NOTE: This is archived content and is not reflecting latest events in the world
Magic Musical Instruments. It’s finally time that I take a look at them. I’m no musician, but I cannot deny the magic feats that some bards can pull off with their instruments. How do they work? How does magic relate to music? Could it be the vibrations, mixed with magic somehow? Need to research this further. Note to self: Ask my old friend Kinimod Drol about workings of his magical bag pipes, whenever I will see him.
Rogar Ironshield came by today. Damn, I have not seen him for months. He has gathered all of the old gang together, it will be nice to get a drink and catch up with them after so much time. Rogar and Konzu arrived to the town today, others will arrive tomorrow.
Raincheck on that drink. Apparently young green dragon has been spotted on the west of the town, threating surrounding farms. Not very strong one, should be easy take care of. The city wanted to dispatch some military, but Rogar convinced them to let us take care of the dragon instead. Should be fun, for the old times sake. I will talk to the Kinimod about his pipes after the fact. I hope he will provide some insights, my research on that has been stalled for some time.
And after that Konzu, the same Konzu that always claimed that he does not care about material posessions, went in and tried to loot the dragon and almost died from dragon’s still-steaming interals poisoning him. We barely saved him (Note to self: learn some healing spells. It could be useful in the future).
I have managed to get the Kinimod’s pipes to my lab safely (I don’t think anyone saw me taking them), then we went and carried his body back to the city. I guess we need to plan the funeral now? Sigh, another big chunk of potential research time lost.
Who the hell plays bag pipes? Apparently only Kinimod did. Obviously I cannot play them myself, but I also cannot find anyone in this goddamn town that can. It looks like practical tests are off the table for now.
After doing every possible test I can think of over these pipes and a whole lot of digging, I can only conclude that my original hypothesis was wrong. Instruments are not actually magical, these pipes do not have an ounce of magic in them. Instead, bards seem to use their instruments as a tool, just as I use my components. I will get back to that, but now I have useless set of bag pipes on my hand. I think I will sell them, if anyone would even want to buy them. Or maybe I just might give them to Konzu as a gift.
Healing thing seems to be dead end. Apparently due to the laws of nature, traditional method of moving the Weave with the help of components cannot produce restorative effects. So there’s that, I simply cannot learn a spell that would heal.
It just hit me, didn’t Kinimod heal people once using his bag pipes? Maybe that magical instrument research time was not completely wasted after all. I cannot perform healing using traditional components, but maybe magic music can be used to plug this hole. There is music shop around the corner, I think I will get a guitar and try this out.
I heard that you need years to learn a music instrument? Not with magic you don’t. Thanks to some pitch helping spells I found, I think I’m getting pretty good at this guitar thing. Still can’t figure out how to move the Weave with that.
I’m stuck again. I mean music from this guitar is nice and all, but still can’t figure out how to do magic from it. Why did I settle in this town with such tiny library? I wish I could visit Pladin’s library before it blew up. I bet my answers would be in that huge library somewhere. So much knowledge lost forever.
Someone has assasinated duke’s wike in the middle of the night. Of course Duke woke us up to help him with that (I’m a wizard, not private investigator. Can I just sleep please?).
We’ve managed to track the killer down. According to him, duke’s wife efforts were not for peace, but she wanted to eliminate all opposing drows once and for all. Could be true I guess. I don’t care much though, all sides in a war are just sides of the same coin, they all do horrible things. And I’m pretty comfortable here with my lab set up, don’t want to start an uprising just because we could be the bad guy here.
That was not the best sleep, but it was better than nothing. This little chef showed up today, bringing me breakfast. I did not see him before (probably duke’s personal chef or something), but damn his food is good. I have not eaten that good breakfast in yȩ̖͚͉̻͟͝a҉̣̳̰͡͝r̴͕̜
Konzu startled me before, he knocked while I was writing. Anyway, prisoner that we captured yesterday, has been badly tortured (I kinda feel bad for the guy, but hey, what can I do) and now he told us more. I think his version of the war might be truthful, at least he believes that he is telling the truth. But I still keep my stance, I don’t want to get involved in this political war stuff. Let the others handle these boring topics.
Konzu wanted us to continue Duke’s wife diplomatic missions ourselves. So now I’m a wizard, private investigator and diplomat? No thanks, I have more interesting things to do.
Wait a minute, silly me. Pladin has NOT yet blew up. We are in the past. Need to find my old notes. Now.
Note to self: Organize your notes. Maybe I could ask old coleague mr. Google to send me one of his magical library search devices? Wait, has he even invented that yet? That time travel stuff is hurting my head. Anyway, I’ve been up all night, but I’ve finally found that old paper.
So, in two years there was (will be? How to properly write that?) height of a war between humans + elves and githyanki (why didn’t I bother to ask for more accurate date?). Then human side, in their infinite wisdom, tried to send some kind of magical explosive to githyanki’s side. Of course they fucked up and blew up whole Pladin instead. But that means explosion has still not happened and I have some time to get the information I need from that library. I need to make a trip there ASAP and get some books that I need.
I’ve been thinking. I could go to Pladin now, get some books and get out, but everything else will still blow up. What if I need more information later? It would not be accessible anymore.
According to that prisoner, drows promised githyanki to help them take over Pladin. So if we manage to handily beat drows first, maybe drows would not be able to help githyanki and thus crystal war would not escalate to the point of explosion.
I guess I may need to help with the war after all. Sigh, I will talk to the Konzu about that diplomatic mission again.
Well that went well. Chaos dwarves do not want to team up and they do not listen to reason. Fuck them, I guess we will have to do it the hard way then.
Duke has assigned me to the Pladin project, the spell that we are supposed to throw into Githyankees’s world. I know how that plays out, but if I tag along, I think I can help those idiots with actually making spell that we can control.
I guess that puts my guitar plan on hold for now.
That is actually pretty clever. They used Fireball spell as a base, increased sulfur count ten-fold and reversed right hand movement in third act of casting. This causes significant increase in Beta waves caused by the spell. But unfortunatelly it makes spell much less stable and less controlable. No wonder it is supposed to blow up in their face. Let’s see how can we make it more stable
Pladin project will not slow down its phase, but this might be a good time for me to try to finally convince everyone that we need more stability in this spell.
I have a dillema: Should I be there at Pladin when spell is deployed?
If I’m there, there is much higher chance that spell will not blow us up and destroy Githyankees But problem is, that I cannot cast spell of that magnitude alone. Other eggheads must help and there is high chance they can screw this up and we go out in flames.
On the other hand, if I let others cast it, I’m safe, but Pladin is likely to be lost. I need to dwell on that a bit more.
Final checklist for Piran project:
This one relies on our strongest caster being at his full power so he can safely turn off spell while casting. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we could come up so far
I think we are ready. Trip to Pladin starts next week. Let’s change some history.
[Blackbox spell: Potential emergency detected. Automatic thought to diary writing activated]
Q7fCR5tvYR6B0i2lBorYRp7NAHro0whzRSE8zj&nrPv!BRg^OSdHyTrNnf$4bN9^CVaxfr9AVcSWwLO7M2^WKVJVq3Sm^TzJE7J@DUs%5eLkPlJ&ZjOVcTWe%7xAktVJxY@H6JGf1#e78E0MDb3lC62P%N79DDCTMOux!SSfhFiCrkkKrMD4QL5t1USxWyhdXo0Z
[High magical energy interference detected. Recalibrating brain link]
rT!48Mik43EShwgFgA8$7O4BkN@GlSAji1D8FYufADicreFteWmAToryeVOlETERnTiousPoLibLoiNViXo What MYsHEM has hap !lDtiT!2!92 pened? Where am I? Am I even alive? Everything is white. I… just…
[Emergency Analysis Complete]
[Cause: ???]
[Location: ???]
[Time: ???]
[Vital Signs: ???]
[Last Known Location: Pladin West (Source: Gertrude Positioning Spell)]
cHt%dJ6qjSEPM5AF all wr scbB&Pojnp!A&afCQNqA shouldn’t have ha MLL2J8D@@#GOM piran spell MLL2J8D@@#GOM airship ddFB$2M1222jclJuTGJYgJc3&F7or elves nx8niOT54r0fGro$#$3aeSxMh%8zv
dM86a0&0&Po7S$ZIZ2#!I3%YxZofVf set up bB0J1^4azK#cofV^admt$18&3m9Zuw. hindsight, I should have predicted that. We should have had some mitigation against it. Oh well, let’s not dwell on the past mistakes.
So all things considered, it looks like Pladin time cave creates deterministic time travel where we cannot change the past as exact same thing has happened that before. That could create some interesting possibilities. But first I need to figure out how to get out of here. Everything is still white and I can’t hear anything other than ringing in my ears.
It looks like getting back home is getting less and less probable. Only one that has heard of Pladin was that ship captain and even she had no idea where it was. For all I know, with all time travel shenanigans surrounding Pladin, we could be years in the future or in the past. Hell, Pladin could be an old myth from the distant past.
So for now I am stuck here. That means that I need to settle down again somewhere here and set up a new lab. Sigh, that is going to require a lot of gold, way more than I brought with me. I need to figure out something.
I’ve met Stephen today. He seems like fine chap. A bit racist maybe, but he is another spellcaster! A breath of fresh air as opposed to barbaric fighters I’m surrounded with usually.
Anyway, we were at the at the quest board today and it looks like we could solve several issues this town has for some gold. So current plan:
Whole thing brings in quite a lot of gold which should put me closer at establishing a lab somewhere here.
Stephen came out with scary idea: After we beat bandits in the sewers, we could sell them to ogres as slaves (before destroying the ogres themselves) for some extra gold. What is even scarier is that both Konzu and Big Biggie are really enthusiastic about that plan. Do I even know those two? I thought they have higher morale standards.
But is that move even that bad? Slavery is obviously very bad, regardless of who is the slave, but we would be dismantling the slave ring after that. And those bandits are bad people anyway, right?
I’m not too on board with that plan, it does not sound good. But it might bring more of that gold that I desperately need, so I will do this just once.