Chapter 1: Tribunal

"Why the hell are you lot attacking this man with the nun?" Bastion says in Occitan, he then turns to cat and says "I'd love to but I am very interested in what transpired here."

As his fellow magi step up to berate the spearmen, St. Avery slid towards his sister. "Sooo....", he said. "How deep in peril are we?" As he had been spending the last fifteen years studying magic, she had been studying essentially everything about the order EXCEPT magic. Including things such as hermetic law, and how to break it for fun and profit.

"Who is this 'we' that you speak of, oh great magus?" She said. "I'm just a lowly scribe."

"It became 'we' when I hired to do our books."

"Never should have listened to mom," she muttered. "'Go work with your brother', she said. 'He'll set himself on fire if you're not there,' she said. 'Get rich, then come back with a hot Frenchman and some grandchildren', she said."

"Wait, she said that?"

"Scribe's prerogative. I may have embellished the conversation for dramatic necessity and to emphasize subtext." Then she frowned. "Scale of one to ten? You're probably only a four."

"Huh. Any ideas?"

"Sure, lots." She ticked her chin towards the now-immobilized spearmen. "Although most of them end with, 'and then you kill them all and bury them six feet downward."

"Well, I could probably do both at once with a simple Rego..." then he blinked, and recoiled. "Wait, that's a horrible thing to do!"

"Not saying any of them are particularly GOOD ideas. Just saying that they're ideas. There are very few violations of the Oath that can't be resolved by the death of everyone who may complain about it."

St. Avery groaned, and rubbed his forehead. "If we can perhaps avoid multiple homicides on our first trip to Tribunal as adults, I'd appreciate it. Couldn't you go, I dunno, talk to them, or something?"

"Yes, I could. Or I could stand here and not get stabbed by a terrified band of mercenaries and/or their target-of-unknown-virtue-and-questionable-innocence." She pointed towards the likely-knight and probably-a-nun. "You don't just hire bands of ruffians for fun, y'know. SOMETHING is going on here, and we don't know enough to make a judgment call. Then she turned back, and with a straight face: "If only there were some sort of magi qualified to investigate such matters."

"Yeah, that would be really nice to have...oh, right. Gernicus."

"Indeed. Interrogations and investigations. Then the incarceration (and internment), if necessary."

And so, the Avery siblings decided to do nothing, and let the more gentle-minded of their peers figure something out.

(OOC - I'd be happy to send Emily to talk to the knight and the nun, but I figured I could let folks whose raison d'être is to do these sorts of things get a chance to do so.)

Catching the end of Emily and Avery's side discussion, Cornelius comments in latin, "Certainly, I can handle any interrogation that we feel is necessary. But I will not step forward as long as weapons are being waved around." He shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the armed men in case the threat become more direct to them, "There is also the matter of language. I know some basic Occitan, but I am not fluent enough to do a good interrogation. Someone else will need to ask the questions and listen to answers."

"We should have just went on our way. I do not see how this is our business." He shrugs, "I heard a saying a few years ago. 'Curiosity killed the cat.'"

All the assmebled are shocked, except the one still making pitiful noises as he slowly burns (and the dead one).

"Magi, what have you done. We are here on orders of the bishop to catch this man and this woman. They have eloped. My master will not be happy to learn how you have hindered us from performing our duty."

The 'nun' speaks up: I love him, and I haven't professed yet. True, I didn't have permission to leave, but this..."

She stops.

Cornelius tries to remember what he knows of the local Civil and Canon Law regarding entering the cloistered orders and the laws regarding daughters, elopment, and other relevant details.

(Int 4 + Civil & Canon Law (Provence) 1 + die roll Civil and Canon Lore roll: 1D10 = [7] = 7 = 13.)

Clovis only understands a few words of what's spoken, but he surely understand the spearmen calling them magi.

in Latin he adds looking at the soldier on fire "Can't anyone extinguish that poor lad ?" He then takes a blanket or something suitable in the cart and tries to extinguish the fire .

In Latin, Cornelius addresses Bastion, speaking loud enough for the other magi and the mundanes to hear, "Our intervention seems to have been ill-advised, master. The bishop is certainly acting within the boundaries of canon law by retrieving one of his charges who runs away. She should have waited until the appropriate time to refuse to take her vows, then should would have been within her rights to go. Now," he turns to gesture towards the burned man being tended to by Clovis, "you may certainly have to pay some reparation for the injury caused to one of the bishop's men."

(Cornelius is very careful not to use any names.)

In latin Bastion replies "Well I disagree with everything you just said and disapprove of every authority the church claims over someone. Buuuut I can see no one but me cares about their plight and I'd rather not be marched over it so fine, we'll let them get on with their awful business."

Bastion gestures at the burning man being put out by Clovis "As for him, unless we have 5 pawns of creo vis we'd want to use for a healing spell there's not much I can do for him. Perhaps when he heals he'll reconsider a life dedicated to that awful institution, in which case I've already done the best I can."

Turning to the armed men in Occitan he says in a flat voice with no emotion "Terribly sorry for the misfortune that has been bestowed upon you, it's a terrible shame that in your current state the people you are hunting will likely make an escape, however I really want to make it up to you and pretend this never happened."

Turning back to Cornelius "Well I made my apology, shall we be done of this dreary business?"

More softly, so that the mundanes are not able to understand him, Cornelius adds, "I am just trying to play a part to avoid making things worse, by offering to pay blood price for the injury. Unless you plan to kill all witnesses?"

(Have the girl and lone fighter tried to run away?)

Elizabeth has a fairly simple theology, Dominion Auras indicate God has judged the group, at the very least, not in need of magi intervention. Infernal Auras are a sign of something very, very wrong, and probably in need of intervention by an expert. That explains her following remarks "Hey, whats this about an awful church? Unless it has an actual Infernal Aura I vote we leave it alone. Anyway, as long as there's no Infernal involvement we shouldn't involve ourselves with any Church related matters. If they'll accept some silver to make up for this, we should pay. " Then she walks towards the woman, and kneels down to ask her "Miss, do you speak Latin? I mean no offense to the Bishop or the Church, but we are a bit paranoid sometimes. If you do I want to make sure, the Bishop and Covenant aren't doing anything... wrong, like worshiping demons, mass murder, rape or similar terrible things?"

"Huh?" He pointed his stick through the immobilized guards, towards the initiate. "Her parents gave authority to the bishop to educate her in a nunnery, until her age of majority. That's almost exactly the same authority that our own parens had over us, during our apprenticeship."

"What?" St. Avery shook his head. "No, no - you just tried to murder someone with a fire bolt. There's LOTS more you can do." He began to count off with his fingers. "You could keep care of him until he healed, or if he dies you can turn yourself over to the authorities for trial. (Because you did try to unjustly kill him, after all - and murderers shouldn't be allowed to just walk around free.) Or you could pay his family wergild due to your felonious actions. I mean, there's WAY more you can do than what you've done."

He paused. "Oh, you mean 'as much as you can do that doesn't inconvenience you or cause you to change your ways." Then ne nodded vigorously. "Right! I understand - yes, anything more would require actual effort on your part to do penance for your murder attempt."

St. Avery thought about that for a moment. "Well, I suppose we are. If you want to ignore what you've done and not take steps to ensure you won't endanger us again with your stupidity." Then he shrugged. "I understand that integrity and consistency and acknowledging one's mistakes isn't for everyone."

Then he gestured at the guards again. "Oh, and you're going to have to decide what do to with them, seeing as they're not at fault here and in the right and doing their job, so I'm just going to let them go." He leaned in towards Bastion. "What with you trying to murder their colleagues in front of them. They're probably kind of upset at that. Are you going to murder them some more? For doing their job on behalf of the lady's legitimate legal guardian?" Then he cocked his head. "But hey - I've heard that when people do something stupid, they try to cover it up by being even more stupid. Are you going to keep being stupid, and thereby bring ruin on us?"

"Hey, can you confirm that they're both not demons or fairies or magical constructs or something? The timing of...this," he yelled to Elizabeth, waving his stick around in the air, "feels a bit off, to me." Then he gave a little bow towards the knight and lady, along with a light smile. "No offense Lady and sir Knight, if you can understand what I'm saying and you're both human. If you're a demon or farie, get $*%Ked."

Clovis Nods at St Avery's comments.

I'm reassured I'm not the only one stuck by the unnecessary display of violence to a man whose only crime was to hold a spear. Let's deal with the consequences together and pretend you're just overreacting to weapons out of fear or something... this time, ONLY, if you see what I mean.

"I would certainly argue the presence of the gift makes that completely different, we were whisked away from a life where had we not been picked up by the order we'd have been complete social outcasts, subject to who knows what prejudice and easy prey for diabolists. Sending a woman to a nunnery to be cloistered and live by stringent rules, to never be able to have a relationship of love, is utterly ridiculous.

"I am... Sympathetic, I acted rashly and with clouded judgement, I wish not total death upon this man but we can hardly take him to Tribunal with us, such a thing is bound to cause more harm than good. What am I to do?"

"I suppose we could thing of a less magical ,solution to this dilemna."

Bastion thinks for a moment trying to find a solution.

"Perhaps we coudl build a stretcher for the poor sod? At least they'd have an easier time getting home than trying to get him to walk

Diabolism would of course be the cherry on top of this incident...

(For anyone that hasn't read the OOC thread, it makes some sense of what I'm doing, not that what i'm doing actually makes sense)

Your victims are forced to listen to you for two minutes, and two of them seem to be able to understand Latin well enough to follow the debate.

When the holding spell ends, they stretch their legs, and stalk the knight who takes a defensive position again. One one of the spearmen asks shyly in por Latin: "Magi superiori, nos volent interficere ille horribile hominus et returnere" not knowing the word he points at the girl continuing in Occitan: "her".

The girl starts crying (again) and says in much better Latin looking at her defenser: "Save us, an we'll serve you. All we want is to be together."

(ooc: that was a lot of debate. The scene is Monty-Pythonesque with all those magi debating like that. But if I get you correctly, you've decided to let them kill the knight and return the girl)

Cornelius asks the spearman, first in latin "Quaeritis interficere hominem? Sine iudicio?", then in broken occitan, "You want kill man? No tribunal?"

(OOC: That seems a hasty way to deal with him. If he is from the nobility, that may be an abuse of the law? Is there a possible recourse in that situation? New roll for Civil & Canon Law: Int 4 + C&L 2 + die roll 9 = 15)

The one speaking Latin says: "Jean-Luc died without a trial, and it doesn't look like he's just gonna let us do our job, that sonofabitch"

Edit: They are arresting someone on the bishop's order. If he stands in their way, they may clear a path.

(OOC: Indeed, if he resists and fights then they would be justified in killing him. However...)

Turning to the lone man, Cornelius asks again in Latin, "Sir, do you surrender to us and promise to stand in trial for your actions, including the killing of this man?" The magus posing as a servant adds, raising his hand, "That would mean that this girl would have to follow these men and return to the covent, for now. After your trial, should the result permit, you may be able to rejoin her. Otherwise you will die here and she will be back to the covent with the memory of your death. That is all we can do for you."

The man, using the spearmen's talkative mood,hacks off another spearman's head with an elegant stroke, and says without taking his eyes of his remaining foes: "God willing, I shall kill all of these cretins."

Shaking his head at the further display of useless violence, Cornelius just says, "The fool is yours, then."

All Elizabeth manages to get in before the sudden display of violence is "Let's not be-. After, she let's out a "God Damn It!" Elizabeth in her native English tongue. The sudden hacking off of a man's head while they were talking it out is pretty much her limit. She casts Call to Slumber on the swordsman, or at least attempts too.

She rolls a 10! +7 Re +5 Me + 1 Sta -3 Dominion Aura = 10
Erm... how many botch dice, should I roll? Elizabeth has nothing that reduces her botch dice, and we have a dominion aura of one right? Looking at the botch dice chart, I think this is roughly about fighting in the rain, plus another for the aura. So here goes 5 rolls, but feel free to roll extra. :slight_smile: Five rolls with out a zero. Woot!