LG108: A Tale of Rats and Spores

[Amanuensis he/him]

38 minutes ago, The Unknown Hammerer said:

I, too, need to roleplay. 

Sorry if I am the hold up, I ended up falling asleep before I finished, might be able to do it when I'm on break or otherwise right before turnover lol

[Araris Valerian he/him]

6 hours ago, A Jo in the Bush said:

I'm of two minds about whether or not we should share what spores we get. On one hand, if we coordinate enough, we can catch an eliminator in a lie about what action they took

I'm not sure that the elims have much incentive to lie about their actions, especially with Sunlight Pots floating around. Especially early on, elim actions will look pretty similar to village ones.

[STINK he/him]

Kinda defeat the point of my lucky dip if I then announce the results of said lucky dip

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

5 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

Sorry if I am the hold up, I ended up falling asleep before I finished, might be able to do it when I'm on break or otherwise right before turnover lol

Nope, I'm just lazy.

~

Illi left the boat under the cover of night. He walked through the dark streets, keeping his hand on a pouch of verdant spores. This island wasn't the bad sort, but times being what they were, he kept it anyways. He would give so much to return to the trail. There, he would not be so alone. And tonight, this trip, it would alleviate that loneliness. At least temporarily. 

He knocked on the door. A tall blonde woman opened it. She took him in, then said, "One Trail."

Illi gave a puzzled and slightly hurt look, but finished. "Many travelers. Nisen, but why?" He trailed off. 

"There's been talk of Midnight creatures around. Things that can take other people's faces. I had to be sure." She said, reassuring him. 

Illi shook his head. "They can't do that, they look oily. Not like people. I've told you that before, haven't I?"

Nisen waved away the argument. "Come in Il, eat dinner with us. I was not sure I would ever get a chance to again."

[Hoid Slayer He/Him]

35 minutes ago, The Unknown Hammerer said:

Nope, I'm just lazy.

~

Illi left the boat under the cover of night. He walked through the dark streets, keeping his hand on a pouch of verdant spores. This island wasn't the bad sort, but times being what they were, he kept it anyways. He would give so much to return to the trail. There, he would not be so alone. And tonight, this trip, it would alleviate that loneliness. At least temporarily. 

He knocked on the door. A tall blonde woman opened it. She took him in, then said, "One Trail."

Illi gave a puzzled and slightly hurt look, but finished. "Many travelers. Nisen, but why?" He trailed off. 

"There's been talk of Midnight creatures around. Things that can take other people's faces. I had to be sure." She said, reassuring him. 

Illi shook his head. "They can't do that, they look oily. Not like people. I've told you that before, haven't I?"

Nisen waved away the argument. "Come in Il, eat dinner with us. I was not sure I would ever get a chance to again."

From a nearby alley, shrouded by the darkness, Shifter watched Illi go in. The interaction brought a familiar pang to his chest. He idly rubbed the sheath at his belt.

There was no one waiting for him.

[IcedOutPenguin He/Him]

Do we need to talk during this cycle?

[Hoid Slayer He/Him]

2 minutes ago, IcedOutPenguin said:

Do we need to talk during this cycle?

We don’t NEED to

Obviously, interaction is nice, but I think the XP from discussion and RP covers the whole cycle

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

4 minutes ago, Hoid Slayer said:

We don’t NEED to

Obviously, interaction is nice, but I think the XP from discussion and RP covers the whole cycle

It does

AND ELIMS

I ALREADY CRAFTED AND USED A ROSITE SPORE POT FOR MYSELF

DONT BOTHER KILLING ME

IT WOULD DO NOTHING

[Amanuensis he/him]

20 minutes ago, IcedOutPenguin said:

Do we need to talk during this cycle?

It's mostly a grace period for people to get any RP and Discussion they didn't in the Day for max rewards. You only need to post if you want to rank up

[Hoid Slayer He/Him]

17 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

It does

AND ELIMS

I ALREADY CRAFTED AND USED A ROSITE SPORE POT FOR MYSELF

DONT BOTHER KILLING ME

IT WOULD DO NOTHING

No you didn’t, cause I grabbed the roseite

Spoiler

Just kidding

Spoiler

Spoiler

Or am I?

 

 

Also, as per the what I understand, I don’t think you can get a spore and use it the next turn. You need to go through the preparing period first, which means the earliest you could be protected is tomorrow

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

11 minutes ago, Hoid Slayer said:

No you didn’t, cause I grabbed the roseite

  Reveal hidden contents

Just kidding

  Hide contents

  Hide contents

Or am I?

 

 

Also, as per the what I understand, I don’t think you can get a spore and use it the next turn. You need to go through the preparing period first, which means the earliest you could be protected is tomorrow

Shhhhh

the elims don't need to know that...

[Amanuensis he/him]

So rollover is in an hour, but a friend likely needs a ride home from work, so I may not be home until 10 or later =/ we are waiting to see if the state disability driver shows up like they said they would

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

[Name] watched the "waves" roll past. We had launched.

For good or for evil.

His knife spun in his fingers until he slammed it into the deck.

Softly, he whispered "Tell me.

"Who are you really?"

Spoiler

Anybody who has secrets is free to answer this. I just didn't want to reread the entire sign-up thread.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Which I totally did the first time.

 

 

 

[Amanuensis he/him]

7 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

So rollover is in an hour, but a friend likely needs a ride home from work, so I may not be home until 10 or later =/ we are waiting to see if the state disability driver shows up like they said they would

Ok the guy showed up! I will be home on time \○/

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

18 minutes ago, ThatOneWorldhopper said:

[Name] watched the "waves" roll past. We had launched.

For good or for evil.

His knife spun in his fingers until he slammed it into the deck.

Softly, he whispered "Tell me.

"Who are you really?"

  Reveal hidden contents

Anybody who has secrets is free to answer this. I just didn't want to reread the entire sign-up thread.

  Hide contents

  Hide contents

Which I totally did the first time.

 

 

 

Sozar jumped back.

Why is this random guy throwing knives and talking to no-one? Better stay away from him...

Strange... Almost felt like he was talking to me...

But I don't have any secrets...

Except for that... but I don't talk about that...

Sozar rubbed his long sleeved and gloved arm.

I don't talk about that...

[Amanuensis he/him]

Siete minutos, por favor

THE NIGHT IS NOW CLOSED, TY

[Amanuensis he/him]

LG108, Day Two — Knot a Pretty Sight

Braid’s hands were trembling. Unacceptable. 

Braid took a deep breath, another. Stilled herself. Roseite was not one of the spores that would kill you instantly, but being incautious around one spore meant death sooner or later. She ran through her preparations again. Water in a sealed flask. A silver knife in her belt. She’d locked her door, chased out the vermin. 

Ann had said earlier this morning that they would teach Midnight tricks and Roseite shields later in the journey, once they had proven themselves. Braid was going to surprise them by mastering one on the first night. 

The pot, on close examination, was a fairly simple device. She had sketched similar designs, trying to reverse-engineer her Master’s far more advanced canisters. The principle remained the same. Water, a measure of Zephyr, and a second spore canister. 

Carefully, she began pouring the small pouch of Roseite spores, counting the seconds in her head.

Then something black and oily reached from behind her head and clamped onto her nose and mouth.

She screamed soundlessly, trying to turn, but whatever held her was strong, and hadn’t made a single sound to alert her, and oh Moon of menace it was Midnight Essence, someone was trying to murder her, and already a second black limb was coming around her throat- 

Desperate, she grabbed the silver knife by her belt and stabbed blindly backwards. The creature made no sound, but its grip slackened enough that she tore herself out of its grip, spinning out of its reach and catching her first real glimpse of a Midnight Essence Familiar. Slick, reflective, faceless. It advanced. 

Thinking quickly, she grabbed the dregs of her Roseite, slammed them on the ground between them, and splashed them with her blood. As they made contact, a thin sheet of pink crystals emerged, but stopped at waist height. Too little spores. Not enough control.The Familiar smashed its way through the crystals with little effort.

Braid sucked in a deep breath. With her left hand, she reached into her pocket and broke the first of her Master’s gifts - the spanreed - a tool from another world. That would let Him know she didn’t expect to come back. With her right, she took out the second gift, a pot full of Crimson spores. 

“Alright monster,” She snarled. “Let’s do this.”

...

At the crack of dawn, the new recruits had already gathered on the main deck. All except one.

Helsmaster Salay, Quartermaster Fort, Armsmaster Ann headed to Braid's cabin. The door had been barred from within; Fort had to lift the hinge pins to get them in. He’d set them back by reflex before any of them spoke.

Braid hung from the lower deck beam, toes a hand’s width off the boards. Her hair—long, thick, woven for beauty and habit both—had been made into its own noose and taken the weight. Her cup lay upright on the desk, lid dogged tight. The porthole dogs were set. The bolt on the door was slid home on the inside.

Ann’s hand went to the bell at her collar and stopped short. “Charlie (the Better) stays out,” she said to no one and everyone, and shut the rat in the passage with a click of her bootheel. She crossed the room slow, goggles pushed up, revolver heavy and unnecessary at her hip.

Fort was already at work in the way he worked best: eyes moving, making notes on his slate he didn’t need to look at. The bite marks were plain even in the gray light—neat little crescents and paired scrapes up her forearms, over one shoulder, along her ribs where the shirt had been torn. The wood beneath her feet was dusted in dead spores, a gray film that clung to the grain in the boards and caked along the hinge seam where the door met the jamb.

Ann touched the dust with the back of her knuckle, then with a dry cloth. The smear it made was the color of old ash.

Salay’s face didn’t change, which on her was the same thing as grief. She stepped beneath the beam and lifted the weight by palm and forearm long enough for Fort to cut the hair. Together they lowered Braid to a blanket and covered her to the collarbone.

“Locked,” Fort typed, slow and deliberate. “Bar on. Porthole dogs set. No broken seam. No sign of a pot thrown from outside. No spilled water.”

“Plenty used,” Ann said softly, eyes moving over the desk, the bunk, the places water hides. Condensation ring on the inside of the porthole glass. A damp mark on the bunkpost that had dried to a tide line. “But nothing left.”

Salay crouched by Braid’s hands. The crescents were too small for a grown rat and too many to be one animal besides; each mark had that oddly tidy, almost imitated look you get when the world pretends it’s something it isn’t.

They each arrived at the same thought, the way sailors feel the same swell under different boots.

“Midnight,” Salay said.

Fort rose and looked to the bolt and back, to the porthole’s dogged lugs, to the gray dreck caked along the keyway like flour in a lock. He turned the slate around. "No other explanation."

“It's the only thing that fits,” Ann agreed. “The mark work—mimic-teeth, mimic-claws. Not animal. Not Charlie.” She said it before anyone thought to say it to her. “Then—Cultists?” The word tasted like iron.

Salay rubbed the heel of her hand over her brow, then over the deck beam where the hair had bitten a groove. Her thumb came away gray. She looked at it for a long breath, then wiped it on her trouser seam like a promise that would not wipe clean.

“We shouldn't jump to conclusions,” she said at last. “Not at suspects. Not at each other. We tell the crew what we found, but we don't want to cause a panic, or a mutiny, on our first day at sea. We’ve not had to make one of our own walk the plank in... a long while. I would rather not start again today, if we can help it.”

Fort stumbled upon a couple of loose pots, fully prepared, and pocketed them. "No sense in wasting Braid's hard work," he wrote with a grim expression.

Ann fidgeted with the lacquered case. “I’ll stand a double watch at the Stores and the armory. I doubt they'd use our spores for this, but just in case, we should be cautious..."

Salay set her palm on the pillow where Braid’s head lay exactly once; or maybe not, judging by the state of her desk... “We carry her fast to Diggen’s Point,” she said. Her voice was level again. “Our destination doesn’t change. The Duke and Duchess are expecting us.”

Salay nodded, already seeing the course line in her head, the Seethe’s next pulse, the timing of the bells. “We tell the crew what we must and no more: that we’re grieving, that we’re vigilant, that no one opens a door without a witness, and that this ship’s business continues. Fort, post it. Ann, with me after; I want eyes on every shadowy corner.”

Ann reached into the passage, and Charlie (the Better) slipped in under her arm and onto her shoulder, quivering with the room’s unsettled air. She laid two fingers against his back to still him.

They stood a last moment together by the corpse. Guilt sat with them like another officer—uninvited, unarguable.

Then Salay straightened. “For now, we should bring her to the medbay,” she said softly. “As for the truth, we’ll find that while we sail."

---

 

Braid (Doc12) has been found dead in her cabin. She was a Royal Loyalist.

Day Two has begun and will end on Monday, October 6th, at 10:00 PM EST, approximately 48 hours from now.

If you did not receive your GM PM, please @mention me and I will remedy that ASAP.

 

Day Two Quartermaster's Spore Storeroom

• ~ Zephyr Charges
• 3 Verdant Charges
• 1  Crimson Charge
• 1  Sunlight Charge
• 1  Roseite Charge
• 3 Midnight Charges
• 1  Novice Roseite Pot
• 1  Apprentice Crimson Pot

 

 

Player List

1. @Araris Valerian — Armiel — Novice
2. @Belandrius Ohhmar — thOmmAs — Apprentice
3. @The Unknown Hammerer — Illi — Master
4. @TwinStorm — Rane — Master
5. @CoderDrag0n8 — Sozar — Apprentice
6. @ThatOneWorldhopper — Fuejrheisjjeirjeujdjeuuduwii — Novice
7. @RoyalBeeMage — William Thorne — Apprentice
8. @Hoid Slayer — Shifter — Novice
9. @IcedOutPenguin — Itenii — Novice
10. @A Jo in the Bush — Emmett — Novice
11. @Doc12 — Braid — Novice —  Royal Loyalist
12. @STINK — Roberto — Apprentice

 

---

SMALL RULE CHANGES

1. Zephyr Pots can now be used at any time during a turn. Please ask me to create the PM if I am around, but if I don't get back to you in 15 minutes, I give you permission to create it; I will take it from your inventory when I get online. Make sure to include both me and @little wilson. Note that the PM will expire at the start of the next cycle / two cycles, regardless of what time you start it.
2. I will allow people to (re)Prepare lower ranked Pots to higher ranked Pots if you have the additional material, however, there will always be a chance of failure (25% for Apprentice, 50% for Master, 75% for Expert)

Edited October 6, 2025 by Amanuensis

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

2 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

LG108, Day Two — Knot a Pretty Sight

[Write-up will be provided before I sleep, also working on finishing last night's]

---

 

Braid (Doc12) has been found dead in her cabin. She was a Royal Loyalist.

Day Two has begun and will end on Monday, October 6th, at 10:00 PM EST, approximately 48 hours from now.

If you did not receive your GM PM, please @mention me and I will remedy that ASAP.

 

Day Two Quartermaster's Spore Storeroom

• ~ Zephyr Charges
• 3 Verdant Charges
• 1  Crimson Charges
• 1  Sunlight Charge
• 1  Roseite Charge
• 3 Midnight Charges
• 1  Novice Roseite Pot
• 1  Apprentice Crimson Pot

 

 

Player List

1. @Araris Valerian — Armiel — Novice
2. @Belandrius Ohhmar — thOmmAs — Apprentice
3. @The Unknown Hammerer — Illi — Master
4. @TwinStorm — Rane — Master
5. @CoderDrag0n8 — Sozar — Apprentice
6. @ThatOneWorldhopper — Fuejrheisjjeirjeujdjeuuduwii — Novice
7. @RoyalBeeMage — William Thorne — Apprentice
8. @Hoid Slayer — Shifter — Novice
9. @IcedOutPenguin — Itenii — Novice
10. @A Jo in the Bush — Emmett — Novice
11. @Doc12 — Braid — Novice —  Royal Loyalist
12. @STINK — Roberto — Apprentice

 

Bruh i just wanna RP

will give reaction to Doc dying then

glad i didnt die tho

[Amanuensis he/him]

4 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

Bruh i just wanna RP

will give reaction to Doc dying then

glad i didnt die tho

Sorry, I figured better to post the thread and update in the flavor, rather than make y'all wait however long it takes me. Plus I want to see if Doc wants to write his death but will do it myself if he doesn't show up.

 

Spark notes is that we discovered Braid's corpse hung by the braids of her hair in her cabin and covered in tiny bite marks that seem ratlike. Quartermaster Fort confiscated her Spores and Pots (the loot of the dead will go into the Storeroom for next day bidding). Player wise, the Masters are trying to keep y'all from panicking, but everyone is more wary than they were before. This is the first death in years aboard The Rat's Tale, so the investigation has begun while we continue to sail for the Rock.

Y'all may vote now too

Edited October 5, 2025 by Amanuensis

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

Just now, Amanuensis said:

Sorry, I figured better to post the thread and update in the flavor, rather than make y'all wait however long it takes me. Plus I want to see if Doc wants to write his death but will do it myself if he doesn't show up.

 

Spark notes is that we discovered Braid's corpse hung by the braids of her hair in her cabin and covered in tiny bite marks that seem ratlike. Quartermaster Fort confiscated her Spores and Pots (the loot of the dead will go into the Storeroom for next day bidding)

Ooooo the loot of the dead? That's a fun way to put it.

And it's fine, I like to RP with the max info I can to give my character's true reaction

[Amanuensis he/him]

2 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

Ooooo the loot of the dead? That's a fun way to put it.

And it's fine, I like to RP with the max info I can to give my character's true reaction

Quote

Spark notes is that we discovered Braid's corpse hung by the braids of her hair in her cabin and covered in tiny bite marks that seem ratlike. Quartermaster Fort confiscated her Spores and Pots (the loot of the dead will go into the Storeroom for next day bidding). Player wise, the Masters are trying to keep y'all from panicking, but everyone is more wary than they were before. This is the first death in years aboard The Rat's Tale, so the investigation has begun while we continue to sail for the Rock.

Y'all may vote now too

I did add a bit more detail. Y'all would not have found the body, but one of the Masters, and the word / details spread from there. Her corpse is being kept in the medical bay. Her cabin is technically off limits but not under direct supervision

Edited October 5, 2025 by Amanuensis

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

1 minute ago, Amanuensis said:

I did add a bit more detail. Y'all would not have found the body, but one of the Masters, and the word / details spread from there. Her corpse is being kept in the medical bay.

Ah.

I see.

I don't really get the Zephyr Pot changes...

Does it still count as an action? Like could I study and Zephyr Potify at night?

Or does it just mean I can use it extra early in the day instead of pre-priming it at night?

[Amanuensis he/him]

6 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

Ah.

I see.

I don't really get the Zephyr Pot changes...

Does it still count as an action? Like could I study and Zephyr Potify at night?

Or does it just mean I can use it extra early in the day instead of pre-priming it at night?

It's just an action you can use instantly, everything else I have to handle. You can only ever do one of Study, Prepare, or Sprout per turn. Still...

[Hoid Slayer He/Him]

Knot a pretty sight indeed

Well, at least I now get to do this:

Araris Valerian

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

11 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

It's just an action you can use instantly, everything else I have to handle. You can only ever do one of Study, Prepare, or Sprout per turn. Still...

Ah, okay.