucking knows are almost certainly on this boat because he's been adventuring with Saelhen for like forty sessions. False confidence achieved, he... holds his black paper up to the sky, pointing it at the moon, and wiggles it around at different angles. Weird!

Meanwhile, Oliver and Looseleaf are practicing this mana-stabilization technique Looseleaf proposed. They get some new moves out of it, which mainly amount to getting bigger number on magic as long as they're in physical contact and combo-casting. Notably, they can pool their Necromancy skill together this way, and get a large bonus on rolls for manipulating death essence. Probably going to come in handy when venturing into a necromantic death zone!

Next time: the dungeon crawl begins! I bet nothing will go wrong in the necromantic death zone!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel #17 was earlier today if you missed it

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itsbenedict · 3 months

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Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 17

A Locked-Room Mystery

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party had just returned from a harrowing mafia-fighting vampire-surgerying misadventure in Welcoming Trails, and received intel that a slaver gang is planning to attack the university in a matter of days. This is a problem!

But before they can deal with the problem... they've got an urgent call from Zzaiya, the waspfolk girl who's been helping with their research into Saelhen's magic bracer. Apparently, one of the divine artifacts they used while studying the bracer has gone missing- stolen by some sort of master thief! They've got to get to the bottom of this theft!

The first thing to check, when something goes missing, is to determine whether it was actually stolen, not just lost or misplaced- but there's ample evidence of that.

This was left on the tripod device in the corner where the divine artifact- an "isolation sphere", used to disable other divine artifacts and otherwise jam divine power- had been left. So it definitely seems like the place was broken into.

Oddly, the note was accompanied by Zzaiya's stolen keys, which is a weirdly considerate gesture for a thief with a grudge. Looseleaf opts to inspect this note with her spirit magic, picking up on emotional impressions. With a crit success, she gets...

So that's suggestive: the culprit had to have done this the morning of the Big Game- sometime after Zzaiya left with Looseleaf to head to the stadium, and before the game itself started. That might help narrow it down!

With that, the party takes a look at the actual crime scene, pictured up top. And, uh, here again, too, why not:

To recap the structure: the "lab" is a corner of the Artificing department workshop floor, sectioned off by six formerly-rolling wooden partitions that've been nailed into the floor by iron spikes. A canvas "roof" is anchored to the corner, and stapled to the top of these wooden partitions. It's not especially difficult to break into via the roof by undoing the staples, but it doesn't appear that this has happened.

Zzaiya explains her security measures:

Ball bearings scattered in front of the door, an idea Saelhen suggested, to determine whether the culprit used the door

A magic one-way barrier surrounding her desk, which lets things in but not out, to trap the culprit

Custom-scented flypaper strips hung up from the ceiling, to maybe pick up hair samples and mark the culprit

Translucent white gauze wrapped around all the artifact storage shelves to...

Saelhen pokes the gauze, and there's a bright flash- apparently this is photogauze, an enchanted film which automatically takes a flash photo of whatever comes in contact with it once it's been activated. The idea was to capture a photograph of the culprit as they attempted to break into the artifact storage shelves- but the only photograph it seems to have taken was one of a somewhat started white rat- likely the same rat currently trapped inside the blue bubble.

None of these security measures seem to have been especially efficacious. The barrier and the gauze only caught a rat, the flypaper strips don't seem to have been touched, and the ball bearings- though they reveal that the door was used- don't tell them much about the culprit. The only thing taken was the sphere from the corner, which wasn't protected by gauze.

The party's first suspicion is that the small white rat is the culprit, somehow- controlled by magic, or a Peter Pettigrew-type shapeshifting disguise. Their first move is to get Zzaiya to lower the barrier, and then snatch the rat before it can escape.

It never stood a chance. Saelhen nabs it, and Looseleaf spirit-reads it. As it happens... this is one of their rats. The ones from their box of lab rats for necromancy research, which they got from the Zoology department. A couple had gone missing- and now they know where this one ended up.

Apart from its origin, though, there's no hint of magic applied to the rat. If it weren't for having been suspiciously stolen from the party, it could well be written off as ordinary vermin caught up in a security system.

Looseleaf then opts to scan the partition walls with her spirit magic, to determine if they were compromised somehow. Sure, the culprit clearly used the door- but why not check to be sure?

She discovers something odds on the partition nearest the left wall. While most of them are ordinary wood, this one seems to have a large patch of... some sort of spongy material in the center, like it's rotted away. And this material seems to have been concealed, by some sort of gooey brown paint. The material seems... somehow familiar, but Looseleaf with a 9 on the dice can't place it.

Looseleaf and Oliver then check the ceiling, after Oliver takes a pneumantic scan of the spongy stuff for reference. The "ceiling" seems to have been pulled away from the wall a bit, its staples having been pulled out and the canvas sagging somewhat, like something heavy was on top of it earlier.

That's about all the evidence they're going to find- so they move on to discussing possible culprits.

The obvious first candidate is Vayen, who- around the time Zzaiya's keys were stolen- had turned invisible and snuck into the lab to eavesdrop on her and Looseleaf. (To little avail, since they'd conducted their conversation via telepathy.) But it seems clear he didn't steal the keys- he was in the room when they used their Locate Object wand, and the keys were more than 1000 feet away at the time. And since the keys were stolen, the lab couldn't be locked, so anyone could've used the door. He's suspicious as always, but nothing directly incriminates him.

Privately, Looseleaf asks Zzaiya if any of her colleagues in the Project might've done this. Zzaiya doesn't think so- there's a limited number of them who even know of her lab here, and none of them would've needed to steal the sphere. She'd have just let them use it!

They then turn to Evelyn- who technically has a part of her body in this room at all times. The large sink/basin on the right side of the room is made of her! Evelyn, though, wasn't watching the room last night- something would've needed to happen to draw her attention, like someone calling her name. She's not a night watchman!

And she also has no idea what the spongy stuff is.

The next thing to look into is... the source of the rat. It seems clear that the rat was involved in the culprit's scheme somehow, and the rat was stolen from the party's dorm room. There's a limited number of people who even have access to that- the party, Miriko, Oliver, and Evelyn herself. Evelyn, they're fairly confident is uninvolved, just from good Speech rolls when questioning her.

While it doesn't occur during this session, it happens in the next one: the party interrogates its NPC allies. Vayen, Orluthe, Oyobi, and Miriko... by a combination of high Speech rolls and Looseleaf's spirit magic, they establish confidently that none of them are lying when they say they didn't steal any of the party's rats.

So.

Players, and those reading along with the recaps: the culprit of this crime can be determined from the information available. At time of writing, the party has not solved this theft. Have you?

#tfj log #twofaced jewel #Are You Smarter Than A Moth Grader?

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itsbenedict · 6 months

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Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 16

People Learning At School (normal)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, after wrapping up a magic surgery, the players took a little time to have some long-overdue conversations with each other and acquired some information on the ghost dryad mafia conspiracy. After a good night's sleep troubled-by-scorpion-nightmares night's sleep, the party (sans Saelhen, still sleeping off a tiring day and some scorpion nightmares because Farn couldn't make it that day) decides to get started on Doing Something about the ghost dryad mafia conspiracy.

The next day, Oliver heads back to his dorm room at Thunderbrush Metropolitan University to warn the university's ghost dryad, Evelyn, about the impending planned attack on the school Miriko uncovered.

Saves effort projecting a whole form!

Oliver decides to elide the source of his information, here, and subtly remixes the truth. Rather than hearing about this planned attack from Miriko's information-gathering, he claims that the party overheard the Sounds they encountered talking about the attack.

Evelyn has a few suspicions, but not that Oliver is lying to her. Rather... she's not sure why the Sounds would attack Looseleaf and Saelhen. They don't make a habit of attacking outsiders, which indicates that those two might be caught up in sinister mafia business that they're lying to Oliver about.

Oliver suggests they evacuate the school, in preparation for the attack, but Evelyn disagrees- she thinks the school is the safest place for them. It's already got a fence, and she can mobilize Long-Arms and the Twelve Black Saint Councillor-Generals.

Look, Long-Arms is a notorious drama queen and Evelyn is enough of a drama-lady-in-waiting to indulge his antics. It wouldn't be an anime if there weren't an implausibly powerful sinister student council!

...What's that, you say? It's not an anime? Okay. Point.

Oliver is once again assigned to tail the party, and figure out why they might be being targeted by the Sounds. Surely they're sheltering some sort of sinister secrets! Suspicious, certainly!

Before getting back to that, though, Oliver takes a brief detour to visit his friend Goldie Lightharvest and warn her about the impending attack. You might remember Goldie as the girl in charge of the Giant Crystal Scorpion research project, who was very upset with the party for inexplicably disappearing the subject of her thesis and refusing to explain. Oliver has to head down to the Zoology department to locate her.

On the way in, Oliver has to contend with a security measure- a sort of metal-detector apparatus, which- rather than detecting metal- detects pneuma, the intangible vapor that pneumancers like Oliver use to summon objects with magic. Not keen on checking his magic at the door, Oliver instead attempts to smuggle in a mass of pneuma by transmuting it into a dense solid cube.

Duly warned, Oliver heads down and encounters the head of Zoology, Dr. Ondere Groove- who doesn't do much besides direct him to where Goldie is cleaning up the shattered specimen tank. She complains a bit about her circumstances.

He warns her about the impending attack, but she's kind of at a loss for what to do. Not like she has a giant crystal attack scorpion she could use to defend the school or anything. He just exhorts her to stay safe, and that's that.

...Except she does invite him to a concert being put on on Saturday, two days from now. Apparently "Radiance", a super popular globe-touring musical act, is supposed to be putting on a "surprise" concert. And the venue... is the Oaken Casket, a Stump gang whose thing is trafficking booze and illicit substances. They throw huge parties with live music twice a month which are often frequented by the campus's party animals and music enthusiasts.

And they're one of the groups named by Miriko as being in on the same conspiracy intended to target the students. Hm.

Meanwhile... Looseleaf's studying up with that fun book she got from the library!

She pokes at it a bit with her spirit magic, trying to figure out what its deal is.

Looseleaf's roll to perform the necromancy exercises from the book goes poorly- she doesn't really have a strong foundation in the Epistomancy necessary to understand the rune diagrams, so all she can really accomplish is push around the goo a bit.

She dials Oliver on the telepathy she has, and invites him to come study necromancy! But Oliver's a little busy at the moment- he's gone to the Artificing department to get his hands on some blast shields. Artificing's penchant for explosive mad science means they've got plenty on hand, and he has a spell to scan and download blueprints- so why not have those on demand?

Oh, and a sword! Why not print a sword, too? Always good to have a sword.

Looseleaf heads over to Artificing to meet Oliver, and finds him at a workbench with a sword for some reason. It's not going well- but then he sees Oyobi's sword, which is cooler and better, and tries scribing a blueprint for that. Oyobi is slightly concerned about her sword potentially diminishing in coolness due to Nerd Interference, but her fears prove ungrounded after a good roll.

Looseleaf takes Oliver back to the yacht, the Two-Faced Jewel, to experiment with doing necromancy on the death essence they collected from Cabana Jim's.

Orluthe and Vayen are also there, chatting about something on the deck. Looseleaf notifies them about the crazy recent happenings- and the impending ghost dryad gang war situation. Vayen, uncharacteristically, is excited about what is being discussed by the party!

He is not happy about the constant gang infighting coming to a halt so everyone can work together towards a common goal, for some reason. He thinks that's terrible! And offers his help unraveling this diabolical conspiracy! Greaaaat! Fantastic! Thanks, Vayen!

Anyway, Oliver... also rolls like crap trying to get the hang of necromancy. He has the epistomantic background to understand the runes, but his control of his mana flow is a lot shakier compared to Looseleaf, who can basically cheat by using spirit magic to keep her own mana stable. Manipulating this stuff is no easy feat for either of them- but maybe working together, they can combine their strengths and master-

It's the isolation sphere!

The what?

The divine artifact of Lepichon that generates a jamming field that blocks other divine energy from reaching divine artifacts! The one she basically used as a lab instrument in magic item diagnostics! After finding her keys missing, she'd set up her lab with a bunch of booby traps to catch a potential thief, but somehow they evaded them all and stole the one artifact she didn't think to specially protect!

Next time: the party is going to INVESTIGATE THE SCENE OF A CRIME! Always exciting!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

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