1223.4 Don't Forget the Blacksmith of Brandywine

Retired Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: In the Ruins of Bibracte
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Fiona simply gives a nod at Isen. [color=blue]"Speak with me after the meeting, and we can discuss it."

[color=blue]"I don't know if 'rescue' is the word I would use. When we left, the entire forest was ablaze. I fear that, in defending himself against the giants, he lost control of himself and could not refrain from creating fire. But I do believe that someone should go back and try to track him down, see if he is any condition to return, physically or mentally. The Blacksmith was able to restore his legs while he was in Magic, and Marcus may be unwilling to return. I don't know how attached he is to his leglessness."

Here you go.

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I think you need to be more plain with me dear Fiona. Do we need to go look for Marcus and possibly rescue him? Or are we rescuing the Magi who were prisoners? Or perhaps attacking Giants in conjure to the previous two questions?

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[color=blue]"Yes, no, and probably," FIona says.

[color=blue]"Marcus is missing. He is probably alive, but may or may not have been taken prisoner by the Giants. I would like us to find out what his situation is, rescue him if he needs it, retrieve his body if necessary, and bring him back home if he wants to come.

"The magi who were being held prisoner have been freed, and are the guests of the Blacksmith until we return. The trouble is that they have been prisoner, by their reckoning, thirty years, and were held in a cell with both Perdo Vim and Rego Corpus effects in place to keep them there. They seem to be mere shells of their former selves, although they do still have their Hermetic abilities. My concerns about them are that the world they left was still fighting the Schism War. Plus, there may be an ever so slight chance that they may age two hundred plus years when they cross into the Mortal Realm. While I have confidence in my knowledge of Hermetic theories, I am less sure of my knowledge of Realms and Regiones, and how they work." ((MT 6, Magic Lore 2.)) [color=blue]"I didn't want to bring them back if it would mean their lives.

"The two magi we rescued, Jurgen and Captivius. Jurgen is Flambeau, and I believe Captivius is as well, although I'm not sure. Jurgen and Captivius were trying to extract Captivius's pater Dulcitius from Bibracte, under a temporary truce, when the mountain disappeared and they found themselves in Magic, where they had been held by the Diedne and the Giants ever since.

"My concerns with Jurgen and Captivius are, do we believe they will survive the return from Magic, and do we feel them to be trustworthy? I feel it a bit of a coincidence that they would have last been in the world in the Diedne covenant that once sat here, but other than that, I didn't feel any reason not to welcome them. But I felt that this should be a decision we make as a council."

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Isen ponders fiona's words a moment

I can't help you on this one. I have heard tales of men being brought down by the weight of the years, while others survived, and can't tell what's gonna happen to them. So I would urge caution, if only for their sake.

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Viscaria is clearly having a lot of trouble keeping up with this conversation. "Wait....who are the Dead Knees?[1] And if they've been torturing Hermetic magicians for over 30 years, why would we want them as allies? Why would anyone name his apprentice Captivus? I mean, no wonder they got captured!

"Two hundred years! Even if only thirty years....clearly their Longevity Rituals have lapsed, if they had even made one to begin with. They will need to regain their strength before we even think about letting them cross the boundary back into the regio, and even then we will need to be cautious as they transverse back to the mundane world. To say nothing of trying to acclimatize them to the modern world!

"But why would you even rescue them, if you were seeking an alliance with the Dead Knees?"

[1]Their name was supposed to have been wiped from history. There is going to be a least one character in this campaign who doesn't know who they are, dammit.

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Yes and no. Wiped by whom? From what books? And I'll point out that Viscaria was updated on some history stuff in Getting the band back together.

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...? I thought the whole thing was that the Diedne had become The Unnamed House, the House That Once Was, etc, etc. "Their very names never to be spoken of again," sort of thing.

During the "Getting the Band Back Together" chapter, we mostly discovered Apollodorus had a copy of something called The Duresca Scrolls, which proved that Guernicus was responsible for something called The Schism War. With 0 points in OoH Lore and CoH, but a 3 in Verditus Cult Lore, I'm playing this off as she'd only really know about Hermetic History from the perspective of how it affected the Verditus (much like many non-historians in America think that Lincoln started the Civil War to free slaves). "The Schism War? That's when they limited the number of items we can sell to mundane nobles, right?"

At any rate, the logic of "We shall go into the magic realm to locate the Diedne, which we shall do by assaulting their Giant allies and freeing their prisoners, while getting attacked by some fire breathing ice giants that I have ALSO never heard of, so that we can discuss what to do with the freed prisoners who might be our enemies because we're opposed to the Guernicus who started the fight against the Diedne whose fortress we just attacked while looking for the allies of Ioeseph who is really Silviatos, except on Thursdays, according to the big sexy hunk whose castle we destroyed by leaving the realm..." is confusing enough for my poor little silversmith to be really unclear on what exactly Fiona is trying to achieve, whether Vee knows the names of the groups involved or not.

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((If I remember right, in Stonehenge, there was a Diedne covenant whose very name was wiped from all records during the Schism War, but the fact of the Diedne's existance has never been redacted. It's always been one of the original twelve houses, that succumbed to diabolism, performed human sacrifice, made their cats and dogs live together, mass hysteria, until something happened (I don't remember if it was ever stated just what) and House Tremere declared war on Diedne. Flambeau signed up right away, there was an emergency Grand Tribunal in which House Diedne, en masse, was cast out of the order. No Houses supported Diedne, but not all were as opposed to them. In fact, there have been rumours that some members of Diedne secretly joined ex Miscellanea, Merinita, or Bjornaer. Here endeth the lesson.))

Fiona looks at Viscaria with a half-smile on her face, waiting for the "Bazinga." When she realizes that Viscaria is serious, the smile fades.

[color=blue]"Not 'dead knees'...Diedne," Fiona says, pronouncing it carefully. [color=blue]"One of the original twelve Houses, until the Schism War in 1003, when House Tremere, then Flambeau, and finally the entire Order, declared war on them and wiped them out several years later.

"I don't know that I would say they've been physically tortured. Mentally, perhaps. And told that the Order had lost the Schism War. But remember that time passes much more slowly in Magic than here...as near as I can tell, roughly seven to one. Captivius was given a "field gauntlet" by Jurgen when they were captured, as kind of an inside joke. A cruel one, perhaps.

"As to why we want to ally with the Diedne? As near as I can tell, Laetitia was of the opinion that, if we went to them and told them that we had found proof that they were framed, for lack of a better word, that they would come to our aid when we beard the Quaesitores. In light of what I've seen since, I don't know if that would be the case. To them, it's only been thirty years since the Schism War. They may think it's still being fought. Or they may feel that they've lost everything on the outside, and that we, or other members of the Order, are an expeditionary force sent to wipe them out as well."

Fiona sighs deeply. [color=blue]"I don't know. I'm not a warrior, or a tactician, I'm a talker. Hell, the only thing I have that could be considered even remotely a combat spell are my two Curses of Circe. I really should have left this for those who are better suited for this kind of thing."

Fiona looks really down on herself at the moment.

((Interesting tidbit...if you Google "When did the Schism War start?", the first thing that comes up is a page about the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.))

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Tranquillina gradually sidles closer to Fiona, and at a suitable point in the conversation (probably during one of Isen's comments, since he won't even notice) she murmurs to the giantess in Gaelic: [color=magenta]"Don't beat yourself up over imperfections nobody else sees, pack-sister. You found Captivius and Jurgen in the first place and removed them from a decades-long imprisonment - do not discard those significant achievements. Anyway, now we're in a situation where negotiating is more important than fighting."

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Fiona looks at Tranquillina with a brief look of surprise on her face, as her mind flashes back to when she thought she was a werewolf, then confusion as having been called "pack-sister," before finally being replaced by her usual calm expression.

[color=blue]"Thank you," she replies in Gaelic. [color=blue]"But...'pack-sister'?"

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Tranquillina winces, then shakes her head. [color=magenta]"Sodalis, I mean," she amends, rolling her eyes at herself. [color=magenta]"Sometimes the wolf-mind takes a while to recede...."

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Who would we be negotiating with? The giants or the Diedne? That will best decide who should go and help.

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Fiona doesn't press, but looks at Tranquillina for a long moment before she returns to the business at hand.

[color=blue]"The original plan was to treat with the Diedne. Obviously, with what we've uncovered, that's subject to change. And, to be honest, I'm not sure that we should be negotiating with either one, unless we get information that shows us that things are not as I now see them."

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So again I will ask, what is the goal of an expedition? I would say that the number one goal is to find and possibly rescue Marcus. A secondary goal, which has no bearing on the first, is to deal with these captives. Are we agreed on this?

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[color=blue]"There's also the question of what to do with Jurgen and Captivius," Fiona says. [color=blue]"I honestly don't know of any reason to suspect that they would age to dust when they leave Magic, but it bought us time to decide how to handle them. Do we want to bring them into the mortal realm? Do we want to give them sanctuary here while they adjust to how much things have changed since they were captured? Do we want to keep their existence a secret, to protect them from our adversaries? I'm sure that someone, somewhere has a record of Jurgen of Flambeau, and it shouldn't be that difficult for someone to put two and two together and realize that it's the same one who disappeared here during the Schism War, which would likely put us higher on their list of priorities."

She stops, then half-smiles as an idea hits her. [color=blue]"Unless they were someone else. Newly gauntleted Flambeaux, with no ties to anyone or anything that died here long before any of us were ever born."

She then grins at Korvin. [color=blue]"Or, to make a long story short: yes."

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[color=magenta]"I think that keeping their existence clandestine - for the time being - is our best option," Tranquillina offers (in Latin for everyone to hear). [color=magenta]"Certainly they might be amenable to secrecy, given their terrible experiences. As for our purposes, it would give us time to gather information: both from our allies, to see in general terms how willing they are to support our push against Guernicus, and from these Diedne magi, concerning their captors and events of two centuries past. Not to mention their Gauntlet dates and lineages." Tranquillina probes her memory to see if she herself knows anything about these two magi. ((Order of Hermes Lore roll: Int 3 + OoHL (lineages) 2 + simple die 6 = 11.))

She sits back down, her mind now whirling with anxieties about what Fiona is thinking about her.

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As I understand it, we have time to decide what to do with Jurgen and Captivius. We can research Jugen while they stay at this Blacksmith's place. I am more concerned about Marcus and I feel that is more time sensitive.

If we are going to talk to the Diedne then I should do it. My house and Fiona's will not be threatening to them. Any of our Flambeau," Korven gestures to the three Flambeau. "should remain hidden from them. I say this because they think of your House as a enemy of theirs. If the plan is to just stomp on them then Fiona and I will take a stroll while our more battle ready magi show them the power the Order.

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Isen smirks
You want us to pull an appolodorus? I like that.

But it sure seems there's something going on with the Diedne, and I'm not sure I like it. Now that I think of it, I wonder. Laetitia betrayed us once to the guernici, although it seems to be unwillingly. And she later advised us to seek out the diedne, which, in retrospect, might not be such a good idea. This might be all coincidences, but I can't help but wonder.
Aaargh! I can't bring myself to these things, these are knots withing tangled knots.
All I can say is, we should really be cautious.

Nonetheless, I discussed this with Adeline last night, and she raised an interesting possibility: These magi are Flambeau from 200 years ago. This is a long time, and we don't know them. Even if they are who they say they are, they could bring trouble to the house and the order, just because our house has evolved, while they didn't. On the other hand, they are probably the oldest magi around, so maybe, just maybe, we could have Jurgen instated as the Praeco, should his identity became known.

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(OOC: I thought the very name of their House had been erased from the record, but wasn't sure and wasn't even sure if any of us had previously been aware of the portal to the Magic Realm previous to this meeting, so I decided to play generally dumb.)

Viscaria has been spent the preceding time in silent communication with Theraphosa, trying to get a quick enough shorthand to keep up with the conversation. "First thing's first. We should send folks out to find Marcus. I haven't even asked him yet to magic up the bath house. We should table the discussion about Jurgen and Captivus until we're not in a rush to make sure someone we care about isn't dead. But remember -- those two wizards whole-heartedly bought the Guernicus lies. They are natural pawns for our enemies."

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[color=blue]"If you think about it," Fiona says, [color=blue]"until last summer, we all bought whole-heartedly into Guernicus's lies. It wasn't until Apollodorus's murder that we learned the truth."