Three years before seven days ago...Your name is Chlotsuintha, though in truth and Wisdom it has been long years since anyone - save yourself, of course - has called you such. Even father. 'Daughter' is his word for you, while 'Sty' is the call of the few familiar, kind others in your life, on the account of the layered Glamours which may hide away your Mystery-blanked eyes with Suggestions of lesions, growths and the aforementioned styes when you are not wearing your gauze and mask. Other others - either less familiar or less kind - will call you either 'you' or 'Leper' or 'Tall one', or if they are from away, perhaps 'Spoil' or 'Blackcap' or 'Rotter', or styles even more distant or unkind. Or more distant and unkind.What no one has ever named you before is 'Witchlet', though in truth, to-day you woke as one! After a year of concerted wheedling and whinging you finally broke your father down; so it was that after weeks of lullabies of lectures preparing you, yester-day was your first practical lesson in the Mysteries from him ... that wasn't just dealing with your Glyphs or the Strangeness for hundredth time. No, you set and Socketed a Socketing Needle, and managed to Reach through a Socket and through a Conduit! The test was done with some little trifling Construct that father made up for the lesson that would blush when you managed the Reach, just a silly little thing, useful for nothing more than the lesson itself ... but since it became clear weeks ago that the lesson was going to be about Socketing Needles, all you could think about were his workbenches. The Glyphery, the Fetish-Foundry and yes, the Life-Loom; for even with you now knowing its terrible history, as well as being wrung out by the somber admonishment from father that came on the heels of learning that history, you cannot keep your thoughts turned away from it. Father spends more time on the Loom than at his desk reading and writing, or working at the other tables. There are weeks where he will spend more time with that Loom than with you, agonizing over the minute of some Construct, struggling for ... something or other, you know not what. He is not want to share such things. But! With no one else to take into his complete confidence, and mother ... elsewhere, you are like to be the only help, the only heir he ever will have. How long have you wanted to prove yourself to him? Can you even remember a time when you didn't?
And now ... with the Loom and the other benches all operated off of Needles, it seems that time is finally at hand. You are ready to learn, ready to help, ready to be worthy - only for you to be told that your next lessons are to be with the flute! You had been confused, thinking a flute to be some stripe of Mysterious Instrument you had not yet been aquantied with … but father made it quite clear that he was speaking of the musical instrument, not any Mysterious one. The flute! You ... horizons that you couldn't even have dreamed of two days ago are beckoning, and you are being told learn music?! You cannot imagine this to be a joke; father has never had the time nor sense for humor. So assuming that this isn't just a ploy to keep you busy while he returns to his work, you have to think that by learning to play you would cultivate a sense of rhythm and timing; for a surety, that would come in handy delving the Mysteries. Even so ... you have to ask yourself why he is only doing this now. And surely, don't you have enough of a grasp of timing and rhythm from your years as a sneak-thief? Moreover, you have – completely unbeknownst to father – done some delving into the Many Mysteries on your own. You … well, you didn't die. You didn't even hurt yourself, not really. So in spite of everything, you know that you are ready for a lot more than mindless timing excercises. For a surety, you very nearly Emanated yourself! And honestly, if it is going to take another year of wheedling before you get to sink your teeth into something serious then your father – if not the two of you – will be dead and buried before you even learn the basics of anything.Right now, you are finishing up the after-dinner cleaning while your father is out – 'doing errands' as he calls it, when he is lightly plying his first trade at many places instead of a running a full knock-down somewhere specific. You will not know how much time you have until you hear him climbing up the belltower, but if he is staying out until he finds and steals a flute for you, then you would imagine that you have more than a few hours to work with … though you mustn't forget to clean up and put everything back into order, otherwise he'll never teach you another thing so long as you live, and that is not even considering whatever drubbing you'd get for going against him like this ...
> Previous Thread: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2024/6053771/> The Terrible History: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2022/5061777/ (starting from 5097780)> Archive of Threads: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=eternal+rome> From 6090983 in the last thread, the vote was a tie – so I figured that we'd do a bit of a flashback, and expand the options. There will be a few branching choices after this, and potentially some rolling. The better you do here, the better the reward will be for Chlotsuintha once the flashback concludes.> Please choose ONE of the following:> You will try your hand at the Life-Loom, though it may prove to be hard to get away with using> You will try your hand at the Fetish-Foundry, though you have the least familiarity with it – or perhaps because of your lack of familiarity> You will try your hand at the Glyphery, though of the three benches it will be the hardest to work with in the time available and the constraints that you are under> You will look for Implements, Instruments and the like to practice with> You will look for Constructs, Assemblies and Hermaphrodites to practice with> You will look through your father's old Inquisitor kit for articles to practice with> You will look through your father's desk for writings and schematics you may learn from> You will practice working with the Scarification Glyphs that you already have> You will practice your Reaching and potentially your Emanation or Projection
> You will look through your father's desk for writings and schematics you may learn from
>>6114723>> You will look through your father's desk for writings and schematics you may learn from
>>6114723>You will try your hand at the Life-Loom, though it may prove to be hard to get away with usingWelcome back, only took a month or so
>>6114723>You will look for Implements, Instruments and the like to practice with
Closed and writing! >>6115002> Welcome back, only took a month or soI know, I know ...
Buoyed by the prospect of how much you learned last night, and how much more you stand to learn tonight, you scour the last of the pots faster than you would have thought possible. Beyond how to use your three Scarification Glyphs and to perform Mitigations and Remediations, father had kept the door to the Many Mysteries shut to you for so long, the prospect of finally being able to learn excites you more than you can even articulate. So once you are done with the cleaning, it is with a broad smile and a flush mind that you heft the washing-tub and hustle over to the nearest window, ease open the unbattened shutters and throw out the last of the water. It is only once you hear the distant splash after setting down the washing-tub that it occurs to you that in your excitement you didn't even give the customary 'beware'. You cringe at your forgetfulness; were you to make an oversight like that with one of the benches ... well, you don't even know what would happen. You have never known father to make a mistake with them, so you can only guess as to how bad things might get. That ... that is a sobering thought, isn't it? Perhaps ... perhaps you are getting ahead of yourself here. Just because you know how to use Socketing Needles now, it doesn't mean that you have to immediately try your hand at the benches. You could do that ... to-morrow, or the day after. Instead, maybe you should find something a little more forgiving to work with tonight. Racking your brain, you take an inventory of what you know to be in the Belfry, the Implements, the Instruments, the Constructs. All the Mysterious articles you know about. You are spoiled for choice ... and if you are being entirely honest with yourself, even less confident than you were just mere moments ago. That fraying wash-water, you cannot get it out of your mind. A mistake like that, you'd be liable to get hurt by the Mystery or caught by father - and while you cannot say which prospect scares you more, the thought of either is enough to make you blanch and your stomach ache. The thought of both, oh Mercy ... No, you ... you are in a right state now. Father has told you about these - when he was teaching you about stealing, not about the Mysteries - about how you have to recognize when you are in your own way. To-morrow, to-morrow, you will be more on top of things. Your are just ... flustered about the flute, that's all. Honestly, if this was to be part of your education, you could have started practicing music years ago now ... Well, you are not like to square that corner anytime soon. Anyway then, if you aren't going to be delving the Many Mysteries, then perhaps you can be reading about them. Of course, father has forbidden you from his writing desk as well, but you have sneaked peeks at his writings and drawings before and got away with it.
Of course, that was just a glance at whatever happened to be on top, if you wanted to get a real look at the stuff he kept in the locked drawers of the desk and the cabinets and chests next - ah, shit! You fraying idiot! How are you going to use your Cold-Touch Scarification Glyph to pick a lock when you just dumped the last of the water out the fraying window! > Please choose ONE of the following:> Look for some other liquid that you may use with Cold-Touch amongst the supplies and ingredients kept in the Belfry. With any luck, father will overlook its absence.> Look for some other means - Mysterious or otherwise - to get into the locked compartments of father's desk and study. > Wrap your gauze and don your mask, then head out into the Midden to the communal well to draw enough water to perform Ice-Lockpick a number of times. > As use of Cold-Touch Breaches in a goodly deal of the Strangeness - and shortens the span of your days in the process - you will just have to settle for peeking at whatever is on top of his desk.
>>6115133>> As use of Cold-Touch Breaches in a goodly deal of the Strangeness - and shortens the span of your days in the process - you will just have to settle for peeking at whatever is on top of his desk.
>>6115133> As use of Cold-Touch Breaches in a goodly deal of the Strangeness - and shortens the span of your days in the process - you will just have to settle for peeking at whatever is on top of his desk.
>>6115133>Look for some other means - Mysterious or otherwise - to get into the locked compartments of father's desk and study.
Alright, consider this closed.
A stiff breeze slams the outer shutter against the frame, starling you. As you hastily batten it down, you find yourself beset by a host of second and even third thoughts. Setting aside the point of you actually using Cold-Touch to perform an Ice-Lockpick - a feat that you have performed only once before - there is the issue of the spent working material, the water. Obviously, water and paper don't mix, doubly so for Estranged water and paper. You don't doubt that you could Mitigate or Remediate away whatever Strangeness that was Breached by the cast, but ... you are not sure certain that you could do it without leaving behind evidence of your work. Or doing it quickly enough that the writings and such didn't come to some more mundane harm in the process. There is also the matter that these casts use you as Fuel, winnowing the span of your days. That ... no, that is just too hard of sell. Surely you will learn better ways of dealing with the Strangeness and overcoming locks that don't require you to kill yourself in dribs and drabs. Until then, you will just have to hope that you may satisfy yourself with whatever has been left out for you. You make sure that you are finished putting everything away, then you batten down the remaining windows and with the last of the embers from the ramshackle stove you light a thoroughly scuffed clay lamp, so discolored with age and oil that you cannot even guess what shade the clay might have been. Once you have a healthful flame lapping, you quit the room, giving the trap door and the winch that looms over it a lingering look as you do, wondering how much time remains to you before father returns. Spurred by the thought, you hurry to then up the stairs to the second floor of the Belfry. Unlike the first, which is divided into rooms by sailing-cloth and rope, there are actual wooden walls and doors here. Father says he built them for safety, and it took you an embarrassingly long time to realize that he meant them to keep his work safe from you. Of course, you might have had an easier time of concluding their intended purpose if they were ever able to accomplish it. The walls only go high enough to hang the doors, but the ceiling of the second floor is the very peaked roof of the old bell-tower. As soon as the walls were up, you were climbing over them in father's frequent nightly absences to see what ever he was up to, to the point that he never even bothered stealing locks for all of the doors. The cabinets and the drawers and the chests though, these you cannot climb your way in, so these he has kept locking. Especially those on his writing desk and in his study.
Following your lamp's warm glow into the room, you have to wonder how late the hour must be as so little light wins through the shutters. On approach to the desk, you can see a few loose papers strewn over the surface. Fewer than you would have liked, certainly - but not none. Carefully setting the light down away from the curling edges of the paper, you wonder how to best approach this. > Please choose ONE of the following:> Look through the bookcases instead. If memory serves nearly all of the texts are in languages or cyphers that are unreadable to you, but there might be notes or sketches left in-between pages instead.> Focus on the papers on top of the desk, memorizing everything about them. In time, you may forget some details here and there - but there will be no evidence of your subterfuge for father to find.> Focus on the papers on top of the desk, writing everything on them down on another piece of paper. You won't forget details if you don't have to remember them - but there will be damning evidence of your subterfuge, if the copied notes are ever found.
>>6115377> Focus on the papers on top of the desk, memorizing everything about them. In time, you may forget some details here and there - but there will be no evidence of your subterfuge for father to find.
>>6115377> Focus on the papers on top of the desk, memorizing everything about them. In time, you may forget some details here and there - but there will be no evidence of your subterfuge for father to find.>Surely you will learn better ways of dealing with the Strangeness and overcoming locks that don't require you to kill yourself in dribs and drabsLol, then we never did
>>6115377>> Focus on the papers on top of the desk, writing everything on them down on another piece of paper. You won't forget details if you don't have to remember them - but there will be damning evidence of your subterfuge, if the copied notes are ever found.
>>6115377>Focus on the papers on top of the desk, memorizing everything about them. In time, you may forget some details here and there - but there will be no evidence of your subterfuge for father to find.
Consider this closed! >>6115572Yep.
>>6115839Sorry for the off-topic, but I just found this thread after following the archive for many months. Thank you so much for continuing this quest.Is there any way you can be reached privately? I have something of a fan work that I'd like to share if you are willing.
There are just no two ways about it, you have never had any success in keeping things hidden from father - and you cannot muster up any reason why this would time be any different. You will just have to do your best to remember whatever you find ... though as you read more and more of the documents atop the desk, you have to wonder if you will be able to retain anything. Almost half of the papers are pages that have been cut out of a book - not recently to your eyes - and of course, they would have to be in some language that you cannot recognize, let alone read. You are able to recognize tables of numerical values on the pages, and you would think that these numbers are probably the most important bit of the passage, but you cannot possibly expect to make even the wildest of guesses as to what your father's interest was about. Flipping through the loose pages - careful to keep them in the order you found them in - you search for notes in the margin from father, or illustrations, anything that you could actually use. As you had feared, there is nothing. Trying not to completely sour on all of this, you turn your attention to the more incidental and scattered pages across the desktop. A number of them just appear to be scraps of paper with numbers written on them and the occasional doodle, but here and there are lists written in plain Reichtongue, quite obvious in your father's tight, neat hand. By your count there are five of these lists, two of which look like they were written on the same piece of paper then separated. All of them list different sorts of cuts of meat from various animals, nothing particularly unusual about the animals or the cuts - though you can see that there are duplicate and triplicate items on the list, specifying different purveyors for the same cut. You are intrigued, certainly, but beyond the notion that these lists are materials for Constructs, you cannot possibly conclude anything. You cannot even say if these are to be the target, the working material or the Fuel for the Weaving ... at least until you notice that there is one line on one list that is stuck through twice, with the note 'respiratory' to the side. From that you could reasonably guess that the lists are of working material, and the line - which appears to be 'rabbit quarters' - suggests ... that it was or wasn't suitable for respiratory work? The strike through would certainly suggest something negative, considering that it - along with the note - is the only additional marking on any of the lists. Or maybe it is saying that rabbit quarters are good for respiratory work, though from your limited understanding of Weaving and the Many Mysteries in general, you would assume that you would want rabbit lungs to work into a respiratory system for a Construct.
Little and less you might have to work with, but you cannot help but be intrigued by what you have seen. You are not sure how much good it would do your education to memorize lists of meat, but considering how excruciatingly slow your progress has been so far, you will take anything and everything that even feels like forward momentum. Of course, the night is still young. You could try your luck elsewhere in the Belfry ... or you could remain at the desk for the moment. You aren't feeling up to picking the locks on the desk and in the study, but perhaps it would be worth your time to just check them, to see if there had been a fortunate oversight here or there. You don't think father has done anything to trap them ... > Please choose ONE of the following:> Go elsewhere in the Belfry and investigate something else, referring to >>6114723> Remain at the desk, in the study, and check everything to see if there is anything unlocked.> Remain at the desk and start memorizing everything about the available papers.
>>6116184I'm glad that you could make it anon! To answer your question, I don't have anything set up at the moment, but I might have an idea how you could get in touch. I'll see if I can get it to work tomorrow.
>>6116248>> Remain at the desk and start memorizing everything about the available papers.
>>6116248> Remain at the desk, in the study, and check everything to see if there is anything unlocked.
In an effort to make hay while the sun shines, I will leave this open for another hour, then I will roll for it.
Rolled 2 (1d2)On a roll of one: > Remain at the desk and start memorizing everything about the available papers.On a roll of two:> Remain at the desk, in the study, and check everything to see if there is anything unlocked.
>>6116427Okay, closed and writing. Look for update within the next two hours.
You are nervous - being here, doing this - and rather eager to get something, anything in the proverbial poke. Yet ... worming through both worries and yearning is a blossoming sense of disappointment. To be sure, father is cautious; enough so that you never expected that you would have a lot to work with, just lying out there for you to read ... but you have to admit to yourself that you expected more than a barely notated list of materials. Without even intending to, you find yourself glancing towards where the winch and platform sit, on the floor below. By the best of your estimation, you have the time - but do you have the nerve? Now unable to draw your eyes away from the veritable forest of drawers, laden down with knowledge and Mysteries you cannot even hope to imagine, you find yourself more and more sure of yourself. You start to glance behind yourself, then you stop, instead cautiously reaching towards the nearest of the drawers on the desk. There has never been anything to suggest that the drawers were trapped or alarumed or gimmicked in anyway, ever. Even still, this is your father that you are dealing with, so touching and pulling on the handle of the drawer to his desk is not something done idly or easily. When you do try the handle, however, you end up making a rather remarkable exhalation - equal parts relief that the drawer is not trapped or alarumed or gimmicked and frustration that it is quite predictably locked. Obviously, it is locked. Of fraying course, it is locked. Did you honestly expect that the first drawer that you tried was going to be unlocked for no more reason than you wanted it to be so? If you are that much of a child, then quite honestly, father might have some sense in delaying and deferring your edification and education into the Many Mysteries. Blushing in spite of yourself - or rather, on account of your childishness - you start trying other handles at random, to the self-same results. No tricks - at least, none that you can see - but no opening either. But as you start to falter again, you try a drawer that feels different from the rest. The others felt locked - this one feels jammed. For all you know, it might just be locked and jammed, but you seize upon the handle, bracing yourself against the desk, ready to throw your weight into the opening of it- and stop yourself just as quickly. What if you free the drawer - assuming it isn't locked - and father finds the jammed drawer no longer jammed? What if it is locked and jammed, and you damage the drawer or the desk with your heaving and hoing? For that matter, what if it is just locked? It could be that the lock on this particular drawer is tighter than others.
Doubting everything once again, you let go of the handle entirely, resolving to - oh! Oh! As you extricate yourself from your braced position, you catch a glimpse of something you wouldn't have seen otherwise, standing in front of the desk normally. Underneath the lap-drawer, there looks to be a pull out writing surface tucked underneath it. When you try it, it moves as smooth as silk dragged across thick cream - and the schematic left on top of the surface is enough to take your breath away. It is a flying Construct. From the scale, it is nothing that could ever be ridden - which you understand to be father's first and greatest interest - but still! At two cubits tall and two-thirds of a cubit around, it would well and away be the largest Construct you ever saw, if father made the thing. A note on the schematic identifies the Construct - or more accurately, the Assembly - as a Drone, which if you understand the name means that the Construct has no cognition of its own, that it must be controlled, either by a Bearer or another Assembly that was cognitively capable. If you can read the schematic properly, it demonstrates how the Bearer controls the ... altitude of the Drone? You are not sure. You flip the paper over and find nothing on the back. Unfortunately, there are no other schematics on the pull-out. As you understand it, there would be schematics for each point of interest in the design, each process. Still, just the Bearer-Drone Altitude interface has given you all sorts of Sub-Assemblies and Constructs to study. Switch-style and Test-style checks, clearance considerations, intakes and outfalls, all alongside things you have never even heard father mention, like recursive and iterative architecture, false consciousness and counter false consciousness. Everywhere you look on the paper, you see something you have never seen before. It is incredible! It is exactly what you were looking for! Is there more? > Please choose ONE of the following:> Wait, no. No. You need to stop yourself. This is more than enough. Take what time remains to you, and commit everything on this paper to memory as best as you are able. Then you call it a night before you make a mess and get caught. > Wait, no. No. You need to pace yourself. You have collected, now you just need to get away with it. Take half and hour or so, maybe more and commit all of this to memory. Then once you are done, resume your search at the desk.> Yeah, there might be more. There might even be better. Put it back where you found it for now, and keep looking. If nothing turns up, then and only then do you take the time to commit the schematic to memory.
Little later than I thought I would be, apologies. You still around >>6116184?
>>6116532>> Wait, no. No. You need to pace yourself. You have collected, now you just need to get away with it. Take half and hour or so, maybe more and commit all of this to memory. Then once you are done, resume your search at the desk.
>>6116532> Wait, no. No. You need to stop yourself. This is more than enough. Take what time remains to you, and commit everything on this paper to memory as best as you are able. Then you call it a night before you make a mess and get caught. Birds aren't real.
Consider this closed. Look for the update within the next two and a half hours.
>>6116533Still around! Just been preoccupied with an infection after a wisdom tooth extraction. Were you able to sort something out?
Wait. No, you are ... you are getting ahead of yourself. This schematic might be in your hand, but until it is in your mind, you haven't accomplished anything. With that thought sobering you up, you lean in and study the paper before you, soaking up everything that you possibly can - staring until your eyes and the lump behind them are aching. There is certainly a lot to take in ... and without you making a copy of it, you have to wonder just how much you can possibly retain. Of course, you have to temper your expectations somewhat; realistically, you were not going to be learning how to Weave these 'bleeding edge' Assemblies tonight ... but as far as being exposed to ideas, to concepts, seeing how Weaves such as these were all put together, that is something that you could keep in mind for future, for a surety! You don't know quite how long it takes, but eventually you reach a point where you feel as if you have done all you can do to memorize the content of the page. Even so, you mood is soured by the nagging doubt that you might not have spent enough time, that you might misremember or forget some rather important detail entirely. And once you move on to actually trying the rest of the drawers, you mood is soured further when you find not one single, solitary drawer in the entirety of father's study to be left unlocked. Trying and ... marginally succeeding at not feeling defeated, you spend a few more minutes scouring the schematic with your eyes, then, only once your head feels fit to burst do you allow your gaze to drop to the jammed and potentially locked drawer that you encountered earlier. You slide the writing surface back into its position as you contemplate the drawer. Should you risk it? Should you look elsewhere? Or should you spend a little more time with the schematic then call it a night? > Please choose ONE of the following:> Try to force the Jammed Drawer open by hand> Look for tools and Implements that might open the Jammed Drawer> After another round with the schematic, go elsewhere in the Belfry and investigate something else, referring to >>6114723> After another round with the schematic, go call it a night [Opener Concludes]
>>6116862Glad to hear that you are still around, and sorry to hear about the infection. Yes, I believe I did figure something out. Tomorrow, while I am sitting down and writing the next post, I'll go to guerrilla mail and get a temporary email. I'll post it in the thread. You can get one too, if you like, then you can send me your work that way - assuming, of course, that you don't have any objections.
>>6116989> After another round with the schematic, go call it a night [Opener Concludes]I really like the almost cinematic feel that these flashback segments give, but I do also want us to be in present to face the consequences of our many bad decisions and hopefully make sone more
>>6116989> After another round with the schematic, go call it a night [Opener Concludes]>>6116993Thanks, friend. That would be great.
>>6116989> Look for tools and Implements that might open the Jammed Draweror> After another round with the schematic, go elsewhere in the Belfry and investigate something else, referring to >>6114723Keep the learning train going!
>>6116989>Look for tools and Implements that might open the Jammed Drawer
Okay, so taking the split vote into consideration, we have a tie here. I will wait an hour, then I will roll to break the tie. >>6117034I just checked guerilla mail, it seems that 'sending email has been suspended for today'. I can still receive stuff though. If you want to wait until you can send your work through them that's fine with me, or if you have an email you are comfortable sending it with, that can work as well. Just let me know.
Just a heads up, I might not be able to start writing right away after all. I'll keep you all posted, but in the meantime, the vote is open until I know I am ready to write.
>>6116989> Look for tools and Implements that might open the Jammed DrawerForbidden drawer.
>>6117105I was just going to send it from a gmail account anyway so no need to wait.
Okay, back on track. And as an added bonus, the tie was properly broken too! I'll get to writing. > Gain one lucky Tenth-Talent>>6117143Okay then, send away to iokusrtg@sharklasers.com
>>6117410Thanks, friend. Sent.
Well ... you suppose it wouldn't hurt to at least look for something or other to open the drawer. Taking up your light, you retreat out of the room and head over to father's mundane workbench. There will be hand tools there, for woodworking and the like, which you imagine would be able to win the drawer free - assuming, of course, that it isn't locked as well as jammed. With some rummaging around, you track down a collection of chisels, punches and wedges, some wooden and leather mallets in various sizes, and a crowbar that has been cut to about a hand's-width. If you were any to judge, you'd say that father keeps these tools around as duplicates for his cracking-kit. You spare a glance around looking for that, but when it doesn't turn up in the small room set aside for non-Mysterious endeavors, you have to assume that it is with father at the moment. Your attention returned to the tools present on the bench before you, you consider how likely you are to be able to free the drawer with them. You would give yourself good odds - so long as it wasn't locked. Now, as far as you being able to get the drawer free without marking or marring the woodwork, that ... well, no two ways about that. That would be harder. If you were lucky - something you know better than to count on, but can never stop yourself from hoping for - you'd be able to get it moving freely with a couple of whacks with the leather mallet. If it came to prying, then you would probably end up doing something to the wood, though if all went well any damage could be kept out of sight. Alternatively ... you recall that father has mentioned ... a Construct you believe, called the 'Picking Purse'. It was in passing - more or less to himself, for that matter - but it has come up more than once, and judging from the name and from father's interests, you have to imagine that it is some sort of living cracking-kit. You don't know if he has actually made one, or this is all just ideas floating around ... but if he has actually Woven one, if he is actually using one out on the Mount tonight, then it follows that there would have had to have been prototypes - some of which might still be alive, kept for observation in father's Pound. Now, you cannot know if any of these surviving prototypes are functional - let alone exist - and you don't know if they are able to working jammed drawers free ... but if the drawer in question proves to be locked and jammed, then it would certainly be of assistance. And once you had that one open, then nothing would be stopping you from getting into the others, would it?
> Please choose ONE of the following:> You are biting off much, much more than you can chew here. Keep things mundane, try to get the drawer open with just the leather mallets. If that doesn't bear fruit, then decide on more extreme options.> You are biting off much, much more than you can chew here. Keep things mundane ... and try to find where father keeps his lockpicks. For a surety, he couldn't have taken all of them with him tonight.> You may be biting off much, much more than you can chew ... but you are a growing girl - er, woman. Growing woman. See if there is anything alive in the Pound, then see about getting it out for a proper look.>>6117486I'm flattered, beyond flattered. I think the changes work fine, given the constraints of the medium. Is medium even the right word here? I don't think it is, but I think of a better word. Regardless, I'm impressed! It has certainly made my day. And my apologies for making it so hard to get this to me in the first place.
>>6117621> You may be biting off much, much more than you can chew ... but you are a growing girl - er, woman. Growing woman. See if there is anything alive in the Pound, then see about getting it out for a proper look.
>>6117621> You are biting off much, much more than you can chew here. Keep things mundane ... and try to find where father keeps his lockpicks. For a surety, he couldn't have taken all of them with him tonight.That's very kind of you to say, thank you so much. I think medium is as good a word as any. It is a challenge to compress the information into song given you only have so much time to work with. I'd like to make more in the future to explore other aspects of the intricate and fascinating world you've made.Thank you for going to the effort to make it work. It would've been easier to just drop the link in the thread but I didn't want to do so without your blessing. Would you mind if I post it now?
>>6117621>> You are biting off much, much more than you can chew here. Keep things mundane ... and try to find where father keeps his lockpicks. For a surety, he couldn't have taken all of them with him tonight.
>>6117621> You are biting off much, much more than you can chew here. Keep things mundane, try to get the drawer open with just the leather mallets. If that doesn't bear fruit, then decide on more extreme options.
Alright, consider this closed. >>6117697If you want to link it, that's fine.
Your mind having well and truly run away with itself, you sit down in the middle of the room and try to reign your thoughts - and yourself - back in. It does not need to be said how mucking about with prototype Constructs could be dangerous, or messy, or otherwise liable to give you away to father in ways that peeking at loose papers and picking your way into locked drawers might. And as far as forcing the jammed drawer goes - it seems that it is going to involve hand tools no matter what, and that is going to come with a serious risk of leaving evidence of your handiwork behind. In your estimation, the jammed drawer is not particularly special - the only things setting it apart from the rest of the drawers and chests in the study is that the jammed drawer is potentially unlocked. And of course, jammed. What you are driving towards is that you have no reason to believe that whatever is inside would be of any greater interest than what is inside the rest of the drawers in the room. And if that is the way of it, then it would make sense to ignore the jammed drawer, and focus on some that you could open without any risk of father knowing. To that end, lockpicks, of a mundane stripe would be best. Feeling resolved and eager once more, you stand up and start forward, only to stop. Now there is a new issue at hand here. You don't know where father keeps his spare picks. You have to believe there are spares though, he's always saying things like 'if it is worth having one, then it is likely worth having two'. And as he keeps his kits up here when he is not out on a job with them, this room is the first place you'd look for them - but this little space has very few places you have already not looked when you were looking for the tools, and you never came across hide nor hair of any picks. Starting to more and more acutely feel the passage of time, you look through the room for a little longer before you finally accept that there are no picks to be had here. The next most likely place to have picks would be father's room. And you know most everything in there is locked up as tight as it is in his study. Fraying Hell, if the lockpicks are locked up, you are really going to have time of here tonight, aren't you? > Please choose ONE of the following:> You will go into father's room, looking for lockpicks as thoroughly as you can without unlocking anything - leaving the option of fetching water and using Cold Touch open for now.> There has to be at least one misplayed lockpick lying around somewhere in the Belfry. If there is, and you can find it, you can save yourself a lot of trouble. > You should just call it here. Take another round with the schematic, then go call it a night [Opener Concludes]
>>6118137>> There has to be at least one misplayed lockpick lying around somewhere in the Belfry. If there is, and you can find it, you can save yourself a lot of trouble.
>>6118137> You should just call it here. Take another round with the schematic, then go call it a night [Opener Concludes]
>>6118137> There has to be at least one misplayed lockpick lying around somewhere in the Belfry. If there is, and you can find it, you can save yourself a lot of trouble.>>6117945Thank you.For any anon who is interested, I wrote a song inspired by this quest. It's mainly written from the perspective of Chlotsuintha's internal monologue. I hope you enjoy it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctmYOXYPPbU
>>6118197Very very cool, anon. Thanks for sharing!
>>6118137>You should just call it here. Take another round with the schematic, then go call it a night [Opener Concludes]
Sorry for the delay - again. Update should be done in a few hours.
Oh, come on now ... all things considered, there simply must be one single, solitary lockpick that isn't under lock and key at the moment. For a surety, there must be, what with all of the cracking-work that father does. Moreover, if your ship is to come in, then by all reason your father's room is the berth you'd favor for it the most; so it is you follow that reason downstairs and into his room ... though as soon as you arrive, whatever eagerness you might have been nursing withers. You know well it is your nerves - or lack there of - that make the shadows here seem deeper and harder for your lamp to displace than they did elsewhere in the Belfry. Or if it is not a question or absence of nerves, then it must be the trampling march of the hours - you did spend quite a bit of a time with that schematic, after all. But it cannot be denied that there is an almost tangible sense, a taste to the air, that you are not suppose to be here. That you are not supposed to be doing this. At the moment, rather than thinking of specific places to look, it is all you can to do not think of what father would say - and what he would do where he to catch you in here, doing this. And where he to glean that you were looking for lockpicks to sneak peaks at his work ... he might just never teach you anything ever again. Moving into the room doesn't lessen this load upon you - if anything, it does the opposite. Only once you throw yourself into the minutia of actually looking for the picks you find some slack in the line. Of course, there are not too many places too look. Father's room is not much larger than yours - and though he has more in it certainly, most of it is under lock and key, and as such are islands in the sea of your search. Checking in between chests and under - and then through - piles of clothes is quick work, and after searching in what you feel to be the most likely of spaces a second time, you are compelled to get a bit more creative with your casing. And ultimately, this creativity is what sends you to the paymaster, for underneath father's bedroll is a single, old-fashioned pick. More than old-fashioned, the pick is old - a patina of rust attests to its age. Given its apparent age, taken alongside its location, you have to assume that it has some sentimental value to father.
> Please choose ONE of the following:> This night has seen enough transgressions placed on your head already. Pinching what is clearly a special pick is simply a march to many. Maker's Mercy, what if the locks are gimmicked and you ended up breaking the thing? Keep looking.> You have been trying to get father to introduce you to the Many Mysteries for years now. Years. And if he let you build out a kit of your own, you wouldn't need to pinch his pick or even be in his room. And of course, you will be careful. You will head up to the study, and start picking drawers and chests at random. Obviously, you won't have the time to memorize everything, but any little bit helps. > You have been trying to get father to introduce you to the Many Mysteries for years now. Years. And if he let you build out a kit of your own, you wouldn't need to pinch his pick or even be in his room. And of course, you will be careful. You will remain in his room, and see what sort of Mysteries and Witchworks he keeps for company. Who knows what you will find in here? > You have been trying to get father to introduce you to the Many Mysteries for years now. Years. And if he let you build out a kit of your own, you wouldn't need to pinch his pick or even be in his room. And of course, you will be careful. You will head up stairs and try to pick your way into the Pound, so you may learn from whatever Constructs and Assemblies father has stowed there. Seeing a whole living thing will probably be more informative than just reading about it ... though it may prove messier. And more likely to be gimmicked or otherwise protected ...
>>6119291> This night has seen enough transgressions placed on your head already. Pinching what is clearly a special pick is simply a march to many. Maker's Mercy, what if the locks are gimmicked and you ended up breaking the thing? Keep looking.
