Fray enters, briefly looks across the Magi in the chamber, and then greets Gregorius, "Welcome back friend. Your trip to the tribunal was very productive - and welcome fellow magi. My name is Fray, and like you I am a guest of the covenant."
Fray's most prevalent feature is bold visible burns across his face and hands where they exit his tunic and robes, and a large pelt he wears atop the traveling clothes. Otherwise he has the pale complexion of a western European with honey coloured hair and full beard.
"Just to be on the safe side, I'll add another letter to Magvillus - how is the post handled here, anyway? - and get confirmation from them. But Tasia shouldn't be able to have multiple sancta, so if she moves and sets up shop somewhere else, that would be a strong case for re-opening her old lab, as it would be abandoned. After all, if a magus could just claim any space they wanted as a sanctum and have it protected, that would lead to abuses. We have to be cautious about accidentally depriving her of magical power if some of her work was left behind and she wants it back. I don't think I'll be doing lab work in the immediate future so at least I won't be putting pressure on that front," says Timaios in response to the lab space issue.
"Pleased to meet you, Fray," he adds when the burned magus arrives. Timaios offers his hand to shake. "Timaios ex Guernicus. I'm just visiting - looking into what happened to Tasia, and seeing if I can help with the issues currently affecting this covenant."
Gregorius nods and smiles warmly back at the newly arrived magus, but refrains from saying anything in favour of the new magi.
"We get Redcaps through fairly frequently."
"I am looking for a familiar, and so I want to be prepared when I find one, which means I'd like to have a lab and a vis as soon as possible. I am ready to work for them, but ready-made would of course be my first choice. ", says Asena in an apologetic tone.
"I suppose we could kill two birds with one stone, and pay you to set up a lab," Gregorius muses to Asena. "Say three pawns of Form vis a season?"
"That would certainly be adequate", Asena replies happily "I've always liked the idea of building a lab from the ground up. I am rather small and this gives me the chance to use smaller tables and so on. I doubt it will make much of a difference to anyone but me - but it will feel good"
ooc: no worries, I'm not going for any mechanical boni here
"Very well - I'll give you a tour of the cavern system where the laboratories are, so you can consider which of the available spaces you want to set up in." Gregorius turns to the other magi. "You're welcome as well, of course."
"I'd be delighted to have a tour," says Timaios. "Anything we should know in advance? 'Don't touch that, don't go there...'?"
With a slight smile Fray says “It’s mostly safe but do treat the resident vermin with respect. I’ll not join you but it trouble rises please say.”
A tour would be most welcome replies Wishbone
"And my lab will be in that cave system, right?", Asena asks.
"I would expect so," Gregorius replies. "At least assuming you want to start setting up soon - there aren't currently any appropriate places above ground, although we might have built something in a year or two. We did have one visiting magus set-up an open air lab protected by wards, but there was a reason I had all of the equipment placed back into storage after he left."
To Timaios, he responds "There are a couple of regios on the site, one of which you could stumble into accidentally after a bit of work. The covenant is also haunted by some old greek ghosts, but they only come out at the new moon and haven't caused any significant problems so far."
He leads off on the tour, pausing occasionally to give the new magi chances to ask questions.
"Where we are now is one of the two main buildings which survived at least partially from the previous covenant. It contains the kitchen and the dining room - you can either eat here, or ask the servants to have your food delivered to your quarters." He points towards the kitchen as he mentions it, but doesn't bother taking the magi there unless any of them seem actively interested.
Moving outside, he walks round the two-storey building you were in before to a central "courtyard", explaining as he does so: "That larger building contains quarters, the autocrat's office and the library. I'll show you that at the end of the tour, as I imagine people will want to look over the catalogue."
He gestures towards a couple of buildings set towards the northern part of the square which makes up the covenant clearing, a little distance from the courtyard. "Those are a couple of craftsmens' workshops. That one over there" - he points towards another building set a little way off on its own - "is the infirmary". The large building over near the watchtower is the barracks - things have got a lot less crowded in the main house since we got it completed a month or so back."
Most of the buildings around the courtyard are in a near complete state of ruin, but to the north of the courtyard an old foundation is filled with a tile mosaic. A stairwell leads down under it into the ground. Gregorius walks over to it, but stays at the edge. "This is an old temple. As well as the staircase down to the cavern system, there's a faerie aura within its perimeter, and also the entrance to a faerie regio where Viola has her sanctum. She likes her privacy, so I wouldn't recommend entering without her invitation - and it's not that easy anyway."
[Edit: corrected location of stairs down into cavern system.]
"The aura in the cave complex - how strong is it, and does it show fluctuations?", Asena wants to know.
"Strength of 5, which so far has appeared to be constant and stable," replied Gregorius. "I'm caveating that because the aura on the surface does vary - it appears to be one point higher in Spring, and increased by two points in those places close to the water once we got it flowing. Overall, it's a bit of a patchwork - right now, it'll be 3 in areas of the clearing away from water, and 5 next to it. In Spring, it'll be 4 and 6. I'm not sure what causes the variation, beyond that it's obviously linked to water somehow. The connection's obviously an old one, though - presumably it's why the Romans used to worship Neptune here." There's a touch of disdain in his last words.
Asena contently hums as they walk through the cave system.
If it is dark in there, she'll have to recast Personal Eyes of the cat every two minutes
(Mu 5 + Co(An) 1+ Sta 2 + Aura 5 + 2 loud and wild gestures + roll (no stress)/5 > 3
"Hm. I have some basic proficiency with Aquam. Perhaps I can help with exploring and charting the waterways. If this was once dedicated to Neptune there may well be regio attached to the water areas themselves," suggests Timaios.
Do you mean to be casting non-fatiguingly (which doesn't get a roll) or fatiguingly (which gets a roll and divides by 2 rather than 5)? I'd have thought the latter made more sense, and would also let you cast at sun duration rather than diameter.
"You're right on the regio," comments Gregorius. "That's the one I mentioned earlier which you can stumble into with some effort. It has a large number of streams radiating into a deep central lake, which we haven't managed to explore properly yet, so assistance would be useful - although I suspect the streams at least are impossible to explore properly due to the nature of the regio."
Once he's finished the surface tour, Gregorius moves onto the caverns. Before he does so, he has a soldier grog bring several torches, although he doesn't have them lit immediately.
The caverns are entered via a broad but somewhat steep staircase down into a natural limestone cavern. Four doors lead off from the cave before it; one on the immediate left, another to the far left, the next in the middle of the wall opposite and the fourth in the middle of the righthand wall. The cavern appears to be lit by several mundane lamps, and in addition in the centre of the floor a single candle flame burns with no apparent flame in the centre of a carved ring.
"The door immediately to the left is the main guest lab," explains Gregorius. "It has been in use by Stephen of Bonisagus; however, he apparently discovered something at the tribunal he wants to pursue elsewhere, so it's likely to be free from next season. It has living quarters which Stephen excavated attached to it. The door to the right leads to a storeroom. It could be turned into a laboratory of standard size, but there would not be any living quarters attached without additional work."
He briefly opens the storeroom's door, and shows it to the magi. It's a roughly rectangular room that looks like it's largely a natural cavern that someone has worked on a little in places. Currently it's filled with a large pile of lab equipment. He then walks on through the cavern before stopping at the door at the other end, which has a sanctum marker clearly engraved upon it. "This is Tasia's quarters and laboratory." He doesn't touch that door, but instead opens the remaining door to the left, which turns out to lead to a short passageway with another doorway off it to the right, and a staircase down on the left.
"My own laboratory is in that room," he explains. "It also contains an enchanted hypocaust which is responsible for heating the covenant - a legacy of the previous covenant on this site."
He moves on down the the stairs which lead to a second level, also lit by torchlight and with another flame in a circle. This cavern has three doors leading off it - one on the right and two on the left - and another staircase leading downwards at the far end.
"The door on the right leads to Fray's quarters and lab. The doors on the left both open onto a single room, which until quite recently was blocked off and flooded." Indeed, the doors look new. Opening one of them (and getting the grog to light a torch), Gregorius shows you a long room, down the opposite side of which runs a stream. There's a metal grille fitted across the stream where it enters the room to the north. Where it exits to the south, someone appears to have blown a hole in the wall, from which you can hear the sounds of a waterfall close by. Indeed, with her magically enhanced eyesight Asena can see that the hole continues until the stream suddenly disappears.
"This could be turned into another lab, although there's the potential for it to flood again if the steam course is blocked as it was before. I don't think that's a major risk as long as we're in a position to care, however."
"Now then, this is the end of the bit of the caverns which is currently inhabited, although there is a grog post a little way below. After this, we're into caves which were all flooded until this spring. It's not lit, so we'll be using torches, and if you're able to cast Eyes of the Cat and haven't already you may wish to put it up."
He follows his words by attempting to case a Personal range version of the spell himself.
[(Mu 0 + Co 0 + Sta 1 + Aura 5 + die 8 )/2 = 7 vs lvl 4, succeeds. (roll.coyotecode.net/lookup.php?rollid=227766)]
ooc: spont fatiguing version Eyes of the cat, roll: 2, spell works
Wishbone will cast palm of flame on his left hand
CT 46 + roll 5 = 51 + aura vs spell level 5 (cast).
Once the magi have finished casting their spells, and the grog has lit and handed out torches to those that want them, Gregorius leads the way down the staircase. This one turns out to go down next to the waterfall, which leaves some of the lower steps slightly slippery with the spray. At the bottom, the pool beneath the waterfall leads into a small steam which the path follows alongside until you reach a huge room dozens of paces across and with a towering roof. Parts of the walls and ceiling have been carved with images depicting a sea god (probably Neptune or Poseidon?), and the centre of the floor is filled with an elaborate mosaic. Other than this, and the stream running through it, the room is largely empty, with another passage leading out of the opposite side of the room.
This turns to lead to a fork in the passage way, with another stream joining from the left before the combined watercourse flows down the third passage. Turning left, Gregorius shows you to another room, this one a dead end. It too is decorated with an elaborate mosaic and wall carvings, but there is also an altar made of stone and bronze. The stream's entrance to the room has been covered with another grate.
Returning to the junction, you take the other path, which starts to slope gently downwards. It passes through another, smaller, cavern. This one looks entirely natural, without decoration, and Gregorius doesn't linger in it, instead leading you further down the passage to the top of another staircase and waterfall. You can see a light coming from below.