#yeah though it was like a make out session in our astral realm and I was even surprised how quickly you jumped on me when the door shut

[clarenecessities]

spooky lecture

Word Count: 2528 Summary: who wants 2 talk about ghosts Chapter Warnings: bad lore [First] [Previous] [Next]

Adrien scrambled to sit down, a few other students engaging in a brief but heated game of musical chairs over the more limited seating. He managed to take the same seat he had on Monday, between Marinette and Rose, and smiled at them as he pulled out his things.

“We’re talking about ghosts today,” said M. Damocles, looking a little browbeaten as he stepped up to his podium. “I know some of you have… experience with them, but today we’re getting into the magical theory that makes them possible.”

Max raised his hand.

M. Damocles sighed, pointing at him. “Yes, M. Kanté?”

“Can you define ‘ghost’?”

“I intend to,” said M. Damocles. “That was going to be the first few minutes of the lecture, as a matter of fact.”

“But does it include—”

“A ghost is here defined as an imprint of a human consciousness, independent of any body, organic or otherwise,” he continued, ignoring a now-disgruntled Max. “There are of course various interpretations of what these imprints truly are—depending on which school of thought you subscribe to, they could be the collective emotions and experiences of a group of people, the collective memories of an individual coalescing into an ethereal representation thereof, or, as is most widely accepted, a disembodied ‘soul’.

“They are in many respects an imitation of life, most reflecting a humanoid shape, limited to a human range of emotions and capabilities outside the planar freedom that being a ghost grants them. This means, practically speaking, that they can walk through solid objects, overshadow living creatures, de- and rematerialize, fly, etc., etc.. The prevailing rationale for these capabilities is that ghosts are not entirely of this plane of existence, and as such are not restrained by our physical laws.”

“Which plane are they from?” asked Adrien, shoving his hand up. M. Damocles gave him a sour look.

“A plane is a dimension, right?” asked Alix. “Like it’s all around us or whatever and we just can’t perceive it or something?”

“Sort of,” said Rose, wiggling a hand back and forth. “That’s certainly true of the way our planes interact, which is how the phenomena M. Damocles is describing are possible, and beings like the aos sídhe who embody magic instead of ‘souls’, but interplanar travel is perfectly possible, and it won’t like, destroy your mind to see other planes or anything. It’s the same physical dimensions as we have here, just… made of different stuff.”

“Like… jelly?” asked Chloé’s witch. She was one of the only students from homeroom that was seated on the other side of the classroom, though she seemed wary of the Aesc students. “Like there’s a parallel universe and everything is made out of jelly?”

“Yes,” said Alix, immediately.

“No,” said Rose, pointing sternly at Alix. “Not like jelly. It’s like—it’s like M. Damocles was saying about the laws of physics or whatever. On other planes that stuff isn’t really an issue. That’s why magic is able to alter things in the way it does at all.”

“Oh,” said Adrien, “like how in our world doors go to different places and time is whatever it wants to be, and stuff like that. Are we our own plane?”

“Where, Eamhna? Yeah, of course.”

“What is… that?” asked Marinette, apparently deciding against trying to pronounce it.

“S’another name for Tír na nÓg,” said Adrien. “The uh—the fairy world. Or plane, I guess.”

“Has anyone ever said, ‘hey, this is ridiculous, let’s pick one single name’ or do you just enjoy the chaos?” asked Bridgette from across the classroom. Adrien stuck his tongue out at her.

“They’ve tried it several times,” reported Rose. “I think they do it on purpose to maintain an air of secrecy or whatever, because no one ever knows what they’re talking about.”

“But what’s in a name?” asked Max from in front of them, smiling broadly. “That which we call a Rose—”

“Students!” said M. Damocles from his podium. “Please.”

“Sorry Monsieur,” they chorused, settling down with varying degrees of abashment.

“As I was saying,” said M. Damocles, “ah… where was I?”

“The laws of physics, Monsieur,” said Max.

“Thank you.” He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, ghosts are not bound by the physical laws of our realm. They—”

“Hey, so, if a ghost is a soul and fairies don’t have souls, but their magic acts like souls—and it comes from their realm—then do souls come from a realm too?” asked Alix.

M. Damocles groaned.

“Not as such. It’s more like… like the Astral Plane in Dungeons and Dragons,” said Max, raising an eyebrow. “A waiting room, of sorts. The coterminous boundaries effect a tangible echo of a departed soul, which manifest as the intangible echo we know as ghosts.”

“Max,” said Alix, putting a hand to her head, “why are you playing Dungeons and Dragons when you are a literal wizard?”

“I… I find the math reassuring,” said Max. To his credit, he looked only a little embarrassed.

“Is that a game?” asked Adrien, leaning forward. “Can I play? Is it hard?”

“I—I suppose you could sit in on one of our—”

“Who are you playing with?” Alix cut in. “What other nimrods agreed to this?”

“I like drawing the characters!” squeaked Nathanaël from the back of the room. “It’s a good exercise in character design!”

“Guys,” said Marinette. “You’re going to give M. Damocles an aneurysm.”

“Right, right, ghosts,” said Max, shaking his head. “Please continue, M. Damocles.”

“Is it always like this?” Bridgette stage-whispered.

“Unfortunately,” M. Damocles said gloomily. “Alright. Ghosts. Unbound by the laws of physics. We’re all clear on that? Good. So how is it that they’re able to manifest, however fully, on this plane?”

The classroom was silent.

M. Damocles sighed. “That wasn’t rhetorical.”

Rose’s hand was up first. “Magic!” she said, apparently delighted to be called on.

“Yes, thank you Mlle. Lavillant, but I meant more… specifics.”

“There are a few different ways,” said Rose, shrugging. “It depends on whether or not they were summoned or manifested on their own. Usually if they do it by themselves they were especially magical or especially… distressed, when they died. Those are the ones that people think of as like, haunting houses and such, and they’re more likely to be summoned if you’re messing around with a Ouija board or something.”

“A wh—”Adrien started.

“You’re not allowed to play with a Ouija board,” said Marinette from his other side.

“But if you’re summoning it depends how long you want them around! And how much power you want them to have. Like we just use a simple anchor system so Juleka has an unlimited duration as long as her anchor is safe,” said Rose, holding up an ornate compact mirror.

“So it’s like Alya’s soul?” asked Adrien, frowning. He made no move to touch the mirror, suddenly concerned he’d break it. “An external container for it?”

“Sort of the opposite, actually,” said Max. “The entity we know is a projection from the anchor. It’s a container, yes, but there’s nothing external about it.”

“So… the mirror is piloting Juleka,” said Adrien, slowly. “Isn’t that what Alya’s soul is doing too? All our souls?”

There was a sharp laugh from the front row.

“You don’t have a soul,” scoffed Félix. Adrien bristled.

“Do too! At least half of one, and I’m sharing with Marinette now!”

“Yeah. He has 150% of a soul,” said Marinette, frowning down at Félix. “That’s more than you.”

“Do not presume to know me,” growled Félix. “I’m as signed as you are.”

“To what, a demon?”Alix muttered.

The Aesc students shifted uncomfortably.

“He’s not signed to a demon, is he?” asked Adrien, looking instinctively to Bridgette. She wouldn’t meet his eye. “Are demons real?”

“Asks the demon,” snorted Félix. “My contract is none of your concern.”

“I’m very concerned if—”

“Adrien,” said M. Damocles. Adrien fell silent. “Leave it.”

He looked back to Bridgette, who was watching Félix, grimacing like she wanted to know as badly as Adrien did.

“So there has to be a physical object on our plane,” Max started up again, stiff and awkward. “Ah—incidentally, unoccupied organic material can suffice. The experiment that led to Kim was intended to grant me a greater understanding of abiogenesis, but I focused too heavily on designing a functioning human body. I was able to create life, yes, but not a soul, as such.”

“Then he tried to summon one and I had to break him out of necromancy jail,” said Rose, beaming at him.

“I maintain that you did not need to do that,” said Max, stiffly. “There is nothing illegal about the resurrection of a soul, so long as you abide by the parameters set in place—”

“So Kim is also a ghost?” asked Alix, tapping a finger against her chin. “Interesting. Interesting.”

“No,” said Max. “I just told you why he isn’t. Are you listening?”

“All I’m hearing is ‘make some salt circles, Alix’.”

“Please don’t,” said Rose. “Juleka could get hurt!”

“And it’s a waste of salt,” said Marinette.

“If he’s not a ghost possessing the weird meatbag you built, then what is he?” huffed Alix. “He gets pissed when I call him a zombie.”

“A simulacrum?” suggested Rose.

“A really big homunculus,” said Nathanaël.

“A humungulous!” said Adrien, laughing delightedly.

“There’s no word for it,” said Max, grimacing at all of them in turn. “There’s not exactly a precedent for it. I work in uncharted territories.”

“Frankenstein,” said Marinette, smirking when he stiffened.

“We do not talk about that!” he hissed.

“The way you explained the difference between Int and Wis in D&D was ‘Intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster’,” said Nathanaël.

“Congratulations, next session I’m taking away your animal companion.”

“So, wait,” said Marinette, holding up her hands as if to slow the conversation. “No soul means no ghost, right? So there are no fairy ghosts?”

“Oh, no,” said Rose. “Could you imagine? You might as well have a dragon ghost.”

“Both of those possibilities are terrifying,” said Bridgette, visibly shuddering.

“Yeah, gotta say, I do not like that idea,” said Melodie beside her, grimacing. “Live ones are wild enough, thank you very much.”

“Rats,” said Marinette.

“Uh, did you want to summon a ghost?” asked Adrien, making a face at her. Who would she even summon? She didn’t know any aos sídhe as far as he knew, apart from his family and Ali.

“Yeah, you know, like a murder investigation,” said Marinette, smiling at him. “We could just call Nooroo up and ask him what happened.”

“Okay, even with a magical human that would be a terrible idea,” said Rose, leaning around Adrien to see her better. “Please, swear to me, never summon a murder victim if they had like, an ounce of power.”

“It seemed like—”

“Swear to me, Marinette.”

“Okay, okay, I swear!”

“Wait, are dragons from their own plane?” asked Alix. “I don’t think I ever considered dragons having souls.”

“I think they’re from the same plane as us,” said Adrien, blinking. “They call it xiānjìng though? Or at least the ones I’ve met do.”

“The way they taught us is the aos sídhe embodied creatures and the dragons embodied physical forces,” said Iona. “They were your plane’s equivalents of elementals.”

“Oh, right on!” whooped Alix, nearly leaping out of her seat. “In an alternate universe I’m totally a dragon.”

“If the possibility entertains you, there is a race in—”

“I’m not playing your nerd game, Max!”

“I mean, it’s not just forces,” mumbled Nathanaël from the back, “they um, they’re also natural phenomena. Fog and diamond dust and, um. Rainbows.”

“Planar theory states that in the beginning, all the planes were one,” said M. Damocles. He appeared to have given up on wrangling the class for now, retreating to his desk to shuffle through some papers. “And when they began to draw apart, they left imprints on one another. The plane of Elfame remembered the shape of a badger, even if it had no badgers of its own—and a plane of living magic was bound to make creatures out of nonliving material. There aren’t very many theories on the origins of dragons, and this is the only one which is held to be credible, because, well—the dragons told us so.”

“So dragons… aren’t aos sídhe,” said Melodie, slowly, like she was puzzling it out. “I don’t need to fight them?”

“You don’t need to fight them,” Bridgette confirmed, patting her on the shoulder.

“You don’t actually need to fight the aos sídhe either, you know,” said Iona from the row ahead of them.

“Someone’s gotta do it!” said Melodie, grinning and flexing her arms in an exaggerated fashion.

“We can never let her and Alya be in a room together,” Marinette murmured to Adrien.

“Ever,” he agreed fervently. “Alix is bad enough.”

“I heard that, and I’m choosing to be flattered,” said Alix, sniffing imperiously.

“As well you should,” said Marinette.

The rest of the class became a meandering conversation about the particulars of ‘souls’ and ‘species’ versus ‘planar origin,’ none of which Adrien felt very confident contributing towards. Outside of what Marinette’s mother had told them about souls, he’d hardly spared a thought to it. Maybe it was just his instinctual shying away from the subject (after all, a cat sídhe who talked about souls too much was regarded with deep suspicion in most circles) but he had never wanted to learn more until he’d met Marinette.

It still didn’t especially matter to him; Tikki didn’t have a soul after all, and she was a paragon of goodness. It was really more the idea of sticking it to that Félix kid that appealed to him, for all that Bridgette seemed fond of him. He didn’t like what that said about her taste in friends, as one of her oldest.

The other Aesc students seemed friendly enough, although Melodie in particular kept shooting him furtive glances like she was waiting for him to attack the room at large. When they were dismissed she whisked Bridgette away before Adrien could say so much as hello, though they got a little wave in as she was tugged out the door.

“This is going to be interesting,” said Marinette as they gathered their things. She was watching Félix in much the same way Melodie had watched Adrien, though there was more open hostility on her part.

“Them, or him?” asked Adrien.

“Both. I don’t trust him.”

“Did he lie?” asked Adrien, holding the door open for her. “He seemed pretty honest about hating me.”

“Well, no,” she admitted. “And he wasn’t giving off like, murder vibes or anything. I guess I just don’t trust him because he hates you.”

Adrien grinned. “Thanks. I was glad he was up front about it, though. Saves me from trying to be friends with him and putting us both through hell.”

“I guess,” said Marinette, pouting.

“The others seem nice, though!”

“Yeah—this really is going to be interesting.”

[dungeons-and-demiplanes]

Reflections - Session 3

In which a dwarf and a cleric (mostly the cleric) force the party to clean up their mess.

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Backtracking a little bit...

Be a Dwarf Fighter named Ciaran Broadblade

Formerly Ciaran Silverlord III

Left home a few months ago after getting into an argument with his dad

Renounce original surname, take on a new one

Wander the land for a few months, working as a sellswordaxe

Arrive in Lorthas Village; decide to stay, to help with the goblin problem

Rent a room at the Midnight’s Breeze

Get awoken shortly after going to bed by some kind of a ruckus

Get dressed, go downstairs/outside

...The whole town is drunk. Why is the whole town drunk?

Why is that elf dragging a human woman and a blue goblin with him through town?

WHY IS THE ALARM HORN SOUNDING??

Suddenly wave of multicolored goblins pouring in from the front gates

Elf & co disappear into a random house

They obviously caused this shitstorm.

Ciaran follows. TIME_FOR_JUSTICE.gif

Busts down the door

Watch someone disappear into the bathroom, follow

… What the fuck, there’s no one here

But there are no other exits aside from the front door

How in the shit? Did they just… disappear??

… Did they go through the mirror in the bathroom somehow???

No time to think about it, goblins are attacking

Like 5 goblins of various colors enter the house.

Cornered in the bathroom

TMW the Goblins decide it’s more interesting to fight each other than to fight the moderately armored fighter

Ciaran used “I’ll Hit A Motherfucker With Another Motherfucker”

Attempts to bullrush one of the goblins into another to knock them both prone

It’s not very effective…

Right. Welp. That’s what waraxes are for, I guess.

Eventually all 5 goblins go down

NowToSaveTheTown.jpg

One Dwarf vs Goblin Horde. Round one. Fight!

#DarkSouls

YOU DIED

MEANWHILE IN THE MIRROR REALM

Saren is still studying Azure

Morthal has been practicing a little with his new psionic abilities

He can make bolts of pure energy

And also an ectoplasmic creature called an Astral Construct

Lah continues to insist on referring to Morthal as “Breaker”

Morthal is not amused, begins throwing books at her in retaliation

She gets the hint (and also gets kind of offended), and stops

Saren suggests that they go back through the mirror to gather supplies from Lorthas

Lah: That…………….. May be a problem.

TMW your employees accidentally set a goblin horde loose on a town composed of residents who were all too drunk to stand

“GO FIX YOUR FUCKIN’ MESS”

Morthal & Lah head back into town

It’s pretty late at night - early morning, at this point

Head outside, look around

Oof.

Well…

Shit.

Basically everyone is dead

Bodies litter the streets

Even in the dark, it’s clear that some are goblin, but others are human.

Only a few people appear to still be up and about, and they look pretty banged up, too

The only person who appears mobile is an old man wandering about

He’s wearing white robes and carries a staff with him

He kneels beside the body of what appears to be a dwarf

There’s a sudden, radiant glow

Ciaran inserts coin to continue

TMW the first thing you see after being resurrected by some old dude is two of the motherfuckers who you are 99% sure caused this mess in the first place

Thank the old man quickly, then get up

Go to aggressively confront the elf and human

They aren’t amused

“Listen, man, we didn’t do shit, leave us alone.”

The old dude walks up, introduces himself as Kraxis

He’s a humble Priest of Pelor

Lah is instantly suspicious of him

He explains that he happened by Lorthas shortly after the goblin attack, and is in the process of healing the wounded, and resurrecting the fallen

“So, if you’ll excuse me”

Starts to wander off to continue his task

Ciaran immediately starts interrogating Morthal and Lah again

Morthal doesn’t feel like he should have to answer to this random dwarf

Isn’t very forthcoming with information

Eventually lets slip that they MAY have had a SMALL hand in this attack being so… one-sided.

Kraxis appears beside them again

He heard that shit.

He’s not amused.

Kraxis used “Zone of Truth”

It’s super effective!

Forces Morthal and Lah to introduce themselves, and explain what the shit happened

They begin to do so, begrudgingly, and incapable of disobeying

Lah is very upset that she’s been forced to tell Ciaran her name

Morthal explains the events of the past 24 hours

Ciaran is pretty pissed

Their hairbrained Plan to End All Plans (effective though it may have been) meant the painful deaths of a lot of innocent people

Kraxis isn’t thrilled either.

“Tomorrow, we’re all going to the goblin caves nearby and wipe the rest of them out, to prevent this from happening again.”

Before anyone can protest, casts Quest on Lah, Morthal, and Ciaran

They’ll get sick/eventually die if they don’t comply

Ciaran is LOLING SO HARD

Morthal is NOT AMUSED

Everyone splits off for a while to gather supplies/prepare

Lah disappears to go steal from the mayor, will be back by the morning.

Kraxis goes off to continue healing/rezing people

Morthal & Ciaran have an awkward meal at the inn

Next morning rolls around

RISE AND SHINE, LET’S GO KILL GOBLINS

Arrive at a cave a couple hours later

Yep, this is where the goblins are coming from.

Doesn’t look like many are home, though.

Ciaran guides the party through the caves

Darkvision, heck yeah

Go through a few fights. Kill a swarm of spiders in one room via Hulk Smash Stomp

In another room, spend forever trying to figure out how to get across a pit with spikes at the bottom

Lah can probably make the jump

Maybe Morthal, too

But Ciaran? In all this armor? There’s no way in fuck

And what about the old dude?

Eventually the cleric just casts Stoneshape, makes a bridge

#ThatWasEasy

Fight a few goblins in a couple of other rooms

The wizard keeps summoning bolts of energy

Can wizards even do that??

TMW he rogue has a fucking energy sword attached to her arm

TMW SHE CAN THROW IT, WHAT THE HELL

Eventually reach the last room

Wtf there’s something BIG sleeping in here

It’s covered in a bunch of furs/skins, so it’s hard to tell what it actually is

Que hushed deliberation down the hall

Agree to have Morthal send an Astral Construct to poke the Thing

Kraxis offers to flank the Thing

Ciaran isn’t convinced that’s a good idea

Kraxis insists that it’ll be fine

… Okay

3 2 1 BREAK

Astral Construct pokes it, as planned

It rises up from its slumber, the furs fall off

OhShitIt’sATroll.png

Everyone gets stuck in

Ciaran realizes that the squishy priest is directly in danger

Shouts at Kraxis to switch places with him

As they switch, Kraxis touches him, casts Delay Death

Ciaran tanks the troll, despite being knocked down to -51hp and being literally torn to shreds in the process

“I FEEL GREAT”

It takes forever, because the fucker keeps regenerating

But eventually, the troll goes down

Loot time!

Spend the rest of the day going to other caves and mopping up other goblins

Never come across another troll, thankfully

Head back into town

Alright so this dwarf has proven himself pretty goddamn competent, despite initial impressions

(I mean his dump stat WAS Charisma, but you don’t need that when you’re built to KICK PEOPLE’S TEETH IN)

#StevenAndTheStevens

“NO TIME TO EXPLAIN”

“WANNA JOIN OUR BAND PARTY?”

“........ Yes.”

Morthal and Lah bring Ciaran back to that bathroom with the mirror

“MORADIN’S BEARD, I FOOKIN’ KNEW IT WAS THA MIRROR”

Everyone goes through

FeelsGoodMan.jpg

Kraxis follows

Lah suddenly begins FREAKING THE FUCK OUT

Dreaded realization dawns on Morthal, too

I mean, motherfucker cast Quest earlier

That’s like a 6th level spell

Which means that Kraxis is, at minimum, an 11th level character

(Spoilers: He’s actually closer to 30th)

(WE GO HARD OR GO HOME IN 3.5)

Ciaran doesn’t understand what the big deal is

Doppelgangers appear

Oh shit what the fuck???

Doppelgangers: “I have an army.”

Saren: “We have a Blue Goblin.”

Azure pads up, shoots a laser from his brain

Immediately disintegrates one of the doppelgangers

Lah, Morthal, and Ciaran take out the rest

Ciaran catches on to what’s going on pretty quickly

Lah is still freaking out, though

… Oh. Ciaran gets it now.

Fuck

Kraxis’ doppelganger emerges from the mirror

Takes a step forward

Eyes bulge out

Agonizing scream of pain

Shatters instantaneously

Stare at Kraxis, dumbstruck

He just shrugs.

“Hmm. I guess there can only be one of me.”

Lah is relieved to not have to fight an epic-level evil priest, stops panicking

SHE’S EVEN MORE DISTRUSTING OF THIS GUY THAN BEFORE

Morthal isn’t too sure about him, either, because holy fucking shit

Kraxis takes several valuable gems from Morthal, turns them into a crystalline horse

“If you ever need me, break that, and utter the word, ‘Salvation’.”

Bids the party farewell, walks back through the mirror - his curiosity satisfied

TMW the crazy priest just used your spell components to make a little horse figurine and then fucking left

Saren greets Ciaran

I’m going to paraphrase the conversation that followed:

“Hey kid wanna do some drugs?”

“K”

The weird mirror folk guy injects Ciaran with some kind of dope

TMW your dwarven genes prevail and you don’t vomit all over the place

“Congrats, you are now a Psychic Warrior”

Ooh, that’s why the wizard and rogue are so weird! They’re also part psionic!

Ciaran learns that he can manifest a protective shield around his body, and also emit a seismic shockwave with a stomp of his foot

Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta

End Session 3

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