Duvors

"I assure you sir, we have no intention of causing any harm or trouble to anyone while we're here. We do indeed have business at the auction and if you'd be willing to let us past we won't take up any more of your time."

"Oh." said Enson, a bit taken aback by this story. "I'm sorry." He paused pensively for a moment. "Tester-Three," he finally continued, "if you and your kind ever attempt to go against your creator again, know that I will always be willing to help." Enson opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it again. He knew that there was a right thing to say, something wise that would fix the problem and bring an end to this tension that he felt was threatening to divide the party. But whatever it was just wasn't coming to his mind. So he just shook his head and shrugged. Enson hadn't known exactly what to expect when he'd followed everyone into the room, but it certainly wasn't this. Composing himself quickly he stepped out in front of the party, bowed, and said; "My apologies, we didn't mean to intrude. My name is Ensonvilterayquis (Enson if you prefer), and these are my companions: Yelana, Tester-Three, Igaz, Kleeck, and Dunola. We are, as has been said, looking for one Jek Flakko, with whom we have business to conduct." He smiled and continued. "That's not an euphemism or anything, we're not mobsters he's angered or anything like that, we just want to talk to him."

"That would be sufficient. The additional time will also allow me to construct a more logical and rational argument, to which I look forward to hearing your response." "Hmm? Oh that! Sorry to say but that was just me 'spitballing' as it were. Extrapolating from what I had read of perception altering fields in an attempt to further an argument about the need for multiple hypothesis in the face of the unknown. Though in hindsight I feel it's inclusion may have harmed the overall thesis." He smiled weakly as he continued. "I'm afraid that in the wider field of metaphysics the study of psychical* phenomena are more associated with the occult sciences then with the theological. And while I do have an amateur interest in the former I'm afraid I haven't read deeply enough in it to be considered any kind of expert in the field." "Oh for goodness sake." Enson said with an exasperated expression. "Yelana, we've already had this discussion and you just decided to shelve your argument with me for the good of the mission. So I think you're sufficiently capable of self restraint not to reprogram people willy-nilly just because they're rude. And Tester-Three, if you have a complaint about Yelana's behavior there are significantly less blunt and confrontational ways of bringing it to her attention and discussing it. I know my outburst just now may have made it seem acceptable to act like that, but that was the result of an unacceptable loss of control on my part and shouldn't be imitated. You are sufficiently intelligent to be pleasant and rational if you try, so I beg you to do so."

I recognize that, but I initially wrote the rant as a single continuous stream with one sentence leading into the next outside of places where I deliberately stated a pause had occurred. It wasn't intended as discrete segments that could be responded to individually but as a spontaneous outburst and I don't think it works very well otherwise. Also you didn't respond to the apology itself so I didn't know if you'd noticed it. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Enson held up a hand as if to arrest the flow of words. "You misunderstand," he said, "the conversation ended when I apologized to you for losing my temper. You should accept the apology and let the argument die here, else we will spend the rest of the mission arguing about who misinterpreted what the other said. And miss, if those three yellow triangles on your uniform are what I think they are, then I've known who you work for since we first met." He stood silently for a moment, as if contemplating something, before speaking again. "Look, if it would give you peace of mind I'd be happy to explain what I meant there in more precise detail. I recognize that what I said was more of an emotional outburst then a rational argument and may have been unclear in meaning. However I would rather we dropped it completely and moved on with our work. I have spent a sizeable portion of my life learning not to give in to irrationally emotional behavior under stress so the whole incident was somewhat embarrassing for me." Another pause. "If you do want me to explain though," he finally said in a resigned tone, "I'd like to borrow your glasses for that, if you don't mind. If you've been recording everything that's been happening on them I'll be able to play back things I specifically want to address, which would help immensely in clarifying my meaning." @Classic_Spaceman

"I see. One last thing, do you know where one would buy a holo crystal? A friend of mine needs a replacement one." "I fail to see how a worker stealing the last egg of an endangered species could be connected with a weak empire's attempt to feign strength by secretly terraforming a planet under the pretense of wiping out rebels with death rays from outer space, but if you do please enlighten me." He sighed and slumped his shoulders. "Look, you say the Cydonians are weak because they have a lot of soldiers and posters and cameras around, but have not yet updated the security for one shipyard or really interfered on the lives of local citizens, right? But that could just mean that they want to naturalize their presence in the minds of citizens, make them think life will continue as normal so they don't mind the occasional changes until suddenly they wake up one morning and realize everything was changing and they didn't notice until to late. Or it could mean that it doesn't matter to them if some random civilians get their ships stolen thanks to old security. And the cloaked ship? You say that they would be easy to spot in atmosphere, but that only works if the cloaking device is only making the ship invisible. It doesn't work if they have technology that can feed false information to atmospheric sensors or if they have magic that makes it look like wind is passing through their space. For all we know the ship is perfectly visible and we just don't see it because they have psychic barriers preventing us from perceiving it. And your rationale for doubting the veracity of the announcement saying the laser blast was directed at a group of rebels is that someone heard a rumor that it maybe fired once before. That's what bothers me here. You say that you're considering these things from a variety of angles but what it looks like is that you're jumping to conclusions based on little evidence and a great deal of surmise and then treating them like established fact. You assumed that the Oozelings we just fought were going to be Sabrillos because Faeja mentioned tentacles when talking about them, despite how improbable that would be. And if you keep making assumptions like that you'll keep making wrong ones, which stands a very high chance of getting you killed. If you'd just stop overthinking-" He stopped suddenly in the middle of his sentence, closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, and mumbled something under his breath for a few moments. He seemed to be putting a lot of emphasis into it at first, like he was chewing himself out, but towards the end it became calmer and a clear rhythm emerged. When he'd finished he opened his eyes again, looking significantly calmer than he had before. "I'm sorry," he said with a sight bow, "I didn't mean to seem aggressive. It's just the idea of someone brushing off an act of murder by claiming it didn't happen is something that annoys me. I will try to restrain myself better in future." He said this in a quiet, reserved manner without the least hint of sarcasm or malice. Which was frankly somewhat unnerving.

"Yelana, this is a planet. It's hardly improbable there's more then one group of rebels here." He shook his head. "Look," he said, "I know you want there to be some big conspiracy or secret plot or something romantic and exciting like that, that you want the world to be lying to you, but I don't think that's the case. Sometimes the world is as it seems to be, regardless of what we want to see in it." "Hmm, I see. Tell me, how have the Cydonians been treating labor unions since they arrived?"

Enson gazed at the blast with an indescribable look of horror and sadness. Solemnly he turned in it's direction, clasped his hands together and with head bowed began a low, droning chant. After a minute of this he stopped, straightened, and followed. "Tester-Three," said Enson with a noticeable strain in his voice, "people just died. I would appreciate it if you didn't complain about how inefficiently they were murdered" Enson turned to look at Yelana slowly, his face bearing an exceedingly stern expression. "No," he said, "I do indeed 'buy it'. I think it entirely plausible that these people would flatten a small rebel cell with an orbital laser wider then a city block. I think they would do it simply because it dealt with the problem promptly and kept their soldiers out of harms way. I think they would do it on suspicion alone without even solid evidence and that they'd do it because it was convenient and kept the populace cowed. I think that they would launch a cavalry charge into an unarmed protest it they had either. These people are authoritarians, historically not the most sane of people. They don't care about proportional force, they care about obedience and adherence to whatever ideology they follow." "Oh I don't think we have anything to worry about just yet. Though if they start evacuating their troops from the city all of a sudden we are probably should worry." Having come upon the kiosk Enson stopped for a minute to let the others ask their questions. once they had received their answers he came forward with his own. "Excuse me," he said, "do you know why the Cydonians ring the city bells every hour?"

"Well, I feel that as long as we coordinate with each other going forwards and not go around doing things without telling each other first we'll be fine. Now if you don't mind I'm going to search the trunk." Enson will examine the trunk. "The pattern of knocking is probably meaningless in-and-of itself, it's likely just a sign used to distinguish someone who's supposed to be there from someone who isn't. It's simple enough to be easily remembered while complex enough to be difficult to stumble upon randomly. A lot of secret organizations and societies have similar codes and signs."

Enson followed the rest of the group into the shipyard, having previously stood aside to let them enter. Upon finally seeing the ship he clapped his hands together with a smile on his face. "Excellent!" he began, "Now if you'll excuse-" "-oh." He closed his eyes momentarily, a pained look crossing his face. Shaking his head he walked over to where Tester-Three was lying and leaned over the droid. "Tester-Three," he said admonishingly, "KR-88's request was just a piece of hyperbole, he didn't actually want you to kick it. And even then he asked us to kick it, not hit the engine hard enough to explode it. You really shouldn't just use the maximum degree of force for everything you do. Now," he said extending a pair of hands, "do you need any help getting up?" "Well to be fair I was going to kick it my-" "What? No!" said Enson positioning himself between Yelana and the robot, his arms held out as if to impede her progress. "Yelana, stop that. It's fine to be angry with Tester-Three, he does kind of deserve it, but we don't go around reprogramming people just because they're not acting the way we want them to. How would you like it if someone brainwashed you to be more amenable to their desires?"

For the last minute or so Enson had been jotting down his thoughts on a piece of paper. Having seemingly finished he looked up from his scribblings and said; "I think I'm close to the solution now. Here, let me show you." WBBB BBWW BWBW BWWB "To start with, we know for a fact that eight of the colors in the first guess were confirmed successes, leaving two unaccounted for." BWBW WBWB BWBW WBWB "In the second guess, we know from the previous one that four out of nine successes are confirmed and that four of the non-repeating colors are incorrect. As the five repeating numbers can only contain two successes that means that the remaining three non repeating numbers must be correct. Keeping in mind that no row or column contains more than three black squares, that means that row three cannot start with a black." WBBW BBWW BWBW WBWB "The third guess unfortunately gives us no useful information I can see." WBWB BBWW BWBW WBWB "Now for the fourth guess we know that five of the colors are incorrect and six are correct. As there were still nine successes and the remaining repeat colors could still only contain two, that means that the only color that wan't repeated must be a success. With this in mind-" Enson will attempt the following combinations:

"Wait wait wait, wait. Tester-Three, if all the colors that are the same across both attempts are correct then it wouldn't be possible for two rows to be correct in the first guess. One of the colors that was repeated must've been wrong and two from the second guess that weren't were right. I think. Does that make sense?" Enson will attempt to use the following combination; B=black W=white WBWB BBWW BWBW WBWB

You don't understand, my issue is more with the fact that every character seems obliged to take at least one of these skills by design, even if a player doesn't want their character to be an expert in any of those fields. I have other problems with magic as well, ranging from its general lack of effectiveness at entry level to the weird way it scales compared with other proficiencies, but I feel that all can wait for a more detailed critique of the system as a whole after the quest. That being said there is one thing I feel it urgent to point out now. Namely that under the current rules it's entirely possible to hit the DC to cast a spell and still do nothing, which just feels bad. I mean, getting the exact amount of successes you need to cast the spell and nothing over means that your Elemental Evocation does no damage, your Healing Light doesn't heal anybody, your Mystic Binding has a duration of 0 etcetera etcetera.

I really don't like that idea,. Part of it has to do with the fact that the resulting skills would be overly generic (which is something that already annoys me about the existing Engineering skill), and the rest of it has to do with one of my issues with the existing magic system. Namely the fact that, as it stands, every character is either forced to spend at least three skill points on one of the 'magic' proficiencies or else have an entire section of their character sheet that they can't use or interact with in any way. A problem I feel would only be exacerbated if we just collapsed all supernatural skills into one.

On that note I feel I should warn you I have a rant about how badly designed I think the spell system is in the works. I just don't feel like diving into it right now.

Again.

Enson looked down at the creature crouching on the crispy corpse of it's comrade, shook his head, and raised his hammer. Enson will attack Oozeling B from D2.

Enson will attack Oozeling C from D2. @Endgame

Since the topic has come up, how do Holo Scrolls work? Does the player only get one use of the spell when they use the scroll or do they get it for the entire quest?

"Igaz," Enson said, "I think it would be better for you to take one of the unoccupied Ooozelings and let Kleeck or Dunola assist Yelana instead!" Enson will attack Oozeling A from D2. @Endgame @Goliath @KotZ @Kintobor

I really don't like this. If you rule that this skill is only useful for healing NPCs then that creates narrative dissonance by creating a situation where NPCs clearly operate on different rules to the heroes. And if you additionally rule that this doesn't count towards healing Vitality and only towards plot-injuries then that means that the skill is completely useless unless the MM specifically sets up a situation where it can be used.

"Everyone please settle down. I know it's exciting to find our quarry's spaceship, but we have no way of accessing it currently. That is a bridge we can cross later, especially as there is someone right in front of us who we have already promised to help. And Yelana, just because these creatures are apparently tentacled don't mean they're related in any way to the thing we are looking for. Especially if they reproduce by fission as I believe has been indicated." "Miss," he said shifting to face Faeja and nodding slightly, "I apologize, we are of course happy to help you in any way we can and would do so even if we didn't need access to this lot. We are ready whenever you are." Enson is ready. @Endgame @Goliath @KotZ @Kintobor @samurai-turtle @Classic_Spaceman

"Well, as everyone seems to be heading to the same place, I will join you." Enson will follow the rest of the party to the Citizen's Shiplot.