\o

o/

Basic plan for this session is that you will plan how you're going to foil the panda stealing, including making preparations (acquiring items, talking to employees, clearing the operation with headquarters, etc.) so that we can time-skip to the actual panda stealing next session.

You are free to wander around the zoo as well as enter/exit as necessary

\o/

Got it.

we are missing someone

We lack a mith

Fowler, you have lost your Eve

:o

while we wait, borg, did you mind the mystery being too "easy"?

i sort of shoved you into all the clues I had set up because I wanted you to figure it out in time for a planning session

\o

That was totally fine, hard to make it too obscure when there is a limited timeframe.

mith!

we are ready to go?

I apologize, I forgot about the time shift, I'll be mostly afk for the next fifteen-ish minutes

we will have borg order food

Feel free to assume Eve is busy scoping out trees still

I assume you all walked to the main food plaza

[just a sec]

Small food carts (pastries, popcorn, corn dogs, burgers, etc.) dot the square, mixed with tables, benches, and small planters. The seating clusters along the flamingo enclosure are all full, but there are plenty of free spots elsewhere. Anchoring the far end of the square is “Old Jemmie’s”, a busy restaurant with cordoned-off seating. Pictures of noodle bowls made in the Sun Islands style plaster the windows.

Now that you’re not rushing through here, you notice an enchantment bubble over the whole food area, dampening sound so it drops off very quickly after several feet and people can enjoy mealtime conversations in peace. Thus, while this place is Packed, it is also Quiet - more akin in soundscape to a busy library than a farmer’s market.

Fowler will scope out any potential corn dog locations.

There's only one corn dog cart, which has a line mostly composed of families with small kids, all pointing and laughing at the varieties on sale

Fowler will hone in completely on the notion of having a corn dog and slips away from the others, humming to himself, to go wait in line. He shifts his weight from foot to foot.

you've already seen this, but

The corn dog cart is run by a man whose hair is entirely concentrated in his mustache. His standard-issue Menagerie uniform jangles with medals issued during the Queen’s River War. What used to be the menu is covered by a sheet of paper with beautifully handwritten and hand-drawn artwork laying out an, ah, updated menu:

Crystal Turtle corn dogs (decorated with artificially colored nuts), Ouroborus corn dogs (circular; two kids eagerly grab one to share, holding it like a wheel), Panda corn dogs (white with black spots), Dragon corn dogs (a note warns these are quite spicy), and, in an apparent attempt to return to the basics of corndogs, a Dogcorn (hotdog with cornbread filling).

He’ll get an Ouroborus and split it with Dollop.

Also, @Ginger roll Lore against 2 to see how well the enchantment on Fowler's comm ring has stood up to stimming

How are you paying for that? Eve has the company card.

[for unnecessary context, the Queen's River War was a half century ago. this corn dog man is old]

I'm back

Forgot, he’ll probably wait for Eve then.

"Lookin' for me?"

You can hang around to hold the spot in line if you want. The corn dog man chats animatedly with a kid who can't be older than six, bending down to hand her a Crystal Turtle dog. "You'll be a strapping young lass one day, just you see."

“Yes, I would like a corn dog,” Fowler says, in the tone of voice that implies having a corn dog is critical to the mission.

+5 on the roll

(+2, +3 lore)

The comm should be a manageable amount of staticy for the rest of session, good artificy work under pressure there

"Corn dogs. Yep, I think that's in budget." Eve will hand the card to the corn dog cart guy, while looking around for something tofu-based.

best in the field™️

Dollop eagerly pokes her head out in anticipation of nibbling on whatever the guy hands him.

One of the Old Jemmie's bowls seems to be tofu and some sort of lumpy sauce

Cool cool. Eve will go to order one of those, tapping one foot impatiently in line.

The veteran bobs his head at the bird. "Good bird, that. We used to send messages by bird, back in my day, you kids have all sorts of" waves hands "newfangled artificy now, though"

He hands you an Ouroborus

“Thank you,” Fowler says politely, following The Script of how this interaction is supposed to go, and takes the corn dog and obligingly holds it out to Dollop while he finds somewhere to sit.

Garrett is distracted staring at the rippley patterns in the sound-muffling enchantment

@Mithical a very bored-looking woman shoves a menu at you. "Which one? That one? Take this, wait there, ten minutes"

She hands you a card with the number 76 on it

"Ten minutes?" Eve raises an eyebrow and gives her a look. "Really?"

The woman attempts to look past you. "Next?"

Fowler locates a quiet table and sits there, waiting patiently while Dollop destroys her half of the corn dog.

Eve gives a little cough.

"Ten minutes. For the batch of noodles. Next?"

Is Garrett going to order any food and/or go to Fowler's table?

Eve rolls her eyes and goes to sit with Fowler.

Garrett walks over to Old Jemmie's, weaving around Eve on the way, and glances over the menu for a suitably unhealthy side

There's an appetizer of battered potatoes and veggies

Or fish pockets (bread with hole + fish in hole + sauce)

“We should have a plan,” Fowler says. The seriousness is somewhat undercut by Dollop noisily ripping apart a corn dog next to his face.

Fish pockets it is, I suppose

The fish pockets are ready immediately; I assume you got the company card off Eve?

yup

Okey everyone should be at the table now

Eve pulls out a map and spreads it out on the table.

"Alright. What do we know?"

The flamingoes in the distance stand mostly still and boring. Groups slowly fill up all the seating around you, though thanks to sound-muffling you can't hear what they're saying.

“We know they’ll likely strike at the weakest point in the defenses, which could be the locks or the surrounding environment.” Fowler wipes corn dog crumbs off his mouth. “It also seems like they’ll strike at night.”

"That's not a lot to go off of, though"

[I am going to provide minor amounts of background description, but unless you actively interact with the background I expect that I won't talk much]

"No motivation, no nothing?"

"Besides money, I guess"

"The regular keeper isn't here tonight, only the kid."

[there's a motivation in the rumors doc docs.google.com/document/d/… ]

[in summary a neighboring kingdom's zoo wants to have their own pandas]

link borked

oh yeah right

Garrett probably forgot that

[it's in the folder, if you still have the folder]

“And the kid is… questionable at his position.”

the folder is in the backpack, so it depends on how you define "still have" :p

@Ginger fixed

"The noise from the construction might mask any attempt at getting in, and / or provide an access point through that door, which nobody's keeping an eye on."

"We'll know if anything goes through it, at least"

“Right.” Fowler taps his finger on the construction site near the panda enclosure. “Loud noise.”

He looks at Eve. “Did you see those tall trees?”

"Already scoped one out. I'll be up there with my spyglass and blowdarts, I think."

"I can keep you two updated over the comms if I see anything. Can your bird do recon?"

"We've got the recon device, although I'm not sure how unobtrusive it is"

"Right... ideally, we want to catch them in the act, instead of just deterring them and having them come back a different time."

“Dollop can’t really do much.” Fowler pets her head. “She just makes me happy.”

"...fine. Good enough. So I'll be eyes in the sky, in the tree. Should one of you be stationed by the construction door?"

Clouds inch forward across the sky, which had been a brilliant blue.

“I can stay by the door.” Fowler sounds eager at the prospect of not having to be part of the beat up the panda thieves part of the plan.

"There's the bug above it, mind you"

"True. What other access points do we have?"

[anything you need from me?]

"There's the entrance through the keeper's office, also."

"The other door, yeah"

"If they could disable the wards they would be able to get in anywhere, but that seems unlikely"

what do I know about how likely that is?

Wizard's wards tend to be difficult to take down if you're not the person who put them up. Emili said Paj himself renewed the wards recently.

[Artificy barriers are comparatively easier to "hack"]

what's the ward's relation to the doors?

“The guards were saying the locks aren’t that good.”

> The ward stretches in a sort of bubble around the pandas, billowing out from attachments around the edges of both artificy doors (and thus allowing entry through the doors)

> The doors have a fairly standard open/non-open mechanism; when in the non-open state it is (supposed to be) unmovable and unbreakable. A note on the side says that it's been a decade since they were first applied, and there are a few scribbles showing where weak points have been band-aided over. (A Zeoist base means it’d be too much of a hassle to make any major changes.)

> "Passage of objects larger than a," she pinches her fingers together as if holding a small nut, "that. Obviously that wouldn't work across the doors, too dangerous to have it go up and down so often, but they're secured around the edges of the doors too so nothing should get through unless the door is open."

to be more specific: do the doors produce the ward or are they just designed to connect to it

The doors are artificy - old, Zeoist artificy - and the wards are wizardry. The doors couldn't be modified to emit a strong enough ward.

got it

“The keeper also said that small things could pass through…” Fowler says, warily. “Maybe something small could ignore the barrier.”

"I suspect that any nefarious individuals with access to the doors could forcibly disable them, but it might take a little bit"

His legs start to jitter from the strain of focusing on the same thing for so long, and he absently presses on his knees to keep them still.

"Like, someone could transfigure themselves?"

A moving trashcan stops next to your table and flips its top open, pausing to see if you're going to throw anything away

“Maybe,” Fowler says, sounding like he was thinking about something bird-sized.

do I know anything about transfiguration?

prepared to roll

Roll Lore. This is wizardry, so it'll be hard.

[sorry that you roll Lore so much]

there's lots of Lore to roll for :b

+4

Fail. You've definitely read about it somewhere, but only a passing mention that people who messed with human transfiguration tended to die horribly, and to not attempt it for any reason without a competent teacher.

[i.e. fail so you don't get any details]

could I Invoke Incident for that?

You want to have had an Incident with transfiguration? Sure, that's a Fate Point.

Fowler is at this point visibly squirming and stimming with the effort it is taking to Remain Sitting For Long Periods Of Time.

The moving trashcan accidentally bumps into Fowler on its way to the next group

@bobble got it, points decremented (to 2, right?)

yep

so do I get to make something up now? d:

If you want, I can too

I'm doing this to get potentially useful information, and I don't have the notes, so you should probably do it

Fowler is staring longingly in the direction of the baby swans again.

Human transfiguration requires a very, very good understanding of what makes up a functioning human. This is a post-graduate specialty offered by only a few wizarding schools. Every degree-holding practitioner's test is stored in a registry. Your Incident involved accidentally getting ahold of this list, which had names, pictures, and nationalities.

Eve, your card from Old Jemmie's buzzes

[or it did a while ago, I forgot]

"Hold that thought."

Eve cheerfully bounds off to get her food, the grumpiness of waiting ten minutes forgotten.

Another woman hands you the noodle bowl, warning that it's hot.

"Thank you!" Eve beams a smile at her, and then hurries back to the others.

"So-" chew chew "-where were we?"

Also, people who can do human transfiguration tend to be frightfully expensive to hire

“Transmutation.” Fowler starts idly doodling bird scribbles over all the bird exhibits.

"I'm almost certain that they're not going to try transfiguration, at least not on themselves, unless we've drastically underestimated their abilities. Human transfiguration is extremely difficult, and if you botch it the results are... unpleasant"

"Sounds fun. Just how unpleasant are we talking about?"

[oh, the registery also had notes on which practitioners had died or been injured and how horribly they did so]

[so ginger you can make up some horrible thing if you want]

"Universally terrible. I got ahold of some records of people who've tried it... have you seen those paintings by Dani Sage, the ones with people whose faces look like they're melting?"

(had to make up a name on the spot, I had Picasso's stuff in mind)

“I’m not sure how they plan to get the pandas out,” Fowler says, apparently talking to Dollop now and ignoring the others. “Even if they get in, they have to get the pandas out with them. Maybe they’ll take the lift? No, you’re probably right…”

(this)

"Hmm. That sounds messier than a knife."

"I'd rather not think about it."

[You are near security if you want to talk with them *wink*]

"Yeah, pandas are more pleasant to think about. I assume they're not just going to stick them under a shirt and run."

How much time do we have till nightfall?

This part of the world, over summer, nightfall is in around ~8hrs

"Fowler, why wouldn't they take the lift?"

[the lift closes an hour before the park does, by the way]

I assume Fowler is distracted by the flamingos :P

"Garrett, ideas for how they plan to get the marks out?"

"If the doors are open they're easy to physically remove, unless they've got extra charms to keep them from being taken out of their enclosure"

Garrett wipes their hands, ineffectually, on the table. "Beyond that I've no clue, I don't work with animals much"

[did either of you who went to Old Jemmie's take napkins? they had some next to the utensils]

probably

@Mithical Fowler seems to abruptly snap back to earth after staring entranced at the flamingoes. “Lift closes before the zoo does.”

"Fair enough. So, back out whatever way they came?"

Garrett leans a bit to watch the flamingoes around Fowler's shoulder

A few flamingoes drink water. One flaps in a circle and then stops again.

[nudge: how do they get in to the zoo?]

Is there anybody around who looks like they might be trying to listen to our conversation?

Roll Notice

"...y'know, they have to get the animals into the zoo somehow"

total of +2 Notice

"Yeah, but they can do that with, like, big trucks and closing down the place. Thieves have to be a bit sneakier."

Nothing obvious. To your left is a walkway where people hurry to food or to animals, to your right is a large family group with something like ten kids running around and a bunch of adults chatting. (Thankfully, the kids' noise is covered by the enchantment)

(do you need help? what do you want me to do?)

Fowler and Garrett, you see Eve suddenly spin around, look very intently in all directions, and then sit back down as if nothing happened.

(I have spent two minutes trying to come up with a witty response)

[if you're petering out on the discussion we can just have you show up to the zoo tonight, next week]

Eve is going to sneak off to the winged cats immediately after this planning discussion

Oh, you can get this description the, pre-written literal weeks ago

The Jackart Cat (common name, proper name feles alarum) enclosure has sweeping boulders surrounding a small pond. It’s been expanded from when you were here last, Eve, by at least half again. The whole place is covered in a thin mesh which faintly glimmers from the artificy reinforcements used to stabilize it. On Jackart Cat circles near the top of the enclosure. Its wingbeats make whooshing noises even from this distance. Two other cats laze on rocks.

Garrett will probably follow Fowler off to find some cool animals

So once she gets there, Eve is going to stay there for a while, stretching and then relaxing while watching them fly around.

[done with session, or want anything else?]

(Sorry, irl stuff)

I'm ok to stop

(thumbsup)

ty y'all

sorry for how the session ended

no worries, it's hard when people are popping in and out

^