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 Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 2:05 am
You find yourself standing in a precisely manicured field, pristine green grass stretching out in front of you for what seems like miles. A gaggle of large flightless birds stand in the shape of a horseshoe, a few of them already engaged by other Amityville students. A horseman of Conquest approaches you, her deep olive hair serving to help camouflage her in the surrounding foliage.
"Greetings. You may call me Rucha. Today you will be working with the adara." She sweeps an arm toward the birds, her long sleeves trailing through the grass at her feet. "On the whole, members of this species have a lot in common with humans as far as temperament and intelligence are concerned, so you should have no trouble getting them to tolerate you." She frowns and looks you up and down. "In theory." Rucha moves to one side, allowing you to step past her.
"Take this," She hands you a list of instructions. "Choose a bird, and make an effort to earn its trust."Instruction One First, you must bow to the adara to show it you mean no harm. Try to at least act sincere.Roll 1d4.1: Your bow is suitably impressive. The adara inclines its head and drops a feather. Perhaps it will be of some use later. 2: The bird screams in terror and pushes you to the ground before running away. You fail. 3: You don't make proper eye contact at first, but soon your adara is nuzzling up to you anyway. It seems you have a natural affinity for dealing with the beasts. A future as a DETH representative might be in the cards. You also obtain one feather. 4: You bow, but it's kind of a weak attempt. Still, your bird responds. It doesn't seem terribly enthusiastic about the whole situation though. You pass. Instruction Two Next you should offer the adara a refreshing drink of water or a salted cracker.Roll 1d6.1: The adara nibbles at your cracker, then turns away and starts to graze on the leaves near its feet. You pass, but not by much. 2: After you've fed your bird its snack, the adara puffs up and begins to gag. You've failed the challenge, but you do obtain a feather as a result of its misery! 3: Your adara drinks its water daintily, then allows you to pet it. You pass and you get a feather! 4: Sadly, after your bird eats your cracker, it quickly moves on to the next student, letting them pet it and collect one of its feathers. The two timer! You pass. Eventually your adara wanders back. 5: The adara in front of you ignores your cracker, but another animal wanders over to eat it instead, giving you one of its feathers in thanks! You pass. 6: You drop your water and crackers, watching in dismay as a passing bird tramples them. You fail. Instruction Three Ask the adara something about itself, listening attentively when it answers, even though you can't understand a word of its reply.Roll 1d6.1: You ask the bird to tell you where it was born and it responds with a happy trill and a long, drawn out bird story. After a while, you begin to get bored. The adara stops mid-chirp, gets up, and waddles away. You fail. 2: The adara looks on in confusion and dismay as you try to stutter out an interesting question. You fail. 3: Your bird is pleased by your question. It sits down and shares a tweety tale of intrigue that you manage to remain bright-eyed and alert for. You pass. 4: Your question frightens the adara and it leaves your vicinity with a shiver. Its shaking causes one of its feathers to fall nearby. You fail. 5: In an effort to seem like you care, you ask your adara a very personal question that it refuses to answer. You fail. 6: You've coincidentally hit on your adara's favorite topic of all time, and even if you can't understand what it's saying, it's still pretty entertaining. You listen as attentively as you can, and are awarded with a feather for your trouble. You pass. Instruction Four Lastly, tell the adara a secret. These animals love to think they're up on the latest gossip.Roll 1d4.1, 2: Your secret is a sad, boring one that nobody cares about. You fail. 3: The adara listens, rapt, as you tell it a little-known tale of intrigue and madness. When you're done, it drops a feather at your feet. You pass. 4: Everybody knows that secret! The adara shakes its head, accidentally dislodging a feather for you to keep. You fail. Horsemen Points For each feather you have (up to three) at the end of this test you may claim a Horsemen Point.
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Boozver rolled 1 4-sided dice:
1
Total: 1 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 2:34 am
Birds?! Wylfenne shivered. "Don't tell me I have to talk to birds!" For a moment she was lost in hesitation imagining what the Wild Hunt people would say. She imagined their grimacing faces, giggling and moaning, all the horror and amusement of haunting and hunting, the pangs of joy of being feared. Birds?
Then she was cut abruptly by her vision of the Elders urging her to succeed. It proved to be difficult than she expected. All the labirynthine wisdom of her Clan would not help. Quiet, my heart. She made the first step. The shadows flickered around her. "Surely they don't want me to go go after some simple creatures like that, surely there's more to that than I perceive at the moment. Surely I can do it, I should do it, I will succeed'. She approached the adara
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Boozver rolled 1 6-sided dice:
6
Total: 6 (1-6)
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:30 am
A feather? It was long and silky and beautiful, but somehow uncanny as it seemed to live a life of its own. Wylfenne was slightly amused.
As strange as bowing to a bird could be, it somehow worked. The adara inclined its head and was studying Wylfenne curiously. Looks like they managed to establish sort of contact.
And young horseman lady, what was her name again? Rucha? Rucha suggested to offer the bird something to eat.
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Boozver rolled 1 6-sided dice:
4
Total: 4 (1-6)
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:34 am
Now that was unexpected. Perhaps, Wylfenne was worried to much, and managed to drop the water and the cracker they were going to offer to adara. Well.. the bird looked a bit irritated, but Wylfenne kind of hoped it's not all ruined.. yet.
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Boozver rolled 1 4-sided dice:
1
Total: 1 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:43 am
Rucha nodded confirming it might be ok to speak with the bird. Wylfenne put all their efforts to sound as gentle, as was possible: "Would you be so kind as to tell me which time of day suits you most?"
Adara stared at Wylfenne for a moment, its eyes grew wider. Wylfenne looked at Rucha, and horselady appeared to be quite worried. Adara was clearly terrified by the question, and made a few steps back from Wylfenne. Good, Wylfenne noticed the bird dropped another feather, and quickly took it.
"What?", they addressed Rucha. "What did I do wrong?". The lady shook her head, but remained silent.
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:53 am
And then.. Wylfenne suddenly found themselves impatient. Well, to tell the truth Wylfenne actually was quite impatient by their entire nature, but normally almost nothing could make them demonstrate this infamous trait of character.
But that was exactly what happened. May be it was the new environment, or just too much things to think about, or just a stupid bird.. Fae didn't know whom to blame. But they were irritated enough to forcefully try and approach the bird ignoring Rucha's protests. "Listen here, oh feathered creature! I'm going to tell you a sssseeeeeeecret".
Adara raised an eyebrow and looked at Wylfenne contemptuously for a moment, and then turned and slowly went away absolutely ignoring poor Fae.
Wylfenne apologised to Rucha, and the horselady explained it wasn't that bad: at least, Wylfenne managed to get two feathers!
Yet, leaving the place Fae couldn't help feeling shamed.
[POINTS EARNED: 2]
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Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 7:14 pm
KUMIKO: While the ceremony of Kodo is a complex one and may take years to master – upwards to 30 being the quoted amount – it seems that the Clan of Conquest has taken it upon themselves to at least bestow a small challenge of observation upon the students in the form of a game that, in theory, is rather simple. One of the younger members of Conquest’s Clan, for the sake of difficulty adjustment, has set up 5 different samples of incense on scentless bamboo squares.
A small demonstration is made as how to smell them – also known as ‘hearing’ the scents, with the square held up to one’s nose and the hand cupped over the square in order to scent it.
With this done, the rest of the explanation is given: Your task is to determine which scents are the same, and which are different! Several scents might match each other, some might not match any of the others. For this task, you are given several different sizes of block.
Using these blocks, you stack them so that a top bar may be put across matching incenses, which will form certain Genji-mon (also called Genji-ko) to denote chapters of the Tale of Genji (a strange tale from the Human World O_O!! )
For example, if the first and the last scents match each other, you would stack your blocks to form the chapter ‘Maboroshi’ (Chapter 41, ‘The Wizard’) with three shorter blocks in the center, and two taller ones on each end with the longer block set across the top of them.
The trickiness comes in that some scents may be very similar to each other, but not the same, and some might be exactly the same just to trick you!
Once you have ‘heard’ each scent and set up your blocks, the individual who set up the challenge will let you know how you did.Mechanics! [ Mechanics: ] You will roll twice for this! In both posts, roll 5d6. In the first post, the dice represent your students ‘guess’ at the scents. Any matching numbers are matching scents! The second post is the Horseman who set up your challenge telling you how you did. However.As there are only 5 blocks, the number 6 is a wildcard! You may alter the number 6 in your roll to be any number of your choosing! How nice! What the numbers are exactly doesn’t matter, it simply matters that numbers repeat in the same places in each roll. Example First Post Invictus rolls 5d6 He gets 33113 That means he guesses that the first two scents and the last one match, as do the third and the fourth one. That means his blocks resemble the chapter ‘Wakana no jo’ (Chapter 34, New Herbs, Part 1). Second Post The Horseman who set up the event rolls 5d6 He gets 44226 This means that because the last number is a 6, it is a wildcard! I can now change this ‘real’ answer’s 6 to a 4, and have the same matching pattern as Invictus had in his guess! Gasp! He got it right! WHY:
You get points based on your accuracy! (SELECT ONLY ONE)
If you 100% match the Horseman’s set up, take 3 points!
If you were one block off of 100%, take 2 points!
If there are multiple matches and you only get one of the two correct, take 2 points!
If you were one off of the second match, take 1 point!
If you matched the wrong pattern, but there was an existing pattern, take 1 point!
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Boozver rolled 5 6-sided dice:
3, 6, 6, 5, 4
Total: 24 (5-30)
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Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 7:15 pm
After the awkward experience of the Lotus Pavilion Wylfenne was not so sure whether they should actually interact with the horsemen. But this place intrigues them, moreover, the whole mechanics of the supposedly ancient game appealed to them so that they just needed to give it a try.
Wylfenne approached the horseman nonchalantly and greeted him politely. The attendant's face looked as if it were carved in stone. "I should ask him to teach me how to stay that cool", the Fae grinned to themselves.
it looked like on the isles they lost all their composure as if by some weird hostile magic trick. They had never felt so nervous before, but to cast it off asked playfully aloud: "Shall we play a game?".
"The game has already started", the horseman said in a monotonous small voice, and moved 5 different sized blocks to them. "Blocks", thought Wylfenne sarcastically, "how exciting, I wonder whether the game would be as wooden as it seems". It all had to do with scents... After their failed first task in Invictus' classroom they weren't so sure they could play it out correctly.
Wylfenne leaned towards bamboo squares.
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Boozver rolled 5 6-sided dice:
5, 6, 3, 3, 2
Total: 19 (5-30)
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Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 7:16 pm
"The gatehouse", pronounced the horseman solemnly. Wylfenne wondered what did he mean, as it was impossible to get from his face whether he was pleased or not with Wylfenne's result. Their head went empty and dull after smelling such a complicated melody of scents. They were unwilling to acknowledge they have never tried to guess any scent before, being used to the cacophony of smells in the Hunt. {{Sekiya, N16: The Gatehouse - both "6" in my roll turns to "5"; "6" in horseman's roll turns to "3", so we have 3-5-5-5-4 and 5-3-3-3-2.
100% match, total win: 3 points}}
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Boozver rolled 5 6-sided dice:
1, 2, 5, 5, 1
Total: 14 (5-30)
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Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 5:19 am
[Day three training - kumiko]
Wylfenne, fascinated by the intricacies of the game and not exactly understanding its mechanics, came back to try their luck one more time. This time their guess was far more bold - allowing less gaps and subterfuges. They were almost sure of winning - as the scents they had chosen immediately produced a pattern of their own, a special aura the fae was sure to have recognized. The horsemen call it 'hearing scents'? Wylfenne was sure they heard some flickering melody in it. Was it a cricket? They looked up at the face of the horseman slightly amused, wondering whether they got the right composition.
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Boozver rolled 5 6-sided dice:
6, 1, 3, 2, 2
Total: 14 (5-30)
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Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 5:20 am
The horseman remained motionless, but there was a hint of evil joy in his eyes. 'Wrong', he said monotonously - and his words sounded like a flat flute.
Was it possible? Wylfenne was sure they heard a distinct melody, and it wasn't out of tune just because the other person dismissed it. No, this melody was actually gaining in voice; after several seconds of hesitation, the horseman continued: 'But it matched an existing pattern'.
(( Matched the wrong pattern, but there was an existing pattern - 1 point!))
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Boozver rolled 5 6-sided dice:
2, 1, 2, 6, 6
Total: 17 (5-30)
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Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2012 10:20 am
[Kumiko day 3]
After all the adventures in the hidden room, Wylfenne felt exhausted. It all felt like a dream, and to snap out of it, they needed something that would seem normal and real. So they decided to play the kumiko game - one of the few things on the Conquest island that seemed so familiar and safe.
So once again they put themselves in front of the bamboo squares and tried to reproduce the melody of the scents.
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Boozver rolled 5 6-sided dice:
3, 5, 1, 5, 5
Total: 19 (5-30)
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Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2012 10:21 am
It seemed like their head was still swimming. It was easy to make your limbs reproduce automatically the movements you wanted them to make: after all, it did come quite naturally that after a minute of weakness the fae recollected their selves and continued with the ordinary routine of life. But it was very different with their analytical abilities. The blood was still hot and feverish after the experience, and the mind was still humming the same string of questions: what was it where they found themselves in? why? did anyone notice?
So no wonder that after Wylfenne put their composition of scents, the horseman looked at them rather strangely and announced they matched the wrong pattern.
The fae didn't even pay attention. 'Does he know... about the room?' - was the only thing they cared about at the moment.
(( matched the wrong pattern: 1 point))
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Boozver rolled 5 6-sided dice:
3, 2, 4, 4, 4
Total: 17 (5-30)
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Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 8:26 am
Kumiko day 4
After the last class Wylfenne still succumbed to their daily ritual and went to play Kumiko. The place felt almost like home, as they could describe it with their eyes closed. Even the ever doll-like ceremonial horseman who arranged the bamboo squares almost felt like a relative. But the fae after their incense induced adventures felt too tired... Could it be said that one can feel drunk of scents? Different odours of all sorts and tastes crammed in their head as if they were spirits asking to be fed, and without giving it a second thought Wylfenne just named the first combination that came to her.
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Boozver rolled 5 6-sided dice:
6, 5, 5, 4, 3
Total: 23 (5-30)
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Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 8:27 am
Was it pity that glimpsed in the eyes of the horseman? Was he actually talking to them? 'It seems you still haven't learnt it. You got the wrong combination'.
Wylfenne smiled, and answered courteously: 'But I still hear it. I still get a combination. It just means I am not an artisan, but an artist - I do not copy, I create my own melody?'
The horseman smiled and slightly bowed to them. 'I will miss you, little one', he said.
'Are we leaving tomorrow?' Wylfenne was surprised. The idea of leaving the Isle of Conquest so soon never actually came to their mind. Time here flew so fast they could not get accustomed to it. And they really felt sorry - was it time to go, now, that they actually started enjoying the whole thing?
But the horseman never answered: he seemed not to be paying attention to her anymore, and after waiting for a couple of minutes the fae left quietly.
[[ 1 point: matched the wrong combination - #26, Wild Carnations]]
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