The Blog of Roon

Heh. For once I pegged it. The mysterious newcomer to the funeral of House Amyriand’s seer was indeed Prince Pirion, Tamasi’s husband-to-be. So she’ll get a good hard look at him on their way back from the burial grounds, undistracted by court flurries and running-the-household issues. And vice versa, naturally.

Good-looking enough chap, Pirion is. Quite the boy-toy, I must say. And polite as polite, something that does recommend itself to Tamasi.

As for Renate, she did indeed have it out with her brother, though he was a canny fellow and didn’t give her an excuse to really unleash her anger on him. So she turned it on herself instead. Long, rambling conversation, as the significant ones tend to be, and she left no happier than she went in… but you’ll see when the logs are posted.

The GM is going to post my fluff-piece as an epilogue to the prologue, so y’all get a firsthand look at my secret vice. (Seriously. Some people have porn collections. I write RPG fluff. Roughly equal societal merit, believe you me.) No use emailing me brickbats; I’m a fluff addict, and that’s all there is to it.

Passions of the Tide just picked up again after the GM’s recovery from illness. House Amyriand has made its way to the burial-grounds for the funeral of its murdered seer; some unknowns have just popped up out of nowhere and are coming toward them.

(I suspect I know who it is—I certainly know who it’d be if I were GM. Suffice to say that I believe both Tamasi’s and Nacreon’s suppositions entirely incorrect.)

Renate, after an agonizing series of visions, successfully bargained for the return of her family’s heirloom magic bow on Forfeit Isle. After she apologized abjectly to Godfrey for dragging him into the Sea of Possibility, they made their way to Gereval—where after all her trouble and sorrow, she found that her much-loved brother had gone so far as to reject their family name, not to mention blowing off her shock and disappointment with completely unwarranted cruelty.

(Oh, and she got a second heirloom returned to her by her brother’s commanding officer.)

She is not happy about this. She is not happy about a lot of things. In a session tonight, barring scheduling difficulty, she is going to confront him over lunch. I’ll let you know how it goes; I have a plan in mind for it.

I also finished and sent the GM a piece of fluff about Renate’s homecoming. (I do send fluff to GMs; most of them have been willing to accept it into canon.) Desperate to fill in for her brother’s absence and redeem (what she believes to be) her failures on her journey, Rennie overworks herself into a deadly heatstroke. The story is from the point-of-view of Renate’s sister Sabine, because I strongly believe that worthy female characters, in gaming as in writing, should have strong relationships with other women, and because I don’t think Sabine should get lost or (worse) become no more than a pawn in all the upcoming fuss over Renate and Emil.

(Renate’s mother Clara is bad enough—where she’s not a fluffhead she’s a complete nonentity—so I really did feel I needed to build up Sabine, who turns out to be wise and levelheaded far in advance of her fifteen years. In addition to telepathic.)

Besides, there’s an aspect of heroism here that interests me. So many heroes are so dreadfully ungrounded. They’re completely sui generis—no family to speak of, no home (or if they do have a home they’re never in it), no responsibilities or ties other than feudal, practically no history that doesn’t boil down to a list of unconnected exploits. They do what they do because it’s what they are; they have no context or history to explain it.

Renate is potentially different, in the tradition of, say, the Cid rather than Roland. (I have always liked the Cantar de mio Cid better than the Song of Roland. I think this is why. The Cid has a wife, daughters, friends, lands when he’s not been kicked off them, an ambiguous and shifting relationship to the throne, a cultural context that he understands and works within. By comparison, Roland is total cardboard.) I want to play with that difference.

I also have an evil and completely un-RPG-ish idea for how Renate is going to change her world. It’s so un-RPG-ish, in fact, that I can feel myself resisting it, which probably means it’s the right way to go. One word: Satyagraha.

And the Grand Ellipse is finally over; I thank Li and Alisa for a genuinely brilliant campaign.

The last London Times neglected to mention (for the very good reason that they did not contact Shirley for a comment) Shirley’s near-apoplectic outrage at being turned into a comic opera character. Margaret managed to talk him down, but she never could convince him to see it; he contracted a conveniently-timed excuse ailment on opening night.

Just as well. The world-renowned comic tenor they got to play him would have offended his sensibilities mightily… as would what the libretto did with his marriage proposal.

The brief later history of the Addams neglects to mention a few things. Within a year of their return from the Ellipse, Shirley Addam and Esperanza Garcia y Gutierrez co-authored a book of stories entitled Tales of the Taiga; Miss Garcia’s lush illustrations garnered especial acclaim. All proceeds from the book’s sale went to a society in Russia whose aim was buying up lands in Siberia for conservation.

Shirley’s overt functions as part of the Foreign Service were in no small part cover for investigative operations at the behest of various government agencies. (He was never a spy, detesting intelligence work; but show him an international crime ring, and he’s your man to break it.) It needled him occasionally that his covert status was too important to allow him the promotions that his overt accomplishments merited, but he had an understanding wife and work he believed in—he could not much repine.

Shirley and Margaret never had children, but on their visits to England they were invariably welcomed joyfully by their nieces and nephews.

Herbert Addison clashed again with Shirley and Margaret Addam, indeed he did; but that story has no place here…

Tamasi is bowing her head to the inevitable. The marriage proposal is the real deal, and the consequences of not accepting it are worse than those of accepting it, so she’s going to accept it. Little though she likes it.

She’s been widowed a while; she was married disgustingly young, and he died not too many years after. You learn what that marriage was like from her mental comment, “The second marriage could not very easily be worse than the first had been. She found some small comfort in that.”

The question is how, exactly. I’m pulling back from my earlier house-of-horrors conception of it (the less said, the better, believe me), because I really was being excessive. Still. It wasn’t a good marriage.

Looking at the context of it, it’s not hard to see why. A venal man whose father was a philandering blusterer, whose mother played the Noble House Slave Saint, who married the girl out of sheer perversity because she (unlike her two elder sisters) did not want him. A too-young girl unthinkingly accustomed to respectful treatment, who did not want any marriage at all (much less this one), who was backed into a corner by people she respected and told to accept it as fate, who had to cope with culture shock at the same time as marriage shock… put these two together, and the result is Not Good.

I suppose that’s enough, really. Nobody needs to know the gritty details. Pirion is going to have to work to overcome Tamasi’s understandable reticence about marriage—if he cares to do so at all, that is—and that’s all there is to it. She’s been cornered again. She has accepted it, but she doesn’t have to like it.

So Nacreon is having an extremely disturbing conversation with his rival General Krill, who got into House Amyriand disguised as a pilgrim.

Krill thinks that Tamasi’s people are corrupting the Emperor and his family. Naturally he is suspicious of Tamasi herself. I keep waiting for him to demand that Nacreon kill his daughter-in-law, though thus far Nacreon has allayed enough of his suspicions that he has not felt the need to do so.

I can’t resist tiny creepy moments, when I’ve enough out-of-character knowledge to engineer them. So I had one of the servants mention the “pilgrim’s” presence in the household, and make the perfectly straightforward request to be permitted to feed and house him.

Tamasi, who despite her fearsome reputation is genuinely a decent sort of person, immediately agreed, saying, “Whatever he asks for he may have,” all unconscious that the pilgrim had motive to ask for some extremely unsavory things…

Tiny creepy moments. A good use of out-of-character knowledge.

There has been a burst of activity in Abyssia. We now know why Krill was absent from Nikolao’s audience with the Emperor. And we know a lot of confusing and contradictory things about Princess Ireth.

Do I think she had Nikolao poisoned? I keep wavering. She is the obvious suspect, but I can’t figure why she’d give herself away to Isleen. Even just to gloat.

I do keep wondering if the plan miscarried. The other epithet Ireth laid on Tamasi—I most cleverly threw mud all over the place with Tamasi’s little homily in order to keep from having to talk about it—indicates that Ireth, whether she is pro-war or pro-peace, is most definitely anti-marriage. Perhaps they really did poison the wrong mer. (Which, if true, is hysterically funny, because Tamasi said as much to Nikolao when it happened, in all innocence and unknowing, meaning something altogether different. I love it when games do that!)

Tamasi being Tamasi, she didn’t lay all her cards on the table. With some people she might have, but not Nikolao. For now, suffice to say she really does want to know how Ireth comes by her knowledge, and how far that knowledge extends.

I have figured out how I’m going to handle the possibility that the Empire is money-grubbing, marrying Tamasi into the family in order to grab her personal fortune. My plan is, if I do say so myself, beautifully devious, in the same way Shirley’s lawsuit was. (And it’s even another legal trick. I’ve absolutely positively been hanging around the sharks too much.) Stay tuned…

Update: Hm. On a second reading, I think I may have Ireth all wrong. Her message to Tamasi looks suspiciously like a warning to sit up and take an active interest. (A warning Tamasi doesn’t need, thank you, but nonetheless.) Whatever game she’s playing, it’s multi-layered… and I am starting to think she’s playing it against Rilagan.

Passions of the Tide is moving from a mailing list to the GM’s message board, starting (we are told) some time tomorrow. Lurkers are invited. If you’ve always wondered just what an RPG played online is like (it’s fun!), or whether my RPG fluff can really be as bad as I say it is (trust me, it’s worse), tune in.

Campaign and character background:

The Abyssian Empire of merfolk, led by Emperor-King Mithondion, has been fighting the savage fish-men for generations. A desperate but lucky victory against insane odds catapulted Nacreon, head of House Amyriand, into an Abyssian generalship, which he later lost (to General Krill) owing to his death-before-dishonor tactics costing too many mer lives. Wealthy but old and tired, Nacreon now lives in the city of Abyssia with his daughter-in-law Tamasi and nephew Nikolao; he has no other family living.

Tamasi is from deep undersea; the merfolk there are easily distinguished from the Abyssians of the shallows by their blandly pale coloration (sun-sea Abyssians have skin and scales colored like tropical fish), and are roundly despised in Abyssia proper. Nacreon’s son Garion married her (spurning her two older sisters for reasons unknown) for her substantial dowry, but he died in battle before he could make much use of it. Since Nacreon’s wife died, Tamasi has been shrewdly managing House Amyriand’s wealth as well as her own (from the dowry Nacreon allowed her to keep).

Young Nikolao had one arm crippled in a battle with the fish-men. The experience turned him into an anti-war activist, but it has not slowed his substance abuse or his sniffing after attractive women in the slightest.

Isleen is a Seer, a diviner. Divining has generally fallen into disfavor in Abyssia, so much so that Isleen’s talent cost her her family’s acceptance. She is apprenticed to House Amyriand’s chief diviner Muireann, as well as performing sundry tasks of librarianship and translation.

An updated list of NPCs important and un- is available here.

The story so far (abridged!):

Both Isleen and her mentor Muireann woke one morning from True Dreams of Mithondion with one arm cut off at the elbow, surrounded by members of House Amyriand. The dream sent Muireann into a frenzy, such that Tamasi and Isleen had to leave breakfast to deal with her. Just then, a messenger came with a request from one Court Minister Rilagan for audience with Nacreon and Tamasi. Nacreon set the audience for later that afternoon.

Isleen learned that Muireann had also had a vision of her own impending death. After consulting with Tamasi, she got up her courage to tell Nacreon of her own dream, but she informed neither him nor Tamasi of Muireann’s additional vision.

Shortly before the audience, Nikolao fell victim to a poisoning attempt while sleeping off intoxication in his quarters. The guards who pulled him from his room took him to Nacreon, where he fought unconsciousness to tell of three servants who had been nearby. Tamasi, worried both that he would talk himself to death or that the Court Minister would arrive in the midst of the fuss, carried him to a dark guest-room. This turned out to be precisely the wrong thing to do; Muireann informed him that the proper treatment was sunlight, and detailed Isleen to take him out to the gardens to get it. As he recovered, Nikolao began a flirtation with the young seer which Isleen has thus far diverted wittily.

Rilagan arrived with two pieces of news for Nacreon and Tamasi. Item the first, that the fish-men have offered to start peace talks (despite available evidence pointing at the fish-men having rather the better of the conflict at the moment) and Mithondion is prepared to come to the table. Item the second, that to allay any appearance of negotiation through weakness, Mithondion’s son and probable heir Pirion will ally himself with House Amyriand by marrying Tamasi.

Shocked and repelled (though for different reasons), Tamasi and Nacreon tried to gain time by pointing to Nikolao’s mishap—surely the Emperor-King cannot ally with a House under the cloud of attempted murder? Rilagan told them bluntly that the marriage was the Emperor-King’s will, and there would be no delaying it.

A very unsettled House Amyriand met for dinner that night, only to be unsettled yet further by Muireann’s interpretation of her dream: “I saw those dining here tonight… acting as conspirators in Mithondion’s death.” Grasping at straws, they decided to play for time once more: Tamasi would write to court to insist that all formal courtship rituals be honored, and meanwhile Nikolao would try to get to the bottom of the attempt on his life.

Tamasi got no response to her letter, and Nikolao had no luck finding his would-be assassin. Two of the implicated servants were clearly innocent of any involvement; the third was found on House Amyriand’s grounds a week later with his neck broken. Tamasi called the household servants together to insist that anyone with knowledge of either crime come forward, warning of severe consequences should anyone be found out; thus far, no one has.

Some weeks passed, with no word from court. Then Pirion, at the front, was reported to be coming home—and bringing a fish-man ambassador with him! Nikolao and Isleen were dispatched to court to learn the news. They are meeting with the Emperor-King at present in game-time. Mithondion has restated plans for the marriage, but indicated that Rilagan overstepped his bounds in declaring it to them before Pirion could return home to observe proper form.

The Princess Ireth, Pirion’s older sister, has made an appearance as well, accompanied by an odd undercurrent of Sight in Isleen whose import Isleen has not yet determined. Ireth demanded of Nikolao whether his acquiescence to weak counsels (i.e. the peace talks) resulted from his injury leaving him unable to fight. Nikolao glibly and suavely told her that his spear-arm was just fine, but the disability of his shield-arm meant he was a danger to those fighting with him; just so, the unthinking use of force without accompanying statecraft endangered the Empire.

Awaiting the return of Nikolao and the apprentice seer, Tamasi engaged Nacreon’s aid in making plans for the household to escape the city should that become necessary. Nacreon told Tamasi horrible war stories from his youth to explain why he could never countenance peace with the fish-men. Tamasi admitted in return that her loyalties were divided; she had House Amyriand and her own people to think of, as well as the Empire. She demonstrated one of her people’s native talents: showy bioluminescence. Nacreon informed her that he was aware of another ability her people in general and she in particular possessed: deadly unarmed fighting. Startled, but gratified that he could overcome prejudice to value the talents and their possessors, she admitted that she was so trained.

They have waited all night and into the next day, but still Nikolao and Isleen are not back, as they arrived too late for the previous evening’s soiree and perforce spent the night in the palace before they received audience. (Now I am veering slightly into hasn’t-happened-yet, but so be it; I’ll retcon this post as needed.) Nacreon at last fell asleep; rather than wake him, when Nikolao and Isleen returned she sent them off to catch up on their sleep before dinner.

When she retired to her own rooms, a letter from Pirion awaited her. In contrast to Rilagan’s rude condescension, this letter was gracious and deferential, piquing her curiosity by claiming to have made an extended visit to her people, though arousing her concern by an expressed wish to bind them even closer to Abyssia. She took the letter with her when the call to dinner came.

And so things stand at present…

In Passions of the Tide, Tamasi and Nacreon are awaiting the return of Nikolao and Isleen from court, where they have just met the rude, cruel, sexy, and entirely too powerful warmonger brat Imperial Princess Ireth.

If Tamasi does marry Imperial Prince Pirion, at some point there will be the undersea equivalent of a Kilkenny catfight. Ireth is just about everything that Tamasi despises. (Well, except for the sexy part. Tamasi’s neutral on that.)

Over on the message boards, we’ve been getting downright apocalyptic. Conspiracy theories galore, stemming from the unexplained absence from court of an NPC with plenty of perfectly good reasons to be absent.

In the Grand Ellipse, Shirley is antsy about an intrigue in Arkhangelsk. The representative there skips out on meetings. According to the servants, it’s because of summons from a lady of doubtful virtue. The so-called liaison started just as Vroomfondel would have been escaping Irkutsk—so although it may well be nothing at all, Shirley treated it with kid gloves.

They seem to have escaped with their tokens, however, after a bit of necessary grandstanding on Shirley’s part, so onward through Europe to the Channel and Glasgow!

(For Li’s edification, I was considering everything from having Sasha fake a temper tantrum to having Esperanza sneak onto the house staff and steal the book and tokens—this was before I found out they were in a locked safe. That, I assume, was to keep them away from Vroomfondel?)

Tamasi’s life would be ever so much simpler if she could just tell the prince “Buzz off, fish-boy; I’d rather marry a remora!”

But of course it’s not that simple. She just got a letter from him that sent her straight into what my Psych 101 book called double approach-avoidance conflict. Given that when she first heard about this she wanted it to All Go Away, that’s pretty good progress for a single letter, from his point of view.

And he accomplished something else, too. She was considering playing sick or running away. Not now. Now… now she wants to see him.

Only a very self-confident GM would dare pull the “it’s all a dream” stunt. Only a superlative GM would make it work.

James did it. Drat him. Every single one of us Passions players opened our email this morning and stared drop-jawed, thinking Nikolao and Isleen had suddenly died.

But what do you know, Isleen is a seer and her visions come through dreams. So it didn’t happen; we just have to figure out what it means.

Drat him again. That shouldn’t have fooled us. But it surely did. Nice work.

House Amyriand is finally starting to come together. They’ll be just about ready by the time the real fun starts; they’ll know what they’re good for, and where they have to cover for each other. Which is not to say I expect these people ever to be a model of familial harmony, just that I don’t think they would have had much chance of making it as four individuals with no interconnections other than belonging to the same household.

It’s a curious crew. An aging ex-general, an ex-soldier flirt with a disabled arm (who appears to be hiding a bit of a Secret Identity), a foreign widow with some uncanny capacities, and a smart and good-hearted but painfully young diviner. Not your typical bunch of characters by any means, which as far as I’m concerned is all to the good. Experience, youth and charm, muscled conscience, and heart—a combination with potential. Despite narrow vision, bitterness, distrust, and naivete.

We still don’t know what’s up at court; Nikolao and Isleen are chatting on their way there. Tamasi and Nacreon, waiting at home, have had their first honest conversation in years, possibly ever. Tamasi demonstrated a little of what distinguishes her people from Nacreon’s, and to her vast surprise Nacreon simply accepted it.

(Don’t think I spilled all the beans about Tamasi, however. She’s not the type to tell all her secrets in one go; I’ve got a few small things and one HUGE thing in reserve still. Timing on the latter, however, does not depend on me.)