Swamped

You decide to focus on the thing that's most likely to come up soon.

"There was a weird pile of dead bugs in the room with the symbol, by the way. It had a vaguely human shape. It was unsettling, and I think it might even be able to move."

The wizard frowns.

"Are you basing that on anything?"

"There was a hammer near it, and there was a smashed bell. I guess somebody might have smashed the bell and put the hammer near the bugs, but that raises the question of how they even got in there. The kids didn't recognize it, and it'd take quite some time to put dead bugs together like that."

"I suppose it could be some kind of golem, but the choice of material is strange. Certainly it would be disturbing to look at, but golems are rare enough that most people would be unsettled even by a wood golem. Then again, we have a number of sailors who are quite large and muscular, so they might not be as intimidated by a ten-foot moving woodpile." He pauses as he approaches the stairs. "I'm only detecting a fairly small amount of ether outside of the symbol, though. That's odd. Perhaps I'll understand it better once I see it for myself."

As he heads down, and you follow, you wonder if you should ask another question, or just wait until that bug-thing is dealt with.

You opt to hold off. Better to keep that thing, whatever it is, fresh in the wizard's mind. It's the first thing you can think of that's likely to cause problems.

"Which door was it?" he asks. "I don't know who around here has children, you see."

You point to the door. You left it open, so it's easy to spot. The wizard starts walking towards it, then suddenly pauses.

"Do you hear a mallow quacking?" he asks. "Or am I imagining something?"

"Oh. That's another matter that came up." You pull the severed foot out. "Mr. Resk heard a gull, then I heard a crow. We found this, and were wondering if this might have something to do with it."

The wizard frowns.

"I'm not detecting any ether from that."

"So, what, it's just an ordinary chicken's foot?"

"It might be. It also might be a chicken's foot that's somehow been empowered by a god."

That raises some strange questions in your mind, but they're less pressing than the questions raised by the vaguely humanoid pile of dead bugs rushing out the door and charging directly at you and the wizard. Questions like, why is it so much larger than you remember, how is it moving that fast, and most of all, what are you going to do about it.

Push the wiz out of harm's way!

Your first instinct is to protect the guy who knows magic, so you push the wizard out of the way, and for your troubles you get rewarded with what feels like a mountain of bugs colliding with you.

You wish you had your mask. As it is, you barely have time to cover your mouth to keep them away. Good thing you've kept your goggles on.

Thankfully, the golem, or whatever it is, doesn't seem particularly interested in you, as it quickly pulls away. But that probably means it's going for the wizard. You hope he had some time to react.

"Deanimation!"

Uh-oh. Does that mean the thing's going to stop moving? You brace yourself for a bunch of dead bugs falling on you, since you assume they wouldn't stick together after that.

But it doesn't come. You look up and see the mass of bugs still advancing towards the wizard... much more slowly, though. Maybe the spell mostly worked? You don't know, you barely know a thing about magic.

On the other hand, you catch a quick glimpse of the wizard's face as you pick yourself up, and he seems as baffled as you are.

Well. Whatever's going on here, you'd best think of a way to stop this creature.

Maybe it's attracted to magic? But then why isn't it going after you since you're imbued with ether? Maybe it's smarter than it looks...

Try throwing the divine chicken foot at the monstrosity.

You wonder for a moment if it's chasing magic, but then you remember you've got time magic surrounding you and an illusion on top of that. So if it is deliberately going after the wizard, it's either smart enough to identify him, or it's being guided by someone who is. However that works.

You can't see much of a way to use that. And your fists don't seem like they'd do much good. Hells, most conventional weapons would have trouble with a creature like that.

So you opt for something a little less conventional, and fling the severed chicken's foot at the thing.

You didn't really have any particular expectations for what would happen next. At best you were hoping to provoke it and give the wizard a chance to cast something else.

You certainly weren't expecting the whole pile of bugs to collapse, save for one tiny, fast-moving fly. It's buzzing wildly. More to the point, it's clearly alive. You reflexively try to catch it between your hands, but it's much too fast for that.

That said, it's also moving very erratically. Like it's having trouble settling on its path. For a brief moment, you wonder if it's hearing bird noises and panicking.

"Catch it!" the wizard shouts. He waves his staff ineffectively. "Don't worry about how much force you're using, it's got a potent protection spell on it. But we need to contain it."

A fly with a protection spell, that was somehow controlling a pile of dead insects? You have no idea what to even make of that.

What you do know is, it won't be easy to catch the blasted thing with how fast it's moving.

Can you use your breather mask or some other piece of your armor to scoop it?

You take one of your gloves off. This is always harder than it ought to be, just because they attach tightly so they don't slip off in the muck.

Of course, just waving an empty glove around and hoping the fly goes into it isn't going to be very effective. You'll have to chase the blasted thing down.

Unfortunately, it's been a good while since you had to deal with a regular old fly, let alone one this fast. And back in the swamp, catching murderflies was never considered a good idea. If one got into the fortress, you chased it out. You didn't swat it if you had a choice, since that would leave their toxic blood lying around.

So you don't really have a better idea than running after it and trying to get it into your glove. But that doesn't go very well. Although, you do notice that it seems to be circling around, rather than actually trying to go anywhere. Could mean something.

The wizard isn't doing much better, it seems. He's just staying still, trying to hit the fly with his staff when it gets near. If you just keep running like this, he'll probably end up hitting you.

There's got to be a better way of doing this.

Well, since the chicken foot seemed to discombobulate it, tell the wizard to make bird noises instead of waving that thing around

Well, so far only one thing's had any clear effect, and that was flinging a severed chicken's foot. Which you suspect is connected to the bird noises you were hearing.

So maybe making more noise will confuse the bug more.

"Try making bird noises," you tell the wizard next time you pass near. "Don't know if it'll work, but it's the only idea I have."

The wizard shrugs, and starts making the most dignified owl sounds he can manage. You do your best impersonation of a crow.

It doesn't seem to have much effect, other than making you feel sillier.

And as if to accentuate the point, Mr. Resk soon comes in, stares at you for a moment, then opens his mouth wide.

He was probably going to ask something along the lines of "what do you think you're doing", but the fly gets into his mouth first, and you quickly clap a hand over it.

"Sorry," you say. "But we really need to catch that fly."

A moment later, you feel the fly walking around on your hand. Suppose it's just as well you used the ungloved one. You quickly pull it away and slip your glove back on. Mr. Resk blinks.

"Did that glove just disappear?"

"Illusion spell," you remind him. "Speaking of, how are things going down there?"

"Well, we've taken the cultists to the infirmary, but we're concerned about having enough beds. We also started asking the cook some questions, and then he vanished in a puff of smoke," he grumbles. "Which is going to make the crew rather annoyed around dinner time, but that's going to have to wait for these pirates to be dealt with. We haven't tried to approach the warden yet, as we don't really have any sort of plan to stop her from pulling the same escape trick. That's one reason I came up here, to get Wiz's help." He turns towards the wizard. "Speaking of which, what are you doing down here? I thought you needed to stay on the bridge to maintain the barrier?"

The ship suddenly shifts again, and you all find yourselves on the ceiling.

"I did, but these disruptions are making that impossible. So I'm looking into them. The only good news is we don't seem to have taken any further hits since they started, though only the gods know how long that's going to last."

"Well, once you take care of that, I'd like you to help us out with our trouble with the warden."

"Excuse me," you interject. "Before we get on too much further, is there something we should be doing about this fly I've got trapped in my glove?"

"Ah, yes," says the wizard. "Just hold still for a moment."

You're a little worried about what he's going to do.

He's going to pull it out of your ear. Now that's real Magick!

Surprisingly, he reaches for your ear.

"Um, I'm wearing a helmet," you point out.

"Good point. Is your chin exposed, then?"

"Yes?" you say, confused.

A moment later, he touches you and then everything goes black.

You almost expect to be somewhere else when you wake up, but no, you're right where you were, minus a glove. Thankfully, you didn't land in the pile of dead bugs, somehow.

"Apologies for the lack of warning," he says, holding up a small jar. The fly is inside. "I was worried we might be overheard."

"By a fly," you mumble.

"It might have escaped if you took the glove off, so I stunned you and the spell carried over to it because it was so close. But I needed to directly touch you for it to work. Only needed a few seconds to trap it. Here's your glove back."

You put it on. Your head's still in a daze.

"Can you do anything about the illusion?" Resk asks. "It's unsettling seeing that glove just appear and disappear."

"It'll wear off on its own. So I'd rather not waste the mana. Anyhow, I still haven't looked at what I intended to look at."

Without another word, the wizard steps through the open door and starts staring intently at the symbol.

Resk opens his mouth, but the wizard promptly says "Hush!" and he closes it again. Whatever's going on must take a lot of concentration.

A few minutes later, the wizard looks up and turns back towards you. From the look on his face, you get the feeling there's some kind of problem.

It's got a potent sort of wizard encryption on it. It'll take a while to crack it.

"Try to keep the magic jargon to a minimum, Wiz," Resk says. This guy really likes to be in charge, you're noticing. "What's the situation?"

"I'm still not sure," he says. "I can confirm that the symbol here is responsible for us floating. And I can confirm that something else is pulling us down, which means I can't get rid of the symbol unless you want us to be an underwater craft. But I can't determine from here what that 'something else' is. It's probably magic, since I could detect it, but there seems to be a separate spell obscuring the nature of the source."

Resk frowns.

"How about where it is, at least?"

Wiz shakes his head.

"No good. This might be getting a little into the magic jargon, but... when I detect ether, I don't directly know where it is. I can get a general sense of how far away it is, but to actually locate it, I have to rely on..." He pauses. "Well, it's a bit like if I could see the address plate of a house from a long way away. If I ignore the numbers, I have no idea where the house is, but if I read them, I can look that up. But in this case, it's like someone's painted over all the numbers."

Resk frowns.

"You said you can figure out how far away it is. How accurate is that?"

"Not very. About all I can tell you right now is that it's somewhere below us. And the concealment spell's given me a bit of a headache just from working out that much."

Resk starts pacing. You imagine he doesn't much like magic, because it's not the sort of thing you can deal with by giving standard orders.

It would probably help if you could come up with some sort of idea for what to do.

Maybe there's a way to reverse-engineer the position. Sort of like rubbing your finger over the paint to touch-read the numbers, and get a sense of the pattern, or like applying frequency analysis to a cryptogram.

Can you spy on the pirate ship or ships and verify whether the magic pull is localized to just this vessel? Might help you identify whether the magic is coming from within the ship or without.

"Maybe this is a dumb question," you say. "But if there's a spell hiding whatever-it-is, how do you know it's pulling the ship down?"

"Ah, that's actually quite observant of you," the wizard says. "The short answer is, I could tell because I was watching this symbol. And that means I could see what it was doing. In that process, I was able to notice another force doing exactly the opposite. Imagine that this spell is someone pulling on a very long rope, and something else is pulling on the other end of that rope a long way away. If I touch the rope without pulling, I can feel the other force very clearly. But figuring out anything else about that force is quite difficult."

"And let me guess," Resk grumbles. "This isn't an actual rope you can follow to the other end."

"Not quite, there is something analogous. The problem is that I'd probably fall unconscious first. So, about the same overall situation," Wiz says with a shrug.

"Could you make a spell follow the rope?" you ask. "Again, maybe that's a stupid question."

"Well, it's understandable with the simplified explanation I've given. I compared it to painting over house numbers, but that doesn't quite convey how thorough it is. If I had a spell that would let me reach out to that address plate and touch it to feel the numbers, it still wouldn't work. The spell would still be linked to me, and that link would still make the concealment spell reach me."

"Okay," you say, thinking a bit. "So let's go back to how you felt that opposing force earlier. Would you be able to recognize that force affecting something else?"

"It's affecting everything on this ship. I don't see how that would help."

"Well, there's another ship nearby. Maybe they're getting pulled down, too."

Wiz looks thoughtful.

"Give me a moment. And please be quiet."

Another few minutes pass before he speaks.

"It's no good. The pirate ship's too far away for me to detect much. I did catch a glimpse of something magical on it, but our relative positions are shifting too much for me to really focus on whatever it is."

"Any chance that whatever you detected is the source of the downward pull?" Resk asks.

"Not directly. If it were then I'd run into the interference effect. There's a number of ways it could be indirectly involved, depending on what it is. But if you're thinking of taking more aggressive action, I'd advise against it. If it is related, disrupting it is as likely to have dangerous unintended effects as it is to solve the problem."

You're starting to feel in over your head. But then you wonder if there's another way to look at it. Maybe the answer isn't in the messy details of how magic works; maybe it's a matter of thinking about what the spells you know about are actually doing, and what someone might be trying to accomplish with them.

Seems worth a try, at least.

You don't get a lot of ideas.

But the main one that comes to mind is that it doesn't seem likely to be a coincidence that you've got a flotation spell and a spell - or something - pulling the ship down. For one thing, you can't see how it would particularly benefit anyone to make the ship float.

So starting from there. The flotation spell comes from a symbol. A symbol that somebody was in a rush to make, judging by the knife left in the floor. Now, that would make perfect sense if they knew something was going to pull the ship down... but how would they know that? You didn't feel anything until the floating started, and the wizard just explained how hard it is to detect the spell in the first place.

The easy answer to that is, someone planned to pull the ship down, and whoever made the symbol knows about the plan. Either they overheard something about it, or they were in on it and changed their mind at the last minute.

So, your next question is who did it. Was it the bug golem? Or was that thing trying to stop the effect? You've got no idea.

But the other most likely suspect would be whoever stays in this room. And there's an officer here who might know that.

"Mr. Resk," you ask. "Whose room is this, exactly?"

The first mate's, of course. But it's more often a nursery.

"This is First Mate Bertha's room," he replies.

"The young woman with the cane?" You're more than a little surprised. "She looked a bit young to be raising kids."

"Not her own. She's taken on the duty of watching children when their parents are busy." Resk pauses. "Wait, how'd you know about that? Were there children in here?"

"Yeah, I thought I heard something when I was passing by earlier. Found two kids here."

"And nobody else?"

"No, just a weird mass of dead bugs in the corner. The same one that's now a big mess of dead bugs on the floor outside. It wasn't moving at the time, but I figured it was best to just get them out of there."

Resk frowns.

"What do you mean, at the time? Are you telling me that whatever it was moved some time later?"

"It attacked us just before you arrived," the wizard interjects.

Resk looks thoughtful for a bit.

"Whatever the story is with that, I want to focus on the children for a moment. I know there was an emergency, but normally when Ms. Bertha has other work while children are under her care, she gets her partner to watch them instead. That's very odd."

Her partner. Guess that's another person who could have been in the room to make the symbol. Maybe even while the kids were asleep. Of course, you found the door slightly open, so it could be someone else... but you'd rather look at the likeliest options before worrying about who else had the chance.

"Is this relevant to finding out what's pulling the ship down?" the wizard suddenly asks, impatiently.

"Sorry. I was trying to think from a different angle, figure out who made the symbol. Thought if we could work that out, we could ask them," you explain.

"Makes sense," Resk says, nodding. "It would be natural to wonder if the room's main occupant might have done this. And I suppose I can go and ask her. I had planned to give a report to the captain, anyhow, and since Wiz is busy, we're probably not dealing with the warden for a while either."

"Just a moment," the wizard interjects. "Before you go and do that, there's something you can do here that would help me quite a bit."

I need you to hold this thing and hum this tune.

"And what would that be?" Resk asks.

"I'd like your hat," the wizard says calmly. "You can use mine in the meantime."

"How is that going to help with anything?"

"It will mean I have an object closely connected with you. I can use that to contact you from a distance. I imagine the captain and first mate will have their hands full for a while."

"And I won't?" Resk grumbles.

"Of course you will. But you'll also likely be around someone you can give orders to."

"Fair. All right, but I'm not taking your hat." Resk takes his hat off and hands it over. "The sailors would snicker at it and we don't have time for that sort of distraction."

"You don't need to wear it," the wizard says, taking it off and accepting Resk's. "Stick it in your pocket or something."

"Wait, what if there's another mage we don't know about? Couldn't they use your hat to get to you, the same way you're planning to use his?" you ask, seeing an opportunity to interject.

"Not without me noticing," the wizard replies. He puts Resk's hat on and hands his own over. "Besides, if you're a wizard you can make the connection work both ways."

"If that's all, then I'm leaving," Resk mutters. Somehow he seems even more gruff without the hat on.

"Well, if you hold the hat and hum a little tune, I can set it up so you can talk to me through it," the wizard says. Resk sighs, holds up the wizard's hat, and starts humming.

As you listen to Resk's catchy tune, you wonder if you should head up with him for his conversation with the first mate, or stay here and ask the wizard some more questions. Or is there something else you could do that might be useful?

SpoilerShow

Just for the record, I started writing before I got a suggestion and tweaked things to incorporate it.

Go with Resk. It seems like he knows more about what's going on than he's letting on. Can you trust him if he's withholding information?

Something's been bothering you about Resk. It's probably the way he doesn't seem particuarly thrown off by all the weird stuff going on here.

Part of that may just be because he tries to project an air of authority. But you can't shake the feeling that he knows things he's not telling you.

"Mind if I go with you?" you ask him as he steps out. "I have a few questions of my own."

He shrugs.

"The Captain seems fine with you running around, and I certainly don't object to being able to keep an eye on you myself."

He walks out, and you follow. On the way, you try to narrow down just what's been getting to you.

It's the chicken foot. He seemed to settle on that way too fast. Maybe it wasn't anything special at all - then again, it did make the bug-thing break apart, and it's hard to believe it could do that if it's just an ordinary severed foot.

"Why'd you think the chicken's foot might be causing the bird noises?" you ask suddenly. "Like you said at the time, it wasn't either of the birds we were hearing."

"I found a dead chicken earlier, in an especially strange place," he replies. "Didn't have time to look closely at it for a while, but when I did, it was missing its foot. So when I see a foot turn up in the midst of some sailors who, according to you, have been doing some strange chants, well, pardon me for thinking it's not a coincidence."

Hmm. Maybe he's not hiding anything after all? Maybe he just didn't see a particular need to share that, and he's been too busy to get you up to speed.

"Might be good to compare notes, then," you reply. "Did you find anything else of note?"

"Aside from the unknown soldier, a merperson who looked just like a VIP we've got on board, and some unconscious sailors in the same area? It's been a very strange day already," he says. Sounds a little annoyed, even. "Why, does any of that give you thoughts?"

"A merperson?" you ask incredulously.

"That's our best guess as to what she is. There were some other oddities I saw, but I already talked to Wiz about them and I'd rather not repeat myself too much. But I suppose I can make you a list and you can ask him when you've got time." He starts pulling out a notepad, then pauses. "Assuming you can read Common, of course?"

"I can," you reply.

"Good, that makes things easier."

Funny. You saw him start to write just a moment before he asked. Almost like he already knows you can read Common. How would he have figured that out, though? You're not even sure you read anything since you've been here.

Maybe your suspicions were on-point after all. Maybe you can catch him off guard somehow and be more sure.

And the dead bugs?