[No, no feast.]
Is Viola covering only Chryse with her Parma, or others as well?
Viola picks a night near the end of Winter, when the ice on the creeks has just started to melt, reasoning that the time of change for the creek fae will help in addition to the obvious symbolism.
For a long time, nothing happens, but then as dawn begins to break she sees movement in the woods near the edge of the Aegis.
Viola will also cover Idiot, her brother, and two shield grogs.
[She really should get her own personal shield grog or two, if anyone's interested in making one.]
As the faeries approach, Viola will wait patiently for them. She's not rushing out to meet them, but she'll be at the head of the group.
Obviously, the content of the story will have resonated with Chryse--Viola will have laid out the entire plan for her, since she needs to learn to think like a maga. Does Viola have any read on how the situation is affecting her apprentice? Also, does Viola have any idea about the nature of Chryse's turbulences?
Scott
[Let's say she has Bogdan and Godzimir with her and covered by her Parma, but no other shield grogs - that way, everyone's covered.]
Viola covers the group with her Parma, and reminds them (looking pointedly at Ipek) that it will only continue to protect that for as long as they remain within sight of her.
Chryse's Latin and Viola's Greek are still both poor enough to make communicating complex concepts difficult. Unless Viola is doing something fancy with spontaneous InMe magics, she'll have needed to employ a translator (probably Calliope? Although I'm sure Ipek would have been happy to help...)
Between the language barrier and Viola's own relative lack of experience of reading people in general and nine-year-olds in particular, Viola isn't very sure quite how much of her explanation Chryse has understood. Apparently something has got through, however, as the usually quiet young girl does ask one question:
"You're going to make the monster a good mother again?"
As far as the turbulances go...has Viola been using the Aegis to suppress them (by not including Chryse in the ritual, and only giving her a token when she wants her to be able to do something), or allowing them free rein?
The faeries stop a little way short of the Aegis, and Viola can hear what sounds like an argument.
"I told you you was imagining it!"
"And I told you I weren't! Just cos you wouldn't notice your own creek freezing over..."
"It's probably some trick by those weirdos living up in the ruins...it didn't sound nothing like her..."
I'm assuming that Viola and Chryse have been communicating through whoever is teaching her Latin--though Viola wouldn't pull that person into this situation. Right now, yes, Calliope is probably the best translator, because God knows what Ipek would do. (Note that, while not a gifted communicator--or really, not a communicator at all--Viola has invested some effort in Folk Ken, at level 1 anyway, with a specialization in peasants.)
Viola speaks up to the creek faeries, "No, I'm not your mother, but I have a son, and this is my daughter." She holds Chryse in front of her and places her hands on the child's shoulders--that might be a little bit of a lie in English, but in Latin, the words are the same. "I know that you love your mother dearly...and if the stories are to be believed, she loves you just as much, and as a mother myself, I know in my heart what she must feel. You haven't spoken to her in a very long time, but now is the time to change that. Come, let's go to her...." She waits for some sort of positive reaction before turning and leading them towards the regio.
[I'm assuming two things there: that Viola communicates better with faeries than with humans, and that she had some help from Calliope and Ipek in composing that little speech.]
Scott
[It also didn't help that Viola rolled fairly poorly on her Folk Ken roll. For interacting with Faeries she's using Faerie Lore rather than human abilities, though, which should help somewhat (although she's still got her negative comm hindering her).]
[In case it becomes relevant later - is Chryse being affected by the Aegis during this adventure, or has Viola given her an Aegis token?]
The faeries stare at Viola. "Wot? You romans as crazy as her, or just think we is? She kills everyone wot goes near her!"
There's no reason to give Chryse a token yet, since her Arts haven't been opened. I'm not clear on whether the Aegis extends into the regio, however; I suppose it does.
One more precaution Viola will have taken before coming out here: she'll have asked to have several grogs posted in the lab room with the statues, and a few more to guard the door to the crones' room. She's not sure what, if anything, is going to happen to any of these characters when Halia changes, since their ultimate fates aren't part of the story. (That might constitute poor planning, but a simple story is likely to work best.)
Viola nods, ":She turned one of you to stone, I know. But...you know the stories, yes? She feels dreadful for it. I know you still love your mother--or you wouldn't have come when I called."
Scott
There's a little bit on the statues in the story (in so much as there's a pre-defined method to transform at least one of them back), but I agree nothing on the crones.
The faerie gives an awkward shrug of agreement. "She's our ma, yes, and ain't nothing going to change that. But how is you going to stop us getting stoned too?"
Yes, the one statue who's Halia's child is supposed to get transformed back. The ones that worry Viola are the ones in her lab--she doesn't want to encounter a bunch of angry "heroes" on returning from the upper level of the regio. There are obviously other statues in the labyrinth, but Viola and Calliope will be there when whatever happens to them happens, and so can probably deal with it.
Viola smile, a little slyly. "I think that will work itself out....A mother's love is very strong." She beckons them forward. "But don't worry, we won't talk to her until it's safe."
Scott
The fact that the one statue focussed on doesn't automatically turn back suggests that the others probably won't - but it rarely hurts to take precautions.
The children look at Viola a little dubiously, but start moving in the right direction.
Viola will need to give them Aegis tokens for them to enter the covenant grounds.
[I reread the story the other night, and I could have sworn that the last scene is for Halia to return the one child she turned to stone to flesh. There's also another statue mentioned, IIRC--the lover in the labyrinth.]
She passes out the tokens, "Here, these will let your enter your mother's home. Follow me--let me go first to be safe."
Scott
[She does, but there's a specific process she follows rather than it just happening automatically.]
The children follow Viola through the grounds of the covenant, then on through the great bronze doors which make up the entrance to the regio, down the four steps into and into the temple. The trepidation they show only increases when one of them elbows another and points up through the broken roof; there, Viola can see that the sky has started to cloud over.
Let's wait for the rain. Viola pauses, and asks of the assembled fae, "Do you know where to find your mother in here?"
I don't recall if we can hear Halia or not. If Viola has to navigate, it'll probably require some sort of In effect--a Mu or Re would change visibility for everyone, including Halia.
Scott
The fae shrugs. "Follow the sound of crying, I guess."
Viola can't hear any crying from where she's waiting on the first level of the regio, but she remembers it being audible in the second level previously. The maze is likely to make it harder to pinpoint.
That could be tough to hear over the storm.
The rules on Magical Senses (pp. 113-114) mention the need to penetrate, but I assume that applies only if the sense is the medium for detecting something within the person of a creature with Magic Resistance--it shouldn't apply to species emitted by that creature. (The creature is magical, but I'm not sure the species emitted are themselves magical--and that seems to be the consensus: Imaginem and Resistance)
So, an InIm spell to enhance hearing is base 1, +3 for target Vision, +2 for duration Sun, and let's give it a +1 for complexity, in that we only want to make it easier to hear crying (not, say, the storm). That's a level 15. Viola's casting total (with Potent Spontaneous Magic) is In 8 * 2 + Im 8 +2 Sta + Aura 6 = 32 + a stress die, all divided by 2. She couldn't quite manage it without Fatigue, due to the need to double one Art and/or add the stress die..
Die roll: 8, with a Weird Magic roll of 5.
How's the storm coming? We don't want to proceed until it's started to get dark. The need to rest for a couple of minutes to recover the Fatigue provides a convenient excuse to delay a little longer.
Scott
Right now, the sky is overcast, but Viola suspects that it's not going to get truly stormy until you're in the final level of the regio - with fae, these things tend to progress narratively rather than with strict attention to time passed.
I'm a bit unsure exactly what you're aiming for with the spell - something that enables you to see auditory species?
Vision is also +4 rather than +3 - do you actually mean Range: Sight? If you do, there's the problem of what you're targetting - Imaginem is more of a constant stream than a discrete object at the time of casting.
Thinking about it more, it feels like what you need (and possibly were going for?) is a variant of Eyes of the Eagle (pg 145 of the corebook) that affects hearing rather sight? If so, I think that would be built as Base 3 + 2 Sun + 3 Hearing ( +1 complexity for targetting crying only) = 25.
Sorry, target should have been Hearing (equivalent to Structure). She wants improved hearing, but only for crying. Yes, I was using Eyes of the Eagle as a model, but no, I didn't notice the similar-looking base 1 and base 3 effects. However, I don't think the base 1 helps, even if we could find a proper target, because it doesn't enhance the sense. MuCo could probably enhance her hearing, but not selectively.
We could drop it to Conc, and she could just about manage a level 20, esp. by adding the +2 for booming voice and exaggerated gestures, but there's no telling how long she can maintain the Conc. What would be the ease factor for concentrating while resting and then while walking? I'd think the walking concentration would be easier than normal because she's concentrating on the noise she's following.
Scott
The maximum amount of time you can concentrate on a spell is 15 minutes per level of concentration. Viola has Concentration 2 (spells), so that would be 45 minutes.
That assumes she's not being sidetracked, which she almost certainly is. Walking is only a Base 3 concentration roll; however, navigating through a maze is likely to be harder than that. However, I'd be happy to say that "concentrating on honing in on the noise" was something she could do without requiring concentration rolls, as it's the purpose of the spell (pg 82: "Note that if a spell is designed to let the maga do something, doing that thing does not interfere with concentrating on the spell.")
Anything else, e.g. talking or casting spells, would require concentration rolls in line with the table on page 82 of the corebook.
In theory she could cast Maintaining the Demanding Spell, but she doesn't know it and it think ends up net worse off if she does (although it might be possible to recover the fatigue more quickly splitting it over two castings).
We'll just keep concentrating. Things shouldn't be too distracting until we get close to Halia (Viola will try to let Calliope talk to the fae until then), at which point the spell might well not be needed.
At any rate, let's enter the labyrinth.
Scott
[Okay - note that Viola is down one fatigue level until she gets a chance to rest (which she won't be able to do whilst concentrating).]
The group passes on through the waterfall and down the stairs to Viola's lab. There they ignore the door to the crones and instead pass down the next set of stairs into the second regio level.
Here the corridor formed by the stalagmites is open to the sky - which means you have no protection from the rain that has started bucketing down. Calliope rapidly casts a Rego Aquam spell and then stands only mildly damp whilst everyone else not taking preventative action is soaked to the skin. A massive peal of thunder follows just a moment after a terrific flash of lightning, causing Chryse to clutch on to Viola; the resulting jostling causes a moment's flicker in Viola's concentration but she is able to successfully maintain her focus on the spell.
In the distance through the storm, Viola can hear a woman's voice crying - it sounds as though it is as yet some distance away.
Viola points, "This way". She then proceeds in that direction, with one arm around Chryse.
Scott