1. Journals

Ember - Worldmiths 2: What the hex?

Session
Ember's Diary 2022-06-18

Notice for readers

Session 1 of the Worldsmiths Inc. adventure was ran by Beefpotato and covered the joint creation of a new setting of the players' original design, and resulted in the creation of a high magic aetherpunk semi-dystopian city state, and it was decided that the story would be a noir-style mystery.
Starting from the second session, the game was ran by Ornstein, and it followed the player characters within the world they created. Inside it, they embodied alternate versions of themselves native to the setting, with no knowledge of Worldsmiths, Everwhere, or any of their past adventures. As such, the characters may be slightly different from their usual selves, and the game involved much less meta hijinx than what usually occurs in TFE.


Just another day for now

Hey diary, sorry that I’ve only been using you to track readings recently, but I think today warrants a change of pace, because boy was it wild.
The day started out pretty normal, in the morning I worked around the shop, helped a lady choose some scented candles for her date, sold a few discoloured soaps using the new pigments mum got the other day, and all in all just a normal morning.
After lunch, I set fresh tinder in Ashes’ litterbox, and headed out to my usual fortune-telling spot in front of Jellica’s bar.

Reading 1 - Wedding Fever

Context: young couple getting married next Saturday, came together and asked about the bride’s mother who’s been coming down with the blue flu since last week’s round of rain shakes.

Spread: [21 - SUN] [9-S] [2-C]

Interpretation: the mother will be fine and will be able to attend the wedding, but there’s something else going on. One of the two is having some reservations about something, and keeping it bottled up is causing them a lot of anxiety. The two of them should talk about their feelings, and things should end up for the better.

Notes: the groom seemed a bit nervous when I said that the bride’s mother would be able to attend the wedding, and he got a bit snappy when I said that one of them is worried about something. Guess the mother in law isn’t his favourite person?
Cute couple overall, I hope they have a nice wedding.

Reading 2 - Midlife Crisis?

Context: middle-aged man feels his relationship with his wife is falling apart. They’ve barely talked since kids moved out, and he doesn’t like that they’re drifting apart. He heard from a guy who heard from a guy that there’s some flower-mushroom thing that grows outside the city that would make them fall in love all over again, and he came to me to make sure he’s going to find it.

Spread: [K-C] [8-C] [5-S]

Interpretation: the man wants to go on a daring adventure to win back his supposed true love (gee cards, really?), but he’s missing the bigger picture, which is that he and his wife have simply grown apart, and if he wants to fix the issue he needs to do it with words, not by some kid with playing cards leading him to a mystical flower-mushroom thing. The truth is, that if he goes on the adventure, it will likely be the last straw, that will irreparably sever their relationship.

Clarifications: the man insisted I was wrong about the outcome of his “quest”, and wanted clarification on the third card. Three times.
[16 - TOWER] something bad will probably happen while he’s on his journey outside the city, he’ll probably be in great danger.
[5-P] he might get badly injured, maybe even crippled.
[8 - DEATH] pretty self explanatory at this point.

Notes: I’m glad I insist on getting payment before I lay the cards, because this guy just stormed away the moment I flipped the last one, saying that he’s going out just to prove me wrong. Good thing I don’t work on commission.
Side note, I should start charging extra for clarification cards.

On to the weird stuff

A few minutes after the last guy left, a swarm of law officers passed by, heading in the general direction of the market. They mostly ignored me, though the last one of the bunch gave me a weird look. I gave him the usual spiel of asking if he wants a reading, and he walked over to where I was sitting.
He knelt down next to me and whispered that something is about to go down, and that I should leave the area. I figured it’s probably some gangs that got tied up in a turf war, though it would have had to escalate quite a bit for so many officers to be sent to one place.
Out of curiosity I asked him why he thinks I should go, but as expected he didn’t really answer. Instead he just asked me how old am I, and if I have some friends I can hole up with, then gave me a handful of coin.
Serious question now: do I look like a street urchin? Sure, Underwall Steev isn’t exactly the richest part of the city, but it’s not like I’ve been eating dirt all my life. I still have parents.
After his ominous (and presumptuous) warning, the officer walked away after the rest of his buddies.

A minute later, when I was sure they were out of earshot, I went after them.
They had closed off a couple of alleys, using their famous Impenetrabile Red Tape of Please Don’t Just Crouch Under It, and an amazing lack of officers on watch.
I found a small exposed Ley Channel running down the side of a building around the corner, and did a quick headcount. There were probably around twenty officers walking about with their fancy schmancy wands glowing like beacons - and there was something else. I wasn’t sure what the other thing was, but it was strong, and it was right underneath the center of the area that the officers blocked off.
So I put on my imaginary skulking hat, and skulked on in.

Avoiding the officers was easy, their wands and sigils glowing brightly to anyone with even the slightest ability to sense them, and I quickly found my way to the basement of a house.
The air was thick with dust, but I could see three people there - two were officers, and surprisingly, the third was an Architect. The three were monitoring the work of a sigilcraft device that seemed to be crumbling one of the basement’s walls to dust.

I figured it was probably just regular maintenance work, where the Architect was supposed to demolish part of the building, with the officers there to make sure no one gets hurt in case it collapsed, so I turned to leave. But curse my luck, just as I turned around, the officer from before was right behind me.
He raised a finger in a shushing motion, then put a hand on my shoulder and led me away from the basement, back to the alleys. He seemed to be very careful on the way out, waiting before turning corners and opening doors, as if he was trying to avoid other officers seeing me there. I guess that’s nice of him, not that I did anything wrong?
When we got out, he started scolding me, going on about how he told me to stay away, and instead I went further in. Please, it’s not like I’m under any obligation to follow his recommendations.
I was going to say something like that, but caught myself at the last moment. I was getting angry, and getting him angry would only make it worse - and I didn’t want anything to catch on fire right now, not in front of an officer. I considered playing along, apologising and walking away, but that would probably just make him more smug and condescending, which would just make me even more annoyed.

So I panicked, and my brain just ran with whatever it could come up with. It said that I was a student at the Andromeda academy of magic, currently doing a research project on architectural sigils, and I was hoping to talk to the Architect about his work.
Not my worst lie, I guess. I did get to take a class on architectural sigils while I was still at the academy, though obviously the final assignment there was completely theoretical. The only way they let us waste an actual Architect’s time was when one of the students’ parents who was an Architect came to talk to us.
Anyway, it wasn’t a great fib, because I was on the opposite side of the city on a school night, not wearing school uniform, and busking for loose change. Yeah, not my greatest piece of work, but at least it hopefully wouldn’t escalate the situation.

Obviously mister condescendipants saw through it and just gave me a deadpan glare. I shrugged, and he shook his head in disappointment. Man, this guy doesn’t even need to speak to be condescending. Better than him getting angry and everything getting on fire, I guess.
Finally he slipped another coin into my pocket and told me to just go away, then left. I gave some weak retort about how I don’t need his money, but the dude just kept walking away.
Hexes, do I hate the officers in this city sometimes.

Peace and quiet? Please?

With the officers gone, I went back to my spot across from Jellica’s bar. I sat there for a while waiting for someone to pass by, all the while feeling the sigil engine running under the street. Its thumping felt stronger than the rain drumming on the roof of the city, and the ley energy was so strong it was practically visible even through the ground.
Why were there so many officers involved in this? It didn’t make sense for them to establish such a big perimeter just as a precaution, there’s no way demolishing could cause that much collateral damage, not with an Architect on site. And that specific officer acted so weird, the way he avoided all the others and looked for me specifically, even before I snuck into the place.
Something was going on in that basement, something was hidden behind the wall they were tearing down, and I wanted to know what.

I made sure no one was looking, and pulled out my cards. I swear I only meant to do a simple reading with no fancy magics beyond what I needed to power the cards, but the moment I flipped the first card my mind started to wander and I started getting visions.

Reading 3 - what the hex?

Context: ^^^

Spread: [14 - TEMPERANCE] [6-S] [5-P]

Interpretation / Reading: The beginning was easy, my deck almost always uses Temperance to represent either Architects or sigils. I saw a vision of the Architect with working with his Sigilcraft engine alongside two officers. I looked closer at the scene, wondering why the cards were showing me my own memory, when I realised I was actually looking at a slightly different scene. One of the officers here was a woman while the two I saw were men, and this Architect had a different set of runes on his jacket. Was this happening right now, in some other corner of the city? How many places where they digging?
I flipped the second card, and looked at it for a moment in confusion. Were the Architects trying to hide something? Is that why they surrounded themselves with law officers? I frowned, trying to figure out what the cards were trying to tell me. Maybe the Architects were looking for something lost, and this was a sort of research mission?
The vision zoomed in on the hole in the wall, turning to show a veil of darkness hiding whatever stood behind the wall. But a noise came through, the powerful rumble of the rain hitting the city, crashing through the pipes that ran from the top Steevs to the bottom, shaking and rumbling every building and street. The Architects were tapping into these channels, they were looking for something in the pipes!
I flipped the third card, and within the vision something flew out of the dark hole in the wall, and the officers gasped in surprise as it squelched to the ground before them.
They were looking for a body.

They just can’t leave me alone, can they?

A sudden sound snapped me out of the vision, and I looked up from the cards with my heart thumping in my ears, almost expecting to see a dead body lying before me. I don’t know if for better or worse, but instead of a dead body there was a group of officers riding down the alley on one of their fancy pelican-rafts, along with the weird bartender from Jellica’s bar, the one with the horrendously augmented face and eyes.
One of the officers hopped off the vehicle as they passed by, and he walked my way. I don’t know if I looked like I was going to run or attack him or what, but his hand hovered over his wand the whole time, which totally wasn’t threatening at all.
I mean, I really don’t know what he thought I would do, when a dozen of his friends were still riding along only ten paces from us. It’s not like I could take them in a straight fight, and even if I managed to outrun them, there’s no way I could dodge a dozen officers zapping stunning hexes at me.
So instead I stood still like an obedient little boy, and tried as hard as I could to calm down and keep the image of the dead body out of my head. I didn’t know if they had any thought-readers among them, but even if they didn’t, it wouldn’t help anyone for me to panic over a probably nonexistent corpse and accidentally set something on fire.

The officer pulled out a silvery-grey sigiled box and told me to empty my pockets, so I made a big show of taking everything out and showing it to him. Seriously, did he think I was doing drugs in a busy alley in the middle of the city, not even twenty metres from a spot where they had set up a barricade?
So, I showed him what I had, which was just the few coins I had (legally) gotten for my readings, a stick of incense my mothers had (legally) made, the tarot deck that my mothers had (legally) bought me for my 12th birthday, and the extra coin that the previous officer had slipped in my pocket when he was done trying to act like he was better than me.
And then the sigil on the box glowed.

The officer apologised, and said that I have to come with them to the station. I asked why, and he said that that coin was marked with a special sigil that marks me as a suspected criminal.
I tried telling him that I got the coin as payment for a reading, that I didn’t do anything, that I can’t be the person they’re looking for. He apologised again, and with a hand still on his wand told me that I need to come with him, and that I’m suspected for murder.
I swear to the stars, I have no idea how nothing caught fire at that moment.

This just keeps getting better

I got taken to the Halls of Justice alongside the weird bartender, who turns out is also a suspect in this case. We were left in an interrogation room for a while, and I tried to start some small talk, but he didn’t seem interested, and I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a serial killer now.
A few minutes later a slightly older officer came into the room, alongside a woman with red skin, fancy expensive clothes, and (literally) burning red hair, who is apparently the third murder suspect.

So the investigator told us that we’re suspects in the murder of the Architect who was in charge of the city festival, and he started his investigation with the most genius of questions ever asked on this earth: “are you guys with AMO?”
Oh yes, mister monocle-and-pipe investigator, the woman with magically burning hair, the man who replaced his eyeballs with Sigilcraft rocks, and the kid who literally has to spend every waking minute trying not to accidentally use his magic - these are the three people who you should ask if they’re part of a group that literally calls themselves ANTI MAGIC ORGANISATION and calls for the outlawing of any sort of magic in the city.
What a keen deduction, officer.