Path to Godhood Session 25: The Emperor's Charms

Characters:

Ajax Karo   -   Gregarious Hunter and Aspiring Kostis, God of Death and Plagues
Neilos   -   Aspiring God of The Sun and Plants
Steidis   -   Aspiring God of Fire and Smiths

A Party

Before Adlai could wander off, Ajax approached him to make polite small talk, and skillfully turned the discussion to the Emperor's right hand man, Firuz, and his strange charms.  Adlai didn't seem talkative, and rocked back and forth as Ajax spoke, possibly due to Evenia's powers.  However, he was more than willing to get him the "Charmformation" he sought, as he and Firuz were actually on good terms.  It could even be possible to acquire a charm for him to peruse, in exchange for a favour.  Having recently taken up wrestling, Adlai was interested in showing off to the assembled nobles, so he would appreciate if Ajax could find him an opponent, and no offense to Ajax, but he seemed a little frail.

As luck would have it, Ajax's sponsor, Jibril Malik, was up for the challenge, and the two men stripped down, oiled up, and get into a makeshift ring in the dirt of the garden.  The two grappled while the crowd cheered on, with Adlai even doing some showboating acrobatics before bending Jibril's arm at an inappropriate angle and forcing him to submit.  Ajax approached Adlai, who thanked him for getting Jibril to fight him, and promised to deliver a charm "at some point".  After giving him the location where Evenia and her goons were staying, Ajax went to mingle with other guetsts.

Glancing around the party, he spotted Abessa Rostami, the Emperor's Marshall, wearing a bright blue tunic, conservative by Eniadnan noble standards, with the golden pendant of a hand gripping a sword displayed on her chest.  Unfortunately, Firuz joined her before Ajax could, apparently to discuss scorpions and other insects, and he'd rather keep his distance from the soothsayer.  Instead, he turned and found Mahali Abbasi getting "the fun kind of drunk" as best he could.

The Steward was wearing a rather ridiculous outfit, with a huge tent of canvas supported with animal bone on his upper torso that greatly restricted his arm movement.  This gradually tapered down to very narrow and tight leggings.  By comparison, his clothes made the gaudy lightning-patterned gold bangle that kept jangling into the table look mundane.  Ajax complimented his taste in wine, causing Mahali to chortle and attempt to slap him on the back, but couldn't move his arms far enough.  The two struck up a conversation, and Ajax turned the subject to the Emperor's children.

There were 12 of them, 7 girls and 5 boys from several mothers, and they almost never left the palace for fear of kidnappings.  The heir apparent was ten year-old Seyyed, the third child and eldest son.  It quickly became apparent that Mahali thought that children existed to further the political ambitions of their parents, and in his eyes, the Emperor was doing a good job.  Child care was performed by the mothers and "slaves" who were paid well and received cushy benefits to make sure they didn't try to abduct someone.

The main "weakness" Ajax discovered was that Seyyed and several other children were being tutored in falconry and horseback riding, but he would probably be incapable of impersonating someone to take advantage of this.  As the party came to a close, Adlai approached Ajax and, explaining that Firuz had owed him a favour, handed over one of the charms: a crow skull with a tiny silver bar in place of the tongue and a string through the eyes so it could be worn as a necklace.  Ajax left with Evenia and Jibril, who seemed to be taking his newly-broken arm in stride.  He asked Jibril about any noteworthy intellects or repositories of knowledge similar to the old Great Library in Metros.

After a moment's thought, Jibril told him his best bet would be some of the nobles they'd just met at the party; in particular, Adlai, Abessa, and Mahali all had access to vast stores of knowledge due to their work or their ties to the Emperor.  Firuz obviously had his ability to see the future as well as the Emperor's ear.  They split up soon after, leaving Ajax alone with Evenia, and he informed her that Adlai knew where she was staying, so she might want to move.  She clicked her tongue and remarked that it was yet another annoyance.  He then asked if she'd let him test out Firuz's charm on her goons, but she shot it down immediately.

Conference

The next morning, Ajax returned to the farming village where the others had been staying.  The villagers were now openly crying out for Neilos to help them, and begging to know why he'd forsaken them.  Neilos emerged from the house he'd taken over and proclaimed that their struggle now was necessary to gain his favour in the future.  Though they weren't happy, the villagers accepted their lot, for now.

For the next several hours, the gods experimented with the charm, to see how it worked.  It definitely blocked all access to powers within its effective radius of 15-20 feet.  Lasers shot into the "field" split up and lost most of their power.  Neilos' power to force others to reveal their secrets likewise stopped working when either he or his subject entered the field.  Ajax noted that this might mean that it would break Evenia's ability to force others to fall in love with her as well.  However, Steidis' mechanical replacement arm still worked normally.

They examined the silver "tongue" inside and noted that it had been marked with some kind of symbols, possibly a script they couldn't recognize, and that it was attached to the bone with some kind of resin.  Steidis used his smith's eye to try to figure out how the charm worked, and determined that the silver bar was the only part that mattered, so he pried it free of the raven skull.  He then walked out of hte field with the skull and looked into its past.

He saw a man with a scorpion on his shoulder, who Ajax later confirmed was Firuz, using a fine chisel to carve symbols into the silver bar, which had clearly been cut from a larger chunk resting on the table, for several minutes before it was completed, and Steidis' vision failed.  Ajax opined that, assuming the silver was important, they could hold it hostage.  Curious what the symbols meant, Neilos made a rubbing of it, then teleported to Mantea to consult with Atlas.  Atlas wasn't there, however, and a quick questioning of a plant revealed he'd gone back to Metros.

Neilos teleported to Metros now and headed to the new library, where he finally found Atlas and startled him.  Unfortunately, the scholar didn't recognize the symbols as any kind of script, which, given his knowledge on the subject, meant they probably weren't part of a language at all.  He was curious where they'd found it, so Neilos told him that they'd been in Eniad, which prompted Atlas to ramble a bit about how there were strange things there.  Eniad was the capitol city, but the rest of the empire stretched far to the east.

Returning to the farming village, Neilos brought the others up to speed, and Ajax asked Keti what she knew.  As before, she knew little; in her past life, she hadn't been educated or travelled.  Figuring they didn't have a good way to deal with the charms, the discussion turned to how to get Meda out of the imperial palace if things went bad.  Neilos suggested a tunneling machine, but realized it would stop working within range of a charm, so presumably they couldn't get too close.  Steidis thought a flying machine would be better.  Maybe they could kill the Emperor and take over in his stead?

Ajax suggested that they go further East to look for the source of the silver, but when Neilos attempted to teleport there, he found a block that interrupted his powers a small distance past Eniad.  He informed the others, and they decided against it.  They then returned to discussion of further schemes for dealing with the Emperor.  Neilos put forth laying siege to the city with their powers.  Someone asked Ajax if he could just infect the entire city with a plague, but he pointed out that he had already done that.

They tested his powers anyway by infecting Neilos with a disease tailored only to him.  A short time later, he started coughing and generally feeling awful, so Steidis brought the charm forth to see what happened.  It didn't do anything to cure the disease, but they were unsure if it would have provided protection against the initial infection, and the idea was discarded.  They next decided to test the effects of the charm on Steidis' ability to leap through fires.   

Unfortunately, his ability to differentiate between fires was very limited, unless he had created the fires with his own powers, so they didn't learn anything.  Suddenly remembering that it existed, Steidis checked on his "pet" Drakkon in the sack they were keeping it in; it was still alive and bitey, so he fed it some meat.  They circled back to the tunneling machine again: Neilos and Meda could go into the throne room while Steidis, having tunneled under the palace, would find the structural weaknesses of the foundation.  They would then threaten to collapse the palace if the Emperor didn't let them go.

Late into the night, they finally turned their discussion towards kidnapping Firuz.  He seemed like an easy target, as he went about unescorted, and he was clearly important to the Emperor, making him useful as a hostage.  These protective charms of his were also very annoying.  Though they didn't settle on an idea, they seemed to agree that they would have to subdue him in some way and get him out of the city.  As it was split by the harbour, they might be able to bring him to the God Galley, though that would require them to get rid of any charms.

Notes:

Prophecy Scoreboard:

Steidis    6

Neilos    6

Ajax       4

Missing Memories:

Neilos     Family, Mortal Name, The Last 5 Years, Childhood, Most Precious Memory (His Horse, Daisy), Mortal Appearance

Steidis    Mortal Name, Family, Childhood, Most Precious Memory (His Mentor), Mortal Appearance, The Last 5 Years

Ajax       Mortal Appearance, Most Precious Memory (His First Hunt), The Last 5 Years, Childhood

It was theorized that the scorpion actually controls Firuz, or at least that there's a Ratatouille situation.

The inheritance system in Eniad is male-preference, but there are still occasionally women in high offices, such as Abessa.

Due to Neilos testing his powers on Ajax, we have learned that, were Neilos and Steidis tied up in front of a speeding wagon, Ajax would save Neilos first.

1.5 hours of this session was spent discussing, discarding, and then re-discussing the tunnelling machine.

If they do build the tunnelling machine, it will be very bad by default.  For every trait they want (fast, quiet, able to dig steep angles), it will be an extra -5.