This post has the following content warnings:
This post's authors also have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
Accept our Terms of Service
Our Terms of Service have recently changed! Please read and agree to the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy
merrin gets a visitor
« Previous Post
+ Show First Post
Total: 893
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

It is possible that if the squirrel focuses all its pathetic desires on ONE spell it REALLY wants, that Asmodeus would be able to hear that ONE THING.

Is its tiny squirming brain able to figure that part out?

Permalink

Nope, Esta is now considering his spell loadout for the day, and realizing in the back of his mind that he maybe should've gathered more information before praying, but eh water under the bridge.

From his domains of Arcane and Devil, Esta... probably wants Analyze Dweomer for 6th?  Because he has already noticed some confusing things around him and Detect Magic might not cut it; also, Planar Binding (of devils only) would work better with additional spells and infrastructure that is perhaps more of a matter for tomorrow.  For his three freely-choosable 6ths, two Heals and a Word of Recall, just in case it is that simple...

Permalink

This is why all mortals deserve infinite pain.

Permalink

Asmodeus has no idea what's going on way the fuck over there, when it comes to Him just choosing spells on behalf of this basically inaudible squirrel.

Thankfully, this dovetails well with an information-theoretic rule about intervention costs, which says that You don't have to pay huge intervention costs on sending godchosen spells to Your clerics if You have non-situationally-optimized rules that You follow about them.

Asmodeus is just gonna send over His standard prechosen Incredibly Lost Squirrel Loadout, 6th circle, Arcane+Devil edition, Day 1.

Permalink
Permalink

Either Esta was making appallingly bad choices there, and his current situation is astronomically important to Asmodeus, or...

...there is something not correct about this prayer process?


Does Esta in fact correctly remember how prayers work, or did Y̴̨̊ŏ̴͙g̷͙̊-̵̗͝S̴͈͗o̴͈͘t̶͕̐h̷̻͘o̸̪͛t̷̨̓h̶̺̋ overwrite Esta's understanding of that with false information the way that Mariona now speaks a different language and...

Permalink

...he is going to try treating this enormous load of godchosen spells as meaningful, because that is the usual rule if you get a godchosen spell from Asmodeus.  But Esta will keep his Perception peeled for the possibility that this is not actually at all what is going on.

Permalink

One of the spells that Asmodeus gave him, which Esta did not ask for, was Liberating Command.

Permalink

(Sometimes extremely lost squirrels have been captured and tied up, yes.  It is a good Day 1 spell to grant if You otherwise are unable to hear or see what is going on with Your squirrel.)

Permalink

And another spell -- which Esta did ask for, and from which he therefore cannot deduce as much, but maybe other godchosen spells revolve around it -- was Cure Light Wounds.

Esta is not actually sure how fast broken bones are supposed to heal for non-commoners.  He knows, from his very early days as a cleric, that broken bones and other complicated injuries take much longer to heal for commoners than the simple logic of 'commoners have very few hit points and should reach full in short order' would suggest.  But also that if you use even a healing spell as weak and simple as Cure Light, a correctly set bone in a commoner will seal right up again.  For powerful adventurers, of course, the question of natural healing mostly does not arise.

Cure Light Wounds (1st) has a somatic component but it is a simple component.  If his hands proved to be healing too slowly, Esta had thought to put in some extra effort and take some risk of further (curable) damage, and just force his fucking fingers to make that simple gesture and tap himself.

Altered-Mariona had politely removed his fingers from their splints on request, but had then considered it apparently very needful to bind them up again afterwards.

Now Esta has been god-given Liberating Command, a 1st-circle spell for making makeable Escape Artist checks; a spell, fittingly, with a purely verbal component.  This suggests perhaps that Esta is supposed to forcibly cure his fingers, after extracting his currently-broken fingers from the splints surrounding them, on his own -- quietly, and without giving notice to altered-Mariona.

Permalink

(If Asmodeus had the tiniest clue what was going on over there, He would not have so much prioritized sending His lost squirrel spells like Commune, a domain spell of Planar Binding for devils, or a lesser spell of Planar Inquiry, that should all obviously convey His command that the squirrel TRY TO REPORT BACK.)

(For that matter, the fact that Esta now has a Commune spell and no expensive incense to cast it, should already be a clue about how little Asmodeus knows of what's going on over there.)

Permalink

Sure, those would all be reasonable things for somebody to deduce if they were in general excellent health; and reasoning things through carefully, more slowly, and in less of a condition of general extreme confusion and five different kinds of fully suppressed panic.

Liberating Command, spoken as quietly as he can manage the word.  It is the sort of spell that works almost instantly if it works at all.

Permalink

That's +20 on an Escape Artist check, against restraints not actually designed to resist an escape artist?

Yeah, Esta's gonna make that one.

Permalink

The quietly spoken word itself, not spoken in tones of distress or calling-for-help, is not by itself going to be enough to wake Merrin. 

 

However, dislodging the splints also dislodges the pulse ox probe on his finger. A sensor-error alarm would not normally, necessarily be the scariest, but Merrin has no one to hand off to and no backup and she was very on edge before going to sleep, and "her patient dislodges his oxygen cannula while shifting position and then has a respiratory problem" was high among her priors, and before going to sleep she turned that particular alarm volume up much louder. 

 

THIS MACHINE WOULD LIKE MERRIN TO KNOW THAT IT JUST LOST SIGNAL AND REQUIRES HER ATTENTION!

(It's not objectively that loud - it won't necessarily sound to Esta like it indicates a screaming emergency - but it's a sound that worms into Merrin's brain.) 

Permalink

It's been four and a half hours since Merrin fell asleep. 

 

 

mrrrrrrg? oh crap that's a familiar medical alarm why is she asleep at work what was she thinking - eyes open - oh right, now she remembers, she's not at work she's on ANOTHER PLANET and doing SOLO MEDICAL CARE OVERNIGHT and that's even worse - 

(It's going to take Merrin a good ten seconds to fully get herself awake and out of her blanket-nest to go fix the sensor problem, though.) 

Permalink

Well, shit.

Esta is going to try to fucking force his fingers into a sufficiently right position at any cost in pain, quickly, and then try that Cure Light on himself.

Permalink

Yadda yadda make some sort of skill check, DC whatever.

Permalink

Esta rolls a number.

Permalink

And he is not wholly healed, but his fingerbones are sufficiently set to try the next spell.

Can he get a Cure Moderate off before altered-Mariona stops him?

Permalink

Well, she's not going to forcibly stop him from saying a word and wiggling his fingers, because she's very much still orienting to the situation and has no idea he's going to specifically try that, or any reason to try to stop him from doing that in particular. 

She will see him do it, though. She's up, bleary-eyed, not yet fully focused but awake, and scooting toward him without standing up, mostly looking at the monitor-screen she propped against her stool - she's going to run through so much of her stored battery power tonight, ugh, mostly running the oxygen concentrator but the monitoring suite and blood analyzer and portable diagnostic ultrasound weren't free either - she hasn't quite noticed that the splints are off, yet, he's clearly alert and breathing and she's making sure the vital sign readings she does still have up are not scary numbers before she does anything else, but if he makes a gesture that's going to be hard to miss - 

Permalink

And that will take his fingers to fully cured, along with the rest of his bones, and his bruising.

Esta is now healed of such maladies as may be reflected in hit points alone.

Does Mariona seem to be of a mind to allow Esta to cast further spells without interference?

Permalink

She's not going to, like, tackle him to the ground about it! That wouldn't help with anything! 

 

She has gotten herself over beside him and is staring with obvious ENORMOUS confusion at the hand splint, no longer on her patient's hands, and instead on the ground beside him along with the pulse ox probe. And at the sudden lack of bruises???

Is she hallucinating right now from sheer sleep deprivation - it would be a bit surprising, that's never happened to her before and she's done a lot of very extended trainings before and also, like, she was way more sleep deprived before her nap than she is now, but also she's never dealt with such an extended and emotionally-stressful-on-a-personal-level medical emergency after six planetary months of being completely isolated and plausibly suffering micronutrient deficiencies with cognitive effects and, on priors, with her sanity already fraying at the edges, despite all the cognitive strategies she has tried to dredge out of the void and her conversations with Imaginary Laeirthe in order to wildly guess at how a smarter and better-trained dath ilani would be able to simply decide not to have a psychotic break even when subject to arbitrary stressors and adverse conditions...

 

She definitely doesn't look like someone who recognizes the very concept of casting a Cure spell on oneself. 

Permalink

The next one he's going for is Tongues, actually.  It is less catastrophic to lose that than the single Heal which Asmodeus granted him, if she interferes; and if she does not interfere, it is the obvious spell for ordering her not to interfere with further spells.

What happens if he tries to sit up and raise his hand to his chest, to grasp where his holy symbol should be?

Permalink

That seems kind of unwise! But, like, not in a way where it would help to Merrin to get into a wrestling match over it with a patient who has a skull fracture!

 

...Instinctively, the thing she does instead is very quickly move into position to help him sit up, arranging herself so that she'll easily be able to catch and support him if he gets dizzy and starts to fall over. She does it with the unthinking automatic-ness of someone who's done that exact thing a few thousand times. 

Permalink

This... does not really seem like a case where he actually needed to hide what he was doing from Mariona...

What of His unholy symbol, the fine pentagram of red gold inlaid upon mithril?

Total: 893
Posts Per Page: