Shield shaping, conjuring, Kal's response
Subject Shield shaping
"I am a druid of The Great North Woods. By the grace of Obad-Hai, whom I serve, I can command the wood itself to take a shape I choose. It has to be a rather basic shape. I'm sure I could make the shield produce a cavity that the torch could fit into, but I would not, for instance, be able to add any fine detail or moving parts, clasps, etc. But I don't know enough about the art of armor crafting to be sure I don't actually damage the shield in the process.
"What we're here to determine is whether, with your guidance, it would be worth my taking the chance to command the shield into shape; whether it would be better to have you solve the torch/shield problem through your craft alone; or whether the whole idea is even viable. If it's going to make the shield significantly less useful as a shield, then I'm sure Mund here would rather just scrap the idea."
From: Mark
Subject Shield shaping
"Obad-Hai?" Lothario looks around suspiciously. "Shhhhh. Don't say that out loud. You know you are in a city swarming with Paladins and such? Right? Not sure how they'd react to one of you nature guys on their turf." He looks slyly at Salix. "So you can do the old power? Can make the wood do your bidding?" The woodworkers eye's are lit up with excitement. "Well to your question. What you propose might work, but not in the way you think. It's a bad idea, tryn to change the shape of the wood already there. What we might try is this though. You use your power to attach a new bracket onto the existing wood. That way it does not weaken the existing shield. I just got to work out a design that keeps the balance the way you want it."
The man grabs the shield and lays it on his work bench. He takes out measuring tools and balances and spends the next several minutes taking measurements and weighing the shield. He also spends time balancing the shield at different points. After about twenty minutes he sighs and looks up. "Oh, your still here. I thought you had left. Well, let me show you what I think can be done."
He pulls out some wood and goes through his design. It is an ingenious system of wood blocks and two leather straps that allows a torch to be attached to the shield, near the top, and then released fairly easily. "At least easily if your not fighting. It's going to take two hands to put the torch on and take it off. Sorry, otherwise it would not be solid."
"Now some good news for you. I happen to have a small supply of darkwood in the back. I keep it around in case I get a call for it. I could use that for this. Take me about a day to do the work and you would have to leave the shield here, so I can match the form of the front. If you want to come back tomorrow, we could work on attaching the bracket. Deal?"
From: Karl
Subject Shield shaping
Salix looks a Mund. "As long as we can meet very early, that's fine with me. Those of us who will be heading North have to be on the road well before noon."
From: Mark
Subject Shield shaping
Salix looks a Mund. "As long as we can meet very early, that's fine with me. Those of us who will be heading North have to be on the road well before noon."
From: Porter
Subject Shield shaping
"You've got yourself a deal", Mund says with a smile. "I'll give you the rest early in the morning."
From: Mark
Subject Shield shaping
"What do you mean the rest? You have not given me any. But you got to leave the sheild and if you don't come back for it, I am ahead. So bring your money tomorrow morning, but not before 2nd bell. The wife gets cranky if people show up too early." He smiles and goes to the front door of the store. He turns a sign in the window over. Salix and can read the word "Open" on the side facing the store now. Lothario turns and jumps, startled. "Your'e still here? I told you, I would have it ready tomorrow morning. Now shoo, I have lots of work to do." He hustles the two out of the front door and it slams behind them.
OODM: Salix got no sense of falsehood while talking to the man.
From: Mark
Subject Conjuring
I did some research on Salix's Summon Natures Ally.
The Conjuration school of magic has several sub classes of spells. The two that concern us are the summoning class and the calling class.
All the the Summoning spells/prayer, such as Summon Natures Ally XX, are as they say, summoning spells. By definition, they summon extra planar beings that do not "die" when killed but return to the plane they came from. I suppose that this requires there to be a plane of animals/nature somewhere, from which the creatures are called.
The calling spells, such as Planer Ally, are Calling spells, and they actually call a creature in its true forms. It can be truly killed.
In game mechanics this has some differences. A summoned creature can not teleport or summon another creature. This does not really effect druids, but it migh affect Allistair. For example if Ally summoned a Sladd (and sladds can summon other sladds sometimes) this sladd would not be able to summon a second sladd. However, if a sladd was called, then it could summon another sladd.
The calling spell is more powerful but also more dangerous to the called creature.
From: Porter
Subject Conjuring
Yay for Salix!
From: Karl
Subject Conjuring
OK, then based on that knowledge, I think we should retcon out Lothar's mild chastisement of Salix. Surely Lothar would know this and wouldn't have chided Salix about cavalierly calling hippogriff's to their deaths.
From: Mark
Subject Conjuring
He was chastising Salix's chastisement of Lothnars' use of creatures.
I actually think it was Allistair who did the criticizing. He was just turning the tables. If Salix and Ally were not worried about the hippogriffs why should Lothnar be worried about the monsters he used?
From: Derek
Subject Conjuring
Probably because Salix's summoned creatures go 'poof' while the creatures we killed there were very, very dead.
From: Karl
Subject Conjuring
Salix didn't chastise Lothar at all. He wouldn't have. Salix never argued that the creatures were not deserving of whatever fate they got. He just argued that death was not automatically justified *at the hands of the party*. He always held that the creators of the testing ground might have had reasons of their own, that Salix might have even agreed with, all things being known. But he didn't think that *Kal* knew any of these things and so his assuming the right to kill things on sight was not only possibly endangering whatever "test" they were undergoing, but also morally repugnant in its own right.
From: Mark
Subject Conjuring
I agree. It was Allistair who made the comment to Lothnar, not Salix. Salix mostly agreed with Ally, but I do not remember him telling Lothnar directly about it. I do seem to remember Salix and Ally talking about it durint their stay, and it might have been heard by He Who Sees and Also Hears. :)
The main point is that Salix does not need to feel bad about summoning hippogriffs to their deaths.
From: Josh
Subject Kal's response
Kal is stunned by the ruling. What had he done wrong? "I'm not too prideful," he thinks to himself. "I have pride in the elven nations, but I'm a humble servant to their will. How did the council not see this? How could they be so wrong? How could they banish me from my home for 5 years?"
Kal leaves the chamber immediately after the council. He returns to his directly to his room, ignoring anying who tries to talk to him, as if they weren't speaking.
As soon as he enters his room, he closes and bars his door. After nearly an hour of dead silence, the sounds of feet sliding across the floor, grunts, screams and elven battle songs fill the hallway with their sound. Throughout the day, the hallway outside his room is somtimes filled with silence, and other times filled with the noise of what is presumably his intense training.
Eventually word of the Kal's noise make their way to Angelwing. He stands outside Kal's door at dusk, listening for what the others have heard. Everything is silent, but the small crowd that has gathered convinces him to wait and hear the noise for himself.
Angelwing takes a seat by the window in the hallway. Staring off into the sky, he thinks to himself how he would handle this young bladesinger. As his thoughts wander through the problem, he watches the sun creep toward the horizon. His thoughts eventually lead him to prayer, asking his god for guidance.
The moment the sun hits the horizon, a loud high pitched scream errupts from Kal's room. The noise shocks Angelwing, jarring him from his prayers. The scream continues for nearly 30 seconds before it ceases. It's immediately followed by the sounds of Kal's training, somehow more intense than it was before.
Angelwing sits and listens for a time and returns to his prayers. After sitting in silence for nearly an hour, he rises and says to the steward. "Guard this door. Let no one in and let no one speak through the door. When Kal-Lar emerges, give him whatever provisions he needs and then send him to me."
As the night progress, the intermittent sounds of the training continues, somehow gaining in volume and intensity as time passes. Elven battle hymns boom through the hallway at all hours, accompanied by grunts and the sound of bare flesh slapping against the stone floors. Occasionally there is the sound of talking and yelling, muffled by the door so as to be incomprehensible.
The rising sun is accompanied by another guttural scream. It echos through the hallway and wakes half the sleeping priests. The scream tapers off as the lungs fail, unable to push out any more air.
Then there is silence. For three hours there is no noise, the longest reprieve all night. Only the quiet breathing of the steward's sleep fills the hallway.
The steward jumps from his seat, startled as Kal emerges from his room. He wearing only the elven robes, Bel-Ril's guard, and his sword belt. His hair, which used to run down the length of his back, has been shorn off haphazardly, at its shortest at the scalp, and in no place longer than a few inches. The front of his robes are drenched in blood starting from a large V at his upper chest and running down to his midsection.
The steward, through stutters, relays Angelwing's message, to which Kal replies with calm composure, "Some light food, a place to clean myself, and some fresh clothes are all I need. I will meet with Angelwing after that."
OOC: Mark you can take it from here. I'm pretty sure you were scheduling a meeting with everyone the morning after the trial, if not then I guess angelwing would just tell him to return whenever that meeting is.