How does one gracefully take their leave of relatives who don't want you to go...ever?
There are a few archways which break the space up into different "rooms," but Viola can see into all of them from her perch by the kitchen table. Little else besides "baskets of vegetables" which are more glamoured bodies.
Nothing else besides the crones in the room adjacent to your lab space. There is still a stairwell leading into another regio boundary from the lab space (the actual stairs are a crumbled ruin, but the "stairs" which traverse the regio boundary are intact).
Your guide will continue to hide upstairs until the door to his aunt's room is shut and locked.
It makes Viola sad she isn't a Corpus maga, but I'm sure all that glamour is worth some kind of Im bonus, or something. Hey, and there's always that nice, sturdy door.
Viola will thank the crones for their lovely hospitality and the lovely meal, and head for the stairwell. She locks the door, and looks toward her guide's hiding place, calling, "Coming?"
I'm assuming that The Cat, still in cat form, is holding the cloth scrap in her mouth? Cuz, she's smart enough to know that when the glamour wears off, it's going to taste like something that hasn't been washed in a hundred years.
Crossing into the next level of regio*, you find yourselves in a long, branching corridor made from staglamites, wet and clay-like. It is open to a dark, stormy sky night sky, punctuated with silent lighting bolts that arc horizontally across your vision, robbing the colors from your eyes (eg, equivalent to moonlight). More stone statues that were once men are visible, and seem likely to fill the place.
The only sounds you hear when you hold your breath are that of dripping water, and from somewhere far away, sobbing.
Thus, I believe the Aura math must be: Aura 3 in the real world, Aura 5 in the first two "floors" of the regio, and greater than that here.
The Magic aura in the ruins is 3, but the Faerie aura in the temple is either 4 or 5, at your discretion. Thus, it could be 5 in the first level of the regio, and 6 here (or are we entering the third level?). At any rate, probably the two levels in which Viola establishes a lab should be 5 and 6, in order to avoid making her lab markedly better than those of the other magi, and also possibly posing Warping problems for anyone assisting her in the lab.
Regio boundaries have to be at least 2 points apart.
He nods worriedly. "Oh, yes."
After the second intersection where he pauses, trying to remember the way, it becomes clear that you are in a maze of some kind, formed by the stalagmites.
OOC: I was actually just envisioning the cat "spearing" a piece of fabric with one of her claws. Also, do I need to make a roll for the following? You mention a maze, but the Cat is just going where she thinks the sound is located.
When she hears the crying, the Cat walks off in the direction of the sound, curious to find out where it is coming from.
Cats will be cats. She sees the stalagmites (the dry ones, anyway) as more like "interesting terrain to walk on" than as "walls." She is quickly separated from the rest of the group.
The scrap of cloth is going to get even more grubby if you walk around this maze with it on your paw.
I just double-checked, and can't find that in the main rules. Are you sure you're not confusing the rule that modifies the Second Sight target number by two times the difference in auras between the levels?
We could leave a trail of bread crumbs, but I'm guess a ReIm spell would be more useful in this case.
"What sort of a problem will she be, and if she will be a problem, why are we going to see her?"
"Just don't look her in the eye. It shouldn't be hard, she's usually weeping into her hands. And don't....wait, you don't know why we're here?" He gapes, dumbfounded and open-mouthed at you. The phrase "horse-faced" never seemed to apply so directly to someone before. "I thought you already knew. If you didn't want to try to talk her back into the Oracle business, why are you here?"
RoP:Magic, pgs 11-13, where it explains how regios grow/contract. I need to re-read it to make sure I'm not confusing stuff, though. Point is, Aura in the lab = 5. Other auras adjusted to match.
Viola nods, "Of course. I just wanted to see what you would say. Would a mirror work?"
[Medusa is supposed to be dead, but might have had two sisters, according to Wikipedia, but I don't see any reference to any of their being oracles. Would an Artes Liberales roll tell Viola anything useful?]
Look at the last (partial) paragraph in the lefthand column of page 13.
According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, Medusa was originally a ravishingly beautiful maiden, "the jealous aspiration of many suitors," priestess in Athena's temple, but when Poseidon raped her in Athena's temple, the enraged Athena transformed Medusa's beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn onlookers to stone. Her fame comes not from the nature of her punishment, but from the heroes who had dealings with her after her goddess punished her. Not to mention, that story was told to the world by Perseus, who beheaded her and then wandered the world with her head in a sack to use as a weapon -- not an extremely reliable historian.
Ah. Thanks. So, Aura 4 in the mundane area, 5 in the lab, and something bigger than that here (no one's checked yet).
Viola isn't vain enough to carry an actual mirror around, but hunts for something with a reflection--maybe the guide is carrying some sort of metal equipment? (It should be noted that purpose-built mirrors go back at least to the period B.C., and so it seems odd that this faerie doesn't know of them.)
Her head was affixed to Athena's Aegis, though, and used by someone else . Bleh.
A lab with the Virtue Regio occupies two levels of the regio in question (hence the Size +3--and you'll notice the modifiers for it are very close to a combination of Isolated and Awkward Shape). In the past, when the two levels differed in aura by only one, I've gone with the lower figure for the lab as a whole. Isn't this the third layer of the regio? So it would have to be at least Aura 7.
The guide, who still hasn't given you his name (and possibly might not be an important enough faerie to merit a name of his own), does not have anything that might reflect on him, from what Viola can see. As for his not knowing what a mirror is, that might just be because he's a backwater hick of a faerie.
....or it might be related to Viola's next discovery: all the metal she's is carrying has become too tarnished to reflect.
Ah, I hadn't realized you were going for the multi-layer option when designing the layout as we've played through it. In the design I've been walking you through, the 1st layer of the regio had two levels. In other words, you've only walked through two regio boundaries so far -- the door to the temple, and the stairs leading to the stalagmite labyrinth. If you want, we can ret'con and say that the stairway inbetween was also a regio boundary, or discover another regio border near the crones.
I'm not sure she was carrying any in the first place--perhaps a buckle or two. A ReIm spont should be able to make the sleeve of her cloak reflective, though, by targeting the species (rather than the image source) and bouncing them backwards. The ReIm guidelines have nothing to say on that sort of spell though (they all take the object generating species as the target), but a base of 3 seems reasonable (it can't be harder than making an image move rapidly in a disoerienting way). Target has to be Part (though it's not really part of the cloak, but rather part of the species in the room), but the range is Personal, so the level would be 5.
In any case, before proceeding, Viola looks around for the cat, and, not finding her, calls out (her quill is no aid here), "Cat, back. Here wander not safe. Yes?"
Well, that's how the Regio Virtue is written, for some reason, and I thought that was a regio boundary anyway. I'm not sure about adding a third level, but hey, having Medusa inside your lab has to be worth some Reputation points.
As Viola strains to hear any hint of the cat's whereabouts, she senses that the dripping noise is coming from a different direction than the sobbing, and definitely sounds like water dripping into a pool.
After several seconds, she still does not hear the cat.
Alas, the cat is far too interested in these unknown sounds to hear anything else. She began wandering towards the sobbing, but then got distracted by a strange and persistent dripping sound. As it continues, the cat wanders towards the water, contemplating on what it could be.
She sees the stalagmites (the dry ones, anyway) as more like "interesting terrain to walk on" than as "walls." She is quickly separated from the rest of the group.
. Bleh.