Harry's Game · Page 18

My recollection is that you already created the holy ground in the room, but you do have to activate it to use it. That is easily done, and you negate your need for sleep for another night. Later you reactivate the ground and purify three emeralds, which come out with a clarity unlike any you have seen.

The next morning the captain greets you warmly as you return to the local station. He goes over your paperwork and asks you some of the same questions. He looks forward to hearing more about the lands from which you came originally.

He says he can start you as an investigator, junior grade, at 35 diktar per day, six days on, two days off. Schedule is flexible if you need to change your day off at any time, but you can be called in if there's an emergency, and then compensated in time off, so that's a regular salary of two hundred ten diktar every eight days of which you work six. Days are ten hours, but again if nothing is happening you can leave early and if there's trouble you might have to work over. Also, as low man on the totem you'll be working the overnight shift at first, but after a while you and the others will trade off. In essence think of it as a salaried position, where you're expected to work sixty hours every eight days and get paid two hundred ten diktar for it. You're an investigator, which means detective work, trying to solve crimes, although in the main it mostly means that you're the guy the more elite clients respect and expect to have answer their calls.

He wants to know if you're interested and whether you want to start tonight.

--M. J. Young

I am, and I can. In fact, I prefer the night shift, so I'm more than happy, at least for now. Once I'm married, it will be something else entirely, but I have a while until then.

Do they have a uniform?
A badge?
Am I required to purchase my own? Or do they provide them?
Do they have, or require, standard-issue weapons? Or am I allowed my own sword and pistol?
Do they require any particular basic training? (Police procedure, basic law, combat styles, basic forensics, judicial rules, interrogation/arrest technique/procedure, that sort of thing?) This is a quasi-military position, all things considered.
Am I expected to jump right in and work alone, or am I being assigned to a more senior partner in order to tag along and learn the ropes?
How does Durnmist handle 'calling the cops', considering they don't exactly have telephones here? (I've been on a ship for two years and only in Durmist for maybe a week in all that time, so it makes a bit of sense that I might not know how they do things here.)

As for the captain asking me about the lands I come from, I'll give him a generic description of what life is like there - rainy, hot, stinks of fish, etc. Most of the minute details I could give him of living with my uncle actually come from spending summers in Pennsylvania with my grandparents, but he doesn't need to know that.

Your office covers thirty-six blocks--a six by six square, bordering on the waterfront. The office is in the center, so you're not more than six blocks from the farthest points you cover. You're probably about twelve blocks from the next nearest office.

Forty "Watchmen" work out of this office. There are ten on during your shift, twelve during the evening, and eight in the day. You are not one of them. They wear bright red uniforms, with a braided cord to indicate their rank. They patrol the streets, check on what is happening. They carry metal whistles, mostly on the ends of their cords, and there are a few signals they use to call each other. The most common way for the watch to be called is for a Watchman to blow his whistle. There are only two calls you have to know; they're the emergency calls that say that city watch personnel who are not "Watchmen" also need to respond. Watchmen are issued truncheons, effectively nightsticks.

There are also five "Supervisors". These also wear uniforms and patrol the streets, but they spend more time in the office overseeing what the Watchmen are doing. There are sometimes two on duty, usually in the evening shift. Supervisors each carry a pistol in addition to a truncheon; some carry swords.

Four "Commanders" are in charge of everything when they are on duty. They are usually in the office, giving assignments, unless there is an emergency that calls them out onto the street. Only one is on duty at a time. There is a "Division Captain" or "Chief" who is everyone's boss, but he usually works through his Commanders. They provide their own weapons, and sometimes wear uniforms for dress or other times wear clothing appropriate to anticipated tasks.

You are in the investigations unit. Your office has two senior investigators and four junior investigators, of which you are one. At least one is on duty at all times. You wear clothes appropriate to anticipated tasks, which usually means business dress. You are not issued uniforms. You may use office truncheons, and/or carry your own weapons. You also have braided cords, although most carry these in their pockets and pull them out when needed. Whistles are optional for investigators, but they will be provided if you want one. That requires that you learn the signals, though.

The primary point of your job is to investigate crimes leading to the apprehension of criminals. Watchmen and Supervisors are at your disposal--in that sense, you outrank them, although you are expected to go through their chain of command. That is, the proper procedure is that if you are going from the office to investigate a report and want backup, you should ask the Supervisor to assign someone, and he will make the decision who you should take; but if you're on the street and you need backup, any Watchman or Supervisor that you find should take your orders as priority unless following orders of a higher priority (in which case, he has to make that judgment for himself--delivering a message for the Chief does not necessarily mean a higher priority than helping a Junior Investigator stop a fleeing killer).

Your job also sometimes includes going to crime scenes for public relations purposes--if a prominent citizen has been the victim of a crime that really does not require investigation (the watch caught the guy fleeing the scene), an investigator will be sent to make the citizen feel he has been treated properly. If he's really important, a senior investigator will be sent, and if he's really really important the senior investigator will take a junior investigator with him.

Procedures for the watch in essence are to attempt to keep peace with a minimum of violence or risk, stop any crime again with minimal violence and risk, and arrest anyone reasonably believed to be guilty of a crime; that includes anyone that an investigator says is reasonably believed to be guilty. Investigators write reports of their investigations, and sometimes appear in trials before magistrates to explain why they have arrested an individual, but each magistrate will have his own expectations of how to handle that, and will make those clear at the time. It's good that you have some weapon and combat experience, but it's not essential to your job description--you can rely on the watchmen and supervisors to handle most of the rough stuff, and if there's something like a riot you'll be in the back lines.

You won't have an assigned partner, but probably they'll start you on what they think are easy assignments, and if they think you need to learn how to handle something they'll have someone else go with you.

There is a central command in center city, where the Watch General and his staff oversee the entire department. That's not really important, usually, because the individual offices are relatively autonomous. Your jurisdiction extends throughout the region, so if an investigation takes you outside the thirty-six block area you don't have to worry about whether you are stepping on toes, although it's polite to report to the local offices where you are investigating to let them know what you're doing, and to cooperate with any investigators who come to this office from other sections. Also, even when you're off duty you're still a junior investigator, and watchmen in other parts of the city are to respect the braid of office and assist you in your efforts to stop crime if you call upon them.

Did I cover everything?

This is mostly explained to you by the Chief who interviews you and by a Senior Investigator who works with you the first night.

Let's get some names.

• Chief Thomas
• Senior Investigator Lewis
• Senior Investigator Adam
• Junior Investigator Sherlock
• Junior Investigator Hercule
• Junior Investigator Jane

That's a start, anyway.

--M. J. Young

(The last three I get, but the first three names make me curious as to whom you're referencing.)

Yes you've covered pretty much everything. All except one thing: What is my first assignment? It's my first night on the job, I've got my braid of office - which I will wear, since it's rather cool - but nothing immediate to do.

I will, in fact, request a whistle and some training in the signals. I would need to learn the signals anyway if I expect to be able to respond to them appropriately, I might as well learn how to call for backup.

The whistle is similar to a bosun's whistle; by moving fingers over the sound hole one can vary the pitch; it is high and shrill so that the sound will carry for a a block or two in the noise of the day, several blocks during the quite of night. You pick up the basics easily enough, but it's going to take months to get adequate and years to master fully.

As to your first assignment, that would be to come back for your shift that night. If memory serves, you used your remove fatigue last night, and it's good until tomorrow night, so you don't need to sleep; you can get supper around sunset at your rooming house, but when you leave for duty the house is closed up for the night. You'll be on duty from midnight to around sunrise, more or less. I see on your equipment sheet your Red-Bladed smallsword, meteoric iron, nicknamed "SoulMourn", dangerous, along with Swordbelt and Scabbard, and Cutlass of Quality RF1 damaging +DC+1; the back of my mind tells me that you also have a pistol, but I do not have the details on the sheet here. (One of my faults in running this online game is I often do not add equipment while you are in a world, because I'd like to know what you're taking when you leave, and that might not be the same as what you're using while you're there. These abbreviated character sheets do not have a space for "where you got it", which complicates keeping things straight.)

What else will you have with you for work?

--M. J. Young

The pistol is also one-step-better quality iirc - I stole one from a pirate and upgraded to a custom-crafted one when I hit the next manufacturing port.

Other than that? Nothing much. I'll dress appropriately for the weather, wear my braid of office and my whistle, my swords (Soulmourn on my belt, the cutlass over my shoulder - real swordsmen don't cross-draw) and my pistol (on my right hip - real gunmen straight-draw).

Between this morning and tonight, I would like to look into two things:
1: What is considered practical in terms of armor here? Is this a late-Renaissance early-Industrial Revolution style society where all armor has gone out of style? Does anyone still manufacture lightweight chain-shirts of a sort that might be worn under a properly cut leather jerkin? And at what cost?

2: What are the rules of the town, my boarding house, and the guard in regards to dogs? I'd like to see about getting me a puppy to keep and train. He'll be a genuine police dog if he seems to take to it, and a nice pet if he doesn't. (I have some experience with training dogs - I was able to teach my grandfather's hyperactive puppy four tricks in only a couple of weeks of trying.)

It is illegal to own or wear armor if you are not an officer in the military currently on active duty or in training exercises. Nothing other than military grade plate-and-chain is made, and it is tightly controlled. If you see anyone wearing armor, you can demand that they provide some proof that they are a military officer currently engaged in some activity that authorizes wearing it after you have placed in him custody.

Dogs are uncommon in town, and the landlady is a bit nervous about the notion of having a wolf in her home, but the landlord says that if you take responsibility for it he'll allow it. There is a litter of puppies reported on a farm outside town, bred for sheep herding. Farmers treat dogs as outside animals, letting them sleep in the barns. You can get one fairly inexpensively. Your first task, though, is going to be to house train it, and if you've never done that you might be facing more trouble than you anticipate.

What's your plan in that regard?

Your first night of work is incredibly dull. Absolutely nothing happens at all.

--M. J. Young

I have, in fact, housebroken a dog before. I helped my uncle housebreak a beagle-mix, and my girlfriend's boss with her lab/rottweiler/hellhound/whatever-the-rest-of-that-shoe-chewing-monster-is. And the dog I pictured is not a wolf. He's a German Shepherd. Durnan Shepherd, perhaps? And I'll name him Scipio. As for that, I'll do what my boss did with her hellhound: train him as best I can when I'm at home, and keep him in a nice big cage so he has room to move around but not room to wreck stuff when I'm out. I won't be taking him with me on duty until he's big and tough enough to actually not be a nuisance.

A nice boring night is good. I'll spend it getting to know people on my usual beat. The other officers who share my watch cycle. The locals in my area, and so on. It's helpful to know things like that, after all. If Thaddeus the Barber is a raging drunk and tends to start fights in the evening, for instance, but Mrs. Lovett enforces peace in the area around her tavern (and consequently tends to generate whistles from people who have fled to her for protection), that kind of thing would be good to know.

(And a cookie to anyone who gets the joke in the names.)

Do you have a preference on the sex of the dog?

By the time your shift starts, the lamps have been filled and lit. Every intersection has at least one, and the larger roads will have between one and five between intersections in each block, on alternate sides of the road. The oil is carefully measured, and the lamps burn out not long after daybreak. During the day wicks are trimmed and oil replenished, and as night falls the lamplighter comes through to ignite them.

The dog that has the litter is smaller than a German Shepherd--a midsized animal comparable in size and build to the American Staffordshire Terrior. The pups look sufficiently like the mother to expect them to be similar. You can get one of these next week, or wait for something else.

--M. J. Young

No. As he/she will be my first time actually having a dog, even though I have worked with both before, I have no preference.

I'll take the opportunity in the dim and flaring lamps to practice my psionic night vision and bloodhound olfaction. I wonder what happens if I turn them both on at once? I probably go deaf to compensate, but it will be interesting to find out. I'll try that, too. Are the lamplighters still out when I go through? If so I'll get to know them, too.

No. Terriers in general annoy the hell out of me, and that dog looks like he would eat my boots. I may not have a preference for gender, but I do have a preference for size: I want a big dog. If I could get a German Shepherd / Irish Wolfhound mix, or a just plain Mastiff, I'd be ecstatic. I'll wait for something else.

Concerning using both sensory skills at once, which one are you activating first?

The lamplighters are gone by the time you check in.

At present, no one is aware of any large dogs for sale in the vicinity of Durnmist.

--M. J. Young

First the Night Vision - it's the one I'm more familiar with - and then the Bloodhound Olfaction.

So my first night comes and goes. If there is anyone to interact with, please detail them at your leisure - I want to get to know my route.

I'll keep my feelers out there for big dogs.
In the mean time, now that I have my job, I want to start sniffing around for a house. How does purchasing a home work in Durnmist? do you have to go through a broker or agent, or are some places for sale by owner? How big a place could a Junior Inspector's salary maintain? I have a not-inconsiderable savings from the Mary Piper - three tons of gold in the bank - but I can't afford to let the place fall into disrepair as soon as I purchase it. It's important to me to be a homeowner by the time I get married. Arabella comes from a respectable family in this city, and it won't do to move her into some rented flat, it just won't do.

If it turns out that I can afford something respectable, I will set my sights on purchasing it.
If it turns out that I cannot, I'll need another way to raise capital, and I think I have an idea as to how...

You get the night vision going reasonably strongly, and then bring in the olfaction. It is not so strong a sense as you remember, but is picking up quite a bit of the smells of the city that normally go unnoticed.

You maintain both for five minutes or so, and then the olfaction fades, but the night vision remains for another quarter hour.

Generally in this city people pay cash for property. Most of the properties are owned by wealthy landlords, and rented by the residents. Properties start between three and four thousand diktar, depending on location, size, quality, and other factors.

That of course is within the city limits, where there is not much undeveloped property. Farmland starts not far from the edge of the city. Because transportation is a concern for fresh food, there is very little in the way of suburbs around here.

--M. J. Young

Seeing as I have 22,000 diktar in the bank, I think I'll look for something suitably upscale - shall we say something in the 10-15k range?

I'd like to look around for something else, too, some way to make money. I think I'll save the remaining 7-12k to invest in my wife-to-be's business after the fact.

Meanwhile, I'll continue on business as usual - patrolling, practicing with my hypersensory skills. Particularly I want to focus on going for long duration; if I can get my Night Vision going all night by spending a bit longer focusing on getting it going to begin with, for instance, I would be happy. Otherwise, waiting for something interesting to happen on my watch.

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of professional realtors in this city; most properties are sold by owners, and advertized by word of mouth. Over the course of the next month, though, you find these properties:

• A small bakery with living quarters above, an ongoing family business from which the owner is retiring and his daughters are not willing to take over. The asking price if eighteen thousand, but the business probably clears fifteen hundred a month, if you can run it yourself.
• A row home of five living units, each with a central cooking and living area and two bedrooms plus attic space six feet at the peak, asking fifteen thousand usually gets fifty to seventy-five per month per unit.
• A duplex, three story, two-sided fireplace separates kitchen from living/dining area, one other room on ground floor, three rooms on second floor, two on top floor, all suitable for bedrooms, mirrored on other half, each half rents for eight hundred to a thousand per month, asking price thirteen thousand.
• Bar in harbor district, smallish, furnishings included, owner died, lived in one of three upstairs rooms the other two used for private entertainment, asking price ten thousand.

You have not yet found a suitable single-family home, but it's not easy to find anything, really. Nothing is organized.

Let's discuss the the night vision duration problem behind the screens.

--M. J. Young

So I'm going with the one-minute activation long-duration version of night vision.

That duplex would pay for itself in a little over a year, even if I live in the other half.
Five rooms suitable for bedrooms, cooking space, living room, and 'one other room' in each half?
Yeah, I think I'll sink 13,000 on that, move into the one half, and post a 'For Rent' notice for the other.
That will leave me with 9,000 in the bank and plenty of space to live in. If this doesn't suit Arabella's taste of living space, I can always move to whereever she likes and rent out the half I am currently moving into.

Beyond moving my meager possessions into a space far too big for them, there is a bit more to do.
I'll need to buy furniture and such, but that can wait until after I start getting paid.
The first thing that needs to happen, of course, is laying my usual 'until I move out' holy ground in the bedroom.

Once I have a place where I can re-up my Remove Fatigue on a regular basis, it's back to business as usual until something interesting happens on my watch, or I have to deal with tenants, or something to that effect.

You close your eyes and focus your attention on extending your night vision. This time, though, it does not work--not entirely shocking, since although you have gotten better at your night vision it still only works about a third of the time. You can try again later.

You get a look at the duplex. One side is in need of repairs; the previous tenants did not care for it well. The other is in very good shape, and nicely decorated. There is no furniture in either side, but the kitchens have counters, basins, bread box, ice box, and bars and racks in the fireplace for cooking. There is a shared well out back, and separate outhouses. It's yours for thirteen thousand, and the arrangements are easily made to transfer the funds from your holdings to the seller's financial institution.

I am assuming that you are using the holy ground ritual for the smaller area; that is successful. I do want to put this floorplan together a bit better. Which room are you designating as your bendroom, on which side? The largest bedroom is second floor front, the next second floor along the outside wall and back corner, and a small one in the rear over the staircase against the partitioning wall. The two upstairs are about the same size, possibly larger in the front, both larger than the smaller room on the second floor, smaller than the larger room on the third floor. The ceilings slope toward the outside edge to accommodate the roof. The downstairs room is not as big as the front bedroom upstairs, but about the same size as the second room on the second floor.

Note that the windows have shutters but not glass, which is not common in buildings here.

--M. J. Young

I'm going to live in the nicer half. I'll invest a bit in some fixing up. Seeing as I don't sleep, I'll have plenty of time to do it myself. I'll pick the small one near the partitioning wall as my room. Being an interior room, it will be easiest to keep heated and cooled as compared to the rooms with lots of external surface area.

One thing I want to do in terms of fixing this place up is add insulation. I happen to know a bit about how insulation works, so if the walls here are utterly for crap in terms of keeping out the elements, I can fix that, at least a little. Lots of cheap tapestries, if nothing else.

And I'll continue focusing on my Night Vision.

The temperature in Durnmist rarely gets cold enough to snow--most of the "cold" winter days are mid thirties, and it might very rarely drop into the teens, as in one to three days every couple years or so. Thus little attention has been given to keeping the house warm. In fact, there are many windows in the living and kitchen areas, evidently to cool these areas when the fire is burning in the hot summer, and the living room side of the fireplace can be screened by wood-over-metal shutters to direct the heat away from this area.

The next night you manage to extend the night vision. It remains functional for two and a half hours with no further concentration for you. You find yourself squinting when you are in brightly-lit rooms, but there are not many of these outside the station on your shift, so that's not a serious problem.

Do me a favor and help me reconstruct your timeline a bit; I've been a tad negligent on maintaining the calendar, but part of that has been because we've been jumping around a bit.

You arrived in Durnmist on Day 596 (counting from your original arrival aboard the Mary Piper). It would then be 597 that you interviewed for a job with the watch, and I think you started that night. Late on 598 you attempted the new version of the night vision skill, and on day 599 you learned it, if I'm counting aright.

The real estate details are not synced with this, though. It would have taken you about five days to locate and purchase that house, minimum, unless somewhere I said otherwise. Since you didn't start until the morning after your second night on the job, which would be day 600, it must be that you moved in on day 605.

Against this, I'm trying to track down your training regimens. I note improvements on day 286 on TK Pulse (1@3) and Telescopic Vision (1@2), but the other skills don't seem to have been mentioned on the calendar (my oversight). I'm guessing that you've been practicing:

• 2@1 Smallsword Duelling Bod 7@1 fast aggressive weapon-dependent +15 att SM -5 def SM att x2 +1 since arrival
• 1@6 Military Hand-to-Hand Combat (specialty in disarming maneuvers) Bod 7@1 since arrival
• 2@1 Use Smallsword B7@1 +1 since arrival
• 1@3 Pistol Gunslinging B7@1 since sometime subsequent to arrival, maybe around Day 100, which was the first time you arrived in Durnmist on your first voyage.
• 1@8 Feint B7@2 tactical untargeted skill check, success adds +RS to next attack, failure bonuses next opponent attack +RF since arrival
• 1@10 Double Lunge B7@3 leveraged attack base dangerous, two hops on the left foot driving the momentum into a sword thrust from at least six but not more than twelve feet, limited to two one other attack in the minute. +1 since arrival
• 1@6 Kick to the Groin B7@7 incapacitation, base dangerous damage plus target save vs stamina or collapse for RS/5 minutes, +15 to next opponent attack(s) since arrival
• 1@1 Divert Attack B7@8 cause auto-injury, character parries such that the attacker's blow is diverted to attack another opponent, -10 if the attackers blow is diverted against himself, skill is rolled as attack against weapon (TV=[user's SAL+MSV+weapon's density]/3), if successful opponent's attack is rolled normally against chosen adjacent character, uses two attacks at least one of those of the sword used. since arrival
• 1@2 Empathy P1@1 since arrival?
• 1@2 Read Intended Combat Movement P1@1 +RS/10 SM on all combat attacks and defenses maybe again since ~Day 100?
• 1@1 Read Surface Thoughts P1@1 since arrival
• 1@10 Heightened Awareness of Surroundings P3@1 enables user to know general layout of buildings or other structures, locations of entrances and exits, and other information, without searching. since arrival
• 1@5 Heightened Awareness (Accuracy) P 3@1 was developed maybe around day 100?
• 1@9 TK Pulse P4@1 as mentioned
• since arrival
• 1@7 Telescopic Vision P5@1 as mentioned
• 1@5 Night Vision P5@1 sometime after Telescopic Vision
• 1@1 Bloodhound Olfaction P5@1 (reduces other senses) sometime after Night Vision
• 1@5 Kiai P8@0 posturing shout intended to intimidate opponent, RS/10 penalty on opponent's next action or defense, will power save RS=S/D/N since arrival

I've also noticed in tracking all of this that I have a math error in my calendar--my count on the second trip started on the wrong day. I can fix that, but I can't fix it today, and we can get everything else in order at the same time.

So I'm looking for a clear picture of what has happened on which days, and when each of these skills hits its advancement day. Any help you can give will be appreciated, and the rest I'll put down in something that makes sense.

--M. J. Young

My Empathy I picked up later on. I would say that was in the neighborhood of day 100, too, but I did Empathy, Read Surface Thoughts, and Read Combat Movement all within days of each other, so if we pin all three to day 100 that would be close enough for me.

Heightened Awareness of Surroundings is something I do without even thinking about, every time I step into a building, so... as often as I've set foot on land over the last two years, I suppose. I doubt I've gotten any stronger in that since Versing out.

Heightened Awareness (Accuracy) I picked up within days of my Pistol Gunslinging and have rarely used one without the other. I also usually use my Accuracy Blessing spells, all of which I developed about the same time, so let's pin those to day 100 (around the time of Durnmist) too.

Everything else seems about right.

Am I really 1@9 in TK Pulse already? That's actually better than I expected.

Did I never actually manage Microscopic Vision? I thought I had developed that as a skill after I did it once as a botch. I could be wrong. Not that it makes a huge difference.

I'm a bit perturbed by the difference in my Night Vision. The old version was based more on a rod-and-cone thing, picking out detail in the dark at the expense of color. The new version seems more like light amplification, which isn't quite what I was going for. Useful, but not quite what I was going for. Something to think about, but later. For now I'll avoid brightly-lit rooms even more carefully than I normally do, seeing as I'm a bit photosensitive to begin with.

Meanwhile... business as usual. Patrolling, and the like.

Oh! And do-it-yourself-ing my new house. Look at me, I'm a homeowner, and I'm do-it-yourself-ing! My grandfather would be proud.

Just reviewing those notes a bit.

I'm assuming that by "Accuracy Blessing spells" you mean 1@2 Bonus Strike M1@2 0:06 whispered prayer "Thor guide me. Put strength in my hands and rage in my heart, to defend my friends and break my enemies" while holding intended weapon in weapon hand RS/10 minute duration RS/10 bonus to attacks with weapon +6SM
and maybe 1@1 Double Battle Blessing Mass Combat Bonuses M+1@2 16:01:00 casting time plus maintenance time, sacrificing 30 uncut emeralds, speaking words invoking Thor, god of Rage; Sif the Golden Haired, goddess of tactical combat; Njordr, god of the sea; and Heimdall who guards the gates inside an activated holy ground, pacing the area, named unique sword in hand, with five armed men on deck for the casting, may be broken after sixteen hours leaving a one minute completion, after which everyone in the affected area who fights to defend the holy ground RSx2 SM on all attacks and defenses, for as long as the caster continues to pray, sing songs of battle, and otherwise maintain the spell, +32 SM
and/or
1@10 Influence Luck M1@5
I don't see any of these except maybe the last as things you could practice in non-combat situations. That's not to say that you can't practice them--going through the motions, as it were, to get the ritual right. It just strikes me as unusual, and like I don't see you using all those emeralds several times a week to practice the big spell, although I could see you going through the motions using pebbles or something.

I do not have Microscopic Vision on my sheet. That doesn't mean it's not an oversight on my part, but I would want confirmation from a thread somewhere that you actually succeeded in learning it. It was not a particularly useful skill in your situation, unless you wanted to hunt for bedbugs or something.

I don't have any carpentry, woodworking, masonry, or standard tool use skills listed on your sheet. What should I have listed for these?

--M. J. Young

Carpentry and woodworking maybe 1@6. I have made my own altar and had it look fairly spot-on. Masonry maybe 1@3 - I understand how walls work but I've never actually built one, though I have knocked one down with a sledgehammer once. Standard tool use I am going to claim a 1@8 - I have spent enough time working with tools having taken four years of auto shop in high school, along with robotics club, I'm competent enough not to break my fingers with a hammer, but making anything useful alone is going to take me a while.

When I say Battle Prayers, I mostly mean the first. I thought I had a second accuracy prayer that went with me, rather than with the weapon, or vice versa, but I could be mistaken. I know I do have my Psionic Accuracy, but I think we listed that already.

And let's forgo Microscopic Vision for now. I know I have the idea in mind, we'll roll for it when it comes up.

And so... nothing happens...

You struggle with a few repairs in the rental side, a section of rotted flooring you did not see before you bought it, back in the pantry. Overall, though, you are making progress with it.

Second week on the job, you are at your desk reading over some of the materials in the office when someone enters. You recognize her as a waitress at one of the bars in the area. She looks pale and frightened.

"Please, sir," she says, "I think we need the police. There's been a killing."

She indicates that several people are dead, in an upstairs room at the bar, but that she doesn't know what happened. She sleeps in one of the spare rooms sometimes, when she works the late shift, and she woke to use the outhouse and on the way back in realized that there was a lamp lit in one of the other upstairs rooms. When she opened the door she saw her employer and three other men, one of whom she recognized as a regular customer, none moving and all in rather twisted body positions, and lots of blood in the room.

--M. J. Young

First, I'll see about getting this woman some counseling. Seeing as I know where she works, and thus which building she's talking about, I can find my way. Let's try and get someone to sit with her, help her calm down. I'll also instruct whoever is assigned to this to very gently persuade her to stay here until I get back - I'll want a few words with her myself.

Meanwhile, I'll ask a supervisor to assign me two watchmen for the purpose of crowd control. I want that room preserved exactly as she found it, as near as possible, so crowd control will be important.

Once I arrive on the scene, I'll speak with whoever is in charge since the innkeeper is upstairs.
What is that room normally used for? (Even if it's something illegal like prostitution, I will assure him I am not interested in that, it's just leading me into my next question...)
Who was using it? Did he have any guests in here last night who weren't regulars?
Did he notice anything or anyone suspicious? Any other trouble?
Were there any great lengths of time in which he was not present?

Naturally, since this person is now in charge, he had a vested interest in the death of the former innkeeper, which means he is himself a suspect, but it's a good place to start.

Also a good place for a new psionic trick: if I can read someone's brain to tell what move he's about to make in combat, I should be able to read someone's brain to tell whether he's firing the Memory sections or the Creativity sections to gauge how much he's lying. I think I'll try that on this guy.

Then I will go up to the room and very carefully turn on my Bloodhount Olfaction. I expect this is going to be overwhelming considering the room, but the object here is to try to pick out any scents that aren't the bodies in the room or the girl who found them, the new innkeeper, or so on - scents I would already recognize.

If there is a scent, I'll follow it. If not, I proceed.

Footprints?
Signs of a struggle?
Any suspicious objects? Weapons? Broken glasses (might indicate poison)?
Do they look like they were all killed more or less the same way?
Do they all look like they've been dead about the same length of time? I'm no forensic scientist, but I know a bit of what to look for. Has their blood begun to settle? Are their eyes still clear?
Any sign that they had been killed elsewhere and then moved?

The bar was closed; she had worked until closing, and then gone to bed in one of the upstairs rooms. The upstairs rooms are in essence there for anyone who wants privacy. There are beds in each of them, but that one also has a table and chairs, and thus is used for private dining, for gambling, for meetings, as well as for trysts, and probably for prostitutes. No one is alive there now. She thought the owner had locked the door and gone to bed himself, but she did not see him do so. She locked the door on her way out, and will give you the key. The front door was locked when she got to it, and the back door was locked when she went out--but of course she left it unlocked when she went to the outhouse, and she may have been outside for several minutes. She didn't hear anyone in the yard, but then, she wasn't really listening. Your attempt to detect whether she is thinking creatively fails; you just can't find her mind.

Your co-workers are not at all sure what you mean by "counseling". If you want someone to keep her guarded until you return, they can do that.

Two watchmen are assigned to assist you in any way they can. Is there anything else you want to ask her before you go to the scene?

--M. J. Young

O.o;

Actually I had meant to ask all of those questions to whomever was in charge at the scene after I went there, but I suppose having the story from her now is just as well.

When no one has any idea what 'counseling' means, I'll ask one one of the watchmen - preferably a woman - to keep her calm and help her to relax, seeing as something has just occurred in her life that's certain to leave her a bit unsettled and it's just not right to leave her that way. See if she has any family we can get to come for her, or any significant friends. Keep her company. Hold her hand, or something, for the love of all the gods...

Once that's settled, then yes it will be time to take my new redshirts (I love that these guys actually wear honest-to-God red shirts) and go to the crime scene.

I understood that those questions were for "whoever was in charge at the Inn", but it seemed to me that before you left you would have ascertained that there was no one alive, let alone in charge, at the scene, and that therefore you would have asked as many of those questions as were reasonable of the waitress you had at the station. You would also need to get the key from her, so you could let yourself in.

She gives you her key, and you take your two redshirts with you to the bar.

Letting yourself in through the front door, you find the bar itself in order, closed up with chairs on tables and stools on the bar itself, cabinets secured. There is a back door off the small kitchen leading into the back yard and the outhouse and well; the well is shared by several buildings which back toward it around the block. The kitchen is similarly properly closed for the night.

Upstairs, the first room is the one in which the incident occurred. The door is now open, but blood spatter ends at the jam suggesting that it had been closed. Light is poor, of course, and your long-term visual acuity did not respond. Do you want to use the short term skill? Your men are carrying oil lanterns.

--M. J. Young

I have one last question for the waitress: Did anyone other than herself have a copy of that key? ANYONE else? (If the innkeeper was supposed to have a copy, I'll be checking his pockets for it when I find his body. If he had a key and it's now missing, it means the back door still being locked means nothing, which is important.)

I'll hit the short-term skill, sure. And my Bloodhound Olfaction as I said previously (even though I know this is probably going to suck.)

Then I reiterate my questions about the crime scene from two posts above:
Footprints?
Signs of a struggle?
Any suspicious objects? Weapons? Broken glasses (might indicate poison)?
Do they look like they were all killed more or less the same way?
Do they all look like they've been dead about the same length of time? I'm no forensic scientist, but I know a bit of what to look for. Has their blood begun to settle? Are their eyes still clear?
Any sign that they had been killed elsewhere and then moved?

And add:
Are there windows in the room?
Open? Closed? Broken?
And if my Olfaction kicks in, do I detect any useful scents?

The owner of course had a key. So did each of two cooks, one barman, and three other waitresses, so they could let themselves in if they were on the early shift. This waitress knows their names, but not where all of them live--she's friends with one of the other waitresses, so she gives you her address, which is a few blocks away, technically outside your district but of course part of your investigation.

You attempt to bring your short-term night vision on line, and suddenly everything goes dark.

One of your men takes a step, and there is a glimmer of light--brightest where his foot hit the floor, spreading out to illumine the floor and the area above it. As the floor alights, you see the shadows of footprints coming from the room toward the stairs. They look to be those of a man's boot. In some places they are smudged by the overlying of a woman's slipper coming from the stairs. It appears that the woman walked across the footprints coming in, then turned around at the door and went out. Her own prints are less defined, as if she walked through the trace shadow on the floor and then carried some of it with her.

The same reverberation extends up the walls to some degree, but quickly fades. There is another step and the light returns. You can hear the sound, and also see all objects that are radiating it. The lamps glow faintly with very quiet hiss made by the flame on the wick.

Your olfaction skill does not activate for you.

It will be difficult to survey the room, but you can ask your men to answer your questions for you.

--M. J. Young

I'll do that. I'll tell them I've been having some problems with my eyes this evening, and in the mean time try to keep them talking and moving around to sound out the room for me. The obvious thing to do would be to blow my whistle or walk around tapping on things... this is another botch I'm going to have to learn to do on purpose... but that would be awkward to explain to the redshirts.

"A lot of blood," one says. His neck and mouth glow brightly as he speaks, and the sound bounces faintly off hard wood walls leaving dark patches for curtains. It also appears that the floor is bare with a rug in the middle; one of the bodies hangs over the edge of the rug on the floor, either prone or supine, one hand open.

Your companions describe four bodies. The one extending off the rug is known, a regular customer of the establishment who always got special treatment. Two others appear to have tackled the owner, and there are three knives among them, and wounds consistent with knife stabs. The two do not look familiar to your men. The customer also has wounds consistent with a blade, but more of a slash or gash; he appears to be unarmed, and there are no other weapons visible in the room. This action is centered around the table, and there are spilled and broken glasses on the table and the rug, along with a pitcher.

There are two shuttered windows, latched from the inside, on the far wall.

Other questions?

--M. J. Young

What's their impression? Was this a drinking group gone bad? A botched murder that ended with the murderers dead too? Initial impressions?

As I talk, I'll be looking around, too, letting the sound of my voice ping the room for me.

Are all of the wounds consistent with the size and style of weapons present, or do any of them look like something larger, like a sword blade? Any broken bones, bruising consistent with a blunt weapon? Anyone to suggest that the perpetrator isn't among the dead.

Not enough booze here for a drinking group; there's only the one pitcher and five glasses.

It seems pretty clear that the owner stabbed the two that are over by him, and that they were attacking him at the time. It also appears that the customer was unarmed, but that he was killed by more of a deep slashing attack, not a stab like the others. He's also far enough from the other three that he either stumbled out after being struck or he was not part of that fray in the first place.

One possible construction has a fight breaking out, someone drawing a knife and slashing the customer. It might be that it was one of the two strangers, while the other went for the owner; the owner was quick enough to get his own knife, and managed to kill the one who went for him, but the other got him probably as he returned the favor.

The slashing wounds do seem rather strange for the knives used. Skin absorbs the vibrations anyway, so you can't really tell too much about the wounds (bruising is not evident to your limited sight). Your voice bounces from the bed framing, the weapons, the table and chairs, and from bits of leather and metal in the clothing, as well as from the walls and floor. The light is faint, but it's enough to see silhouettes of the objects that are not reflecting the sound. The glasses and pitcher, several of them broken, also reflect the sound, and the spilled beer on the table quivers as the sound hits it. The bloody patches on the rug are slightly darker than the dark rug, which diffuses some of the sound. There are also the same boot prints leading to the door. which you saw in the hall.

--M. J. Young

I'll walk around whistling and looking under the bed and furniture, careful not to step in the spills, looking for anything that might reflect the sound that might not be visible in the available light. If the strangers were willing to kill two men, apparently in cold blood, there must be a why, and unless the customer was killed by an unaccounted-for fourth knife, that why is probably still here...

There is a glint from under the hair of one of the strangers. On closer examination, it appears that he is wearing an earring--as is his companion.

"Do you suppose they might be pirates, sir?" one of the men asks.

"Pirates? Why would pirates be upstairs after hours, enjoying a drink and a chat with Mr. Keeper? This looks to have been more a business meeting than anything else, and I don't see Mr. Keeper taking no truck with pirates."

"Yeah, but what if he'd agreed to meet with them before he knowd they was pirates? What if they were offering some sort of business deal which interested him, and then it went sour and they didn't like his answer?"

Pirates would explain the earrings and the knives. They have other jewelry as well, more consistent with rich bandits than with wealthy businessmen.

--M. J. Young

"From what I've seen of pirates, these fit the description. Exotic weapons, too damn much gold." I shrugged. This was a damn dirty business. Who would want to kill a respectable innkeeper? And why? It didn't make sense. Something was missing. If this was just a business deal turned sour...

"Someone else would know," I said, "Someone would come looking for these two. Even if they were pirates, they wouldn't get away with jumping ship."

I knew it was a long shot, but seeing as the crime only happened last night, and it would be five more hours before the taverns started to open for afternoon drinking, it seemed like a good place to start. As good a place as any.

Yeah, I felt like doing a little pulp detective style internal monolog. Not sure why, considering I've never actually read any pulp detective fiction; it just felt somehow appropriate.

As you leave the room and your feet vibrate the floor, you again notice the footprints, fainter now, of a man's boots leaving the room, overlaid in spots by the woman's slipper coming from the stairs and then returning.

Where to, and what instructions?

--M. J. Young

"Follow me. I have a hunch..."

I follow those bootprints. Along the way, I'll try to activate my Bloodhound Olfaction again, seeing if there's a scent to go with them.

By the time you reach the stairs, the footprints have faded below your ability to recognize them.

Your acute olfaction does not respond.

--M. J. Young

Where were they headed by then? Down the stairs?
If they fade that close, they must have been fresh when I found them, which means this must have been done recently - just before our witness found the crime. The murderer might still be close by. I'll send the redshirts on ahead.