Turn 4
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Lying on the bed, you stare sullenly at the ceiling, resting your tightly wrapped foot on the spare pillow. The revelations of the past week, and especially the cult that found itself under your nose, require careful reflection. And if your trauma hadn't been there, it might have been worth faking.
Now you have one or two free weeks to spend on self-development and deciphering Knowledge. After all, you need it even more than before. Not least because of the cult. Having nothing but a general idea and a claim, to pry into an established cult is shortsighted at best. You need Knowledge. You need Artifacts. You need loyal associates. You need information and resources. It's easier to list what you don't need.
Namely, you don't need to lie on the bed, indulging in idle musings.
You rise to your feet, picking up the crutch that has fallen to the floor. This is no time to lie around. Business is not waiting.
* * *
Because of the foot injury, you can only move around with a crutch, which is quite uncomfortable. On the other hand, you don't have to go to school for at least two more weeks, which is mostly a plus. You have time to do the many things that don't involve physical activity, and to think about the cult of the Restless Heart at your school.
You have one Body action (B), three Mind actions (M), and two Passion actions (P). You have 16 funds at your disposal (all available savings).
Influences:
- Injury - I need rest and food to recover. However, Mother of Ants welcomes wounds. (-20 to body rolls before healing. Actions of Journeys blocked until healed due to the nature of the injury).
- Tangible Enlightenment - Enlightenment is so close! In a little while, even the uninitiated will be able to feel the light of my mind! (+15 to the Study rolls. May lose 1 or 2 steps or, in critical failure, turn into a fixation)
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Turn 4 Results
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You pedantically write down in your diary the achievements and discoveries of the past week, or rather, summarize what you wrote down earlier. Despite minor setbacks, the overall results achieved are more than good.
Though you'll probably need something more reliable than plain paper shortly: Mortal materials don't seem to carry the full weight of the Secret Knowledge very well.
The desire to write down the knowledge of Mansus in ciphers, riddles, and allegories, so that they had to be deciphered anew each time, suddenly acquired a rational explanation. It's worth trying to do something about it...
* * *
Influences:
- Injury - I need rest and food to recover. However, Mother of Ants welcomes wounds. (-20 to body rolls before healing. Actions of Journeys blocked until healed due to the nature of the injury).
- Tangible Enlightenment - Enlightenment is so close! In a little while, even the uninitiated will be able to feel the light of my mind! (+15 to the Study rolls. May lose 1 or 2 grades or, in critical failure, turn into a Fascination).
Dream:
[X] (B) Bed rest. You have been wounded and need medicine and rest to heal. It's a good thing you're a child and supported by your family, otherwise, the price of medicine would blow a hole in your budget.
Even better, Linda is a nurse, which means you get the proper care. Requires 1 pass, 90% chance of success (Selected automatically by your parent's will, on completion reduces Injury to Minor Injury).
Required: 10. Roll: 34 + 10 (Decreasing Growth Burst) = 44 Passed. Injury reduced to Minor Injury (-10 to body rolls before healing)
The medications and mandatory bed rest are expected to make me feel better and help my wounds to heal. The crutch is almost no longer an inconvenience, and all in all, it would be wonderful if it were not for...
"Greg, honey, why did you get out of bed again? You don't need pencils and paper! You need rest, or your condition will get worse! What if you fall down the stairs? Go back to your room at once! I'll take care of everything!"
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
...Not Linda's hypercustody. She seems to have combined images of me-child and child-patient in her mind, causing a cumulative effect somehow. Hmm, what a good phrase. I should write it down in my diary before I forget it.
Study:
[X] (M) Books are immortal memory. Among other things, the Predecessor's possessions contained books. It is unlikely that he kept tabloid journalism along with mystical pigments. The subject matter of the books and the references in the diary suggest the same thing: Whatever the content, these texts are related to Mansus and the Principles. There is much to be gained by reading them... Except, where to begin?
- "The Locksmith's Dream: a Light through the Keyhole" by Teresa Galmier, volume one. Requires 1 pass, 70%/10% chance of success.
Required: 30/90. Roll: 62 + 15 (Tangible Enlightenment) + 5 (Learned) + 34 (68/2 - Additional Throw from the "Words Have Knowledge" Crit) = 116 Artificial Crit!
The parallels in mystic dreams experienced by carpenters, masons, and other artisans, and what they purport to reveal about the architecture of the world. Sometimes mordant, sometimes funny. No one has ever explained why Galmier devoted herself to this quixotic exploration of artisan's dreams.
Of particular interest is the excerpt from the afterword, underlined by the Predecessor:
Time and again we hear of the Wood, which rises from the world's foundation. All trees reach for the light. What does the Wood reach for? Is there a difference between light and Light? I think the key to dreams of the Wood might be one of these - the one that isn't exactly real.
After studying the volume from cover to cover, thanks to the Predecessor's brief sketches in the margins and reasoning in the journal, you suddenly come to an understanding. This is it! What you've been searching for all this time: the Secret Knowledge!
A Watchman's Secret: It has been expressed like this: 'Each hour has its colour, but colour exists only where there is light..(Knowledge of Lantern 1, power 2)
It is the Secret Knowledge of the place that is sometimes called the House of the Sun and the light above it. Now you are almost certain that you can reach the Forest, and dealing with the Mysteries that try to hide from your gaze will become easier.
Before you close the volume to rest from your mental labors, you flip through it to the very beginning and notice the delicately embossed autograph on the inside cover: "To a beloved admirer from Teresa Galmier. May his journey be long and his Labor successful".
Did the Predecessor really know the author? It must not be easy to get an autograph from a famous occultist... After all, almost all of them are rather secretive people.
[X] (P) Admiration for art. Your drawing skills have dulled considerably, and at the best of times, they didn't exactly shine. But you can fix that! The Internet is full of films about famous art galleries with the works of great artists of the past and online tutorials on many kinds of art! With a goal in mind, you can greatly improve your skills.
Requires 1 pass, 70% chance of success. (On completion of +1 action feelings, increase creativity)
Required: 30. Roll: 23 x 0.5 (Emotional Fountain) + 15 (Tangible Enlightenment) = 26 Failure.
In the euphoria of your discovery, or rather of the Secret Knowledge revealed to you, you were going to improve your art of the brush and pencil in the usual way. But at the last moment, you suddenly remembered one thing: in the things of the Predecessor, among other things, there was a tin of Refulgine! A mysterious pigment endowed with the power of the Lantern!
Opening the suitcase with shaking hands, you open the tin, exposing its contents to the sun. It's so white! The purest white color you've ever seen... White so pure that it stays visible even in total darkness!
Um. Darkness? When did night fall?
After hastily closing the tin, you put it away. You should be more careful with things that contain the power of the Abode. You're lucky Linda fell asleep before she caught you, sitting on the floor in a trance, drooling over the suspicious white substance in the little jar.
[X] (M) There is knowledge in words 2. A mind is a useful tool. Especially when the path to greatness involves comprehending the Secret Knowledge. To better understand them, to gather them into a single mosaic, decipher them, and perhaps to find new ones - one should keep this tool sharply honed. There were some of your parents' old school textbooks left in the home library, and the articles found on the Internet are still relevant. Requires 6 passes, 60% chance of success. (On completion of +1 mind action, increase in erudition.)
Required: 40. Roll: 85 + 15 (Tangible Enlightenment ) = 100 Artificial Crit!
In between trying to understand the occult-philosophical reasoning of Galmier's work, you continued to educate yourself with articles found on the Internet. Thanks to the spiritual uplift of your newfound Knowledge, or tangible progress in your general education, the problems in the old textbooks do not cause you any difficulty at all. Maybe you should consider transferring to Arcadia. This high school is really good, and it certainly doesn't compare to a dump like Winslow...
Sometimes, out of the corner of your eye, you catch some glints of light on the surface of the paper, although there are no obvious sources of such glow in the room. You chalk it up to the Refulgine. You shouldn't have stared at it for so long.
[X] (M) Mastering of the Craft. You'll need more than a little arcane knowledge to make special items. Of course, you can always leave that to the people who have the hands grown from the right place... When you have them among your followers. In the meantime, it's worthwhile to improve your handicraft skills. Requires 3 passes, chance of success 60%. (A crafting section will open after completion.)
Required: 40. Roll: 75 + 5 (Scholarship) + 15 (Tangible Enlightenment) = 95 Passed.
When you finally gained the secret knowledge and experienced the power of an object saturated with the power of Mansus, you longed to learn how to create something like that. This isn't some tinkertech, but real magical artifacts!
Having habitually decided to start searching the Internet, you set about researching the methods of manual labor used by ancient people in the creation of everyday objects and culture. Having barely escaped the captivity of forum quarrels about the technology of the ancient Egyptian civilization (which was clearly based on the powers of Mansus), you learned something about their everyday life and crafts. That might be useful in the long run.
Conversation:
[X] (P) Place to Exercise. You'll need a designated area for productive exercise. For example, one of the guest rooms. It hasn't been used for as long as you can remember, anyway. Linda would agree because it wasn't a whim; it was a necessity. She must have realized this after the incident in which you were injured. Required:1 pass, 55% chance of success/???
Required: 45. Roll: 43 x 0.5 (Emotional Fountain) = 22 Failure.
In response to your inspired speech about the need for a separate place to study, Linda frowns unhappily and chews her lips.
"Greg, honey, I'm not mentally ready to discuss this right now. Let's get back to it after you're better, okay?"
You have nothing to do but give up. It's not a refusal, which means that later her words can be interpreted as prior consent. And until your injuries heal, you definitely won't need the training room.
The action is not available until recovery. The roll requirements are lowered to 40
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