By the way, I'd worry more about Lindsey's con abilities rather than her magical to summon the spirit. She is lying pretty bluntly, and even mundanes can sense magic with perception and so forth. (awakened get +2 I think to the perception test) I am not sure what applies exactly to conjuring - at any case that summoned spirit can be traced back to her with a successful assessing test. And there is also the possibility to trace from Lindsey to the spirit and to the (burning or very hot) armors that would not 'disappear'.

I do not mind her being nasty it is a great read, but there are risks to bluntly lying and manipulating people like that.

I think she cleared her traces, in the astral at least: "Lindsey is already hard at work scrubbing the glowing traces left behind from the elemental's passage out of 'existence'" in the camp. If Sim (or Cailin, or a spirit summoned just for that) looks for it outside of the camp, it might be possible to find, but it's not easy given the background. And with each passing hour, it'll be even less so.

As for the perceiving magic side of things, it would be a perception test with a threshold of Summoning - Spirit Force. So 2 in this instance. With the night, no one is looking when she does it, there are probably some modifiers to a perception roll.

So all in all... I wouldn't cry if she got caught, but in this case I don't think it's likely...

So yeah, Scrap's voice is still being found. Sentences will be shorter as she is more agitated. It should be obvious, but she is not exactly keen on herself, or being social.

...as for the spirit stealing away the armor, I wonder where it went.

Ask Dana, she's probably the thief ^^

And she killed Grok and assaulted that girl on the first day, too!

in plain sight, with a crowed of people some would score it, just likely.

I'll admit I'm a bit fuzzy on the current conditions in the camp.
I thought it was at night (or late evening at least) and that most of those in the main camp were asleep. But if that's not the case, probably yeah.

At least Lindsey did not drop the armors at the second camp. Now that would have been extremely evil.

Not necessarily. Sure, the hot-headed ones in the camp wouldn't have needed more to scream bloody murder. But some of them (and I'm pretty sure Rick is one of them) would realise it would have been pretty stupid of us to do that. And while he may not be fond of Maya or Dana, I don't think he believes they are that stupid.
Of course with Lindsey muddying the waters it could turn pretty ugly, but it would be a very risky gamble. A good way to drive a wedge between Rick and his troops if it works though.

As Cailin pointed out I seriously doubt it...the three or so girls with her hardly constitute a crowd, are loyal to her anyway and have little reason to doubt her even if they weren't. It is 'night' more or less at the time of the spirit intervention...at least on my reading of it all anyway, IrnOrchid may like to clarify? Teenagers are fairly self obsessed and probably less perceptive than younger kids, at least from my perspective as an old git with young kids anyway

I can't see exactly what Lindsey's end game is in all this but I'm looking forward to finding out!

Hop, second part of the BG (in spoiler, in case anyone wants to read). Last part of the adventures of one Devin MacDough in the land of the dandelion-eaters. Next one will probably take place when Cailin is ten or something like that I think.
I didn't read it over as extensively as I should have, so there are probably many mistakes, sorry
It was much longer than I expected so once I typed the last word, I just wanted to post it and forget it... I'll come back to it later to fix that.

Spoiler makes reading difficult - but copying it to word worked.

That's because you have to earn it
And I thought it would be better than a wall of text completely unrelated to the action in the middle of it.

So, my understanding of rules and such to make sure we're on the same page. If I made any mistakes, let me know and I'll edit or suffer the fallout. Don't want anyone to think I'm intentionally bending rules for advantage.

Timing: This was intended to be during the last watch before dawn, so somewhere in the 3am-5am period. I did that so Addie could wake up for her guard shift and participate if she wanted to.

*******

Con: Lindsey was careful not to say anything that could be flagged directly as counterfactual. She heard Rick mention Sim could tell truth somehow previously. She does have 15 dice in Con though, which is pretty burly.

An elemental just flew out of the middle of the stockpile and disappeared over the trees!: Truth

I'm not sure what kind it was, it was flaming at first but then those blew away.: Truth. She's Uneducated and this was her first attempt at summoning a non-Spirit of Man, ever. In fact her first real attempt at summoning a "spirit". Guess that explains the rolls.

I was looking over there when I heard Nora.: Truth

By the time I was able to try and examine its glow, it was already virtually gone.: Most arguable statement. Could say a F3 in a BGC2 area is already "virtually gone", but also, she never tried to "examine" it.

I've never seen it fade that fast.: Truth

Maybe it's something to do with the strangeness of this place?: Leading question.

James didn't see anything either.: Truth. He/it didn't even look.

And that thing was way faster than he can go, so I'm really not sure what it was.: Truth

Do you think it was those mages with Maya?: Leading question.

*******

Magic Detection:

I knew mundanes could detect Spells/Powers, that's why she's not been using Confusion/Influence/Fear, but I didn't think that applied to the act of Summoning itself. Reading the rules now though, it says specifically that sometimes Spirits cause the air to shimmer, even from Astral. Aria, if you want the people around the fire to roll to perceive that, I can RP an explanation for it if need be (Threshold 3 or 4 (Summoning 6 - F2 or F3 depending on how you interpret this interacting with Spirit Whisperer) I'd think? Possible modifiers for nighttime/firelight?).

For the Astral Signature, in my head, Spirits don't leave a constant ooze of signature all over Astral. that would be a right mess. I thought when they "do" something (skill check, power use, etc) then it "stamps" the signature at that point. The rules get real messy as far as scrubbing signatures if Spirits leave it constantly (what radius can you scrub per combat turn, can you scrub faster than it poops it out, etc). For linking the spirit to Lindsey, I thought you'd need either existing signature or to see the elemental itself. My hope was for the spirit to be out of sight before Sim woke up, got out of the tent, and thought to turn on Astral Perception. If I need to roll something there, let me know (and I'll need to know if the Spirit is allowed to use Movement without consuming a service).

For tracing from Lindsey to the Spirit, how does that work?

*******

Anyway, just let me know if I need to change anything or adjust stuff in the future.

I think it's that the purples and blues that look nice on the black background get washed out in the whitish/grey background of the spoiler. I was able to read it on my computer, but probably wouldn't be able to on the phone.

Ha probably, I didn't test on a phone/tablet and since it was fine on my computer...

Page 315 core rule book.

Nearly all magical things (spirits, spells, foci, and magical lodges) have an astral link to whoever was responsible for them. Active spells are linked to their casters,
spirits are linked to their summoners, astrally projecting
magicians are linked to their physical bodies, and foci
and magical lodges are linked to the magicians who activated them. Awakened entities who assense the astral signature of these astral forms can track their links
through the astral plane back to their sources. Following an astral link requires an Assensing + Intuition (5,1
hour) [Astral] Extended Test modified as noted on the
Astral Tracking Modifiers table.


So basically, it is an extended test with a threshold of 3. (One of the modifiers is tracking a master by spirit +2, this is how I got to 3).

For spells, focuses and their ilk it is just a treshold of 1.

The interval is 1 hour - but extra hits can shorten needed time. So it is not that difficult for people skilled in assensing to trace these things back to Lindsey.

I am not coming to rule lawyer and I like the scene, just saying that using magic in front of people can have consequences, spirits can be traced, sustained spells can be traced and so forth.
As much as I know, astral 'clean up' does not make it go away, it raises the threshold required to identify the astral signature, and if someone identifies the signature with the increased threshold they know that you tried to hide it.

Page 315 core rule book.

Nearly all magical things (spirits, spells, foci, and magical lodges) have an astral link to whoever was responsible for them. Active spells are linked to their casters,
spirits are linked to their summoners, astrally projecting
magicians are linked to their physical bodies, and foci
and magical lodges are linked to the magicians who activated them. Awakened entities who assense the astral signature of these astral forms can track their links
through the astral plane back to their sources. Following an astral link requires an Assensing + Intuition (5,1
hour) [Astral] Extended Test modified as noted on the
Astral Tracking Modifiers table.


So basically, it is an extended test with a threshold of 3. (One of the modifiers is tracking a master by spirit +2, this is how I got to 3).

For spells, focuses and their ilk it is just a treshold of 1.

The interval is 1 hour - but extra hits can shorten needed time. So it is not that difficult for people skilled in assensing to trace these things back to Lindsey.

I am not coming to rule lawyer and I like the scene, just saying that using magic in front of people can have consequences, spirits can be traced, sustained spells can be traced and so forth.
As much as I know, astral 'clean up' does not make it go away, it raises the threshold required to identify the astral signature, and if someone identifies the signature with the increased threshold they know that you tried to hide it.

Right, my understanding is all the linkage tracing goes from the magic thing back to the originator of the magical thing. I've not seen anything that says you can Assense Lindsey and then follow a magical link to the Spirit. It only works if you Assense the spirit (which is long gone) and follow that link back to Lindsey, right? Nothing in the Assensing Table mentions being able to see the Sustained Spells or Spirits (bound or otherwise) that the mage has. Or am I missing something?

For cleaning, I was going by "A magician using astral perception can “wipe clean” a temporary astral signature (such as from sorcery) or
hasten its normal fading. A magician can spend a Complex Action to reduce the amount of time it takes for the signature to fade by 1 hour (mentally pushing the signature into the background energy, if you will). No test is required. This action can be done multiple times until the astral signature is gone." A F3 signature in a BGC of 2 should only have a duration of 1 hour, thus requiring 1 Complex Action to eliminate. Reading the Astral Tracking bit, it again seems to go only from Spirit to Mage, not the other way around.

I get that there are consequences for Magic, but I've been intentionally working to mitigate/avoid them. Just trying to figure out if I've made a misstep. Rules Lawyer is fine, I want to do things correctly.

It was also my impression that a spirit doesn’t leave a signature, per se. If you see a spirit you can try to track back to its master, and that probably is some sort of astral trail – but you can’t tell ‘a fire spirit was here an hour ago.’ So yes, anyone who saw the spirit would have a chance to trace it back to Lindsey, and her summoning left a trace (that she cleaned up). But I really don’t think that all the various spirits that are around leave noticeable ‘footprints’ everywhere that they go – I’ve never seen it in books talking about how dangerous it is for a mage to simply have a spirit.

On a different note: If Lindsey's theft is that late in the night (in the pre-dawn hours), then I think some of the unconscious hunters would wake up before then? They have filled stun boxes, but should be rolling a fair number of dice each hour, even given the slightly rough conditions. (I think it is body+will+1 (for Addie's medicine roll, assuming that doesn't get retconned by rough conditions/lack of tools) then -2 I think for rough conditions? So probably something like six dice for the humans and nine for the dwarf? Not sure how many boxes of recovery before they actually wake up for real, however.

Astral Signature is p312:



So Lindsey can completely remove her signature. Only Sim in the main camp would have a chance to see her remove the signature. But it would take less than 10 seconds for Lindsey to completely remove the signature at the camp, and since Sim is asleep at that time, there's no way he can find out.
However as long as the spirit is using Engulf, which is a power, he produces a signature*. And while the signature at the camp has been scrubbed, that's not the case outside. As such, finding the spirit itself would probably be quite straightforward: it's still using its engulf power (and if it's using its Movement power, it's even worse), which will leave a Signature. So Sim would have one, maybe two Force 4 signatures to follow. You don't need any roll to follow a signature (only to read it, and he probably doesn't care what exactly is the signature at the moment) so that's not an issue. Since Sim would be in the astral and the spirit materialized, he would catch up pretty quickly, even with the spirit using movement.

So, spirit found, and clothes probably too. However, finding Lindsey from the spirit is another matter entirely. Sim would need three successes on an Assenssing roll. Even if he succeeds at the first try (which is by no mean easy with the Background Count, and I don't know how much he has in Assenssing anyway. Except maybe if he could teamwork with a spirit? Or had a big one looking for him.), it still takes one complete hour. I seriously doubt that the spirit stayed around that long, even if Sim and one of his own spirits didn't disrupt it.

So most probably, Lindsey is safe, and the clothes are found (but would probably require a lengthy trek to recover). But I suspect Lindsey will not really care that the clothes are found. While not the perfect result she would have expected, she instilled doubt which was probably her main goal anyway.

* : A signature lasts for a number of hours equal to the magical effect’s Force after the effect (spell, critter power, astral battle, or whatever it was) ends, slowly fading into the background. (CRB, p312)

Hurm, I was thinking that Engulf would just leave a signature when it was used. I was mainly having the spirit use it for fancy effect. I mean, it can just pick the packets up with its hands. If that's how signatures work, then I'll just edit it so that the spirit grabs the packets, unless anyone objects?

You could of course.
But I don't think it would change the final result. Not using its powers, the spirit would be for all intents and purposes just next door in astral space. And the spirit has no way to hide itself. Just with an astral perception, Sim would probably only need seconds to find it.

At best, I think you could have the spirit grab the clothes, dash for a minute, stuff the clothes in the first ditch/hole/whatever it found, and free it. The clothes wouldn't be too far, but still not easy to find. And you wouldn't be able to be found either.
What you do after that I don't know, but well... I'm sure you can find solutions (of course, if you don't, I won't cry over it )

How would Sim find the spirit if it has a significant head start? If not using Engulf it wouldn't be leaving a 'snail trail' behind it, right? He can't just pop into Astral and say 'Take me to the spirit with the clothes packets!" right?

Just trying to make sure I know for the future. As long as she's not pinned for the spirit, I don't really care what happens to the clothes. As soon as Sim finds the spirit though, isn't it trivial to pin it on her?

Edit: Quick math give the air spirit a materialized speed of roughly 40km/hr assuming it's allowed to buy 1 hit on a running test. 30km/hr if not.

No he can't, just "pop in the astral and say "find this". However, the astral is pretty dim, and a spirit's aura is pretty visible. Given the speed you can go in the astral (even if it's reduced here), it would probably be easy. The spirit materialised has the dual-nature and thus quite visible (especially here with no building to break lines of sight). And the head-start is pretty small given the girls who yelled as soon as they saw the spirit. At most a minute probably. The spirit, even if it is an air spirit, can't have gone far: Force 4 means Agility 7. So a run rate of 28m / turn. It can add +10m per success on a roll, so 6d, let's say 2. That would be a total of 48m / turn. So Less than a kilometer in a minute.

Finding the spirit however doesn't mean he can find Lindsey. He would need to get three successes on an Assensing roll plus at least one hour. If he does get the three successes before the spirit is freed, then yes, he can find Lindsey. But I seriously doubt it would happen here. And, that's not taking into account the fact that Sim's main goal would probably be to stop the spirit, which he can only do by disrupting it. Once the spirit is disrupted, there's no way to find the summoner.

So whatever happens, I'm pretty sure Lindsey is clear. But I can't imagine the clothes going too far either.

Don't trees block Astral sight? I know the tents do. All it needs to do is get to the tree line.

And he doesn't need to do Astral Tracking to know it's her. Tracking is to follow the link back to an unknown caster. 3 hits on just bog standard Assensing test gives you the signatures on the subject (ie: Lindsey's).

Hum right, I forgot that since he knows your signature, he could just recognise it. It would require 3 successes which is not that easy to get given the circumstances, but possible I suppose.

As far as trees go... I didn't study the map that much, but I don't remember something dense enough to hide the spirit though so...Maybe? Can't do much more than that here ^^
It would be a huge risk to Lindsey though. After that, I can't say much more (and I'm not sure I could be impartial then so I'll just shut up ^^)

Heh, k, I guess it comes down to Aria then. How long does it take Sim to get his Astral Projection going on or does he take Lindsey's word that "it's gone" and just checks the area with his sight? If he is gonna project, how far away is the tree line and is it thick enough to block astral sight? If he suddenly drops to the ground from projecting, she's gonna have to get her damage control on!

What is 'as far as possible' mean for a spirit in this situation? Personally, given that they are not apt to like the background count, I'd guess that once this becomes a remote service (100 * Lindsey's magic rating) it wouldn't stick around much longer. That is ‘far away’ from Lindsey in spirit terms, and it doesn’t really want to be here in the first place …

Also, would Lindsey even know of the engulf power? She seems pretty ignorant about spirits outside of her ‘friends.’ Granted that the instructions aren’t really English and the thought/concept of a cloud of smoke sucking the packets inside it could well mean engulf, but possibly would also mean simply grabbing them in the way that a cloud of smoke would grab anything, I would think.

Lindsey's intention would have basically been "get *item description* as far away from here as fast as you can" with plans to cover up the traces left behind by the spirit. I added the engulf cause I thought it was a nice image for the spirit to sweep the stuff up inside it instead of bending over and picking it up. But yeah, she really has no idea what the spirit is actually capable of that's different from a Spirit of Man or Beast, she was just trying to summon one that was least like her normal ones as possible that wasn't a Beast. So if Aria wants to RP the spirit doing something different based on her intention, that's cool.

As far as the remote service aspect, I'm not sure spirits do the whole 'I'm a genie so I'm going to narrowly interpret your wish in order to screw you" thing. I wouldn't think saying "as far as possible" instead of "500 miles" would let it shirk it's job like that. It's "possible" for the spirit to go more than 100m.

Well, 600 meters (100 meters times magic...at least I think 600, character sheet on obsidian portal has magic listed at 0 if I'm reading it right, but it based on priorities and edge I'm guessing it should be six). And sure the spirit would probably go farther, just saying that at around that point it might start thinking about 'how far is far enough? I can't even really feel her anymore ....' And agreed that they aren't nasty genies in general - but they are not going to want to stick around in a background count any longer than they really need to, I'd think. (Granted that I may be looking at it this way as I think it is more entertaining if the suits are like a kilometer or two away, not 100 kilometers away)

But those are just my thoughts: agreed that at this point Aria needs to decide how that plays out.

Also, since you put it when Addie would be on watch, I'll have her respond to the ruckus, but pretty sure she wasn't around the fire.

The spirit gets to be F2 due to background count, and so forth - it is not THAT fast - it would remain visible for a while as it flies away. (We can see quite far to the air). Then again it is night - at any case we're over thinking it.

The whole spirits in BGC thing is annoying. RAW it looks like for speed it moves like a F3 (since there's no roll involved) but if it sprints it suffers the 2 dice penalty for that attempt (which, looking at an air spirit actually puts it at a massive 2 die pool, since it's only 1 STR. )

I'm just trying to make sure I know the rules so next time I can do it better.

Some things straight about the rules.

1. BGC - the spirit loses 2 points of force - so it is F2 (until it leaves BGC).
2. The spirit has agility of 5 and takes -2 to any action it takes (it is a magical critter).

Therefore, the spirit has a movement rate of 10 meters/combat turn walking and 20 meters 'running'
If it does not use movement it moves quite slow and the more agile humans may be able to keep after it (until it goes over a cliff or something.)

If it uses the movement power - then the speed doubles to 20/40 and as it is like agility 10 human,
nobody is likely to be able to out run it. Even with sprinting and so forth.
However in that case it used a sustained power and therefore it leaves astral signature behind it.
Sim can therefore track the spirit with astral projection (and since it is not that fast, he will catch up very quickly.)
This puts Lindsey at some risk of being traced.
(in both cases really, especially if the spirit is going to carry the goods very far. )

This is my interpertation anyhow - the way I read the rules and apply them to the situation.

Can you source the spirit losing 2 points of Force? Last time I talked about it I thought we determined that was a relic from previous editions and now they just have a 2 dice penalty on actions.

I cannot source it, I was under the impression that that we decided to take that interpretation. (this is why I keep summoning F3 with my 5 dice - otherwise I'd use F1). With force 4 it does not change that much, the spirit will have agility 7 and probably difficult to out run. (not impossible but very difficult considering that it is not affected by gravity).

If it uses movement power than it is now 4 times faster and cannot be out run, but it leaves a trace as to whee it is heading, and Sim can easily follow that trace and find find the spirit as movement is a magical power and thus leaves signature. (this is why you did not want the engulf in the first place).

Hope it helps anyhow.

In fact I'm pretty sure it does not lose force -- last discussion I went back and reread the BG rules just to be sure on that. Lose BC dice on all roles, but force is not changed (unlike sustained spells)

I thought you did that because a F1 would have a pool of 0 for many tasks.

For the Force thing, it was decided that it was not reduced (and probably a remnant from previous edition).

As I said earlier, the spirit should have a running speed of 28m/turn, with a 4d (Strength 2 + Running 4 - 2 BGC) pool to sprint, so with a bit more than 1 success/turn, its speed becomes slightly more than 38m/turn, let's say 40m/turn (except that earlier I used agility and not strength to sprint).
This translates as a 800m/minute speed (or 48km/h).

So no way anyone can catch up to it, cliff or no cliff. However, 800m per minute is not that much: in the astral it's just around the corner and even with the BGC, it's quite visible there.
The question becomes "does Sim check the astral before the spirit reaches a cover, such as a forest for example?" (Careful with the order too, with a simple "grab stuff and run as far away and as fast as possible", would it even try to use cover?)

Good thing the spirits are not nasty genies, it could have just flown straight up then ^^

Laugh, what's the terminal velocity of a package of armored clothing dropped from whatever height the spirit poofs at?

And is the thermal insulation good enough to hold up against that air friction ?

All that assumes Sim is stupid enough to go haring off into the astral after a spirit with a bunch of clothes that aren't actually materially useful to the group! Rick will want him to stick around in case this is a precursor to Dana assaulting the group, and by the time they realise it will be too late! There was a reason he waited to go out scouting with Cailin and didn't solo it before that!

Lindsey's machinations go unnoticed for a bit longer!

Muhahahaha!

I appreciate the discussion on the rules though. I'll make sure to take it into account next time. Hiding magic use is *HARD*.

They really fear Dana to assault an entire camp? I am flattered.

I'll be disappointed if Dana doesn't perform as advertised

Most ordinary people believe mages can do anything

Well I thought we'll need to deliver a huge tiger carcass to make her truly fearsome.

Are you still working on the scene at night? or can we skip to the morrning where Dana would come with a big pile of meat and the way it looks now will be welcomed with mistrust and perhaps even hostility.

Well, given that Maya is in the morning, I suppose we can ^^
Lindsey's actions were at the end of the night anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem I guess

Lindsey is done for the night. Beta was going to have Addie interact with the scene though.