The Misadventures of the Missed Adventurers

[Krsqk]

[ooc: You're trying your best to make this awfully complicated, aren't you? ]

John glares impatiently at Jack, while Arthur glances up from his seat. "The requirements are as follows. Ahem. 1) The ring's owner must not intentionally allow the ring to leave his care. Care is defined as on his person or within arm's reach. 2) The ring's owner must not intentionally allow anyone but himself to handle the ring, with the exception of the apprentice upon final transfer of the ring. 3) No third party may be involved in the transfer of the ring. 4) If any of these conditions exist without the will and/or intent of the owner, he is obligated to do his utmost to correct them, even at cost of his life. 5) If any of these conditions exist with the will and/or intent of the owner, or if he does not act to correct them, he shall be subject to such punishment as the ruling Guild board shall determine; ownership of the ring and any other related rights shall devolve on a party chosen by the board. It's pretty simple. If he abandons it on purpose, he's punished and someone else is appointed. If it wasn't under his control, he's obligated to regain possession of it."

D (aside to Jack) "From what I've seen of the guild in question, they take the possession and handling of apprenticeship rings very seriously, even when there is no enchantment involved. For a ring like this, which is obviously very heavily guarded, it's probably a very touchy matter."

Arthur "If you're thinking about any alternate means of getting the ring into my possession, remember that I'm forbidden to accept it and would have to return it to John. If you're thinking about further study on the ring, that's something that would have to be negotiated after I receive it, as John's forbidden to permit you to handle it. Frankly, I understand that the rules are quite blunt; but remember that our guild values its traditions very highly, and apprenticeship rings are among the oldest and most revered traditions we hold to. Besides, the sooner we resolve this, the sooner you can finish the detection spell and we can get on with our plans."

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Narp looks at the map for a few minutes.

"ok, we have the telepath alone and unprotected and what looks like a bunch more bandits. well, if your outnumbered, the recomendation is generally attack. i think... if this is ok with everyone, Jack, you teleport something big over there so it looks like where running. John, you teleport us quietly to near where the telepath is, i'm assuming you know the terrain, then we find the telepath. after that, we've only got a massive bandit problem. ah, well. one problem at a time. did i say thanks for the bow? anyway, thanks. this one is near to falling apart."

ooc:[my writing hasn't been to good lately. need to do better.]

[Jack Simth]

ooc:[You don't like complications? All right then.]

Jack "Fair enough then - as long as you are both in agreement as to who the ring belongs to."

Jack hands the ring over to John, then turns his attention to Arthur's spell.

Jack "From the looks of it, the telepath is busy coordinating an attack. Hmm, is that this mountain they are converging on? No matter; we won't be here much longer. This is actually quite a spell. In making it a visual display you may have added a feature you weren't expecting. Remember how you kept saying that the number of people in the caves kept changing? Now that I'm maintaining the spell, I can feel the number changing, but the display fills in the critical detail: those twenty some returns are all coming from the exact same spot. He did successfully deflect the seeker looking for him, but the visual aspect of the spell makes him obvious. I can't distinguish the Baron though. It could be that the posessed register as being at the telepath's location as well as their own, and so that seeker got confused and headed towards the telepath, then got deflected."

Jack "Oh, and Narp - you're welcome. I had to take it from the gaurd, but I didn't have any use for it myself."

Jack "As for the teleporting ... would a large boulder teleported so that it is resting against the door in your tower, John, suffice? If the teleport gets traced, he'll get someone to try breaking in, and that someone will find the door resistant to opening, both causing it to take longer to open and convinicing him that we are actually in there. I'll also send the psionic block along with it, incorporating your wonderful suggestions, John; we've all got talismans for protection and camoflauge now, so the block is only serving to give away our location; if our adversary thinks we are still using it, the spot he can't see will become his target - not us."

Jack glances at a sizeable boulder.

Jack "All right - I'm set; John, if you would...."

Jack and John simultaneously cast their teleports; the boulder and block end up in John's tower, with the rock leaning against the door. The group ends up next to a cave enterance.

ooc:[Note for when battling the Psi: the talismans will prevent the Psi from acting directly on the party - if he tries to mind control, he'll hit nothing (psionics diverted to a spot with no mind); if he tries to move one of our characters, that one will feel a breeze off to their left as the Psi grabs air (if he corrects to the right, he targets an undefended location, and he hits the corrected spot - on the real target's right). However, if he uses telekenisis to throw a rock, the rock is undefended, and gets thrown properly. However, we're camoflauged, so he will need to be able to see us directly, or through an agent's eyes, in order to target. We've already established that there aren't any possible agents in the cave.]

[Krsqk]

[ooc: I wasn't prepared for Jack's sudden possessiveness about "his" new toy. I didn't catch that you were setting up conflict between Arthur and John until after your Last post.]

Arthur quickly does another life detection spell, slightly altered to make it look like it was cast from the castle. Signs of life are shown, with the usualy delay, a few hundred yards inside the cave. A detect magic spell, however, does not detect anything.

Arthur "That's odd. It's the same thing I encountered on the way to the manor. There seems to be some sort of selective filter which allows some spells to pass and blocks others. I don't know if it blocks on the inward path or the return path, though, or how it would affect spells cast inside it. It's almost like a semi-permeable membrane."

Everyone takes a moment to check themselves over and make any Last-minute preparations for whatever they will find.

[Jack Simth]

ooc:[I was just setting up the possibility; your character, your decision. No matter.]

Jack looks at the cave thoughtfully.

Jack "We could set up a probe ... let's see ... I need a spell detection stealth bubble to work in ..."

Jack sets up a spell detection supression bubble, and pulls a small wooden disk out of his robes.
Jack "Hmm, Last one; I'm going to need to find a decent carpenter soon. Ah well; they are for practicing enchantments, and that I have been doing. Anyway ... on the probe itself, I need a recall mechanism ... a scanning mechanism ... some spell detection stealth ... some psionic stealth ... and some memory ..."

Jack takes a moment to write several glowing runes on it.

Jack "There, that should do it. We'll know what's up in a minute."

Jack rolls the disk into the cave. A moment later, the disk rolls back out of its own accord. Jack picks it up, looks at it for a bit, and puts it in a pocket of his robe.

Jack "It took a quick look around from the inside, and came up with some interesting results. First off: John, that barrier is your spell. Nice work by the way, but I suspect you don't remember making it; there is a forced aspect to it, as though someone was searching memory for instructions rather than just doing it. As for what it does, it is a selectively permiable membrane. It traps any magic it finds on the way in and suppresses traces very effectively, but lets psionics and solid matter pass freely. I suspect it registers Arthur's detect life spell as psionics, but it takes a while to make that determination, hence the delay. The probe noticed several spells running on the inside, but didn't get enough of a look to tell what they do. We shouldn't have any trouble getting in."

[narf poit chez BOOM]

ooc:[only the baron's soldier's where converging on us. now, let's see...the telepath can't send the baron back to where he thinks we are because the bandits are nearing the baron's manor, so i guess he just keeps going.]

they had been riding for an hour now and they where getting nervious. the baron seemed almost obsessed on that mountain peak ahead and only thirty had been left to guard the manor with bandits about. but, he was the baron and maybe he knew something they didn't.

the bandits could easily see the the baron's manor and the town if they climbed a tree, although it all looked like toy blocks. in two more hours, they would be there. the plan was simple, they couldn't take the town until reinforcements got here, so they would attack the back wall of the manor. with only thirty soldier's on guard, it would be easy.

Narp, remembering the Last cave they went into, picked up a stick and said "D, can you cast silence on the stick? and Jack, could you cast a life-simulation spell on it?"

"sure."

"adapting the spell from a flat, regular cylindrical base to a long, irregular cylindrical base will provide a little practice."

two short spells later, Narp rapped the stick around the cave walls, then stepped in.

a short walk and many raps in, the cave diverged into three different paths. from the left, one up the cave wall and going up, the other low on the cave wall and going down, the other level with the floor and going right. the wizard's could see a pale and shifting spell over all three doors and the space between. so, everyone stopped short of the room.

ooc:[hope you don't mind, but Jack's all out of disks and i didn't want to spend most of today, real-time, deciding how we're going to enter the cave.]

[ July 15, 2003, 19:03: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Jack Simth]

Jack looks closely at the door.

Jack "Someone spent a lot of time on this. Again, it has that forced look to it."

John "Yes, yes it does. Hmm, I recognize every one of thse runes ... they seem to be in my style ... and have my signiture. That's odd; I don't remember making it."

ooc:[We've never actually told him he was being possessed, have we? He could readily be in denial at this point (especially with the comment Narf gave him about thinking he had been blocking).]

Jack's eye wanders over to the hinges.

Jack "Hmm. It seems the focus was on protecting the door and lock. The hinges were ignored completely, and could be removed without difficulty. As we are in a hurry, I suppose we can do without disenchanting the door for now; the enchantment will still be here on the way out ... Narp, got a knife?"

ooc:[Someone searching through another's memory for instructions on complex tasks would likely miss something of how they are supposed to be used; forgetting about the hinges, for example.]