![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I wrote this post several months ago and then didn't post it because not enough game had happened and then I didn't post it some more because of other things, and finally there was one bit of it that came out in play and I was "Oh, right, I should post this thing before I forget it entirely."
About collaborative gamemaster/player work on character development.
Note at the header of this: this was all written before plot happened and I was wrong about one important thing that was going to happen.
Ezra did not stab anyone.
Ezra bit the hell out of someone.
Necessary background knowings, systems level:
It is possible to build a character at several different power levels in this game system; when building more powerful characters, some amount of wyrds (flaws, ish; magical or mundane disabilities of some variety) have to be taken. Taking wyrds beyond that does the standard ‘give you more build points for powers and stats’.
When I was building Danny there were a couple powers and flaws that I was very tempted by for him; however, since we were being asked to make a low-magical-awareness character, I decided against them. The most significant of them was Season, a wyrd that either binds a character to change according to the seasons (consider a dryad whose hair color, mannerisms, and so on change according to their tree’s manifestation over the course of a year) or binds a character to one season, regardless of actual time of year, with the personality to match. The power I considered and discarded was Adaptation, because man is the ability to be even mildly immune to weather effects handy if one is geas-bound to not sleep under a roof more than three nights in a row. Again, I considered it overpowered for the level of campaign, even if it would be really handy. (I was also tempted by Element Affinity but none of them worked out right for his personality; hilariously, I later wound up building a fae semi-NPC who’s part fire elemental, not even thinking about that.)
Element Affinity has to be taken at chargen and cannot be acquired in play; Season does not have that description, but does note that it cannot be cured without permanent damage to or possible destruction of the person’s soul. Meanwhile, the seasonal affinity for Spring is, I quote: “Lusty, bouncy, energetic. Reckless in behavior, passionate in love, brilliantly joyful with sudden storms of rage. Wears bright colors and makes plants bloom.” Sure, okay, that’s the close match, but the character I was building was an aroace trans guy, so I let it go. (Let it go! Turn away and slam the door!)
The worldbuilding of this instance of this gameworld includes a love-at-first-sight fairy tale trope; in-world it is extremely rare, more so between a fae and a human, and has a substantial drawback: while humans can stop being overwhelmed by the grief of the loss and heal somewhat (like one of those lightning-shattered trees), the fae cannot; the wounds remain fresh forever. General consensus that it is absolutely worth it to have the true love experience, however.
Necessary background, game level:
One of the party members was issued a nemesis in our first plot arc, a fae of the Winter season who has a long-standing hate-on for his family (mother’s side), who he had only just met. This grudge extends to the rest of the party because they happened to be standing next to him at the time. We have since caused her to lose face because she falsely accused us of the crime we were investigating, and then actively thwarted her schemes by revealing that she was behind a plot that threatened the whole local magical community in the long run. (Danny was very visible in the spreading that information.) This person’s name is Fanferluche, but I often call her Evil Elsa because it’s shorter to type and more usefully descriptive to people who haven’t met her.
It turns out Danny was not aroace, just too dysphoric for any of that, in addition to certain other factors not relevant to this scenario. This came out because early in that first plot arc, he spotted Sir Ezra, a fox fairy, and proceeded to gently obsess about him in very much a lust-at-first-sight sort of way. MG commented that he would probably have to figure out how to express his interest as genuine over time (because fairies will flirt and not take it seriously), but it turns out Ezra caught on pretty fast and they have been seeing each other quite seriously since basically the second plot arc. To the extent that MG sort of wondered why Ezra didn’t ping on Danny equally at the point they met, aside of course from the part where we as typists did not have any clue how good they were going to be for each other at the time. One going theory was that as a fox Ezra needed scent more than sight for the trigger, and hasn’t figured out yet that he got it when Danny tackled him in a park while they were fooling around on their first date (they were both foxes at the time).
Ezra is a live-in-the-moment ethical slut type, a free spirit, and Danny is turning out to be very similar, though from a rather different angle. They get along brilliantly.
It is worth noting that there was a plot to suborn Ezra at one point that involved a weasel fairy who happened to be Evil Elsa’s niece. There were no fatalities but it was perhaps a nearer thing than the girl in question realized at the time... However, the consequences of same basically made Ezra too depressed to be much of an active force in the area unless poked, which suited Fanferluche and her crew nicely. He is much perkier these days. The niece was disgraced, socially shamed, and fled back to Faerie, but is probably still obsessed with her ex. (Del, my fire weasel aforementioned, has so much commentary about this in my brain.)
Additionally: Danny’s background includes metaphorically burning down his life to be reborn as someone else. He has attracted the attention of a phoenix spirit, because we can’t turn down a good metaphor. I had actually noticed he had an animistic streak and the write up for spirit-dealing magic includes that each practitioner has a particular ally spirit to start with, and while I thought a cat at first since that’s his primary shapeshift form, it was Incorrect until I realized, “Oh. Phoenix.”
Danny has also expressed a Concern about the whole soul-mates thing, because Danny has lived a marginal enough life that he is extremely aware of his mortality (and that feeds into his YOLO attitude that makes it possible for him to keep up with a swashbuckling fox fairy in the first place) and the idea that his free-spirited lover might be emotionally crippled afterwards just guts him. Ezra has reassured him that if it was going to happen they would know already, which Danny considers a massive relief.
We start scheming:
Somewhere along the line I commented to MG that if I had built Danny as a more powerful character I would have taken Season:Spring on him, and she allowed as how that was a really good fit. I then noted that that implied a character event that would cause him to develop that Wyrd, and MG said “Hmmmm.” I pointed out eventually that an interaction with Evil Elsa could bring it out, because Winter/Spring dynamic is a thing, we noodled around for a bit, and eventually I said “Oh, I was thinking she might just try to kill him.” Basically becoming Season:Spring in self-defense against aggressive Winter.
We settled on bits of development towards this end and then I noticed all sorts of things that are Hilarious Foreshadowing in context, which were placed there basically because Danny is so clearly Spring that the vibe is well-established before it is overtly magical. Things like ‘in the oak and holly winter solstice clash he was aligned with the oak, because vibes’.
At some point I commented to MG that the Season wyrd is explicitly a soul-affecting thing, and you know, what if it isn’t just Ezra’s sense of smell that’s a factor (with all the local humanish-born fae talking about “love at first sight” as a thing and not making consideration for “love at first scent”, thereby obscuring the situation linguistically). What if the Seasonal wyrd and its associated soul-changes make for a soulmate? That would explain why he hasn’t pinged yet - he’s acting like it’s close but not quite the Real Thing. (Danny is acting like it’s the Real Thing, more or less, and this whole situation is baffling Briseis the Majestic Sword Lesbian, who is the widow of a mortal/fae true love relationship.)
I have known this plot was set for early February for some time. I also wound up writing, at one point along the line, a Danny In Spring Resonance side story, where I said “Hm I don’t think I can write this last bit until the event” and then MG gave me a fragment of a scene to work with so I could write the bit. Which involves “A Hazy Shade of Winter”, because rampaging bard will rampage.
Which is a good setup, really, for summoning in the Spring to fight off the side-effects of winter.
The timey-wimey:
One of the interesting things about having a known plot like this is getting fragmentary bits of character reactions to the event, but not being able to do anything about them in any meaningful way, because while they are likely accurate as far as they go, I don’t know that MG has planned. Which means I get things like this:
Danny, who is as beforementioned a part-time cat, post-murder-attempt: “Okay. That’s four. I have five more. You wanna try me?!” (In play this actually came out as him hacking together a ridiculously potent curse, which he landed on the Evil Elsae with a bit of help from various friends.)
Danny, encountering a blood-splattered Ezra, kissing him and using the kiss to seal a diagnostic enchantment because he wants to know if his beloved is okay.
“How are you feeling?” or some equivalent sentiment from Ezra in immediate aftermath.
“About half like a blind kitten who’s gotten out of the nest somehow and is mewing for rescue and half desperately horny teenager. Since I assume you don’t want to fuck here can we at least get to a car or something so I can get your hand down my pants?”
Reactions to the party asking him what he needs being notably more brittle and explicit than he usually gets.
If Ezra has any sort of wibble — as someone whose true nature is as a protector, who is currently organizing his life around Danny — about not being able to protect him in this circumstance, I have a whole thing for that.
The way Danny just crumples when he learns Ezra’s hit true love because that is the last thing that breaks his ability to pretend he’s coping with everything right now. (And what he does in the immediate moment.)
Danny, after learning Ezra has hit the true love threshhold, spending several days in the woods as a large grumpy porcupine. Possibly alternating with a snapping turtle since he can’t stay in any one shape for more than three days, depending on how long it takes for someone to convince him to not be a porcupine. (And what happens if Isobel and Briseis in particular go looking for him, because he is likely to go cougar at that point and Isobel’s spoken Cat is very rudimentary, and Cougar would definitely be dialect/closely related language to Domestic Feline....) (In play: less than 24 hours as a porcupine, a brief round of snapping turtle, and then, due to decisions we made, a cougar/porcupine hybrid.)
Danny, dealing with combined traumas, doubling down on wanting to read Musashi in the original. (It genuinely makes sense, if sideways.) (Haven’t gotten here yet.)
Danny composing an autobiographical violin sonata. (I have written a description of three of the four movements but the fourth depends on me knowing the rest of this.)
Danny having a meltdown about how the magic he does to save his own life has changed him in complicated ways that leave him feeling profoundly displaced — not that he was attached to humanity qua humanity but suddenly turning himself into a changeling, basically, was not how he expected to spend the weekend.
(A side note on that: somewhere along the line I commented to MG that this has potential relevance to the true-love magical match. Ezra was born as a fox; he became an approximate human with all the abstract thought and walking on two feet thing as a young adult critter. He is still, fundamentally, a fox, while simultaneously being separate and distinct and alien from his own kind-of-origin. There are probably others like him, but he doesn’t have a community of same. Danny will wind up doing something similar to himself as part of what he does to survive, and thus they can be one-of-a-kind(ish) together.)
Ruminations and general anxiety about identity leading to asking an old law school friend for a moderately odd favor.
Finally coming up with a relevant comment to a question Ezra asked him a while back which he’s been unable to answer which I am not putting here because I think it’ll be more fun springing it on MG without spoiler. (Which I did tonight! And thus can post this post!)
Every so often I get him in the back of my head gnawing on one of these things and possibly some others I can’t remember right at this instant.
Keeping the damn thing on the rails:
So I know some things. I know that there will be snow involved in this plot. I suspected (and have had subtextually confirmed by timing commentaries) that it is looped in to the party going back up Mount Rainier in some fashion, given timings. I know Ezra will probably stab someone. I don’t know if that someone is Evil Elsa, her niece being used as a catspaw again, or someone else, though. I know that there is a bit that does not include an immediate villain other than hypothermia. (I also know a bunch of similar to the above aftermath tidbits that are not relevant to this bit.)
I also know that I have a character who is profoundly chaotic, has been cramming both magical and other skills because he is focused on survival in a way only attainable by a human who is both actively aware that the world is out to get him and also acknowledges that someday it will win. He is extremely “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we all may die” about pretty much everything. The first time he ran into Evil Elsa when she was in a snit the thought that went through his head was something like “This is going to hurt, but on the bright side probably not for long!” It didn’t change what he was doing in the slightest.
Which means that I have to make sure to keep him on fucking track, which means I have a lot of side notes to MG that begin “Oh I thought of another thing—”
Like: assuming that this has something to do with the planned Rainier hike, he already has appropriate cold-weather hiking gear, competent hike skills, and competent survival skills. Further, he has a complex emotional relationship with The Call of the Wild, a book which notably has a scene in which a dog learns about surviving Yukon (or wherever he was by then) winters by digging a snow burrow rather than staying on the surface.
Beyond this, Danny is a fully competent and reasonably powerful shapeshifter at this point. Dealing with winter cold is easier done as, say, a bear, who would be sleepy but not freezing to death. He would absolutely think of being a bear before he resorted to the sort of complicated, dangerous magic that I need him to do for getting the results of the plot, so there has to be a reason being a bear isn’t good enough. (I don’t know what it is, but MG has told me there is a plan.)
He has basically a couple of magical flares that help him hide from an antagonist and send Ezra an “I’m in trouble and over here” type signal. There has to be reason that Ezra cannot solve this problem, or at least cannot solve it in time. (I suspect that Ezra’s attempts to solve the problem in time will involve stabbing, as there will be stabbing.)
He is aware that monks trained in the magical art that he is training in are capable of sufficient body temperature control to melt snow by meditating. I figure this does not work because he has not figured out how to be reliable about meditation skill.
He has been, as I mentioned in passing, making friends with a phoenix spirit. Further, he knows that if he duets with the spirit for long enough the area gets hot. He would absolutely think of this (and suspect that if it works it would mean he owes the spirit a substantial debt), but we need it not to work. He would try it, though. (I threw a possible solution to MG for this one already.)
There may be other things, I can’t recall right now, but he just ...has a lot of solutions to things now. He does not feel he has enough solutions. But he is interesting to keep on the rails for this purpose. We will see what he actually does in play when we get there...
About collaborative gamemaster/player work on character development.
Note at the header of this: this was all written before plot happened and I was wrong about one important thing that was going to happen.
Ezra did not stab anyone.
Ezra bit the hell out of someone.
Necessary background knowings, systems level:
It is possible to build a character at several different power levels in this game system; when building more powerful characters, some amount of wyrds (flaws, ish; magical or mundane disabilities of some variety) have to be taken. Taking wyrds beyond that does the standard ‘give you more build points for powers and stats’.
When I was building Danny there were a couple powers and flaws that I was very tempted by for him; however, since we were being asked to make a low-magical-awareness character, I decided against them. The most significant of them was Season, a wyrd that either binds a character to change according to the seasons (consider a dryad whose hair color, mannerisms, and so on change according to their tree’s manifestation over the course of a year) or binds a character to one season, regardless of actual time of year, with the personality to match. The power I considered and discarded was Adaptation, because man is the ability to be even mildly immune to weather effects handy if one is geas-bound to not sleep under a roof more than three nights in a row. Again, I considered it overpowered for the level of campaign, even if it would be really handy. (I was also tempted by Element Affinity but none of them worked out right for his personality; hilariously, I later wound up building a fae semi-NPC who’s part fire elemental, not even thinking about that.)
Element Affinity has to be taken at chargen and cannot be acquired in play; Season does not have that description, but does note that it cannot be cured without permanent damage to or possible destruction of the person’s soul. Meanwhile, the seasonal affinity for Spring is, I quote: “Lusty, bouncy, energetic. Reckless in behavior, passionate in love, brilliantly joyful with sudden storms of rage. Wears bright colors and makes plants bloom.” Sure, okay, that’s the close match, but the character I was building was an aroace trans guy, so I let it go. (Let it go! Turn away and slam the door!)
The worldbuilding of this instance of this gameworld includes a love-at-first-sight fairy tale trope; in-world it is extremely rare, more so between a fae and a human, and has a substantial drawback: while humans can stop being overwhelmed by the grief of the loss and heal somewhat (like one of those lightning-shattered trees), the fae cannot; the wounds remain fresh forever. General consensus that it is absolutely worth it to have the true love experience, however.
Necessary background, game level:
One of the party members was issued a nemesis in our first plot arc, a fae of the Winter season who has a long-standing hate-on for his family (mother’s side), who he had only just met. This grudge extends to the rest of the party because they happened to be standing next to him at the time. We have since caused her to lose face because she falsely accused us of the crime we were investigating, and then actively thwarted her schemes by revealing that she was behind a plot that threatened the whole local magical community in the long run. (Danny was very visible in the spreading that information.) This person’s name is Fanferluche, but I often call her Evil Elsa because it’s shorter to type and more usefully descriptive to people who haven’t met her.
It turns out Danny was not aroace, just too dysphoric for any of that, in addition to certain other factors not relevant to this scenario. This came out because early in that first plot arc, he spotted Sir Ezra, a fox fairy, and proceeded to gently obsess about him in very much a lust-at-first-sight sort of way. MG commented that he would probably have to figure out how to express his interest as genuine over time (because fairies will flirt and not take it seriously), but it turns out Ezra caught on pretty fast and they have been seeing each other quite seriously since basically the second plot arc. To the extent that MG sort of wondered why Ezra didn’t ping on Danny equally at the point they met, aside of course from the part where we as typists did not have any clue how good they were going to be for each other at the time. One going theory was that as a fox Ezra needed scent more than sight for the trigger, and hasn’t figured out yet that he got it when Danny tackled him in a park while they were fooling around on their first date (they were both foxes at the time).
Ezra is a live-in-the-moment ethical slut type, a free spirit, and Danny is turning out to be very similar, though from a rather different angle. They get along brilliantly.
It is worth noting that there was a plot to suborn Ezra at one point that involved a weasel fairy who happened to be Evil Elsa’s niece. There were no fatalities but it was perhaps a nearer thing than the girl in question realized at the time... However, the consequences of same basically made Ezra too depressed to be much of an active force in the area unless poked, which suited Fanferluche and her crew nicely. He is much perkier these days. The niece was disgraced, socially shamed, and fled back to Faerie, but is probably still obsessed with her ex. (Del, my fire weasel aforementioned, has so much commentary about this in my brain.)
Additionally: Danny’s background includes metaphorically burning down his life to be reborn as someone else. He has attracted the attention of a phoenix spirit, because we can’t turn down a good metaphor. I had actually noticed he had an animistic streak and the write up for spirit-dealing magic includes that each practitioner has a particular ally spirit to start with, and while I thought a cat at first since that’s his primary shapeshift form, it was Incorrect until I realized, “Oh. Phoenix.”
Danny has also expressed a Concern about the whole soul-mates thing, because Danny has lived a marginal enough life that he is extremely aware of his mortality (and that feeds into his YOLO attitude that makes it possible for him to keep up with a swashbuckling fox fairy in the first place) and the idea that his free-spirited lover might be emotionally crippled afterwards just guts him. Ezra has reassured him that if it was going to happen they would know already, which Danny considers a massive relief.
We start scheming:
Somewhere along the line I commented to MG that if I had built Danny as a more powerful character I would have taken Season:Spring on him, and she allowed as how that was a really good fit. I then noted that that implied a character event that would cause him to develop that Wyrd, and MG said “Hmmmm.” I pointed out eventually that an interaction with Evil Elsa could bring it out, because Winter/Spring dynamic is a thing, we noodled around for a bit, and eventually I said “Oh, I was thinking she might just try to kill him.” Basically becoming Season:Spring in self-defense against aggressive Winter.
We settled on bits of development towards this end and then I noticed all sorts of things that are Hilarious Foreshadowing in context, which were placed there basically because Danny is so clearly Spring that the vibe is well-established before it is overtly magical. Things like ‘in the oak and holly winter solstice clash he was aligned with the oak, because vibes’.
At some point I commented to MG that the Season wyrd is explicitly a soul-affecting thing, and you know, what if it isn’t just Ezra’s sense of smell that’s a factor (with all the local humanish-born fae talking about “love at first sight” as a thing and not making consideration for “love at first scent”, thereby obscuring the situation linguistically). What if the Seasonal wyrd and its associated soul-changes make for a soulmate? That would explain why he hasn’t pinged yet - he’s acting like it’s close but not quite the Real Thing. (Danny is acting like it’s the Real Thing, more or less, and this whole situation is baffling Briseis the Majestic Sword Lesbian, who is the widow of a mortal/fae true love relationship.)
I have known this plot was set for early February for some time. I also wound up writing, at one point along the line, a Danny In Spring Resonance side story, where I said “Hm I don’t think I can write this last bit until the event” and then MG gave me a fragment of a scene to work with so I could write the bit. Which involves “A Hazy Shade of Winter”, because rampaging bard will rampage.
- Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That’s an easy thing to say
But if your hope should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around
Grass is high
The fields are ripe
It’s the springtime of my life!
Which is a good setup, really, for summoning in the Spring to fight off the side-effects of winter.
The timey-wimey:
One of the interesting things about having a known plot like this is getting fragmentary bits of character reactions to the event, but not being able to do anything about them in any meaningful way, because while they are likely accurate as far as they go, I don’t know that MG has planned. Which means I get things like this:
Danny, who is as beforementioned a part-time cat, post-murder-attempt: “Okay. That’s four. I have five more. You wanna try me?!” (In play this actually came out as him hacking together a ridiculously potent curse, which he landed on the Evil Elsae with a bit of help from various friends.)
Danny, encountering a blood-splattered Ezra, kissing him and using the kiss to seal a diagnostic enchantment because he wants to know if his beloved is okay.
“How are you feeling?” or some equivalent sentiment from Ezra in immediate aftermath.
“About half like a blind kitten who’s gotten out of the nest somehow and is mewing for rescue and half desperately horny teenager. Since I assume you don’t want to fuck here can we at least get to a car or something so I can get your hand down my pants?”
Reactions to the party asking him what he needs being notably more brittle and explicit than he usually gets.
If Ezra has any sort of wibble — as someone whose true nature is as a protector, who is currently organizing his life around Danny — about not being able to protect him in this circumstance, I have a whole thing for that.
The way Danny just crumples when he learns Ezra’s hit true love because that is the last thing that breaks his ability to pretend he’s coping with everything right now. (And what he does in the immediate moment.)
Danny, after learning Ezra has hit the true love threshhold, spending several days in the woods as a large grumpy porcupine. Possibly alternating with a snapping turtle since he can’t stay in any one shape for more than three days, depending on how long it takes for someone to convince him to not be a porcupine. (And what happens if Isobel and Briseis in particular go looking for him, because he is likely to go cougar at that point and Isobel’s spoken Cat is very rudimentary, and Cougar would definitely be dialect/closely related language to Domestic Feline....) (In play: less than 24 hours as a porcupine, a brief round of snapping turtle, and then, due to decisions we made, a cougar/porcupine hybrid.)
Danny, dealing with combined traumas, doubling down on wanting to read Musashi in the original. (It genuinely makes sense, if sideways.) (Haven’t gotten here yet.)
Danny composing an autobiographical violin sonata. (I have written a description of three of the four movements but the fourth depends on me knowing the rest of this.)
Danny having a meltdown about how the magic he does to save his own life has changed him in complicated ways that leave him feeling profoundly displaced — not that he was attached to humanity qua humanity but suddenly turning himself into a changeling, basically, was not how he expected to spend the weekend.
(A side note on that: somewhere along the line I commented to MG that this has potential relevance to the true-love magical match. Ezra was born as a fox; he became an approximate human with all the abstract thought and walking on two feet thing as a young adult critter. He is still, fundamentally, a fox, while simultaneously being separate and distinct and alien from his own kind-of-origin. There are probably others like him, but he doesn’t have a community of same. Danny will wind up doing something similar to himself as part of what he does to survive, and thus they can be one-of-a-kind(ish) together.)
Ruminations and general anxiety about identity leading to asking an old law school friend for a moderately odd favor.
Finally coming up with a relevant comment to a question Ezra asked him a while back which he’s been unable to answer which I am not putting here because I think it’ll be more fun springing it on MG without spoiler. (Which I did tonight! And thus can post this post!)
Every so often I get him in the back of my head gnawing on one of these things and possibly some others I can’t remember right at this instant.
Keeping the damn thing on the rails:
So I know some things. I know that there will be snow involved in this plot. I suspected (and have had subtextually confirmed by timing commentaries) that it is looped in to the party going back up Mount Rainier in some fashion, given timings. I know Ezra will probably stab someone. I don’t know if that someone is Evil Elsa, her niece being used as a catspaw again, or someone else, though. I know that there is a bit that does not include an immediate villain other than hypothermia. (I also know a bunch of similar to the above aftermath tidbits that are not relevant to this bit.)
I also know that I have a character who is profoundly chaotic, has been cramming both magical and other skills because he is focused on survival in a way only attainable by a human who is both actively aware that the world is out to get him and also acknowledges that someday it will win. He is extremely “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we all may die” about pretty much everything. The first time he ran into Evil Elsa when she was in a snit the thought that went through his head was something like “This is going to hurt, but on the bright side probably not for long!” It didn’t change what he was doing in the slightest.
Which means that I have to make sure to keep him on fucking track, which means I have a lot of side notes to MG that begin “Oh I thought of another thing—”
Like: assuming that this has something to do with the planned Rainier hike, he already has appropriate cold-weather hiking gear, competent hike skills, and competent survival skills. Further, he has a complex emotional relationship with The Call of the Wild, a book which notably has a scene in which a dog learns about surviving Yukon (or wherever he was by then) winters by digging a snow burrow rather than staying on the surface.
Beyond this, Danny is a fully competent and reasonably powerful shapeshifter at this point. Dealing with winter cold is easier done as, say, a bear, who would be sleepy but not freezing to death. He would absolutely think of being a bear before he resorted to the sort of complicated, dangerous magic that I need him to do for getting the results of the plot, so there has to be a reason being a bear isn’t good enough. (I don’t know what it is, but MG has told me there is a plan.)
He has basically a couple of magical flares that help him hide from an antagonist and send Ezra an “I’m in trouble and over here” type signal. There has to be reason that Ezra cannot solve this problem, or at least cannot solve it in time. (I suspect that Ezra’s attempts to solve the problem in time will involve stabbing, as there will be stabbing.)
He is aware that monks trained in the magical art that he is training in are capable of sufficient body temperature control to melt snow by meditating. I figure this does not work because he has not figured out how to be reliable about meditation skill.
He has been, as I mentioned in passing, making friends with a phoenix spirit. Further, he knows that if he duets with the spirit for long enough the area gets hot. He would absolutely think of this (and suspect that if it works it would mean he owes the spirit a substantial debt), but we need it not to work. He would try it, though. (I threw a possible solution to MG for this one already.)
There may be other things, I can’t recall right now, but he just ...has a lot of solutions to things now. He does not feel he has enough solutions. But he is interesting to keep on the rails for this purpose. We will see what he actually does in play when we get there...
Tags:
From:
no subject
Goodness, that is a lot!
May it be a delightful surprise how it gets where you know it is going.
From:
no subject
We are having a grand time with it.
From:
no subject
Hurrah for a grand time!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
And so much juicy fallout.