Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

She had all the information she might need, now, and Faith knew that it was time to really start.

Putting together everything that she needed to, she had all of the records, all of the information. It was here, she knew it was. The answer - the cure - it was here. Now, she just had to find it. So, she started as she always did, by visuals - diagrams on the walls, all of the details presented on large sheets of parchment. Faith did this in order to be able to visually draw - or more specifically, use string to connect- linked information. She put up the drawings she'd done of the blood, at each stage - after the patient had been infused with ectoplasm and what impact the wisps had. All of these things, they were all important.

They were all important because each one of them connected together. It was like a puzzle and she knew that the answer to it - the solution, lay in this information. "Alright, then, Sharilla," she said, softly, speaking to the ghost of the first patient who had died here from it. Not the last, but Sharilla's curious nature had brought Faith further on and, in fairness, Faith liked the woman. "Look at this. Look. It's perfect. The progression, it's perfect." Faith frowned and shook her head. Sharilla, who stood next to Faith in ghostly form, looked at the young Zuuda and she frowned.

"Isn't that good? It's predictable, it's clear?" Faith nodded at Sharilla's words and spoke, replying quietly. "It is. It's all those things. It's also wrong. I've studied a hundred, hundred diseases, and they're messy. They're widespread, unclear, this is ... this is neat. Neat and ordered and not at all natural." Faith frowned as she said that and she recognised something which she had not. "It's not natural. It's made. Immortals, but it's made!" Sharilla frowned and looked at Faith, observing her. There was no doubt that Faith was pleased with this discovery and Sharilla didn't really understand.

"Why is this important?" The ghost asked and Faith beamed.

"It means we're fighting a person, not nature. Nature is much more clever, much more flexible." She beamed at Sharilla. "People are predictable. They work in patterns. I just need to work out what they've used, how they've done this. Then, I can use that information, all this information, and combat it."

Sharilla shook her head. "That's all, is it?" It didn't sound like "that's all" to her, but she believed Faith.

"I need to taste it," Faith said. Sharilla looked at Faith in amazement.

"Taste it?"

"Yes," Faith said, softly. "I need to. That way, I'll find out what it was made with. And that will, I hope, tell me more. So much more."

Please Famula, she prayed. Let that be true.

Faith was sitting, alone, in the War Room. She'd asked to be alone, because she needed to think. This was so much to take in, so much. Faith had told Sharilla that she hoped the tasting of the oily substance would give her more and, by all the Immortals it had. But how she wished it had not. In that moment, Faith felt almost cursed by her abilities. In that moment the idea of being a slave without concern or responsibility was more than tempting. It was a rare day in which Faith wanted to run and hide, but that was what she felt right now. Like hiding would be the ideal thing, the best thing.

"Tristan, where are you?" Faith whispered and she looked at the oily substance. It was oily, of course, and she should have recognised it from her time as a chef there. Star Fire from Rynmere. When it was made into a liquid, it did this. Faith had used it as a salt, in very small amounts. It wasn't that which caused her to sigh, though, or to worry. No, it was the use of the Venora-specific rose oil, added in tiny amounts. The overseer who had beaten her for spilling water when Tristan had brought her to Venora had assigned Faith to the kitchens, and there she had learned a number of the key ingredients and secret recipes.

And this had come from Venora.

Venora, and Ellasin. Or, at the very least Venora and necromancers. The faintest trace of that ether was there and, now that she had seen the ether in blood she recognised it when she separated everything out. Faith sighed. Because this plague, should it get out of Rynmere would be horrific and she knew that. It had, after all, had a 60% fatality rate - it could, quite literally, do the same across the world. Thank all the Immortals that Rynmere was in lock down. Faith was convinced that Ellasin was trying to spread this plague, and that was why she had been there, in Rynmere, but Ellasin would have to release it more slowly because there were not people leaving Rynmere.

The realisation hit her right in the chest.

"No... no no no..." her hand was reaching for the parchment which she already knew the contents of. Ellasin had exchanged a Venora noble for a whole lot of Venoran "assets" - foreign assets. Military. People. Immune, but infected people, she realised, would be a weapon of the worst kind. She wouldn't be able to track them all fast enough. Shore leave would be... "Oh... oh."

At which point, she pulled out an echo scroll and wrote to Carter and Jess, telling them that she needed all the information available on those resources and she needed it urgently. Until then, she could do no more than continue on, but she knew, now, that she was on a timeframe, because she had - potentially - a fleet of plague carriers, all of whom were unwittingly part of Ellasin's army.

And that, she had to stop.

It had, she was afraid to say, all added up and now she was faced with a very bitter sweet victory - if a victory it was at all. Faith was very concerned about the sheer number of repercussions which this information would cause. The plague was created by a necromancer, with links to House Venora. What could she assume other than that it was Ellasin? Faith didn't like it, not one bit, but it was there and the evidence was irrefutable. What was worse, of course, was that she was grateful for it - because it meant that she knew the ingredients, the parts which had been put together.

It was vile, but Faith thought - believed - that she could cure it. It would require ectoplasm, but that was fine - she could make that and they were in Famula's realm. It didn't take much, comparatively speaking. Then, the right combination of medicine would be required. The way that this worked, this time, was that she needed to combine an anti-coagulant which was fast-acting and delivered the actual ectoplasmic cure, which made it work on the now-thinned blood. But that would be damaging if left for any length of time and Faith had combined it with the technique she and Gennadiya had used with the Ember Plague cure - it ripped through the system quickly and was immediately followed by a slow-acting coagulant, thereby minimising the damage done from the cure. She was under no illusions, however, many of the plague victims would not survive - if they were on the third and final trial, Faith had major doubts about their ability to withstand this.

However, the ectoplasm in the fast-acting anti-coagulant coupled with the slow-moving coagulant meant that the individual had ectoplasm in their system and that, in turn, made them immune. It was so simple, she thought, when she knew how - but such had been the case for the Rot, for Lightbane - for each thing that she had discovered - it had been simple once they knew how. It was just the knowing how that was important.

And still, she knew. "Miles to go before I sleep," she whispered. Because now, she needed to test it, to check it with people of all races, ages, stages of the disease. She needed to fine-tune it and ensure that it worked at it's absolute peak of efficiency, because then she knew what she had to do. It wasn't something she wanted to, but equally, it was what was needed. She had to give it to Carter and Jenny, let them distribute it in Rynmere - get it out to the whole of Idalos via the Order of the Adunih and Isonomia. She knew that her job was something different.

She knew that her job was to find those resources, swapped for a Venoran noble's safe return, and make sure that they were hers - part of her army. More than that, though? She had to make sure that they weren't a means of spreading this plague throughout the world at Ellasin's whim.

Nope. That wouldn't do. The Venora family were - in part - responsible for this whole situation but then, Faith knew, that the situation in Andaris and Rynmere was far from straightforward. The Venoras had been incredibly kind and inordinately cruel to her, depending on which one it was, but there was no doubting in her mind, the debt she owed Tristan. And for that? For him? She'd take every cruel abuse they could throw at her.