On phone, traveling. Calatin changes into a medium-sized constrictor snake, having taken the demonic nonsensical cacaphony as a hostile action.

My readied action occurred just as he began speaking, putting my initiative right above his, as per rules and stuff, if you want to follow those.

edit-
Fixed formatting
This message was last edited by the player at 12:51, Mon 17 Dec 2012.

Calatin is a snake now. In fact, a big one.  But the snake form creates an obstacle for him:  The stall is filled with Raz's web, and Acerbeil is stuck in it.  Calatin is long enough to stretch out and bite, but if he attempts to use his snaky constricting attack, he will be stuck in the web also!

But then... he's not planning to go anywhere, is he?  Calatin grabs the Demon.  If nothing else, he can hold the Demon still, and improve Raz's attacks.

Raz jams the spear into the demon.  It sticks.  It rapidly becomes hot.   After a few moments he has to let go of it, and with his spellcraft knowledge, he figures out what's going on.

The spear is an infernal ceremonial spear, and its unholy enchantment allows it to leach magical power from a victim, and channel it into an infernal servant- who must also be in contact with the spear.  At the moment, Acerbeil counts as both, and a rare and bizarre Arcane Feedback Loop has been created.  The spear begins to glow and vibrate.

All this commotion has made the watchman suspicious.  No longer buying the "familiar" story he rushes over.

"Great hopping snots, that's no rat!" he says, and aims his staff at it.

Which, as befits a watchman in a town hosting the last great academy of magic, happens to be charged with Magic Missiles.

Oh. I wasn't trying to grapple him yet :X

We'll go with it.

Would I be entitled to the same Spellcraft knowledge thingie?

Disappointed that the spear didn't work as he had hoped, and cursing the Identify spell for not revealing that it bestows drained magic only upon infernal servants, Raz pulls it away, covering his palms with cloth if needed.

He had to admire those infernal artifact crafters - they knew how to build failsafe triggers into their devices.

He then takes out the lamp, trying to subdue Acerbeil with its light.

Raz attempts to pull the spear out of the wound.  It's harder than it seems.  It requires a good solid yank.

Acerbeil was gravely wounded by it.  All that energy flowing in, out, in, out... not a pleasant experience.  He looks at Raz with a confused expression.  Angry, purely malevolent, but also very confused, because the spear Raz just pulled out was hurting.


In the meantime the watchman gives it another round of magic missiles.  Acerbeil squirms against the snake but is unable to break free.  With nothing else to do, he bites Calatin.

"We were too late." Raz tells Calatin and the guard. "The magic is corrupted. Nothing to do now but kill it."

I

Acerbeil is bound solidly within the coils of the snake, and both are bound by the web.  The Demon's attacks are limited to physical biting- effective, but not powerful.  Acerbeil never was the sort of Infernal that specialized in "direct" attack.

The watchman has his staff, and continues to shoot Acerbeil with magic missiles.

Raz draws out the lamp. and now that he knows there are multiple powers available to it... which does he use?

Raz shines the light upon Acerbeil.

The druid moves from simply holding Acerbeil to intentionally constricting him.

A small amount per round, but constriction damage is like falling damage in that it ignores DR/whatever.

Calatin squeezes, and Raz shines the light.  The light of the lantern is not only painful to the Demon, but it has visible effects as well.  Acerbeil’s skin reddens and blisters where the light strikes it.  It tries to twist away, and in desperation it tries its powerful Mockery attack again, this time focusing on Calatin.

The watchman shouts at the workers to get help, but it seems they have already done that.  There are the sounds of running feet, approaching.

”Some magic thing!”

”Get wizards, it’s theirs, they say!”

”Is there a wizard on gate duty?  Get him!”


(At this point there is no way for Acerbeil to escape the attack, he is all but defeated, but Calatin must endure its last attack, and is at risk due to his low Charisma.  It is a mental attack, will save, DC  18 Will Save.  Acerbeil’s attack is a psychic poison- a failed save indicates that the insults and mockery have damaged his ego, causing 1d10 Charisma damage as the victim suddenly believes himself to be useless, stupid, ugly, etc, etc, and self esteem plummets. With a charisma of 3 or less, the victim becomes uncommunicative and shuns all contact, and if less than 1, completely catatonic.

Calatin finds it odd that he's finally able to understand the inane gibbering, but manages to shrug it off for what it is--nothing more than a malicious and last-ditch attempt to preserve the creature's existence.

The large snake tightens its grip on the malevolent creature, hoping to silence it.

Calatin will attempt to pin Acerbeil, preventing it from "speaking" if he can.

I understand that the attack may be supernatural in nature, but Calatin's specialty is squirrels, bears, mud, and trees, not demons and planar shenanigans.

Acerbeil has failed with both of them.. and the Demon growls at itself, hating itself for its failures.

Immobilized, it is slowly crushed, burned, and missiled to death.  And when Acerbeil sees help is arriving, the Demon simply gives up.  And dies.

Demons have a strange way of leaving the mundane world.  From what Raz has learned, most of their physical substance is not "real".  It is composed of hate and fear and envy and all sorts of bad things, and where they come from, that is a physical substance, but here those are immaterial things, and a Demon is given a semblance of form by the magic that summons it.

When that magic fails...

The tiny mouths all over Acerbeil start drooling like mad dogs, and they spit bile and blood.  And then... Acerbeil consumes himself.  With those little mouths, the Demon tears at devours himself, and against all notions of conservation of mass, he vanishes quite rapidly.  When the horrible feast is done, there is a peculiar looking black skull left behind, and a spinal cord that looks it is made of black glass.  It is covered in an inky, oily looking ichor, and it still twitches for a while, and then it is still.

There are three others who have just arrived.  Two are soldiers of the city guard, and one is a young wizard Raz and Calatin recall from the Academy.  There are a group of "warrior wizards", trained in just a few simple spells, (rumor has it they aren't the brightest of potential wizards and really can't handle more) but also trained to fight well and support soldiers in battle.  They don't know this one's name, but they know he's one of those.

"Gods' blood," he says, looking at the mess.

"Not a familiar.  Definitely not a familiar," the watchman says.

Raz and Calatin have both experienced mockery and insult on a level the average Human will never know, and for the next year, having been insulted by an Infernal Being that would make Triumph the Insult Dog seem feeble and gentle by comparison, they both have +4 tor resist any affects, spell or other wise, that involve insulting them, reducing morale, or similar verbal style attacks.

Calatin re-assumes human form and backs away from the skull and spine. He remains silent, waiting for Raz to explain.

(We must invoke the DM moves the story along rule...)


Raz lawyers up.  He's normally the kind of guy who is readily believed, but here, now, with a Demon... perhaps that's pushing things just a bit too far.  But he doesn't have a lawyer, and the concept of lawyering up hasn't been invented, so he invokes the authority of wizards, explaining that this is a secret wizard thing, and he must absolutely not speak openly of it until he has a chance to report this directly to the wizards at the Academy.

Raz only has to be mildly plausible to be believed, and when things involve wizards, "mildly plausible" covers a lot of space.

But the watchman grumbles something about "duly noted", and it seems certain that he will report this as well, to those in charge of the security of the town.

The young wizard with the guards gives a little shrug, and looks at Raz with curiosity.  Raz doesn't need magic to read the skepticism in the young wizard's face:  why hasn't he seen much of this wizard around the academy, and what kind of hush hush magic things were going on they didn't tell the battle-mages about?


Obviously, this leaves Raz and Calatin with a clear priority:  Now that Raz has claimed Secret Wizard Stuff, if they don't report it back to the Academy, and word gets around that Something Happened and Someone Lied and Nothing Was Reported to Anyone, Raz and Calatin will look very bad around here.

Calatin looks over to Raz once people have started to turn away and leave.

"Right. I'll just be following you, then. I would like to hear exactly what the hell was going on just then as well."

Hi,
Due to family issues it is unlikely I'll be on rpol in the coming weeks.
Please accept my apologies.

I can suspend myself and wait for your return since we're tied together a bit. I absolutely understand how real things can intercede into online hobby time.

If the DM would like to progress Calatin's adventures on the side, I'd also be up for that.

I hope you and your family will turn out well, Raz. Come back soon.

 Calatin reunites with his bear companion.

He also realizes, he needs a bear friendly home.

One thing Calatin knows is that where Druids are rare, such as they are around here where the Roman gods predominate, they an always find employment in the rural areas, where they act as veterinarians/agricultural advisors/lorekeepers/forestry experts.   The people who want these services are generally the farmers, herders, woodsmen and hunters who live in the agricultural belt that surrounds each city.  They aren’t rich and they can’t offer much in the way of gold payment, but they provide Druids with all the comforts they need: homes, clothing, plentiful food.

And as exciting as the city is, Calatin needs a rural home.  This is because he has a bear companion, and although a bear can be trained to make itself useful in a city, it loses something of its true bear nature in the process.  Also, it’s December.  Calatin’s bear, like all the other bears around, has been getting fatter and sleepier all autumn, and now intends to do a lot of sleeping in the dark, cold months ahead.

Having a rural home gives the Bear a place to do that safely, where Calatin can find the bear quickly if he has to.   So Calatin aquires a small “Druidly” cabin about an hour northwest  of Aurelianorum, near a farm run by the Bucius family, in a wood with a few ponds close by.


Now… to develop a spell that will prevent a bear from snoring…

He keeps touch with Raz during the upcoming “Demon Hearings.”

The staff at the Academy, very predictably, is not happy with having been kept in the dark over the whole “Acerbeil” thing.  Who knows what mischief the demon wrought?  Raz didn’t monitor the Demon continuously, and the cleverer Demons are known for their intricate, subtle plots.

Raz needs all his natural charm to avoid their wrath.

One of the Academy’s first decisions is to sweep any place the Demon showed interest in with “detect” spells, looking for any sign of magical tampering that might have occurred.  Raz’s home is overrun with wizards, and they move on to the north gate area.

Dire wolf, though if you're declaring it's a bear as a matter of fact, then I'm good with it.

Calatin takes the time to flat-out revel in nature. No paved streets, no throngs of teeming human bodies bereft of so much as one one twig between them, and no huge collections of hewn stone and cut wood.

He offers his services to farmers, mostly, making sure their crops or the grass in their pastures grow as well as they can to avoid the need to clear more of the forests or natural fields for addtional cropland.

If there's plenty of time before his next calling from the mages at the academy, and he's going to be in the same area in the spring, then Calatin is going to start scouting some locations to construct several dozen enclosures in a wide area for bee keeping in the following spring.

Where Druids make themselves useful, they become welcomed very quickly.

And one of the most useful things a Druid can do is bring in bees.  Bees are the farmer's friend.  They are essential for many crops, and people know this.

They are also the bear's friend, although the feeling is not mutual.

Calatin and his bear become well fed and well provided for.  Food and clothing is donated in large amounts.

In working with the bees, Calatin recalls something:  A small number of Druids are much closer to bees than the regular Druids.   They can interact with a swarm as if were one single creature, and could even have bee swarms as companions.  It is a talent Calatin could pick up, if he is interested.

There are other things that would interest a Druid, though.  Solstice is coming. Druids are expected to conduct ceremonies to mark the low point of the sun, and to bless its return.  Wherever they are- even if they happen to be the only Druid in the area.

Especially if they are the only Druid in the area.

In this era, the real life Merovingians had a fascination with bees.  Hundreds of gold bee jewelry pieces were found in a kings tomb.  (If a player character discovered hundreds of jeweled gold bees in a tomb, he'd go nuts trying to figure out what they were for.)
Actual gold bees from this era:
 

They're for sweet sweet Construct Swarm Animal Companions! Hell god damn yeahs!

While he would love the ability to communicate with swarms as a single entity, Calatin prefers his one-piece animal companions. Having it as an option, however, should the unthinkable happen to either his hawk or bear, does not pass his mind as inappreciable. Perhaps working with the bees will further refine his affinity for such creatures.

He should, and may be expected to, have as many things to show as he can for his time away from Britannia to the other members of his grove, after all.


He sets aside a few extra bee enclosures closer to the ground for his brown friend, and tells him that these and these only are to be pillaged at his leisure in the coming spring.


The ceremonies of the solstice sneak up on the distracted druid, but his obligation to fulfill them goes without saying. Calatin welcomes any who would like to participate. Within reason.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:20, Wed 16 Jan 2013.

Calatin has another function in Aurelianorun which he cannot ignore, the responsibility placed on him by the wisest of the Druids.

 There are two peaks of Druid power in Western Europa, both sometimes referred to as “circles”, and they are related.   In  far off in the western reaches of the long, rugged, and deeply Fey oriented Brittany, in the town of Lan Ternoc, is the College of Druids.  They study, they train, and they are responsible for determining just what it is that a young Druid-to-be should be taught.   Further south, in a swampy area along the Atlantic Coast populated by the Santones people, the Blue Lady is more than a Druid, she is a high priestess of Arduinna, and some say, a divine incarnation herself, acting as intermediary between the Human and Natural worlds.   These two great circles centers are not competitive, they each have their own way of doing things, and they often cooperate.

One thing they did cooperate in was the tasking of Calatin.

The Druids have old power, and naturally they believe in the primacy of their ways, but they understand that there are other powers left, and if something positive is to emerge from the ashes of the Roman Empire, and throw off the threats of the Huns, Goths, and others, cooperation will be necessary.  So Calatin is the Druids’ way of reaching out to The Academy of Aurelianorum, connecting the power and philosophy of Druids with that of wizards.

So Calatin cannot remain apart from them.  At the very least he is expected to be their advisor and “go to guy” for things involving the gods of the Druids, the natural world, and the Fey.  He must be a bridge between worlds, sort of.

This means there are high expectations on him for the Solstice.  It’s not enough for Calatin to merely perform his ceremony out among trees and bears.  He has to “engage” the Academy wizards.

He has a chance to talk to them about their past traditions.  Generally, they have put on at least one party, and its been a big party, with all the trimmings one can get from an Academy full of wizards.  But that’s it.  It’s been mostly, to them, and excuse to eat, drink, and make merry.

This year, despite the trials and tribulations of the world, they are planning to do the same thing.

One stroke of luck- word has it that a troop of well known musicians has just arrived!



You can access some basic information about the Academy of Aurelianorum here:

http://europa512adgame.pbworks...+of+Aurelianorum.doc
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:20, Fri 18 Jan 2013.

Having picked out plenty of spots and made note of them, even Wood Shaping quite a few dead standing trees into a very bee-friendly environment, Calatin leaves his plans for to be finished during the winter.

Lyion, his bear companion, does not mind day trips into the city, though a bear this time of year tends to have reduced patience. A prolonged stay in a Academy stable, for instance, wouldn't be enjoyed by anyone, especially the horses.

One of the hunstmen he befriended had a habit of bringing deer livers to Lyion when visiting. This was something the animal appreciated greatly. Upon setting out to prepare for the solstice, Calatin asked the man if he wouldn't mind checking in on Lyion every few days or so, since they seemed to get along well enough--especially if the deer livers remained a part of the relationship. In thanks, Calatin leaves him with ten gold pieces for his trouble so that the extra time does not cost him money he could earn from meat and hide.

The Aurelianorum Academy is not the druid's favorite place, though it is not disliked so long as he's not kept there for days and days on end. It is cramped and full of people, and their art uses plants and natural materials as if they were merely tools hungry and eager for exploitation, but that is the way with most wizards, and he knew this before coming.

He makes an appointment with Lady Dromessa with the intention of discussing a proper place for the solstice ceremonies.

Over a few days, Calatin has a chance to meet with some of the key wizards regarding the Solstice celebrations.

One of the oldest member of the faculty is the Contessa Chatelet.  Her money and family power have long propped up the Academy.  But she has left most of the day to day handling of things to younger members, lately.  Syanthus is quite possibly the most powerful wizard there is, but he is also quite elderly and doesn’t have much energy for things, so he acts as a sort of advisor-at-large.  Lady Dromessa, who is of “uncertain” age but seems to be around forty at least, is the one who keeps things running these days, but the demands on her time have been extraordinary.

Being a Druid, Calatin is also alert to the signs and portents of the natural world.  Sometimes, he can feel things just out of sight.  It’s what Druids do.  He’s not a famous prognosticator, prophet, or oracle, but there are signs visible to Druids, and he sees one of them.

Calatin also learns that the Academy, though composed mostly of wizards, does function in many ways like any ordinary institution of learning:  that is, if you volunteer to help with something the rest of the staff considers a chore, do not be surprised if the whole thing ends up being dumped in your lap.  But nowhere else would "prepare solstice celebration" be considered a chore.  Wizards are strange.  The Lady Dromessa does indeed drop it in Calatin's lap, but also, introduces him to their musicians:  Caprio Thelea, and some of the children of his family, who are noteworthy musicians all, have journeyed here at considerable trouble.  The Academy can take advantage of their talents.  At least, there will be professional music.