Kaitaine Log

An attempt to work backwards, gathering IC posts, to figure out what we're doing and why...

(skipping the Terrikke HQ until it gets back to the mundane)

• 1. Tzanrol opens the portal, and starts evacuating.
• 2. A robed figure replaces Matsos to guard Lianna.
• 2. Thiator convinces Lianna's guard to flee.
• 3. Lianna and her parents discover each others' identities.
• 4. Matsos waxes villainous about the evil plot.

msg#1339

Matsos grabs the fleeing robed figure by the neck as he passes, and addresses Lianna across the table on which Fogg still lies. "What's the attraction? Why power, my dear, sheer power!"

With that, he starts chanting in a strange language, and he lifts the minion off the ground with just the one arm. His arm shimmers with a red hue, and he sends the man flying across the chamber into a wall. The figure falls to the ground barely alive.

Matsos start heading towards Lianna slowly, "I was the son of a count of vast wealth, once, and thought like you that the gods would keep me from harm. But then my father fell out of favor, and my family was thrown into jail. For ten years of my life I rotted in a cell, the victim of the fair judgment of those who follow the Lords of Orhan!"

He stops again, "And I was only freed because I met a member of a Zanarian order in jail who was able to break out. Working together we left that stinking jail, and I swore that I would never be powerless to protect my freedom or my family ever again. I joined with the Zanarians who taught me the true path to power, all he while protecting my identity with their magic. And then, once I'd worked my way up and became a member of the Ahn Sye Yarkbalka, and had put in my time I asked for one thing, to be placed as a paladin in the order. So that I could strike at it, and at the hypocritical nobility of this rotten city!"

"With their magic," he again indicates the amulet, "It was easy. Oh, it took time, yes; but one learns patience in prison. Patience."

"And this minor set back here," he points his sword at the pool, "I can weather. We'll breed more Adroki again. Would you like to see the eventual fate of the nobles of Kaitaine?"

He backs off Lianna, and over to the pool. Sticking his sword into the pool, he starts prying somthing open. One of the giant clams comes up on the end of his sword, and Matsos curses it, "Damn you, open!"

The thing opens slowly a tiny bit, and then suddenly it opens wide in a smooth motion. Inside for all to see, is the body of a woman dressed in a rather ornate party dress who matches the description given to Lianna of Lady Marsa. Strangely, she seems rather undecomposed considering how long she's been missing, and the container in which she's found. Lianna gets the impression that, like the man thrown to the wall by Matsos and Fogg, that she, too, is barely alive.

The Marquis manages to stand at this point and spit out. "You never told me, Tzanrol! Not about this!"

Matsos turns to the Marquis, a look of victory on his face, "Oh, but you had to suspect, surely? You certainly turned a blind eye to what Tzanrol was doing down here. You made it all too easy."

Turning back to Lianna, "You see, the Marquis' business has suffered somewhat of late, and he needed to have something big to put him back on top. Couldn't have the Greensward name becoming just another minor noble house, could we? Well, when a sailor came to us years ago and told us about the Adroki, well, Tzanrol concocted a plan to use them to produce a magic dye. And isn't it wonderful?"

Suddenly some of the tubing that runs from inside the pool to the equipment makes a sort of sense.

He points to the magic dress shimmering in it's various radiant hues and continues sarcastically, "Certainly when revealed tonight at the party, this would put our dear Marquis back on top of the heap, wouldn't it have? But what he never realized is just quite what we're getting out of it. See the life essence of these poor souls goes straight to our use."

He laughs a tad maniacally for a moment, "Again, don't you see? Power. Pure power for as long as we like to keep these unfortunates alive in these things."

The Marquis makes a move towards Matsos, but collapses in agony. "Damn you!"

Matsos' only reply is more laughter.

msg#1350

Lianna watches and listens with a strange detachment. Power. To protect her family. Yes, she could see the attraction, in theory. But the cost.... Did he even see it? She needs a point in common, a bridge she can use to reach him...

"Well," she says cynically, "if Lady Marsa is typical of most nobility, that's the first useful thing she's ever done in her life. And conditions in that clam look more comfortable than in Stalter Street. If you believe in eye-for-an-eye justice, and done by class rather than by individuals, I suppose that's fair."

[OOC: If the audience doesn't give a few gasps of horror at this most un-paladin-like attitude, I'll be quite disappointed.]

She meets his eyes with none of the revulsion or fear he probably expects. "What worries me isn't what you're doing to them. It's what all this is doing to you. Your soul's almost gone, Matsos. Tzanrol's is gone completely. You're closer to death than the Marquis, it's just less obvious. I don't know if you can be healed, not now, it may have gone too far. But it's got to be worth a try."

<Inufil? Am I getting through to him at all? Any other angles that might work?>

Downthe Dungeon 2