I don't want to spend days spellcasting. And if by chance, Yannick could "borrow" a horse, the spell would be getting in the way...
Another thing to be done, though:
Yannick will ask the werewolf for some personal information. He needs the names of his wife and children and how to recognize them. Who were the dead werewolves and what were their names? Who are we likely to encounter and how would he speak to those people? In short: the info needed to pretend to be him.
Yannick will use the werewolfs clothing and gear.
Mariella will attempt some defensive spells
Rusting touch which annoys the enemy
PeTe 15
R Touch Target individual Duration Sun
Base 5 +2 Sun
Any metal touching the caster corrodes away immediatly
Which should destroy any metal weapon which attacks her
A Ward against Animal attacks as suggested above as well
Finally Do the mages want to take Siegfried along he is an excellent swordsman probably better than our Grogs and may be useful in a fight. Mariella won't suggest this.
Once all preparations are done what happens at the house in the forest? All spell casting succeed as the magi have time to make the proper preparations and cast spells in a calm state of mind.
[color=red]"Yannick , I do not beleive your deception will hold up for long, so I suggest we give you a headstart of a few minutes and then follow you in as there is possibly powerful sorceress waiting for us and I do not think you will be able to win a magical battle. Will five minutes be a long enougth head start. If it is you we will follow you after 5 minutes and head towards you. We will then deal with anyone who is threatening you or the hostages.
Alternativly we will launch an immeidate assault and hope suprise and speed carry the day, This would be safer for Yannick, than risking him being caught alone.
[color=red]There will surely be guards there, so five minutes is probably too short. I need to get to the sorceress first. Move in with the first signs of trouble
Or in a quarter of an hour, in the unlikely case that there are no signs of trouble. Who will take the backside of the house?
Besides, I'm more worried by blades than magic.
[color=red]Given that we will be some distance away if we wait until there is trouble I fear we will be to late as it will take us several minutes to arrive. I see no sign of sentries and there is some evidence that she does not possess her own troops so we may be able to gt close although it would be easier if we had troubled to learn invisibility spells.
I suggest Ardeth and her bodyguard cover the rear entrances while I and my bodyguard go through the front.
[color=red]Don't worry, I can handle myself for a couple of minutes.
But I see you want to get your hands dirty just leave me enough time to distract her a little.
I suggest you get in position and I move in for distraction after that.
When everybody have moved into position Yannick makes his move. Yannick approaches the house hearing nothing from within. Silence, grim silence. Nothing happens as Yannick approaches and when he enters the house Yannick is forces to bend over and throw up, such is the horror of the sight before him. On the floor there are corpses in plenty, only a day or two old but animals have started to feast upon them. From what can be seen there are four adult women amongst the dead and the rest are children. The cause of death is simple but equally gruesome, all of the slain have axe wounds in their bodies. Only one of the corpses have self inflicted wounds and lies next to a bloodstained axe. The stench is horrific.
Seeing Yannick in distress Mariella moves forward. Upon seeing the scene in front of her she makes the sign of the cross and mutters a quick prayer for the departed.
Then she moves forward and tries an intellego vim spell on the man with self inflcited wounds to see if she can detect any traces of magic upon him.
(In 3 +Vi 10+ sta 1 +aura ?)
When that fails she carefully checks each of the bodies to confirm that they are dead and then moves to search the rest of the building looking for any sign of the sorceress who did this
Yannick will spend some time taking a breath outside to recollect himself.
After that, he'll spont a MuIm to change the stench inside the house into an equally overwhelming scent of flowers.
He will help Mariella check if there are any signs of live. Yannick will try to recognize the victims (with the help of the descriptions the werwolf gave him...). Hopefully there are people missing...
[color=red]They were already dead when the werwolves attacked us, right? They never even had a chance.
[color=red]Yes, they were. These were useless killings, especially the children. Why come to such an extremity?
There is some scheme at work here, something I don't quite understand.
But I can't shake the feeling that our opponent musn't be far, unless she's scrying us maybe. He or she must have wanted the books, and waited to see if this was a trap, intending to kill the werewolf when he entered the house.
Yannick, you're our nature-expert, do you have you a way to ascertain if there's someone around? If not, we should rush to the covenant as soon as possible: Our ennemy may want to use the opportunity to attack.
[color=blue]As the werewolf where conducting the attack in league with his brothers and father the victims are most likely the wives and children of their men. It has passed some time between the attack and when the discovery where found so perhaps some werewolves on a book hunt missed their deadline, but who knows...
For the moment I don't have my books with me but I let you detect some sings of magic on the person with the self inflicted wounds. They are weak however.
"My Intellego magics are not good enougth to learn more here. Magic was used here but I am not skilled enougth to determine more I presume mind control but anything more is beyond me. I am not capable of Necromancy or any other spells to gather information from here. I don't think either of you have spells suitable for an investigation or good enougth arts to spont such spells anymore than I do.
I can't think of anything else we can do here , except send out some people to bury the bodies and conduct a service for them. When we do I will accompany them to ensure their safety otherwise we should return to the covenent
"
[color=red]I concur, although their parent should decide on what we'll do with the bodies.
He'll also probably want to see them one last time, despite their state.
The magi make haste to return to the covenant. As they approach a trail of smoke can be seen from the covenant, on a closer look it seems as one of the servants quarters have been put to the torch. The building is destroyed but the surrounding buildings have survived the threat. As the magi come closer to the covenant one of the servant’s rushes up to meet them. [color=red]My ladies! he screams, [color=red]it was horrible. Suddenly one of our homes burst into fire and later someone assaulted Master Justus Felix. I think he is alright but I don’t know.
When you enter the covenants council hall, Justus sits on a chair seeming most troubled. As the other magi approaches he informs them about what happened. [color=red]I heard the alarm of a building on fire, he starts to speak there are no question that he is quite startled about what happened, [color=red]then it appeared… it was a blurry picture of a humanoid form and it begun to cast spells. Before I know what happened I couldn’t move and then I felt how someone forced my mind to answer questions about where we had hidden the books and how they could be obtained. I couldn’t do anything in my defence. Then the shape lost its concentration on me, as one of our kitchen staff entered the room, I fled. I teleported away and hid in my chambers… I lost my courage in the face of the enemy. When I dared to walk down to our council chamber a look and the following books where missing, Defence against the magus malediction, Obliteration, a summae on the destruction of entities and Domination over the elements, minds and bodies in your surroundings. The most worrying thing is that our summae on Parma Magica is missing.I managed to comprehend the magic though, is was hermetic. Justus sighs and hold his head in is hands.
[color=red]"This is a high crime against the order. We should call in a Quasitor immediatly. The magus who did this is probably more powerful than us as he was able to function within our aegis and defeat the parma of Justus with a fairly powerful mentam effect. If our attacker was hermetic at least we have not lost a work on Parma magica to hedge wizards. It is clearly the same attacker as before or a cohort of theirs.
They have angered me and I will see them dead wether from hermetic justice or wizards war this I swear in the name of God and the honor of my house
. Justus you could not be expected to singly defeat a magus capable of such magics .
I presume the house fire was just s diversion but we should check to make sure that it was notmore signifigant.
We need a better Aegis and better guards trained to fight magi. I will write to my parens to see if I can secure such from him and my house and what the price will be.
Mariella is clearly furious, an expression which is becoming a common sight on her face.
It looks like she really would like to KILL SOMETHING
Aaaarrr! We're too late, just as I feared. Our ennemy must have monitored our movements, intending either to take the books from the werewolves, or to use their diversion against us. He just seized the occasion.
You have nothing to reproach to you, justus: As mariella said, our ennemy is clearly a very powerfull opponent, which makes his actions all the more strange: Why hide and raid a covenant of such young magi when you're an elder magus, with an entire covenant's ressources at your command? The risk is very high, for comparatively little gain. Unless this is an eremite of sorts?
Still, we must clearly ressort to the quaesitores, as this is a clear breach of the code. Whoever did this has to pay, and pay dearly.
Anyway, I clearly concurr on the aegis subject. We should all learn wizard's communion, and obtain a powerfull aegis ritual. The higher, the better.
[color=red]Forgot you could track someone. This is a great idea, one we should try at once, especially while our wards still hold. Too bad ursus left with the other magi, he'd had been especially usefull.
As per aldrick, if there's some magus or maga around, he may know about it.
[color=blue]I’ll cut this chapter short here. This is because I want to let the new players get into the game. Take a seasons study for each of your character, but do not use it to read a stolen book.
Justus decides to travel to Oculus Septentrinalis so that he can deliver a message to the Quesiatoris in security and then return safely. He encourages each and everyone to devout their study to something that could help the covenant as a whole, especially in combat or other security matters. No clues can be gained for the moment to the location of the assailant but perhaps there will be. Of course next chapter will start with a council meeting in the beginning of the winter season. Post if you want anything clarified before we move on.
