Turn 7
* * *
Because of the excess concentration of the Moth Principle, in a small period of time a special action is performed:
[X] Trying to paint a picture. Focusing on the knowledge you discover, the memory of the Wood, and the quiet buzzing in your head, you cut off a strand of hair and use it instead of a brush, letting lead your hand. This can both turn a painting into a useful object and irrevocably ruin it. (1d100 for the result, no bonuses)
Required: ???. Roll: 47.
Result: 20<47<50 - Half of the number is added to the original Creation of Art result.
Required: 20/40/60/80/95. Roll: 30 x 1.5 (Emotional Fountain) + 5 (Vivid Imagination) + 5 (Painter) + 23 (47/3 from trying to finish painting) + 2 (1d6 from A Barber's Warning) + 5 (Buzzing in the Brain)= 85 Passage of 4 grade!
Ignoring the rustling of wings that exists only in your head, you step away from the easel, looking at your creation with a skeptical eye. A moment later, though, you nod contentedly: The moths look alive, and the scissors stuck in the trees draw the eye and create just the right contrast. Even with a close look, it's hard to focus on anything in particular, and if you look away, it's easy to believe that the moths are moving, changing their position while no one is looking.
You didn't have the necessary pigment and skill to create a true Masterpiece of the Hour, but what came out from your brush can definitely be considered a successful draft. It is, after all, an ordinary painting, but no one with eyes would say that this piece does not have a certain vibe...
Obtained item: Picture with the mood "Moths". Is not an artifact and therefore cannot be used in rituals, but is capable of creating the right mood. (A new voting option is available: "Observing Moths")
The "Buzzing in the Brain" influence is depleted!
Because of reaching the limit of Enlightenment, which the fragile human mind cannot handle, a throw to the consequences is made:
Required: ???. Roll: 96.
You blink sleepily, pulling your head away from the surface it was lying on.
You have a closed notebook in front of you, awakening vague memories, and it's barely dawn outside the window. It looks like you fell asleep at your desk, barely finished with... what?
Covered in a cold sweat, you frantically try to retrieve the memory of what you were doing after you left the painting to dry. It was definitely some thought, an idea that came suddenly, and you had to write it down urgently before the understanding was lost.
You picked up a notebook and a pen, and then... Then you woke up in the morning on your own desk in front of a notebook filled to the brim with not very clear musings about some kind of revelation that had come upon you. Besides, that fleeting feeling that had filled the mind for the past weeks was gone. In return, all that was left was a sense of your own mental inferiority.
(Received "Mysterious Revelation," a notebook with incomprehensible notes strongly resembling the ravings of a madman, marked with a drawing of a moth in a circle, the top of which is crossed by four lines. The influence of " Enlightenment" is completely depleted).
* * *
The sick leave is over, and you have to go back to school. In the case of Winslow High, it's a snake pit of fodder from various gangs, informals of all stripes, and generally aggressive, and in some places intimidated, teenagers in the prime of puberty.
According to unofficial statistics, one in two has a knife, knuckles, or other means of harming his neighbor in his pocket. (-1 mind action per turn for study, +1 pocket means every 2nd study week (To be gained at end of turn))
You have two! body actions (B), three mind actions (M) (-1 to study), and three passion actions (P). You have 16 funds at your disposal (all available savings).
Influences:
- Vitality - The drums in your ears. You can work better. (+5 to Body rolls) 1 Lv.
* * *
Turn 7 Results
* * *
Drumming the fingers of your left hand on the low tabletop, you write down in your personal diary the results achieved over the past week. Despite the obvious successes, a few thin spots have been identified that threaten problems in the near or distant future.
Once you'd set the point, the only lamp in the room flickered, only to stabilize a few seconds later.
A minute later, the sheet with plans for further projects was adorned with a new terse entry: "Wire?"
* * *
Influences:
- Vitality - The drums in your ears. You can work better. (+5 to Body rolls) 1 Lv.
Work:
[X] (B) This body is mine. All of these rites and rituals are quite traumatic, not to mention sacrifices. Yes, and some knowledge, as well as much more than some practices, hurts the one who learns and performs them. You need a much sturdier and stronger body so that you don't have to go to the emergency room after every vein you open. Exercise should do you good, and the dumbbells dug out from under the rubble in your room are already helping in no small way. Requires 4 passes, 80% chance of success. (On completion, +1 body action, increase vitality.)
Required: 20. Roll: 29 + 10 (Decreasing Growth Burst) + 5 (Vitality) = 44 Pass!
"Forty-nine... Fifty!" You breathe heavily, falling to the floor, having finished your fifth set of push-ups. Repeating the exhausting exercises over and over again exhausts your body but the tangible results are worth it. Not so long ago you could do barely half of your current number in almost every kind of exercise.
With the little space you have and the limited tools you have, there's not much you can do. Probably a couple or three sets of exercises from the depths of the Internet could help with building the right muscles, but it's hard to know what benefit or harm they could do.
We can only hope that the repetition of the usual school exercises will not screw anything up.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
[X] (B) The abode of dust and junk. Now that you've got something as valuable as this suitcase in the attic, what else can you find if you dig hard enough? But first, you have to make general cleaning and replace the light bulb, otherwise, you risk staying there and waiting for the next treasure hunter. Requires 1 pass, 80%/50%/10% chance of success.
Required: 20/50/90. Roll: 34 + 5 ( Vitality ) = 39 Pass of the first degree!
By spending an order of magnitude of time, you remove the age-old dust that covers all attic surfaces. A sprayer of water and a huge amount of wet rags are invaluable in preventing a dust storm that could have rendered the entire room uninhabitable.
At last, the last corner of the ceiling is stripped of its dusty cobweb cover, and the last piece of furniture cover sewn from sheets is sent to the washing machine. You remove the remaining cleaning supplies from the attic, plug a new light bulb into the socket, and for the first time in an inconceivable amount of time, the room lights up.
Rolling up your sleeves, you start sorting through the things you find in the attic, sorting into two piles what can still be used, and what you would be ashamed to haul to the trash even on a moonless midnight. The latter mostly consisted of overly broken furniture, moth-eaten clothes, and a couple of jars of something unrecognizably disgusting. Just in case you checked, you made sure this stuff had nothing to do with any of the Principles you knew. But you could probably get a lot of jail time for possessing it: the smell alone is enough to be a chemical-biological weapon of mass destruction.
Among the useful items remained a few quality pieces of furniture, such as a worn and battered by time but the still strong antique sofa, an antique coffee table with an indelible suspicious stain on the lid, a pair of elegant chairs with broken backs ... And of course a memorable four-barrelled closet.
After going through the smaller things, like cans and empty boxes, you slipped the red wig over the mannequin's coat-clad torso and went back to the closet.
A thorough search yielded nothing, as the inside was completely empty, but you didn't give up hope, and after a while your diligence was rewarded: in a pile of waste paper lying around, a small handwritten magazine with a blue cover was found.
The title had faded long ago, but you could make out the outlines of the letters that formed the words "something" and "mysterious". Inside, unfortunately, was not the Secret Knowledge you had hoped for, but low-grade porn with too many references to pantaloons and frills, interspersed with whining about the obsolescence of modern morality. Considering that this is probably about the century before last, you might even be inclined to agree with the author.
After a quick flip through the ancient graphomania to the end to make sure that further text is unchanged (and useless), you notice a dark circle resembling a coin drop out of the notebook. After wiping it on the edge of a soiled T-shirt, the surface reveals an intricate scene of three people having sex. You smirk: It's not every day you get paid for cleaning with silver.
(Received: "Something something DEEP MYSTERIES something," a late nineteenth-century pornographic graphomania. Useless on its own, but you can try to sell it to some connoisseur; Silver Spintria, the currency of the secret world; A cleaned-out attic to which you've dragged everything related to the mystical arts except your diary. - Bonus to stealth when attempting to incriminate yourself in the occult).
Dream:
[X] (P)Way: The Wood. I've learned the path to the Wood, tangled darkness that grows around the walls of the Mansus (thought the Mansus has no walls). I can Dream with this to return to the Wood. Requires 1 pass, 90% chance of success.
Required: 10. Roll: 18 x 1.5 (Emotional Fountain) + 5 (Initiate) + 6 (1d6 from "The Watchman's Secret") + 5 (Vivid Imagination) = 43 Pass!
...Now I pass between scar-barked trees. The moon passes behind branches, though her fingers remain in my hair. I am stumbling over roots, now. It is tempting to drop to all fours, to avoid the low branches. Pale wings move, deep in the night. "While I was returning to the depths, one appeared, in front of my eyes, whose mouth was sealed. When I saw them, in the great emptiness, I cried out.."' I think that last night I met another soul in the Wood. I will never recall exactly what we said, one to another, but I think that we will recognize each other in the waking world.
(Acquired: Peculiar Rumor - a tip for finding the right person)
Study:
[X] (M) School attendance. As a minor U.S. citizen, you are obligated to receive a general education. The state doesn't need savages. Well, more than there already are. Sick leave is over, and it's time to go back to school.
Repetitive action, 90% chance of success.
Required: 10. Roll: 27 + 5 (Scholarship) = 32 Pass!
You're bored, spending a few breaks dropping off homework you've done to your teachers. Not that it makes any sense, given the level of local education but it was nice to close the resulting gestalt.
Sparky, whom you met before your first lesson, blinked stupidly for a while as if he didn't recognize you. But once he got used to it, it was just like before. Almost. When he asks you why you suddenly abandoned games and anime and started pumping iron, you have to make up lame excuses about secrecy and the need for confidentiality.
Perhaps you should enlighten him as soon as possible, or this misplaced curiosity could be a problem. He'll think you're a cape, and then he'll tell his mother, or worse. Something has to be done and fast.
(Your most trusted (and on this side of the black mirror, your only) friend, Sparky, is beginning to suspect something, due to your altered behavior and loss of trust. If you don't let him in on what's going on soon, he might do something stupid).
[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?
- "Mysterious Revelation" is a notebook with incomprehensible notes, strongly resembling the ravings of a madman, marked with a drawing of a moth in a circle, the top of which is crossed by four lines. The contents are unknown.
Requires 1 pass, 60% chance of success.
Required: 40. Roll: 31 + 5 (Scholarship) + 6 (1d6 from "The Watchman's Secret") = 42 Pass.
You struggle to make your way through the maze of your own illegible handwriting to study a handwritten treatise. You have to do a lot of work with the lighting to make the horrible scribbles in several places look more like text but eventually, the notebook surrenders to your pressure.
In the text, you (do you count as you if you are not you?) tell of a waking vision, the details of which, in the description, cause some concern for the integrity of the describer's psyche. Based on attempts to make sense of what you saw, the author - sort of like you - derives a chain of completely inadequate reasoning, which in the end boils down to the following:
What we see is a representation in Mansus of some meeting or secret supper of some cult in which they attempt to find a new answer to the question, "What can be lost?" The answers listed are generally different, but essentially equally inadequate. In spite of this, you manage to pick out from the mountain of other people's thoughts, Secret Knowledge seems to be the strongest you've ever known.
(Obtained Secret Knowledge: An Ecdysiast's Parable - The Knowledge of the Moth)
An Ecdysiast's Parable The Ecdysiast's Riddle is 'What may be lost?' Each Ecdysiast's Parable is an attempt to answer the Riddle. (Knowledge 3, Power 6)
[X] (P) Admiration of Art 2. 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 types of art! With a goal in mind, you can greatly improve your skills.
Requires 5 passes, 60% chance of success. (On completion of +1 feeling action, creativity boost)
Required: 40. Throw: 38 x 1.5 (Emotional Fountain) = 57 Pass.
The great success with the painting brought back the desire to study the various facets of fine art that had been shaken. All these countless styles, features of various authors, masterpieces of world painting, and national treasures embodied on canvas...
Aren't they wonderful?! You might even want to try your hand at some new genre... Abstractionism, perhaps?
[X] (R) 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 3 passes, 60% chance of success. (On completion of +1 mind action, increase in erudition)
Required: 40. Roll: 77 Pass!
Feeling considerably dumbed down after the disappearance of the influence that invisibly guided your thoughts, you try to understand how bad it is. Oddly enough, not too bad. Yes, your thoughts are somewhat retarded, your conclusions are crumpled, and your theses are not obvious. But the study texts are still clear, the tests are solvable, and the new knowledge is laid out just as it was before.
Without Influence, your work is somewhat more difficult but still feasible. The granite of science is as stale as dried bread, but it can be cracked.
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. Requires 1 pass, chance of success 60%/???
Required: 40. Roll: 4 x 1.5 (Emotional Fountain) + 5 (Vivid Imagination) = 11 Fail!
Unfortunately for you, Linda is adamant: She won't let you convert the guest room into your workout place. Mostly because it's a guest room, but also because it's not cheap and it's not safe.
"It is better to do physical training under the supervision of specially trained people, in specially designated places. I agree to allocate money for this if you can find a decent gym."
You nod in agreement, acknowledging the common sense in her words. From the point of view of an ordinary person, of course. Except that you don't quite know how you'll explain your condition to outsiders in the later stages of your development. As you advance along the Way of the Forge, your body will be covered with layers of burn scars, and in the higher stages of physical form, even a little Knowledge of the Forge will allow you to exceed the possible limit for humans just a little bit. But when you think about it, home isn't much of a place for this kind of activity, either.
* * *