12 Chirreb 4385 (5 Chirreb): Trapped Bandits

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Checking for Traps

The strongroom was deep inside the snag, where the world-twig's core had rotted out but the exterior was still solid world-wood tens of feet thick. To reach it, we descended a deep stairwell filled with traps for the unwary.

Fortunately we were pretty wary and we'd been warned about them. Most of them were bound spells and since we already knew where the spells were and what they were bound to, Nightbloom or Purrzhon just Twice-Bound them to keep them from going off. A couple were mechanical and we avoided those.

But just before the door to the strongroom at the very bottom of the shaft was an enchantment that would fill the stairwell with water and summon a big Khtsoyis made of water. The water-Khtsoyis would use its tentacles to strangle and hold down anyone in reach, keeping them from swimming to the top of the shaft and out of the water to avoid drowning. The spells wouldn't go off if the enchantment recognized you and you said the password but the enchantment didn't recognize us and we didn't know the password. This part was restricted to only a few of the bandits and the Cani we'd interrogated wasn't one of them.

So we walked right into that trap.

Trapped!

All of us --including Outcast but not Faefen, we left her at the top of the stairs because we didn't want her to end up a hostage for her father's behavior again --came down the stairs clumped close together for when we set off the final trap. I was flying and in waterform and made sure to get a good lungful of air as we closed on the door. The enchantment didn't go off until we were almost on the last turn of the stairs. Everyone held tight to the rail as the water gushed into the shaft. Except me: I Changed Places through the door and into the strongroom.

Where about eight bandits were waiting for someone to teleport in. This didn't go nearly as well as teleporting into the kitchen when no one was expecting me had. I jinked and dodged but there were too many spears and swords to avoid them all and they killed me.

Not before I dropped the last of the bound Change Places and everyone else appeared next to me, though.

Comments

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Owie! I hate getting killed. You have my large sympathies!

That's a nasty trap though. I must Keep It In Mind when-and-if I go build my traditional wizardsome stronghold.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

This is the third time I've died in my life and UGH it never gets better. It's why I quit adventuring the last time.

It's a pretty good trap! It'd be better if you couldn't teleport out of it though.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Eek! What a risky plan! Although if all you had to do was drop them to set them off I guess you might have managed that even *after* you died.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Teeeeechnically I didn't even have to drop them because it's the person they're bound for that sets them off. They wait a heartbeat after I go so that they don't all port in closely packed together and so I can try to make sure they don't come in at a terrible tactical position. You know. Like I did.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I bet Trust was, um, not happy about this plan. Or at least the results. Is he ever going to adventure again?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I hope not I mean he's a great healer and this would've been a disaster without a healer so I don't want to say he shouldn't've come but he really really should not be an adventurer.

Really.

But you have to try things sometimes to find this stuff out so at least now he knows right?

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Ouch! But you must be feeling better since you're writing in your journal still.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Yeah I didn't stay dead! It is why it's taking me sooooooo long to finish writing about this day though.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Ouch! I envy you all on the World Tree where you primes have relatively reliable 'come back from a violent death' capabilities. Here, that can only happen for certain types of death (ie, the body dies but the brain is still alive for a bit), and then only if a surgeon does some very immediate, specialized things. Our laws of physics don't have the whole 'vitality is the strength your spirit holds onto your body' thing; our actual physical organs are *specifically* what keeps us alive, and ONLY those. So there is no one who can survive an incredibly damaging, telling blow to the vital organs, for example...

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

That must be awful I guess your healing god isn't as nice as Mircannis. Or maybe it's like being a cyarr where your healing god hates you and so you just die unless somePrime helps you.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well... give the Cyarr several thousand years of advancement in the medical and natural and mechanical sciences beyond where they are now, AND a set of laws of physics that enable those sorts of sciences to take the place of some aspects of your magical healing. So basically you could think of as, 'the god of healing is lazy, but the god most relevant to hard work and accumulation of knowledge and making of very precise tools helps us make up for it'. Does that make any sense at all?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Maybe? Is it like how nendrai can use Mutoc to heal but it hurts horribly because Gnarn is evil?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

No, it's like how you know doctors can stitch up and use salves and bandages and you can eat tonics and medicines from barks and plants and rots and do surgery and stuff like that?

Advance that sort of natural sciences based thing enough, with the right laws of physics and natural laws to leverage 'a deep understanding of how the body and the world works' into really really good natural healing that is so good it can do things you think requires a cast spell of some sort.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

*roots and fungi

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that works for you since you don't have a good Healoc goddess like Mircannis but I'd still rather have Mircannis!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

...Yea, I'd rather have Mircannis too. Though I would posit that the sort of understanding that this sort of thing helps means that if you get a prime healer that somehow learns the skills and biological information and such from a place like my world, then they would PROBABLY be able to leverage their magical healing REALLY REALLY well by being able to target it more precisely and efficiently. I read somewhere that many of your healers didn't know why aquador is so relevant to healing -- which is something that I thought the answer to was obvious, because of the sorts of things we know with our natural sciences.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Part of what I am implying is that "it MIGHT be possible, with enough natural sciences, for the Cyarr to overcome most of the difficulties with their healing, with enough effort". I don't know for sure; many of our natural laws are MUCH more stagnant, more knowable and less fluid and prone to change by elementals and whatever than your all's are!

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

That sounds awfully inconvenient although sure knowing how bodies work helps in healing and healers can do stuff even if they're out of cley like splinting a broken arm the way Trust did since he doesn't know the spell for that. So it works kind of but it's slow and awkward and painful and not as good and you're not going to bring the dead back to life without cley!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Yes you can... for certain values of dead. Say you are counting 'the heart and respiration has stopped' as dead (which in a world without the spirit attaching thing, would be pretty much dead). You can bring someone back from that by pushing their chest and lungs and heart the right way, and stimulating the heart muscle to start pumping again, to bring them back from the dead.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Nooooo I can't and I bet Trust can't either not that he'd try!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Do the actions taking place in this image look familiar to healer you show it to, Trust or otherwise? Besides showing illustrations of extradimensional nonprimes? Check the pulse, force air into the lungs, and then give chest compressions to force the heart to start beating again?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Dead in world tree kind of involves the spirit leaving the body, though. If your heart and breathing stopped, but your spirit is still attached... you might still be *conscious*.

OTOH if it was the last straw pushing you over the edge then fixing it *might* let the spirit reattach as long as you got them restarted in the *2-12 seconds* you have where that can work (this is why people bind Heal the Awful Wound).

Otherwise you'd need to back it up with a Spirit Reunion.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Think of it this way: You use the tools your universe gives you -- a system of artificially changing the status of reality around you by spending cley -- to do stuff, and we use the tools the universe gives us -- stagnant, deeply knowable natural laws that cover far more unchanging aspects of the reality around us than you are used to -- to cause change.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Oh I guess that makes sense for extradimensional nonprimes.