by Kris Schnee
[Healing roll: 0/00+0 = 1.]
"I have to make a roll to use the thing too?" He'd been hoping to just use Magic for everything. He needed to beat or maybe tie a 2. "If I have this 'Pledged To the Light' thing I really ought to be good at basic healing, right?"
[Not according to your chosen skills.]
"Master Artificer, then. This is, like, very basic artifice."
His last fate point vanished, his roll became a 3, and his Gashed Leg became a Bandaged Leg. Physically, he saw the bandage go on, with a simple knot. Mechanically, he now had his lesser injury set to go away after the next "scene", making it safer to try treating the ghost-thing. He gestured to make the damage part of his character sheet reappear, and saw:
Fate Points: 0
Stress: Body [][], Mind [][][]
Consequences:
2: Bandaged Leg*
4: Weaver Ghosts
6:
Miles now had no points left to shift the dice in his favor. He was still in danger. He said, "What happens if I get 'taken out' in this game of yours?" But there was no answer.
He figured he wouldn't be allowed to just hang out in the cave and call that another scene. Or worse, it'd inspire the GM, GMs, whatever, to harass him further. So instead he carefully gripped the new rope, tugged it, then climbed up to the sunlight.
3. Clotho
It was a blindingly bright day, after the cave's gloom. Miles squinted and looked around. He stood at the base of a hill in a grassland that stretched in every direction, with patches of forest here and there. Aside from the tall purple grass, it looked very much like Earth. "Where is this, anyway?" There was even a moon similar to Earth's visible as a pale disc. Planet Tafl, or Edda V, didn't have a moon.
There was a game here, but he didn't yet know the goal of it. Survival, the alien GMs had said, but there was something they wanted from him. Just entertainment, maybe, or some insight about humans.
He swatted at the cloth spirits that kept distracting him and trying to trip him up. He climbed the hill for a better look, but the day was getting hot. He made it to the top panting and sweaty. Still just savanna and scattered forest all around... except for a faint plume of smoke in the distance. Maybe the others were trying to signal him!
Maybe Captain Thorn in particular was trying to signal him. Miles wasn't eager to be back under his authority, not yet.
Instead, he looked for other points of interest. To what he decided was the south, based on the sun, stood some little hills in a pattern too orderly to be natural. Probably a hint. He headed in that direction instead of toward the smoke in the west.
An hour's hike took him within sight of fields, full of odd orange plants with purple leaves. He walked warily on, getting thirsty now. Then he spotted a dark red creature with scaly hide, using a hoe to tend the crops. It often looked to the sky and then back down.
He recalled that he didn't have any skill at the Charm ability. He had no fate points left to help him push past a difficult dice roll. He kept his distance from the lizard creature and called up his interface, hoping to get the GMs' attention. "What counts as a 'session' for purposes of restoring my points?" he asked aloud.
They answered, [Generally, a long rest will be considered the start of a new session.]
He needed to rest, to have any chance at recovering. He looked the little village over again, seeing several lizardfolk now in the fields. They were wearing little more than rags at the moment. Their houses were just the little mounds, carved out as sod huts.
He said, "I want to cast another spell to create an advantage. Trying to make some cloth to give them."
Using the magic interface, he called for a bolt of red linen. It started to materialize at his feet, and the dice rolled. [3 total. Your defense: 0.] His largest mental stress box filled in, again leaving him dangerously close to injury. But he had the cloth, now.
Miles picked it up and slowly approached until the villagers could see him. "I come in peace, with a gift!" he said.
One of them tilted back its long fanged muzzle and called an alarm. Miles muttered, "Is this good?"
Now five of the red lizards were approaching. As they drew near, he found they were only around four feet tall, not counting the long serpentine tails that dragged behind them. But they all had farm tools including those sharp stone-bladed hoes, and two had bows and arrows. Miles said, "Craft skill. I want to stack up another advantage by showing off how pretty the cloth offering is." He unrolled the cloth and gestured as though he were showing off the finest silk.
The townsfolk hesitated as though the GM were considering his request, and then he saw a roll of 2. The words [Ooh, Fancy!*] appeared above the bolt.
One of the lizards pointed his hoe at Miles and spoke haltingly. "You, traveler?"
"Yes. I mean no harm. I want to rest here and give you this." He wondered if there were real minds behind these creatures, or if they were just the GM's puppets. Probably the latter.
"Why flying things? Monsters?"
Miles looked at the flapping, dancing cloth apparitions around him. "They're spirits of my power," he said. "They won't hurt you."
The lizard tilted its muzzle skeptically but flicked its tail toward the cloth. "Want food, rest for this?"
Miles nodded. "And water; that's all."
[Charm roll: 0/+00- = 0. Adding Fabric Gift and Ooh, Fancy!, for 4 total vs. a low difficulty request. Success.]
"Then come." The lizard waved him onward, while two others snatched up the cloth.
* * *
He rested in one of the sod houses, eating orange vegetables from a crude wooden bowl and drinking cold water from another. At first he was wary of eating alien food, but he doubted that a cosmic GM playing with him would want to kill him off quickly. The food was starchy, like sweet potatoes, but faintly spicy. The lizards let him take a nap.
He woke to find that both his leg bandage and the injury beneath it were gone. The latest mental stress had faded too, leaving him unhurt except for the damn Weaver Ghosts. His fate points had refreshed to 3, which put him in a position to do something about that. He had to "treat" the injury with a difficulty of 4, but using Magic to treat it meant he could take damage from trying.
He said to the hidden GM, "Now, if this is a new 'session' since I rested, I can swap two skills' levels, I think? I want to push Magic up to 3 and Craft down to 2."
[Done.]
"Next, since I need to take some kind of treatment action, I create some kind of magic... spirit... bag to grab these ghosts with." He used the magic interface to show what he meant.
"What you doing?" said a lizard who had just peeked into the room.
Miles stammered. "Trying to make something."
"Why spirits chase you?"
He tried to think of a sane answer. "When I use my power to make cloth, I might get hurt. No threat to you."
"Bad spirits, then?"
"Yes," he admitted.
"We use songs to stop bad spirits. You try?"
"I don't really know how."
"Show you!" The lizard dashed out of the hut, tail wagging like a dog's, and returned trundling a big set of linked drums. "I play?"
"Sure."
It began to thump the drums like a xylophone with only five notes, playing a slow rhythm. It provided some good dramatic accompaniment to Miles' attempt to roll well but not too well.
Miles triggered his cloth creation. The bag's outline began to appear. He snatched it up like a real object and tried to snag the cloth ghosts, stuffing them into the thing and trapping them inside. He saw, [Magic 3/roll +0/Mystic Drums +2 = 5. Your defense: 2. Consequence treated, but you take 3 mental stress.]
Just what he needed. He'd succeeded in treating the "injury", in that he now had a cloth sack tied up and full of bumping ghostly things, but he now had 3 mental stress again.
Stress: Body [][], Mind [][][X]
Consequences:
2:
4: Sack Of Spirits*
6:
>
This was progress toward being fully healed! The GM wouldn't let him totally erase a medium injury until the next "session", not just the next scene, so he tried walking out of the hut. The bag bounced along the ground toward him. Not surprising; he figured that he couldn't ditch it yet. He returned to the shady hut.
"Strange!" said the lizard, leaving off its drumbeat and clapping its hands. "Worked?"
"I think so. Thank you! What's your name?"
"Kanak." It thumped its chest. "Best drummer!"
"You are, yes."
A new message appeared:
[You've earned a stunt. Pick one of the following:
-Lizard Guest: Once per session you may request hospitality from lizardfolk, if approaching peacefully with gifts.
-Relaxing Drums: +2 to recover from mental consequences, while relaxing and listening to music.
-The Weaving: Create up to 9 square meters of a common type of cloth.]
Normally he'd get to pick three minor powers like this from the start, but he'd had little idea of what he was getting into. All three were good options, and he was obviously going to need a power like the drum thing before long. He said, "What's the last one for, if I already have this cloth-making power?" The lizard seemed not to hear him; it was oddly still as though paused.
[It allows creation of large amounts of cloth.]
"But I just did that, for the rope. It's basically what the Fateweaver power itself does."
The GM hesitated. [This is correct. Then let the third option be, Magic Bolt: Telekinetically control cloth within your zone.]
"As in, flinging it around? Possibly using it for offense and defense, and not just making it appear in a useful spot?"
[Yes.]
"I want that one." So far he had no actual weapons or armor, and that overrode even his need for a way to limit the damage he took from his own spells.
[Granted: Magic Bolt.]
He addressed the lizard again. "Kanak, did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Didn't think so. Thank you again. Do you know of any other creatures like me?"
"Yes. 'Human' town west. You come from there?"
"No. Not exactly."
Kanak looked relieved, and turned to whistle toward the doorway. An older, tougher-looking lizard arrived, with scales so dark Miles figured they were partly infrared. That one said, "Good, because humans stole from us."
Miles winced. "What were their names? Was there a Thorn? Eva?"
"Thorn, yes! Get back our Star, in name of the Light!"
[You've been beseeched in the name of the Light! Will you accept a fate point to act on your aspect "Pledged To the Light", or forfeit one for rejecting it?]
He was being offered a reward or punishment based on whether he played the role he'd chosen. He'd counted on this as a source of extra points, but had figured the quests would be more like "slay the local monster". He didn't have a lot of points to spare, just his "refreshed" level of three at the moment. "Accepted."
He hadn't even defined what "the Light" was, other than generic holy niceness. He wondered if the aliens had any clue what that meant, from reading Eva's books.
The elder lizard nodded gravely. "Then go. Take knife." It offered a crude dagger made of sharpened bone.
Miles took it. "Thank you. I'll find this Star."
"And wash," said the elder, wrinkling his snout.
Miles looked down at his dirty coverall. It was dangerous to cast more spells, but if he didn't, he was going to start getting a "Stink" aspect or something. He nodded, and concentrated to try conjuring up some clothing. To his annoyance, the menu didn't provide a way to make anything much more complex then a bolt of cloth or a rope with knots in it. There was a list of spells he'd cast this 'scene', too, but it was currently blank because he'd made the bolt before napping. He grumbled. Okay, then; if he was only going to take stress from "the first use of a new spell each scene", he could take advantage of that. He called forth another simple roll of linen, this one blue.
[Magic 3/Roll -1 = 2.] The new fabric wove itself into existence. [Your defense: 0.] Two mental stress, which he could handle safely.
Miles grinned, and did exactly the same thing again. More cloth! Then a third time, which rolled so badly that nothing happened. The fourth roll succeeded. More cloth! His smile widened as the stuff piled up. "You guys can have most of this if you'll help me sew some clothes," he said, as he conjured yet another few square meters.
Kanak and the elder gaped at him. "You give all this? Yes, good!"
He could use the chance to rest and undo the stress, wash up... and avoid being under Thorn's orders again, which were going to be a problem if they had this Star and cared about it.
* * *
Soon, he was decked out in crude pants, moccasins and a shirt made from the blue cloth and the soles of his jumpsuit's shoes. He got to practice his Craft skill and discovered that he could sew with remarkable speed despite having only a vague idea of how to do it. The stitches and cutting just worked as he imagined they should, most of the time, and he had plenty of material to waste on his failures. The catch was that he'd never learn how to do real sewing this way; it was a dice-based approximation of true work.
Which raised the question of whether he was even in the real world, or some simulation. The aliens had godlike power over him. It was enough to use abstract rules they'd only seen yesterday as a replacement for this world's physics whenever they felt like creating a conflict. Was this a virtual world, somehow, with his body trapped in some holding tank? He had no way of knowing. He muttered a prayer to the Maker, not knowing whether he'd like the truth but asking to find it anyway.
They let him spend the night there (after all, Monsters Roam the Land) and set off in the morning. He had the bag of possibly-evil cloth spirits bouncing along behind him like one of those cartoon slime monsters. He headed away from the rising sun and eventually caught sight of that smoke trail again. Over one shoulder he carried a spare roll of blue linen, and he had a nasty-looking gourd for a canteen.
The day was getting hot and he was busy wiping the sweat from his brow, when a shadow flitted along the ground. He looked up in time to see a giant dragonfly buzz down at him, extending sharp legs to try raking his back.
Miles yelped, and time stopped. The battle interface appeared, startling him again. The dragonfly-thing was almost within reach. He had seconds to think of a response to something that should've been near-instant.
With no Melee skill there was little point in going full defensive. Miles said, "Point of order. Can I attack using Magic, now that I have this Magic Bolt stunt?"
[Yes, because you can move your created objects around.]
Instead of attacking, Miles said, "Advantage: tangle this thing." He found a simple hovering interface instructing him on how to move the cloth bolt he was carrying, to flick it open in front of him and try to net the monster with it.
[Magic 3/Roll +1, vs. defense 4. This is a tie, so you get a boost: Briefly Tangled!] The cloth wrapped itself around the giant bug in a continuation of what Miles had been trying to do. No damage or lingering aspect, but he'd imposed a momentary aspect he could use once. One of the thing's talon-like legs stabbed through the cloth and slashed his arm, making him hiss in pain. But the damage number that appeared was only a 2, enough to treat as physical stress without injury.
[Magic-caused stress: also 2. Next round begins.]
"Attack by slamming it down!" he cried, demonstrating a yanking move. The dice said 3+0 versus the enemy's 2 defense. "Using the boost." Now he had a 5 versus 2... but that annoying bag of ghosts whacked him in the back of the legs and spoiled his aim. That'd be the GMs spending their free bonus from that spirit aspect. It left him with an attack of 5 versus 4. Good enough. The beast hit the ground inside the confining cloth, tore its way loose, and rattled its legs angrily at him. It was hurt, but free now and ready to attack.
Round three. "How tough is this thing?" There was no answer. M
iles stepped away from it and since he'd already taken a mental hit for using levitation, used magic again to try rolling up the cloth and whacking as though with a newspaper.
A palpable hit, worth 2. In response the bug gashed his leg for 1. Then, its stress boxes overwhelmed, it toppled and fell over on its back, kicking its legs at the sky.
Miles checked his stats again, seeing that he had both of his physical stress boxes full and the 2 for mental. He couldn't keep fighting like this without constant injury, even against random enemies. He waited a minute for the stress to fade. With his knife he tried cutting the critter up, saying, "I want to save any bits that look useful."
[Survival 0/Roll -1.] The carcass lay there, still whole and useless. Ugh.
He moved on toward the smoke signal. The question was whether the aliens had captured all of Hart's crew and forced them into the game, too. He was obligated to make contact. He hiked across the plains and climbed another low hill to observe.
It wasn't just a campfire; there was a little village with a stockade! Miles approached more cautiously, and when he was close he started calling out. "Hello, the camp!"
A man on patrol outside, with a bow, spotted him. "You, stop! Who are you?"
Miles raised one hand slowly, keeping the other on his shouldered bolt of cloth. "Miles Hochen, engineer, of Silver Hart. You're one of the astrogators, aren't you?"
The man lowered his weapon, looking astonished. "Where have you been? And what's that bag following you?"
"That? It's... a weird kind of damage I took on the way here. Say, you know this is some kind of game, right?"
The astrogator, whose name was Samatra, nodded. "What the hell did we get into?"
"Seems like we're being studied, or just played with."
"Yeah. You'd better come in so we can compare notes."
Samatra ushered him toward a gate in the low stockade. There was scattered forest around here and signs of recent logging. "We had to do a lot of construction in a hurry. I signed up to configure a warp gate, and instead I'm stuck doing this."
"We made first contact with aliens, anyway. Not how I ever pictured it, but it could be worse."
