24 Chirreb 4385: Too Clever a Ruse

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

After the ghempoch had been gone for a little bit, Trust moved and broke the Quiet Veil on himself. A couple moments after that, his patient did too. "That was very brave of you!" she said to me. "We didn't think the ghempoch would believe that!"

"I wasn't sure he'd believe me either but I had to try something I can't Change Places with a whole dam!" I said.

She giggled. "And to think we were all worried you wouldn't help us!"

"Of course we would why wouldn't we?"

She shook her head, amused at herself. "You won't believe this, but we didn't realize you were norren too!"

...

Trust and I gaped at her.

The injured person's smile faded into a worried look "... you're not a norren, are you?" she asked. I shook my head. "You were just saying that to make the ghempoch leave us alone, weren't you?" I nodded. " ... can we just pretend I didn't imply to you both that I'm not Orren?"

Trust yelped. "You're a monster?"

She cringed. "I'm a norren! I'm not a monster! I'm not the one attacking prime villages or anything. We got hurt helping the primes escape!"

"How can we believe you? <\3 You lied to us about being prime!" Trust whimpered plaintively.

I thought back. "Teeeeeechnically ... we never ASKED if they were Orren we just sort of assumed. Or at least I did. Maybe Outcast has some special detect-nonprime sense that he gets for being a nonprime lover and he knew."

"Or maybe they used Mentador to keep you from asking! ... do they really use Mentador all the time?"

"We wouldn't do something like that!" the norren said, hurt.

I shrugged. "I don't know but I reeeeeeeally think the ghempoch is the bigger problem right now since it's still trying to kill everyone and the norren are just hiding and being injured. Can you finish healing her if you're going to? We need to find Outcast and Nightbloom."

Trust did finish healing the norren although he felt guilty about it. "Am I allowed to heal a norren? Isn't healing nonprimes a crime?" he fretted.

"They're not hurting anyprime. And you healed Chain Lightning and his girlfriend."

"That was different!"

"How?"

"It just ... was."

While he fixed her up, the norren explained that not everyone hiding in the dam was norren. Just some of them. It was actually the norren longhouse, so to speak. The norren had been at the village when the ghempoch attacked because they were friends with the local Orren. It was one of the norren who'd drawn off the ghempoch, and the rest had led their Orren friends to the dam to hide.

"I had no idea there were norren in Ketheria I thought they were some faraway nonprime species," I said.

The norren said, "We like to travel. The group of us here, that is, I don't know about other norren. And inner Ketheria's a lot safer than most places. As long as you don't get the primes mad at you."

By the time she was ready for Healing Sleep, Spirodance had come back out of the river and apologized for running away and leaving us to deal with the ghempoch even though that had been the actual plan. He said he was really an Orren and turned to humanoid form to prove it so not everyone is. Unless he used Illusidor to fake it of course.

Really there's not much in life you can ever be sure of when you think about it.

The norren and the wounded one we'd already help were the worst wounded since of course Trust saw those first. So we let Spirodence take the norren back into their dam. The norren and Orren both were going to stay hidden for a while and if they did come out, they'd stay in waterform and tell any lurking ghempoch that they were norren.

Trust and I went to look for Outcast and Nightbloom. Because someone needed to do something about the primocidal ghempoch and we were the only adventurers around.

D:

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Gypsy otters! Do they do fortune-telling too?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

They didn't think our fortunes looked very good for fighting the ghempoch but I don't think you'd need divination for that.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I would presume you could tell prime/nonprime by looking at people using magic sense, or looking at the Magerium, yes?

It might be, yaknow, RUDE, but it should work, right?

And ooh oooh! Another weird translation thing! The scroll translated what I can only presume was originally written as 'landform' as 'humanoid'. I would've expected 'biped' before 'humanoid'. Wheeeeeen will you look into how your scroll is getting translated to us extradimensionals who don't share a language?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Looking at the magerium should work, but it's not only rude, it's inconvenient and takes a while. Plus if a monster is designed to disguise itself as a prime it probably has a magerium that can pass casual scrutiny.

On the other hand, "My, what a big mentador branch you have, grandmother!"

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what your point is are you expecting me to spend a minute offending every stranger I meet by staring at their magerium and implying that they're nonprime?

Because I'm not.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Well, even if they're nonPrimes, they seem nice enough people - they did hide the Orrens from the nasty ghempoch, after all!

And if I recall right, healing a Norren isn't a crime, but letting them into a city - gatewaying - would be!

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

You're not supposed to bind healing spells for nonprimes either I think although I'm not sure I'm not a healer. Sythyry would know! And yes letting norren in a city would be very bad! And illegal!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

That might be because bound spells are tradeable and might end up in the hands of a nendrai or something.

I think you *are* allowed to teach a nonprime spellbinding, help them get healoc and corpador connections, sell them a boxed healing spell, and let them go to town. So it's kind of a silly law.

I think 'trying to get into prime cities' is one of the Norren dooms. They're not known for actually causing trouble once inside, so the gods probably created them to make primes feel bad about mentador and doorwaying laws.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting idea about norren although I don't know how anyone could feel guilty about hating Mentador it's SO AWFUL but about doorwaying maybe it's wwhy extradimensionals like Gavin can't understand why doorwaying is BAD.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I've been slowly coming around. Kind of. My main issue is the universality of the doorwaying laws; I don't believe they should apply equally to all types of nonprimes. I was thinking the laws should be more nuanced, specific, have some exceptions, and allow for the genuinely harmless nonprimes.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

*and allow for genuinely harmless nonprimes, of generally harmless species, to have a path to be allowed in a city (done on an individual basis) under certain circumstances.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I don't think there is such a thing as a nonprime harmless enough to let into a city but Sythyry's going to try I guess so we'll find out (eep!)

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

So what exactly would a harmless enough sentient and sapient and speaking nonprime look like or act like? If you can answer that question, you can start looking for nonprimes (either individuals, families or clans, or entire species) that fit the bill!

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Noooo I mean there isn't such a thing because the gods wouldn't create it! It's not how they want us to live so they're not going to make any nonprimes that would be safe inside a city. Maybe some extradimensional nonprimes that weren't made for the World Tree would be safe like the Elfimel MAYBE.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Hunh. I thought that gods, by definition, weren't all that thoroughly knowable? That might be my personal definition of what being a god means, though. Don't the gods not always agree on basic concepts all the time? If there was one god that would be like, "I'm going to make this one completely harmless species that could really be let into prime cities and be a full ally with Primes, just so I can have that wager with Kvarse for how long it will take them to figure it out."

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

To the end of that, add, ", which god would that be?"