Please respond

Hello world.

Scarlet rests in Adalaiz's sitting room, pleased that she was able to master the handkerchief trick so easily, but still feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything.  The old lady's voice is calm, measured.  "Very good, child.  Drink your punch, relax, have a biscuit.  We have things to discuss."

After a while, Scarlet feels her breathing and heartbeat slow, and Adalaiz continues.  "You will not come to my rooms through the main hallways again, except in an extreme emergency.  It is safer for you not to be seen as tied to me.  Tomorrow morning, I'll arrange for you to be shown a passageway that leads to room that few know about.  There's an entrance not far from your quarters.  I'll meet you there after you've finished your first assignment.

"This first assignment is to train and test you.  You won't be in serious danger, unless you are foolish, but you will want to make every effort to succeed -- it will be worth it, I think.

"You are to find a way into the kennel and I want you to befriend the largest queen; her name is Zenobia.  You'll know you've succeeded if she allows you to hold her kittens, which are due in a little over two weeks."  Scarlet knows that the Rheame family is famous for its Savannah Cats, a breed that was created in the past century by breeding a common feline from Egypt with an African Serval.  They are quite a bit larger than a house cat, have the speed and energy of a wild cat, but are affectionate and trainable.  The duchess is rarely seen without two or three of them nearby.  The cats are often a topic of conversation in the castle, with strong opinions both for and against the breed.

Adalaiz continues, "I am quite sure that Sir Fischbacher, the head breeder and trainer, will not be pleased to find you anywhere near his kennel, so you'll have to avoid him.  If he catches you once, it will mean a stern lecture; a second time will be a problem; but a third time will be probably a beating and you will have failed the trial.  How you avoid him is up to you, but, obviously, don't kill anyone, don't harm any cats."  She waves off any questions with "You'll figure it out," and eventually ushers the girl out of the family section.

Of course, Anne waits at the entrance, and she practically jumps off the divan when Scarlet appears.  (I'll let you write up her questions and your answers.)

The next morning, just moments after Anne has left to use the garderobe, there is a knock at the door.  A tall man with a bald head waits outside, and Scarlet thinks she recalls seeing him serving wine in the great hall on feast day.  He says not a word, but merely crooks a finger and walks away, down a hallway that Scarlet knows is just a dead end to give access to the arrow slits that look out over the courtyard.  He walks to the last of the openings and makes an odd gesture, like someone smoothing sand.  He peeks out on over the courtyard, waits until there is no one bustling about, then reaches through the arrow slit to about a foot outside to the left.  Suddenly, there is a click and a portion of the wall slides towards them, leaving a small gap between it and the wall.

The man gently pushes the door shut again, looks out over the courtyard to be sure it is still empty, then waves to Scarlet to reach through the arrow slit.  After fumbling around for a second, she feels a crack in the wall, with a flat lever, or more of a flap, behind it.  It takes all the strength in her fingers to squeeze the flap against the wall, but she is rewarded with the same click and the wall sliding towards her a few inches.

The man then reaches to the side of the door and pulls it, swinging it to the side.  Inside is a narrow passageway up some steep stairs.  Trailing down the stairs is a bright yellow ribbon, which the man picks up and hands the end to Scarlet while gesturing up the steps.  He follows her in, then pulls the door gently shut with a handle.  Before she has a chance to ascend, he touches her shoulder lightly, points two fingers to his eyes, then he makes the same sand-smoothing gesture before opening a small panel above the door and looking through it.  Satisfied, he closes the panel, then tugs a latch which opens the door.  Finally, he steps outside the door and closes it again, with Scarlet still standing in the narrow stairway.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:24, Tue 08 Mar 2022.

Scarlet nodded and sipped punch, trying her best to keep her composure and eat and drink like a lady. She had a thousand questions racing in her head, but she asked none of them, contenting herself with shaking her head in the affirmative to Idalaiz’s instructions.

Steal a newborn kitten, is that it? Consider it done. I thought it was going to be something harder…

She consigned all the details to memory, and curtsied again as the spymistress dismissed her.

Mother, naturally, had many more questions, and was not exactly shy about asking. Scarlet evaded the worst of the barrage with improvised explanations about what an enthusiastic fan of ballet the lady was, and how impressed she had been with her performance. That had the virtue not only of satisfying Anne’s interest, but also subtly mortify her for her previous criticisms of Scarlet’s dancing merits. Mother frowned and didn’t acknowledge it, naturally, but she did give her daughter a long speech about how she should ingratiate herself with the lady. Again, Scarlet nodded through it, thinking to herself, ah, but I AM doing my best to be on her good side, Mother, more than you could ever suspect…

If nothing else, she was already enjoying having a secret, something she could  keep from Mother, something to keep her heart warm and hopeful. Its warmth lulled her to sleep.

The next morning, Scarlet followed the bald (and mute?) man with barely disguised trepidation. She memorizes the place, the gesture, the procedure: perhaps soon she will have to do it alone, in the dark, and against the clock. She is a little puzzled by the sand-smoothing gesture, but dares not ask; dares not speak at all, indeed. Even if her mission isn’t really anything illegal or immoral, she knows better than to take things lightly; it is obvious the lady Idalaiz is only testing her, that this kitten-snatching has further ramifications, just like Mother doesn’t insist in her dancing skills because she is so fond of ballet. Both women, in different ways and dimensions, are power-hungry, she can sense it; the question is how can Scarlet serve both...

She stands there, finally alone in the staircase, holding the yellow ribbon in her hand, thinking about the silent instructions she has just been given.

Before you open this door, use the panel to check there is nobody on the other side. And this ribbon… use it to find your way up and down the staircase? In the dark, maybe?

She opens the panel and peers through it once, before sliding it closed again and climbing the stairs, carefully, as silently as possible…

The very narrow and steep stairs go up for 25 or 30 steps, then empty into an opening that is the size of a large broom closet.  Three passages head away, in three different directions, but the ribbon goes in the leftmost, heading west.  There is very little light, but once Scarlet's eyes adjust, it is enough to navigate.  As she follows the ribbon, there are a few places where the morning light slices in through a crack, creating a sharp line in all the floating motes of dust.  She reaches one more intersection, with a ladder up, a passage north, and the ribbon continues west.  After another two dozen steps the passage ends in a very normal looking door, the ribbon trailing under it.

Opening the door cautiously, Scarlet finds a cozy little room.  The ceiling is slanted, tracking the roof line, such that the wall on the far end of the room is barely four feet high, with a small window looking west over over more castle rooftops.  To her right is a comfortable looking chair with a small table beside it.  A sconce on the wall above the table holds an unlit candle, and beside that is a bookcase packed tightly with books.

On the left is a table with odd instruments.  Besides many unlit candles of various sizes, there are dozens of bottles, some stoppered some not, some round, some square or triangular, some on the table and some up on a metal scaffold of some sort.  Some of those are an even weirder shape, with the only opening a narrow neck that is off to the side.  There is also a book, lying open, and several papers scattered about.  Behind the table is a drawing slate and more bookshelves.

Sitting on top of the open book is a folded piece of paper with "Scarlet" written in bold letters.  Opening the paper, Scarlet reads



Here is a picture, though imagine that all the candles are unlit.
PICTURE
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:38, Wed 09 Mar 2022.

Scarlet has absolutely no idea which way she's heading, except for the startling realization that she has never heard of, let alone see, anything like that in her short life, spent entirely within the walls of Castle Moresby. She feels, even more sharply now, that she is being let into a great secret, literally: the very existence of those secret chambers is beyond her craziest dreams.

She reads the note twice without picking it up, impressed that Idalaiz herself would have written to her. She makes sure to touch nothing: it all looks like alchemy to her, a dangerous practice best left to those who know what they are doing. Something tells her this is not like Mother's lotions and ointments for the skin: more like poison-making and who knows what other dark arts. Following the instructions to the letter, she lights a candle and checks the books on the bookcase, reading the spines, but avoiding the contents of the table altogether, lest she's tempted to pick up a paper or turn a page on the book.

Then she retraces her steps, following the yellow ribbon to the intersection, and instead of west, she picks another one of the passages, stepping carefully and trying to be silent as she explores it...

09:30, Today: Zag, on behalf of Scarlet d'Ardelle, rolled 20 using 1d20+4.  Perception.
09:51, Today: Zag, on behalf of Scarlet d'Ardelle, rolled 7 using 1d20.  luck

Most of the books that have titles are histories of the gods, the heroes, noble families, military campaigns, etc.  However, there are a number without titles, just an author's name, as if that is enough to convey to the knowledgeable reader what information might be stored inside.  In the midst of a group of these she does see one with a title -- a title that strikes her as a bit ominous:  Venomous Snakes of North Africa.  She decides to explore the passages, instead.

Heading down one of the other passages, it quickly narrows to where Scarlet would scrape both shoulders, so she turns sideways and then has to duck under a beam.  This section is quite a bit darker -- there are fewer cracks in the walls letting light in.  The passage ends in a very small metal gate; even if it were open she'd have to scramble on her belly to get through.  The gate is locked with a sturdy-looking padlock.

Returning to the intersection, Scarlet tries another route.  It leads to what initially looks like a dead end, but then she notices that the panel on the floor is not nailed down, just loose.  Once she gets her fingers around its edge, the real effort in pulling it up is maneuvering her body around it in the cramped space.  Finally, she is able to fit it past her and she is looking down into a closet containing neatly folded blankets and pillows.  The dust that covers this cramped overhead space is already wafting down on the bedding below.

Venomous Snakes - that might explain the origin of poisons, if that is what Idalaiz or one of his agents uses that laboratory for. For now, Scarlet prefers to keep her nose out of substances.

The second corridor proves mostly uninteresting - there's the grate, and beyond the fact she has been explicitly ordered not to go beyond it, she also has no ways of actually opening it. So she's glad to find an exit to the third and final passageway, if a most intriguing one.

A closet with blankets and pillows, so it follows that it must be near the bedrooms... perhaps the family bedrooms? She hesitates for a few heartbeats, then she slides down into the closet, after checking the shelves below will make adequate hand- and footholds to climb back into the secret passage.

She spies through the keyhole before trying to crack open the door, trying to guess which part of the castle she's in, listening intently for any telltale sounds before she tries to step outside.

Scarlet peeks out the keyhole of the closet and sees a bare, wooden wall.  This tells her, at least, that it doesn't open into any part of the family section in the castle, because she noticed in her one visit there that all the walls, even the hallways, were covered with tapestries.  Unlatching the door, she steps out into the hall to get her bearings.  There are a number of doors off of this hallway, and she can see stairs down at the end of it.  On one of the doors someone has attached a small standard, but she doesn't recognize it.  It is azure and sky blue with a white star and a black anchor.

https://drawshield.net/create/...%20anchor%20%20sable

She hears footsteps coming up the stairs, at least two people.

You would have recognized Rheam, or, of course, d'Ardelle heraldry.  This is neither of those.  BTW, feel free to tell me what a d'Ardelle standard looks like.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:57, Thu 10 Mar 2022.

White star, sable anchor, Scarlet consigns it to memory, trying to remember if she has ever seen that coat of arms around Castle Moresby...

Scarlet d'Ardelle rolled 10 using 1d20+6.  Knowledge (Local).

Her ears perk at the sound of someone coming. Not willing to risk one of the doors, she goes back into the cabinet, peeking through the keyhole to spy who's approaching...

15:22, Today: Zag, on behalf of Scarlet d'Ardelle, rolled 1 using 1d20.  Sense Motive.
I'm using Sense Motive just as a general ability at reading people.  Spoiler alert:  You did not succeed.  :-)

Scarlet sees that the people coming up the stairs are two men, both with moustaches and no beard.  The taller one has gray in his hair and moustache, the shorter one has dark hair.  She doesn't recognize either of them, which implies that they are probably visitors.  They walk past the closet and stop at the next door beyond the one with the standard on it.  She hears a key being turned, then they walk into that door and close it.

Unknown men, unknown coats of arms... What is all that to Scarlet? As far as she can tell, they have nothing to do with her mission for the lady Idalaiz, namely to steal a kitten.

And yet, she is curious. Is it mere coincidence that the secret passage grants access to this particular wing of Castle Moresby? Or is there something important to be learned here?

Exiting the closet, Scarlet approaches and puts an ear to the door.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:45, Sat 12 Mar 2022.

Scarlet does not even have to put her ear to the door to hear the conversation inside the room the two men just entered.  The thundering voice can be heard from even down the hall a way.  "We are here to find you a wife who will make us a good partnership, not for you to dally with chambermaids!  You can have all the chambermaids you want AFTER you are married."

After a pause, the same voice continues, "What's wrong with Ranteson's girl -- what's her name? -- Alyssa?  She's pretty enough.  Her father is a count ... Travis county!  And she seems quite interested in you."

"But father," the other voice is a little higher, and has a slight pleading edge to it, "she's such a ... eieewgggh.  Can't we find a girl who isn't such a, a, ..."  He trails off.

"So the girl has ambition.  That's a good thing.  You could have a little more ambition.  You'll be a count one day.  It's up to you if you're going to be satisfied with just Gemlia or if you want something a little more substantial.  Count of Gemlia AND Travis, that's a start.  And Ariznia is near Travis.  Old Harrovenos has no heirs, the Duke is going to be ..."

The boy cuts him off, "Yes, father.  Could we PLEASE not go over this again?  The first hundred times was enough, I think.  OK, fine.  I'll chat with Alyssa at dinner.  Maybe she'll be less of a shrew if she has a couple glasses of wine in her.  I'm going to go down to meet with Usuul again and have anther workout.  You should see the improvement in my swordwork!"
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:55, Sat 12 Mar 2022.

Scarlet's lips purse.

Alyssa has 'ambition'? What she has is a stick up her butt. She is trying to marry a count? And be countess? Not if I can help it... and I can, and will. Let me show you what ambition is, you little bitch.

At the same time, her brain wheels are spinning. Was that the Count of Gemlia's arms on the door, or are they from a different visitor? What is the best way of sabotaging their date tonight? Could she maybe borrow some of those substances she has seen at Idalaiz's secret room? Who the hell is Usuul, some sort of swordmaster? And could she take the time off her own mission to...?

Yes, she decides. Yes she can. She has two full weeks until the kittens are born, but only until tonight to run interference. This takes priority.

She goes back to the cabinet, to hide while the boy goes out, before she can go try the door with the coat of arms.

As Scarlet watches the boy walking back down the hallway to the stairs, she realizes that he is quite handsome.  This is a new feeling for her, to care about a boy's looks, but there is something in the line of his jaw and the curly hair on his upper lip that calls to her.  But he's really old, probably 20 or 21.

After he trots past, she comes back out of the closet to listen at the door with the standard, but the room is silent.  It occurs to Scarlet that her mother, with her excessive focus on what everyone else is wearing, probably will know what the heraldry represents, as well.

I see you have no points in Disable Device, so breaking in is not an option.  You can return via the halls or the passageway, but I'll assume the latter, since you are pretty filthy, right now, with cobwebs in your hair and dust all over you.  We can change it if you want a better grounding of where you are, but it won't be that hard to figure out.

In thinking of her mother, Scarlet realizes that Anne is probably frantic wondering where she has gone.  After slipping back into the closet, she climbs back into the passageways and replaces the makeshift trap door, trying to minimize the gouts of dust wafting down on to the spare bedding, but not really succeeding.

When she returns to their room, her mother starts to screech at her.  "Where have you been?  I've been looking all over!  And you're filthy!  Were you outside playing in the dirt?"  Once Anne gets the stress out of her system, Scarlet is able to ask about the standard.  "Oh, that's the Stede family, from Leucas.  Stay away from them; they're practically pirates!"

You don't have to focus on one activity or the other.  It's barely mid-morning right now.

With butterflies in her stomach, Scarlet returns to mum and her parrotings barely register. One good thing about mum and her tendency to fill the void with words is the ease with which one can just nod and smile or look taken aback, suiting the occasion, and let her do most of the talking. Scarlet does just that, and thus avoids any real explanation of where she's been or what she's done.

For a while she entertains the thought of telling Anne about the Count of Gemlia and his plan to marry his son to Alyssa, but soon she discards the thought. While Mother has a great potential for sabotaging things, there is a fair chance she would fail in some embarrasingly spectacular way, and even if she succeedes, then she, Scarlet, might end up betrothed to the lad which... well... would that be so bad, mmm?

She pushes aside those thoughts. She has stuff to do.

As soon as Mother is done with her, Scarlet wanders off, picking her way to Alyssa's chambers. She hasn't decided what form would her sabotage take yet, but she wants to see if she can slip into her room undetected, and pay her in kind for her 'assistance' during the ballet.

Since Alyssa is one of Duchess Darling's ladies-in-waiting, it is a safe bet that her room will be empty at the moment.  After getting herself cleaned up, Scarlet makes her way to the small rooms that the unmarried ladies-in-waiting have, and it occurs to her that she doesn't know which is Alyssa's.  There are eight such rooms, though not all of them are for the ladies, possibly they are not even all occupied.  While she can get into the wing easily enough, the doors to the small rooms are all locked.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:30, Mon 14 Mar 2022.

Curses! A lock, a simple lock could foil her plans.

Scarlet gave herself a second or two to sulk. There was a reason she hadn't been whatever she was now, before now. Just a year ago she would have pouted and refused to go onstage after Alyssa's sabotage; just two years ago she would have run crying to Mother. She was changing fast, she felt it, but she was still mostly a normal girl, not the revenge-exacting machine she was, in her daydreams.

There was no point hanging around that wing without a clear plan or a way inside Alyssa's room, whichever it was. She would just be spotted at some point and that would be it. Scarlet turned around the way she came, ruminating some other way to mess with the older girl.

If I can't get to her... let's see if I can get to him.

She finds the most direct route to swordmaster Usuul, hoping to catch Alyssa´s reluctant suitor there.

Scarlet realizes that she has never been to the area where the sword training goes on, and has to ask directions from a page.  It is in a set of rooms on the ground level, which means it has no windows.  Peeking in through the main door, she is immediately assaulted by the smell:  sweaty, unwashed bodies overlaying a strong scent of leather and wool.  The walls have racks of weapons, mostly wooden practice weapons but some real ones, as well.  There are doors in each direction, probably heading to changing rooms, maybe an office.

In the center is one tall, wiry man leading three others through some exercises with practice swords.  His grace and economy of motion is astounding, reminding Scarlet of Angelique.  He is bare chested, and she can see his ropey muscles rippling just under the skin.

The three students are the young man she saw above, another young man, and a woman!  They all struggle to keep up with the instructor.  They seem more rushed in their movements than he, but at the same time are barely keeping up, and all three are covered in sweat.  Finally he calls a halt to the exercise.  "Good, now let's pair up and practice that against an opponent.  You two lads together, and I'll work with Ellenda.  Take turns being attacker and defender.  Attacker can only use either the triplet high-low-thrust or the high feint - sweep.  Defenders, you should be watching the shoulders and waist, to figure out if that initial high move is a feint or an attack.  With only the two attacks to worry about, it should help you focus."

Watching the lesson is fascinating, as is watching the master in action.  When the woman attacks high, his sword is always there to block it; but when she feints he doesn't even move towards it.  When he attacks, it seems that her blocks high always catch air as his sword taps her on the side, and when she ignores the "feint," it isn't.



I'll pause here in case you want to go into the room during the lesson.  Otherwise, you can just wait for him to come out.  He will notice you and respond in a friendly way if you talk to him, so you can go ahead and start the conversation.  (Even though you're only 12 years old, you still have an 18 charisma, which is going to attract positive attention from nearly everybody ... at least everybody who isn't jealous.  So he won't necessarily be flirting, just being friendly.)

Scarlet had had... dreams. And daydreams. About men. But not about actual men, not yet, but marvelous, elf-like creatures of soft skin, tender manners and warm kisses. She does not know actual men yet, in all their disappointing or thrilling reality, but the idealized men of teenage fantasy.

The fencers, graceful and agile but covered in sweat, manly but not overtly so, fall somewhere in the middle, a grey area that is still equally exciting and disconcerting for her. She isn't sure how she feels about it exactly, only that she is very pleased that there is a girl there too, perhaps as a role model, perhaps in and by herself?

For a minute she hesitates between remaining out of sight and stepping into the room, but she finally decides to be bold and make her presence known. After all, she is very new to the stealthy approaches that Idalaiz seems to favor, but she has had a whole (if short) lifetime of learning how to be charming and lovable.

Without even feigning surprise, she takes a seat and unfolds her fan, fanning herself slowly while she watches the show. Let them come to you, as Mother says. The greatest hunter is not the one that springs forward the fastest, but the one who convinces the prey to come to her, willingly.

Without pausing in the exercise, Usuul glances as Scarlet and gives her the briefest of nods to acknowledge her.  He continues a minute more, then puts up a hand for his partner to halt.  "Excellent, Ellenda.  It's a little unfair, because I practiced for years to make sure my shoulders moved the same through both a feint and an attack, but you are watching the right place and you'll do very well."

He turns to the two men, and calls out, "Freeze."  They both freeze as quickly as they can, clearly having been through this before.  "Well, we didn't catch it.  Pattersuma, start that last move again ve-e-e-ery slowly. ... OK, stop.  Stay right there."  He turns to the other man, the one Scarlet saw upstairs, "Xavin, first, where are you looking?  No, not at me, look at him.  You're still watching the blade, but the blade tells lies.  Look right here, in his shoulders.  This is a feint, not an attack.  Even if he tried to convert it to an attack, it would have no power at all.  OK, now Pat, start the other move, slowly again. a-a-a-and stop, right there.  Do you see, Xavin?  His shoulder is in a much stronger position, this is an attack, and you'd better block it."  He waves to them all.  "Drink some water, then back in five."

Finally, the instructor turns to Scarlet.  "Yes, Miss.  Can I help you?  Are you here to sign up for some beginner lessons, perhaps?"