Author Topic: (Skyseas of Gensokyo) Nazrin Quest (Part 7) (Read 44120 times)

DracoOmega · « **Reply #540 on:** February 02, 2012, 03:29:05 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 02, 2012, 03:27:40 AM

>Assuming we're outside the door, would that be sufficient proximity for accurate dowsing?

>Well, the closer the better, in general. Of course, you can pick up quite a few things at a moderate distance, and some things at a considerable distance; it really depends on the effect in question. Given that you don't know what you're looking for, you have no idea how easy it would be to find.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #541 on:** February 02, 2012, 03:37:06 AM »

>"Crystal."

DracoOmega · « **Reply #542 on:** February 02, 2012, 03:42:55 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 02, 2012, 03:37:06 AM

>"Crystal."

>Louise nods, then stands up. "Well, shall we get this over with?"

Oldmansour · « **Reply #543 on:** February 02, 2012, 04:15:49 AM »

>Incline head politely.
>"Lead on."

DracoOmega · « **Reply #544 on:** February 02, 2012, 04:48:25 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 02, 2012, 04:15:49 AM

>Incline head politely.
>"Lead on."

>Louise walks out into the hallway without further comment and you follow after her. She pauses to close her office door behind the two of you, then heads back downstairs to the lobby and leads you through a small gate to the other side of the service counters, stopping in front of an open doorway along the left wall. Glancing inside, you can see rows of heavy filing cabinets lining the space.
>"This is the place," she says, turning a keen eye on you. "Do whatever it is you're here to do."

Oldmansour · « **Reply #545 on:** February 02, 2012, 04:51:17 AM »

>Produce dousing rods.
>"Thanks."
>Guess we'll make do from here.
>Sample the air with our nose.
>Visual scan of what we can see for anything that looks conspicuous.
>Sweep for indications of mice.
>Dousing scan.

DracoOmega · « **Reply #546 on:** February 02, 2012, 05:09:18 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 02, 2012, 04:51:17 AM

>Produce dousing rods.
>"Thanks."
>Guess we'll make do from here.
>Sample the air with our nose.
>Visual scan of what we can see for anything that looks conspicuous.
>Sweep for indications of mice.
>Dousing scan.

>You take your dowsing rods in hand.
>Then you thank Louise. She gives a very subtle nod of her head, but doesn't take her eyes off you.
>It does seem this is where she wants you to stop, so you hope it'll do.
>You take a sniff of the air. Aside from Louise and the other people nearby, you can pick up hints of a few potted plants and, from the filing room in particular, the smell of old wood and paper - nothing that seems the slightest bit unexpected
>You can't see the interior of the room all that well from this angle, particularly as packed with filing cabinets as it is; ones near the entrance mostly obscure ones further in. You can see very little conspicuous other than that. It is possible there are other features or even people further inside the room, but nothing you can see at the moment. There is, however, clearly a very significant amount of records kept here.
>You don't smell any mice nearby, nor detect any of the other telltale signs of their presence.
>More mundane senses out of the way, you sweep the room with your dowsing rods. There are some quantities of metal, but nothing precious or unusual, nor any other materials that strike you as out of place. You sense a faint magical resonance over whole of the room, but upon closer inspection it feels rather like a simple ward of some sort - possibly against fire or water, or maybe some sort of alarm system. They're not altogether unusual, and it wouldn't surprise you if a building like this had some within it. Narrowing your focus, you trace very slowly across the contents of the room, looking for something more specific that might set off red flags about a particular document being tampered with. Try as you might, though, you come up blank on this front. If someone has pulled off something of that nature, you're not picking up any obvious sign of it.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #547 on:** February 02, 2012, 06:45:13 AM »

>Alarm system? As in, an alarm against leaks, or an alarm against intruders?
>No sign of chemically-scents?
>Any sign of tunnels?
>Is our dousing sense sensitive enough to determine if that room has any glass, like windows?

DracoOmega · « **Reply #548 on:** February 02, 2012, 05:02:17 PM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 02, 2012, 06:45:13 AM

>Alarm system? As in, an alarm against leaks, or an alarm against intruders?
>No sign of chemically-scents?
>Any sign of tunnels?
>Is our dousing sense sensitive enough to determine if that room has any glass, like windows?

>You'd been thinking more along the lines of intruder-detection, but you honestly can't be sure; while you can detect the presence of magic, and to some degree the 'feel' of it, you can't necessarily determine a spell's ultimate intended function from just this. It's a bit like hearing words in a language you don't speak; you can guess some of the meaning of a conversation even if most of the words themselves are incomprehensible, but the details would be lost on you. Likewise, you can recognize specific magical signatures that you've encountered before, and estimate the similarity of a unknown signature to ones you're familiar with, but you can only guess at the significances of the differences; for that, a magician would be much better suited. In this case, what you sense is quite reminiscent of some basic warding spells that you've encountered before.
>Well, you can smell ink and wax and some sort of cleaning solution, but nothing out of place.
>You don't believe this building has a basement, nor do you detect any obvious 'holes' in the substructure.
>In general, you can detect glass somewhat, yes. You don't believe there are any windows in the filing room.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #549 on:** February 02, 2012, 08:45:34 PM »

>Can we detect any unusual concentrations of metals in the vicinty? In particular, large concentrations of coins, or other monies?

DracoOmega · « **Reply #550 on:** February 02, 2012, 08:56:55 PM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 02, 2012, 08:45:34 PM

>Can we detect any unusual concentrations of metals in the vicinty? In particular, large concentrations of coins, or other monies?

>You don't sense any inside the filing room, at any rate. It would take a little more work, but you could look for them elsewhere, if you liked. Of course, there's the chance that pointing your dowsing rods in the opposite direction of what you said you'd be looking at might rub Louise the wrong way.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #551 on:** February 02, 2012, 09:03:38 PM »

>Given the woman in question, there's a great many things that might rub her the wrong way.
>Do we NEED to point our dousing rods in a particular direction to get an accurate reading in that direction?

DracoOmega · « **Reply #552 on:** February 02, 2012, 09:07:29 PM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 02, 2012, 09:03:38 PM

>Given the woman in question, there's a great many things that might rub her the wrong way.
>Do we NEED to point our dousing rods in a particular direction to get an accurate reading in that direction?

>That does seem likely.
>They work as a focus, so in general, yes. The more directly you focus them on a particular spot, the more specific readings you can get from it.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #553 on:** February 02, 2012, 10:46:00 PM »

Well, I'm running out of things to scan for.

>Does the cleaning solution smell seem similar to one that is commonly used, IE, bleach?

DracoOmega · « **Reply #554 on:** February 02, 2012, 11:53:04 PM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 02, 2012, 10:46:00 PM

>Does the cleaning solution smell seem similar to one that is commonly used, IE, bleach?

>It smells more like a soap that you would use on flooring and such. It has a pungent woody scent, but is fairly faint at the moment. All in all, it is quite mundane.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #555 on:** February 03, 2012, 12:34:10 AM »

Can anyone else think of a way to alter the wording on a document, other than careful application of bleach?

EDIT:And magic, of course.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #556 on:** February 03, 2012, 03:36:23 AM »

Apparantly not. Well, there is one more thing I can think of.

>Without pointing our dousing rods at Louise, from this proximity, can we determine if she is carrying a large quantity of money, or if she is giving off residual signs of magic?

Kasu · « **Reply #557 on:** February 03, 2012, 03:54:38 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 03, 2012, 12:34:10 AM

Can anyone else think of a way to alter the wording on a document, other than careful application of bleach?

EDIT:And magic, of course.

Hmm... White-out? Considering they even have white-out.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #558 on:** February 03, 2012, 04:07:43 AM »

Well, I thought about that, but, I had thought that it was a more modern advent.
On the other hand, it really couldn't hurt to ask. Thank you, Kasu.

>Does white out exist?

DracoOmega · « **Reply #559 on:** February 03, 2012, 04:28:59 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 03, 2012, 03:36:23 AM

>Without pointing our dousing rods at Louise, from this proximity, can we determine if she is carrying a large quantity of money, or if she is giving off residual signs of magic?

>You don't sense any active magic upon her; you could pick that up at this close range easily enough. She may be carrying a small amount of money, but certainly not an unusually large amount of it.

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 03, 2012, 04:07:43 AM

>Does white out exist?

>You haven't personally encountered a chemical that performs this function.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #560 on:** February 03, 2012, 04:46:53 AM »

>Does the door lock show any sign of recent tampering? Or any signs of forced entry in or around the door?

DracoOmega · « **Reply #561 on:** February 03, 2012, 04:58:32 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 03, 2012, 04:46:53 AM

>Does the door lock show any sign of recent tampering? Or any signs of forced entry in or around the door?

>The door is currently open, and you'd have to go and examine the lock closely to determine if it had been tampered with. There are no obvious signs of forced entry that you can see from this distance.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #562 on:** February 03, 2012, 05:21:50 AM »

All right, all right, I know when I'm licked.

>Lower dousing rods.
>"Nothing. Whatever I sensed on the ship, it either isn't here, or it's too faint for me to detect. And I detect no obvious signs of magical tampering with your papers, or chemical tampering, for that matter."

DracoOmega · « **Reply #563 on:** February 03, 2012, 05:31:09 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 03, 2012, 05:21:50 AM

>Lower dousing rods.
>"Nothing. Whatever I sensed on the ship, it either isn't here, or it's too faint for me to detect. And I detect no obvious signs of magical tampering with your papers, or chemical tampering, for that matter."

>You put your dowsing rods down.
>Louise gives you an appraising glance. "I see. Well, I suppose I should consider myself grateful in that case, yes?"

Oldmansour · « **Reply #564 on:** February 03, 2012, 05:44:21 AM »

>Put away dousing rods.
>"Thanks for letting me try."
>"I would like to have a closer look at the door lock, though, just to check if someone's jimmied it recently."

DracoOmega · « **Reply #565 on:** February 03, 2012, 05:58:06 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 03, 2012, 05:44:21 AM

>Put away dousing rods.
>"Thanks for letting me try."
>"I would like to have a closer look at the door lock, though, just to check if someone's jimmied it recently."

>You put your dowsing rods away.
>Louise regards you intently for a moment. "Very well. But then your business here will be done?"

Oldmansour · « **Reply #566 on:** February 03, 2012, 06:29:15 AM »

>"Well, unless there's some way I can leave here with a replacement liscence to get Murasa on her way before closing time, then yeah, this is pretty much it."

DracoOmega · « **Reply #567 on:** February 03, 2012, 06:35:31 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 03, 2012, 06:29:15 AM

>"Well, unless there's some way I can leave here with a replacement liscence to get Murasa on her way before closing time, then yeah, this is pretty much it."

>"Go ahead, then," she says.

Oldmansour · « **Reply #568 on:** February 03, 2012, 06:38:33 AM »

>Approach and examine the door lock.

DracoOmega · « **Reply #569 on:** February 03, 2012, 06:44:07 AM »

Quote from: Sourfang, the Falling Star on February 03, 2012, 06:38:33 AM

>Approach and examine the door lock.

>You approach the door so that you can examine its lock. In the corner of your eye, you note Louise keeping a very close eye of her own on you. You don't imagine this changes as you lean in and peer into the keyhole, though you can no longer keep watch on her.
>The locking mechanism used here turns out to be quite high quality, and would take some real effort to pick. It does not, however, look as though anyone has attempted to do this; you see none of the characteristic scrapes that would be left from the process.