13: And the Monster of Amristar Chapter 11-12
Chap. 11: Corruption's Touch
Fame's Tasty fruit
The next class they have to deal with is Hufflepuff Herbology
with the Gryffindor's cheering the audacity of the Hufflepuff's plan of action.
Gryffindor are always down with the "deeds not rules" ethos. This is a brief chance to introduce some of
the Gryffindor kids, who will have the task of being a bad influence later. The
class starts with a description of the Argusatos
project and the fact that they have to repot them. The PCs will be told to go
to the cupboards and get the next largest pot size, but be careful not to
disturb the row further back, as it contains the second year's Mandrake roots,
which were also just re-potted. They might see Rowan idly stroking one of the
mandrake plants.
Argusatos are key
ingredients in potions sharpen eyesight and reverse blindness. They also, in
theory, will give the ability to temporarily see through earth & stone if
eaten raw (they might think to use this later), though eating them raw requires
a Bravery check to make the first bite and a Fortitude check to finish it.
Then move to Daisy’s Muggle Studies class, where Prof. and
Dr. Plain are tag teaming things. The distaff part of the class is no longer
quite so googly-eyed about Dr. Plain now that he’s so clearly doting on his
visibly pregnant wife. Dr. Plain will be spending some time in class talking
about parallels between muggle and wizard cultures, specifically focusing on
the Grindelwald war and how it overlapped with WWII. He’s advancing a belief
that the cultures are intertwined and that forces in the Wizarding world will
take advantage of muggle disruptions, and vice versa. Both professors provide
some praise for Daisy, and Dr. Plain corners her after class saying that he
heard she would be around for Easter break, a perfect time to take her up on
her offer for interviews as someone both muggle and wizard.
We then shift to the Ravenclaw/Slythern Herbology class,
where we open with the students at the point of pulling out their Argusatos, with much by way of hilarity
a Fortitude + Herbology roll is required, and I already know that Castor's will
have small, weak, watery eyes with little monocles. Zane will yank theirs out if
Jasmine doesn't stop him, leading to the little eyed orb bouncing across the
floor and into a dark corner. Whomever goes to get it will have a nasty shock
as they will be bitten by a Kobold that has burrowed up into the greenhouse.
The bit isn't much, but the student is nonetheless sent to Madam Pomfrey to
have it treated.
Other classes may be added at player request.
All Alone in the Night
For their detection they'll be relegated to Professor
Kettleburn's care, which ought to worry them just a bit. He will set them to
capturing the Kobolds that threaten the herbology greenhouses. Its dirty work -
made worse by the Kobold's nasty demeanor & Kettleburn's rigid insistence
that they be treated with respect, as they were introduced here just after the
War and are therefore a wizarding responsibility. He preaches. It gets old.
Kettleburn will also insist that they stay within a well-defined
area around the greenbouses, and under no circumstances are they to wander off.
He’ll teach them the Lumos spell to
aid in their search. In this search the PCs (& Bess) find a trail leading outside
the work area.
It leads through the vegetable patch to a small Hindu altar.
It doesn’t look like the last one. This one is Shiva as Mruthyunjaya, the
“victor of death”, who overcame Yama to prevent the death of one of his sages.
This one also has a dozen Kobolds heaped on it. It’s clear that the Kobolds
have been bled dry. If they tell Prof. Kettleburn about this he will be very
upset, furious at them for getting so close to the dangerous willow (never mind
this!) and send them back to their rooms immediately with orders to not discuss
this with anyone!
Inevitable library time
They'll learn Kobolds are creatures that debase what they
touch; their blood is used to convert gold or iron to dross, or for dark arts
that corrupt or to overwrite the pure with the foul. They are native to Germany , and
don't belong in the British Isles , where they
compete with the less odious Knockers.
The Tempust spell,
assuming that they can score enough of a Research success to find information
on it, is an incredibly complex ritual spell that would take weeks to cast
properly, but need only be done a little bit a day with the use of proper rune
work. That rune work requires a lot of potion ingredients, however, which the
PCs could try to track – all of them at the school, none of them are Kobold
blood. They could also track Uranal energy (associated with rebellion, breaking
down of old structures, political movements). This is well outside the first
year's potential, but Daisy could do it - assuming that it was happening.
I expect research into Hindu magics to see about the body
swapping thing. This will reveal (via Taxomancy) that such a thing is possible,
but as a perversion of the existing ideas of Phowa (the reincarnation stream) to become a yangsi (the reanimated soul). In the normal course of events the
yangsi enters the Pohwa and accepts what they get. Corrupted it is possible to
use this spell to suppress a soul that has a tenuous grip on its body. Such a
version of the spell would likely require something that debases what it touches;
overwriting something good with something foul (like, say, Kobold blood). In
some cases this is a swap, in some it is a suppression or eviction of the
victim's soul. These cases also require some ritual work that Astronomy might
reveal to them, relaying on Mercurial energies
They are able to find a text saying that Grindelwald, who
was a better wizard than Dumbledore, used this trick to swap bodies with a less
experienced wizard (whose soul had been dislodged with extended crucious curses) just before the duel;
Otherwise we'd have to assume the unlikely proposition that a pure academic was
able to defeat a hardened war wizard, which is unlikely. This theory had remarkable
longevity in the 1950's; it’s the wizarding world equivalent of Hitler's Brian.
Chapter 12: Easter Break
I really have no idea where the players will be in their
researches at this point, but I am going to lay out a few possible courses of
action:
They might have bought the idea that it is Prof. Kettleburn
hook line and sinker, and be looking to find out what it is he brought with him
or what he’s doing. The break would give them an ample chance to do that, and
in so doing possibly get them the wrong side of the carnivorous Occamy. By, for
example, getting too close to its eggs. This might make a good “Fluffy”
analogue. If they get caught doing this have it be by professor Flitwick or,
better still, Briar. Both with scold them for it and take away some house
points, but Briar will subtly push them to continuing to keep an eye on the
mysterious Kettleburn.
The PCs, if they spy on him directly, will see him with his
shirt off at some point. If they sneak into is rooms they’ll find a satchel
labeled “Newcastle, October 1945”, which contains everything that Kettleburn
was able to salvage from Slaughter’s flat – including the bag itself, which was
Slaighter’s Galdstone from his days in India and carried with him for life.
The might think that it’s Dr. Plain, since he was born in
the same year that Slaughter died. It’s a good guess, but it was 1945 – a lot
of kids were born in 1945! The Muggle doctor is being incredibly solicitous of
his wife, who is now showing quite a bit, and doing everything he can to make
sure that nothing bad happens to her. They might take this as him “protecting
his investment” but it’s perfectly normal. He’s also carrying on lots of
interviews with the students. Who are there over Easter Break, asking them if
they’ve seen or heard anything strange, suspicious, what have you, with a focus
now on the PCs. Well duh! He’s finding out what first year students might see
as normal or odd for his research.
He will reveal some things about himself to the students but
not much. Questions about where he was born, for example, will be met with
“well that’s a very strange and personal question?” On the other hand, he will
ask the students what they know about Astrology, it being a Muggle perception of
magic, and reveal that he is a Gemini. If they think to compare that, his
birthday must fall between May 22nd and June 23rd 1945,
but Slaughter was found dead in September! Does this invalidate him as a
suspect? Is he just, perchance, lying?
They will also learn that he has requested, and been
granted, a small room that he can lock and store things. He’s very secretive
about what’s in there, but keeps finding time to slip away. If the PCs break
into it they’ll find that he’s building a nursery and playroom, with the
assurances from Ogham and McGonnagal that they’ll be magic the door to open
into his & Rosemary’s room, so that he can surprise her for the first 3
months that the child will be at the school. Inside the room are the muggle
toys and chest that he brought to the school after Christmas. Any attempts to
find magical resonance are doomed to failure.
Or they might have settled (correctly) on Briar. This will
make things harder, as I’m not sure exactly what they’ll be doing. They will be
unable to sneak up on her doing anything she oughtn’t because of the location
charms on their protective amulets (unless they’re so suspicious they take them
off, in which case I might want to give them some sort of circumstance to block
them from seeing too much). Right now, however, she has everything she needs to
perform the spell except a reliably live baby and Woden.
They might confer with one of the other professors, perhaps
Lippershey, to get advice or help on how to handle the detection of such a
spell. Of course, they would also be spending time with Lippershey as the Dee
boys are there for the recreation of
Henry Morgan’s sacking of Panama. (In 1667, Morgan was commissioned by
Modyford to capture some Spanish prisoners in Cuba in order to discover details
of the threatened attack on Jamaica. Collecting ten ships with five hundred
men, Morgan landed on the island and captured and sacked Puerto Principe, then went
on to take the fortified & well-garrisoned town of Portobelo, Panama. It is
said that Morgan's men used captured Jesuits as human shields in taking the
third, most difficult fortress). Lippershey volunteers to take the part of the
Panamnians, and the PCs have to figure out how to get their troops to sacrifice
the Jesuits.
Anything else at this time is just playing by ear.
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