MrKingOfNegativity

Secret Histories feats (Live and Let Drood)

May 3rd, 2020
87
0
Never
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 13.17 KB | None | 0 0
  1. Molly raises several shields, a "No See" zone and numerous serious avoidance spells, and claims them to be low level for her or any other mage worth their salt:
  2.  
  3. She struck a witch’s pose, and her hands moved through a sinuous series of magical gestures. A slow presence gathered on the air around us and all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. A sudden cold wind came gusting down the hallway, disturbing the ashes. Molly spoke a single Word, almost too much for human vocal cords to bear, and the echoes of it trembled and shuddered all through the enclosed space.
  4. “There,” said Molly, relaxing just a little. “I’ve put some temporary shields in place: a No See zone over the Hall and serious avoidance spells around the perimeter. Low-level stuff, easily broken by anyone who knows what they’re looking for, but enough to buy us some time, so we can make a proper investigation. Where do you want to start, Eddie?”
  5. I didn’t thank her. It would only have embarrassed her. -Live and Let Drood
  6.  
  7. Molly can summon sharp winds with a snap of the fingers:
  8.  
  9. She raised one hand and snapped her fingers imperiously. A sharp breeze blew in from the open doors and rushed down the hallway, dispersing the smoke and blowing away the soot and ashes. The breeze died away quickly, before it could disturb anything precarious. -Live and Let Drood
  10.  
  11. Molly erects a forcefield with a word:
  12.  
  13. Molly threw an arm around me and thrust her other hand up at the descending ceiling. She said a very bad Word, and a shimmering protective shield appeared around us. The broken ceiling fell down, hit the shield and fell away, unable to touch us. The whole room shook as the entire ceiling came down in heavy chunks and pieces, followed by parts of the compressed floors above. Molly grabbed my arm and hauled me through the doorframe and out into the corridor. The shield came with us, still protecting us. Safely outside the room, Molly held me close as smoke and dust billowed out of the room after us. The room was filling up with wreckage from above, hammering loudly together as though annoyed it had missed its chance at us. -Live and Let Drood
  14.  
  15. Molly says there's a potentially infinite number of other dimensions:
  16.  
  17. “Life is too short to sweat the small shit,” Molly said briskly. “Given a potentially infinite number of other dimensions, an infinite number of choices and outcomes is always going to be possible. If it comforts you to think of that two-faced, treacherous bastard being still alive somewhere else, feel free to do so. After everything that man did and would have done to you, I don’t give a rat’s arse. We’re all alive, we’re all dead and everything in between, on the Wheels of If and Maybe.” -Live and Let Drood
  18.  
  19. Molly reverses a waterfall, then boils the water, then summons a gusting storm that causes numerous waves to form:
  20.  
  21. She struck her usual impressive witchy pose and then undermined it just a bit by dropping me a swift wink. She ran through a quick series of slashing hand and arm gestures while chanting something in debased Celtic. The waterfall poured down the craggy cliff face entirely unmoved…and then slowed and stopped. And then rose slowly upwards, reversing its path.
  22. There was still no response from the undine. Molly glared at the reverse waterfall, rolled up her sleeves and ran through a whole new series of gestures, throwing in half a dozen really unpleasant Words. The waterfall stopped again and resumed its normal downward path. But even as the waters thundered down the cliff face, they were already starting to steam, becoming boiling hot. The gentle haze at the foot of the fall disappeared, replaced with thick clouds of scalding steam. I backed away a few steps. Molly didn’t.
  23. Still no sign of the undine.
  24. Dark brooding thunderclouds appeared out of nowhere in the pleasant summer sky. A shadow fell across the great lake and nowhere else. Thunder roared and lightning stabbed down. Great gusting winds moved across the surface of the waters, raising massive waves that slammed back and forth, sending blasts of disturbed water splashing high over the sides of the lake. And still the undine wouldn’t answer. -Live and Let Drood
  25.  
  26. And then she threatens to do some shit that's even more extreme:
  27.  
  28. Molly was breathing harshly now and not just from the effort of so much hard conjuring. She kicked off her boots so she could dig her bare feet deep into the grassy lawn. Molly had a lot to say about being one with nature, but that usually meant nature doing what it was told, where Molly was concerned. She shot me a dark look, flicking her dark hair out of her sweaty face.
  29. “Give me a minute. I’m just getting started. I’m damned if I’m being ignored by a bloody jumped-up water elemental. Soon as I get my breath back, I’ll call up something so impressive and unnerving it’ll blast all the water out of this lake, crush the whole cliff face into rubble and tie the waterfall in a knot!”
  30. “Let me try something else first,” I said, soothingly. “Just…while you get your breath back.” -Live and Let Drood
  31.  
  32. For reference, that's about thirty feet of waterfall, not including the lake it's falling into:
  33.  
  34. “Hello. Sorry about all that.…Look. I’m Eddie Drood. I really do need your help. Please…talk to me.”
  35. The waterfall seemed to pause, halting itself in midfall while it considered the matter, and then slowly the undine appeared, forming herself out of the falling waters themselves. The whole waterfall bulged out here and there, taking on a human shape some thirty feet tall. -Live and Let Drood
  36.  
  37. Eddie absentmindedly runs through a checklist of Drood Hall's outer defenses:
  38.  
  39. “Why didn’t our outer defences kick in automatically?” I said to distract myself. “I mean, this whole place is lousy with built-in protections. Robot guns, sonic weapons, nerve gasses, stroboscopic lights and hallucinogenic mists, and a whole bunch of things the Geneva Convention’s never even heard of. Not to mention all the magical protections, the shaped curses and invisible flying hexes…They couldn’t have been off-line; they weren’t linked to the other Hall’s Operations and War rooms.”
  40. “You’re not thinking it through,” said Molly. “The Hall, your Hall, disappeared the moment Alpha Red Alpha was activated. There was no detectable attack from outside, so your protections never knew anything was wrong till it was all over.” -Live and Let Drood
  41.  
  42. Remember earlier in the series, when we learned that the Droods keep a guard of undead scarecrows made from the bodies of their most hated enemies? Well, here's an elaboration on how many there are, and what their function is:
  43.  
  44. I called to them silently, reaching out through the authority still built into my torc, and one by one they materialised out of nowhere, appearing all around us. I knew some of them. Laura Lye, the water elemental assassin, also known as the Liquidator. She drowned three Drood children before we brought her down. Mad Frankie Phantasm, who drifted through bedroom doors to murder innocents in their sleep. Roland the Headless Gunner, who should have stayed dead in Africa. And many more infamous names. One by one they blinked into existence, acknowledging the power I had over them as a Drood. Scarecrows, all of them, made from the bodies of our fallen enemies. Held back from the release of death to guard our grounds for us, forever and a day, or until they wore out.
  45. They formed circles and then rows around us, filling the copse of trees. They wore battered clothes from many periods of history. Dead but not departed, because my family wouldn’t let them go. Just enough life left in them to torment them. Because no one threatens us where we live and gets away with it.
  46. Molly moved in close beside me. She remembered the scarecrows now.
  47. My family makes scarecrows out of the bodies of our most hated enemies. Because we can, and because we believe in making the punishment fit the crime. Their faces are weather-beaten skin, stretched taut as parchment and just as brittle, cracked here and there by exposure to the elements. Thick tufts of straw protrude from their ears and mouths, but we leave their eyes. So we can see their suffering. Our enemies may hate us, but my family hates harder and longer. If you listen in on the right supernatural frequency, you can hear the scarecrows screaming.
  48. “I thought we destroyed them…” said Molly. Her voice was little more than a whisper.
  49. “They can’t be destroyed,” I said. “That’s the point. Tear them to pieces, burn them up; they just come back again. For as long as they’re needed. They’ll endure for as long as their scarecrow bodies last, and my family makes them well, to last centuries.”
  50. “Where are they?” said Molly. “When they aren’t here?”
  51. “Close by,” I said. “Hanging on their scarecrow crosses, waiting to be called. Don’t look at me like that, Molly. These are my family’s worst and most vicious enemies. They deserve this.…”
  52. “Do they? What about him?”
  53. She stabbed a hand shaking with emotion at one of the more recent scarecrows. The straw-stuffed thing we’d made out of the Blue Fairy’s body.
  54. Half elf, half Druid, we took him in and made him part of the family. Even though we knew what he was and what he’d done in the past. I vouched for him. And then we went to war together, against the Loathly Ones, and he struck down a Drood in the middle of battle, from behind, and stole his torc. I trusted him, and he betrayed me. I forgave him eventually. Just before he died in the great spy game of the Independent Agent, Alexander King.
  55. “He isn’t in there,” I said to Molly. “He was already dead when I sent him back to the Hall. That’s just his body.”
  56. “But why is he here? He was your friend! How could you allow your family to make him over into…that?”
  57. “Because he stole a torc,” I said steadily. “There is no greater crime against the Droods. Punishment, like justice, must be seen to be done. The scarecrows aren’t just our defenders; they’re a warning to our enemies.”
  58. “He was your friend,” Molly said coldly.
  59. “I wouldn’t have brought him back alive,” I said. “But there are many kinds of duty and responsibility when you’re a Drood. Why do you think I ran away first chance I got?”
  60. “Sometimes your family frightens me,” said Molly.
  61. “Sometimes they frighten me,” I said. “But we frighten our enemies more.”
  62. I turned slowly round in a circle, looking the scarecrows over carefully. More and more of them were still blinking into existence, answering my call. Dozens and dozens of them, maybe hundreds…I hadn’t realised there were so many. All of them standing unnaturally still, waiting for orders. Watching me with the eyes my family left them, hating and suffering and…Apparently there was a limit to what the Alpha Red Alpha field could affect. Or maybe they just weren’t alive enough. At least now I could make sure the Hall and grounds would be protected while I was gone.
  63. “Eddie,” said Molly. “I have seen and done bad things in my time, but never anything as cold-blooded as this. Enemies forced into half-life, denied the release of death, held as slaves…until they wear out…This isn’t right, Eddie.”
  64. “No, it isn’t,” I said. “But it’s necessary. There has to be someone here to fight for the Hall and the family on the few occasions, like this, when we can’t fight for ourselves. There has to be something here awful enough to frighten off those who aren’t frightened enough of Droods. Remember when the grounds were overrun by the army of Accelerated Men? Suicide soldiers sent in to kill us all, men and women and children? We used the scarecrows to guard the perimeter while we went out in our armour to meet the Accelerated Men head-to-head and hand-to-hand. They came to slaughter us, to wipe us out, and we killed them all. But that wasn’t enough. A message had to be sent to those watching from a distance.
  65. “So we took the bodies of the Accelerated Men, all of them, and made them into scarecrows. Stuffed with straw, hanging on their crosses, waiting to be called. Because that’s what you get for threatening our children.
  66. “Look at them, Molly. There are hundreds of them. More appearing all the time. I don’t know how many there are; I’ve never cared enough to find out. I’m sure someone knows the exact number and keeps a watchful eye on them so the rest of us don’t have to. Duties and responsibilities for all of us. Remember? It’s enough that the family is protected, Molly. We don’t need to know all the details. It’s enough that our enemies know what we’re capable of.”
  67. “It’s times like this,” said Molly, “that I want to bring your family down more than ever.”
  68. “We only do such awful things,” I said, “because our enemies are capable of so much worse. It’s necessary.”
  69. “Very good, Eddie. Now try saying it like you mean it. You don’t approve of this, Eddie! You couldn’t! You said yourself, the grounds are lousy with defences! Why do you need bloody scarecrows?”
  70. “Because of the effect they have,” I said. “Because they upset people just the way they’re upsetting you now. I might not approve…but the needs of the family are always going to be bigger than the needs of one man.” -Live and Let Drood
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment