AllsFairInLoveAndWar

E.g. All's fair in love, war and Scandinavia

Cool, I'll emigrate immediately! -- Senji

But if you do, this will no longer be true!

Oy! -- Senji

Are you, or are you not, brown haired?

That may, or may not, depend on how you define brown.  And how sunny it has been recently.  And how long my hair is. -- Senji

Surely you don't have to redifine brown -  you merely have to redefine fair so that it is no longer mutually exclusive with brown?

But you said you'll emigrate immediately. Are you, or are you not, brown haired currently?

Do you know how hard it is to look at your own hair? -- Senji

But looking at the reflection of it in a fairly colour-faithful reflective device should not be too difficult, surely? --MJ

There's a lack of those at work.  My wife tells me that my hair is currently pink, but I think it's probably brown, because it's long and it's summer. -- Senji

(Why in heaven the party was picked to do this is left as an ExerciseForTheReader) --SF

That'd be because we're 6% of the entirity of the whole of the Sidereals... -- Senji

The "entirity of the whole", huh? --SF

You know what I mean... -- Senji

But they still have plenty of time to say silly things whilst they're saving the world, so that's OK.

That was a good damage roll. 10 body levels in one attack. I was quite happy to do 14 damage levels to the party in that battle, but more spread out would have been better...

Just demonstrating the GlassNinja? effect -- Senji

Syrtis would like to take this opportunity to (a) smile serenely, and (b) reiterate that he is NOT Tulas.

Hmm, lets see.  You're a Mortal Rights activist, you've healed people who're essentially dead and you've just seduced an NPC... -- [Kira].

Erm, the NPC seduced him. (They summoned the island spirit. It turned out to be a nymph, who was very scared of the evil fae who'd been visiting lots recently and wanted help. It was in-character...)

To be fair, Syrtis failed to resist the temptation to seduce, IIRC --CH

And that is the way Kira interpreted it... -- Senji.

Hmmm.... Does putting "Tulas Bait" flags on an NPC count as seducing my character? --Edith

I refer you to the fact that Syrtis does so far have the highest kill count in the campaign despite all this. --Requiem

*mutter*mutter* damn dice don't like me... *mutter*mutter*.  I might have to take up 'tenka's habit of training them... -- Senji

Are death-lords incredibly stupid and/or gullible then?  --ChiarkPerson

This is an RPG and you're talking about the badguy.  The answer is 'basically - yes'  I would, however, be interested to hear the kind of rationale that allows an enemy to be persuaded of their having a specific weakness.  It sounds like a useful PlotDevice.  --Vitenka

Deathlords, and indeed the Incarna, are kinda like Greek or Norse gods -- they're very powerful, but they're still human really, and they do stupid things. -- Senji

Yeah, but we're talking about a level of stupidity here in excess of normal human stupidity. This really is god-like stupidity.

Who better than a god, then?  ;)  Seriously though - until we hear how they convinced her that she had this particular weaknesswe can't really pass judgement on quite how daft she'd have to be to fall for it.  If, for example, you repeatedly protected her from something innocuous (orange leaves, say) then claimed, I dunno, that it caused weakness and memory loss and thus you were constantly vigilant against it and had ordered the orchards burnt - well, just maybe doubt would set in.  And if it might really be that deadly, would you test it?  I don't know enough about the setting to know whether just this nagging doubt is enough.  But maybe you could use the 'returned visitor is a native' trick to increase it.  Hmmm..  Now how can I work this in to my plots? ;)  --Vitenka

1. Taking the single known "weakness" (of Princess with the silly name), and forming 13 other similarly poetic but attainable ones (one for each deathlord), we construct a formula which, when given a deathlord's title, produces a weakness, ensuring the formula is consistent with the 14 chosen weaknesses.
   
2. We write the "journal" of a first-age Solar who was interested in cheating death, and becoming a lord of the underworld. We detail experiments he had made into achieving this aim, and also of his discovery of the formula which ensured he would have a terrible weakness, bad enough that he resolved to give up his attempts to not-die. "He" quotes the formula.
   
3. We curse this journal under the Banner, causing it to be the source of infamy and rumour.
   
4. We select a deserted and remote island of the Western Archipelego containing an unexplored but safe first-age ruin.
   
5. We re-architect the ruin to look like the abode of a first-age necromantic Solar, and place the journal in it.
   
6. We cause a box of old texts, written in Old Realm, to wash up on the beach of a poor fishing village near this island, and ensure a local fisherman finds it. He will give it in tithe to his local Immaculate temple, as it costs him no taxes this year.
   
7. The temple's speaker of Pidgin Old Realm recognises that the texts are very likely bits of the Immaculate equivalent of the Apocrypha, and requests from the temple over them a scholar in Old Realm to come nd decipher the texts.
   
8. Such a scholar, who happens to be an agent of the All-Seeing Eye, is duly dispacted. He spends a year or two working on the texts, and thereby building a local reputation.
   
9. After this time, we cause a ship to be blown off-course onto out ruin island, whereupon the crew (including at least one Dragon Blood) find the ruin, and either commence or call for an archeological investigation (or tomb-raid, as it's more commonly known).
   
10. The journal is found, and seen to be important but unreadable - it being in old realm. The Dragon Blooded passes it to the local authority on Old Realm, our man from the All-Seeing Eye. It passes through the Immaculate temple en-route, who unsurprisingly demand to take a copy of the translation.
    
11. The scholar translates the journal, takes a copy for the Eye, gives one to the temple as requested, and possibly even one to the Dragon Blooded.
    
12. There are now 3 copies of a book which is the source of rumours and infamy, and is in the hand of the Immaculate order and the All-Seeing Eye. It passes rapidly through these networks, being copied all the time as people quite want to retain a local copy.
    
13. With such traffic, it rapidly comes to the attention of the spies we know the deathlords must have in the realm, because they'd be silly not to.
    
14. The deathlords get passed the document, and discover their own weaknesses. If they decide to trace the chain back to see if it's some sort of ruse, they end up with a random shipwreck discovering a hitherto unknown Solar tomb and finding a work of great import in it. Nothing unusual.
    
15. The deathlords become convinced that these weaknesses apply to them, so they do. They also learn of the other deathlords' weaknesses, and launch large scale civil war. The Solars and Dragon Blooded can probably be convinced to help. All is chaos in the underworld, and our job gets a lot easier.