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View Full Version : [Fantasy Academia] How to deliver a stinging rebuke to a school *without* violence?



Kiero
2014-12-13, 07:33 AM
In our 13th Age game (system isn't terribly relevant here) Acrozatarim (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim), the PCs have found themselves in an interesting position.

We came to Qyashun (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim/Gazetteer#Qyashun), the foremost centre of learning on the continent, at the request of the ruler, the Vault Keeper (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim/Icons#The_Vault-Keeper) (one of the setting's Icons).

While we were waiting to introduce ourselves and begin that task, my character decided to go and talk to the main elemental college, the Six Dragons, about his discoveries. He's an Elemental Knight (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim/Elemental_Knight), a practitioner of elemental magic through empowered martial arts.

To wind back a little, in this game-world, everything is elementally-flavoured. The world was created by the great elementals (though life by the Elder Gods they dreamed up once they'd given up trying to make it), and their touches remain all around the place. You can read more on the Cosmology (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim/Cosmology)elsewhere, same goes Divinities (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim/Appendix_2), if it interests you.

Upshot is that as far as everyone is concerned, there are four elements, corresponding to the four great elementals - Air, Earth, Fire and Water. Everything that exists in the world can be explained in this context, including life and magic (though elemental magic isn't the only kind). Thus there is little reason for anyone to believe any differently, especially people who aren't practitioners of the elemental martial arts.

There are actually five elements, the fifth is Void, for which there is a great elemental in which everything else sits. It's basically outer space and null and zero. There are practitioners of Void, but they are rare and it's practise is little known. My character has a ghostly mentor who is driving him to recover lost knowledge of Void martial arts, which he's starting to do.

So my character went to see the Six Dragons. They basically told him to sod off, they didn't want to know. Add in some usual scholar/artisan type disconnects (he's not published, has written no articles, has no academic pedigree, etc). What it's really about, though, is that they don't want to share knowledge of one of their most precious secrets, and don't want some practitioner blurting it about either.

After being rebuffed, they sent an assassin who poisoned my character with a rare venom poured into his ear. He nearly died, but ironically went on an astrally-projected vision quest which not only confirmed what he knew, but brought even more insights. And a chance meeting with another Icon.

We since met with the Vault Keeper, who's made my character promise not to retaliate against the Six Dragons (it was the Vault Keeper who provided the antidote that saved his life). However, he's not going to let this lie, they tried to kill him after all.

So what's the best way to deliver a return shot that doesn't involve killing anyone or starting fights? He's already delivered his Treatise on Void to the astronomy school who were receptive to one of the other PCs on a different matter. There's no press or the equivalent as far as I'm aware, but it seems to me broadcasting his findings is the most effective way to hit back at them.

Does anyone have any other ideas? Bonus marks if I can punctuate any of those points by punching out some scholar.

ReaderAt2046
2014-12-13, 09:27 AM
I'd suggest training people in Void magic. A great way to publicize that it exists.

Anonymouswizard
2014-12-13, 10:18 AM
+1 on the train people in void magic.

Alternatively, start studying the theory behind elemental martial arts with a couple of fellow martial artists, and then launch your own peer-reviewed journal. Afterwards try speaking to them again. At this point there are a ton of childish pranks you can play, plus you've started to get the word out.

Sartharina
2014-12-13, 10:34 AM
Hire another assassin to nearly-kill whoever sent the assassin after your party. Maybe next time they'll think twice about sending assassins after people they disagree with. Just make sure the poison used makes them go all loopy and weird for a while instead of dead.

Jay R
2014-12-13, 11:52 AM
Here's my idea. The Six Dragons are not idiots, and regularly scry on their enemies. Nobody in a D&D world believes that death will prevent revenge, so they are already watching you, and anything you try will fail.

You are trying to set up a rivalry with powerful people that does not serve any purpose. Walk away, and have some adventures against people who don't know you're coming.

[On the other hand, if you spend some time sending Message spells out to random trees, arranging for several armies and Void wizards from other planes to come besiege the Six Dragons in six weeks' time, they probably aren't scrying the trees, and so only know that you are planning a battle, not that nobody heard you. They spend six weeks and lots of gold on defensive preparations against an army that never appears.]

Kiero
2014-12-13, 04:00 PM
I'd suggest training people in Void magic. A great way to publicize that it exists.


+1 on the train people in void magic.

Alternatively, start studying the theory behind elemental martial arts with a couple of fellow martial artists, and then launch your own peer-reviewed journal. Afterwards try speaking to them again. At this point there are a ton of childish pranks you can play, plus you've started to get the word out.

This would take longer than we're prepared to remain in the city. We have a few weeks at most before we move on, I'd struggle to keep the other players interested in hanging around for months on end just to enact this.

Someone on another forum suggested doing a public lecture (a la TED talks or the like), that's probably as much publicising as we have the opportunity to do. What's potentially good about that is it's likely the elite echelons of the Six Dragons don't share any of this stuff with the lowliest of their students (possibly even any but their own inner circle), so it would rile up their base.


Hire another assassin to nearly-kill whoever sent the assassin after your party. Maybe next time they'll think twice about sending assassins after people they disagree with. Just make sure the poison used makes them go all loopy and weird for a while instead of dead.

They are an established and entrenched power in this city, we are a motley collection of outsiders with no power base. I think it's doubtful assassins based locally would want anything to do with us, or want a contract on a target that may have hired them out before. We'd have more luck trying to get into the schemes of another tower who want to cause the Six Dragons harm than doing it ourselves like that.


Here's my idea. The Six Dragons are not idiots, and regularly scry on their enemies. Nobody in a D&D world believes that death will prevent revenge, so they are already watching you, and anything you try will fail.

You are trying to set up a rivalry with powerful people that does not serve any purpose. Walk away, and have some adventures against people who don't know you're coming.

[On the other hand, if you spend some time sending Message spells out to random trees, arranging for several armies and Void wizards from other planes to come besiege the Six Dragons in six weeks' time, they probably aren't scrying the trees, and so only know that you are planning a battle, not that nobody heard you. They spend six weeks and lots of gold on defensive preparations against an army that never appears.]

This isn't a standard D&D world where everyone and his mother is a mage.

Most of the scholars of the Six Dragons, and indeed all the other towers are just that - mundane people who devote their lives to study. The Vault Keeper, the most powerful man in the city, isn't a mage or any other sort of practitioner. He's just a very skillful political operator. I wouldn't be confident they had the ability to scry, more likely they just have spies and other agents keeping an eye on what's going on in the city. Same way they got to my character with an assassin.

There also isn't any resurrection (one of the agreements when we established the premise of the game), so dead does mean the end. The only revenge is if your buddies retaliate in your memory. We don't know of any other planes, or of any pre-existing group of Void practitioners who we could call upon.

I could just walk away, but my character isn't meek or the sort to leave a grave insult like that unchallenged.

Arbane
2014-12-13, 05:02 PM
I could just walk away, but my character isn't meek or the sort to leave a grave insult like that unchallenged.

To misquote Ambrose Bierce, "forgiveness" is the term for "patience while plotting a really worthwhile revenge."

razorfloss
2014-12-13, 07:07 PM
To misquote Ambrose Bierce, "forgiveness" is the term for "patience while plotting a really worthwhile revenge."

I second this option. In the meantime do a lecture about it. I'm sure the dragons will be lest then pleased

Geostationary
2014-12-13, 07:20 PM
Instead of creating a school, set yourself up as a traveling master of an ancient and forbidden kung fu and spread rumors about your feats (real or made up, that's up to you). Take in students who will travel with you (possibly pseudo-offscreen); ideally as your legend grows they'll seek you out. If challenged, defeat others with your superior kung fu. While doing this, also work to discredit the Six Dragons or otherwise criticize their theory through the use of your great powers and deeper understanding of the cosmos.

Bob of Mage
2014-12-13, 10:57 PM
Start writing a series of Void for the Layman books. Wirte in such a way that the lowly normal people can understand it, and make sure it isn't peer reviewed or anything proper like that (at least not at first and not by your own actions). Add to this random classes and lectures on the subject of the Void as time premits on your travels.

What this does is not so much beat them at their own game, but refuse to play their game at together. Since they get their power from hordeing knowlegde, giving it away to the comon man will disrupt the system greatly. If your lucky they will have a kneejerk react and link Void with you. Thus they will try to discredit anything to do with the Void just because it's linked to you, and history will show them to be great fools.

Really and revenge is going to have to be long term so only plant the seeds now.

Vitruviansquid
2014-12-13, 11:18 PM
Not sure if this would work within your setting, but why not start going around destroying the hell out of dojos?

Make yourself a big wooden sign advertising you as "The Grand, Fearsome Destroyer of Old Ways" or something similarly long-winded and menacing sounding. You're going to carry it around to dojos all across the land, challenging their masters to 1-on-1 fights. After you beat the master and humiliate the school, take their sign to commemorate the occasion. Your Six Dragons wouldn't be able to explain how all these dojos of respected elemental martial artists were crushed by someone using an element nobody's heard of.

Kiero
2014-12-14, 05:42 AM
To misquote Ambrose Bierce, "forgiveness" is the term for "patience while plotting a really worthwhile revenge."


I second this option. In the meantime do a lecture about it. I'm sure the dragons will be lest then pleased

The issue with patience is that we're an itinerant band of adventurers who won't be sticking around. We've got a lot of different places around the continent we want to visit. So anything that has a short-term impact is good, if it can sow seeds of a longer-term one, even better.


Instead of creating a school, set yourself up as a traveling master of an ancient and forbidden kung fu and spread rumors about your feats (real or made up, that's up to you). Take in students who will travel with you (possibly pseudo-offscreen); ideally as your legend grows they'll seek you out. If challenged, defeat others with your superior kung fu. While doing this, also work to discredit the Six Dragons or otherwise criticize their theory through the use of your great powers and deeper understanding of the cosmos.


Not sure if this would work within your setting, but why not start going around destroying the hell out of dojos?

Make yourself a big wooden sign advertising you as "The Grand, Fearsome Destroyer of Old Ways" or something similarly long-winded and menacing sounding. You're going to carry it around to dojos all across the land, challenging their masters to 1-on-1 fights. After you beat the master and humiliate the school, take their sign to commemorate the occasion. Your Six Dragons wouldn't be able to explain how all these dojos of respected elemental martial artists were crushed by someone using an element nobody's heard of.

There's a misapprehension people have here. The Six Dragons are not a martial arts school, they're a college of elemental theory. They are scholars who learn about, teach, debate and discuss elemental theory. The vast majority of them are neither mages nor elemental practitioners, they're academics. They don't actually use any elemental powers or train in any elemental styles. I mean there might be a practitioner or two amongst their student body, or on the payroll, but they aren't an entire organisation dedicated to application of the theory they study.

If we were in Grum-Tarath (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim/Gazetteer#Grum-Tarath), talk of martial schools would be appropriate. What we are talking about in Qyashun are some academics who have no time for a mere practitioner, one who isn't even published, sharing their closest-kept secrets. I'm not even sure there are any meaningful-sized martial arts schools here.

Thus the talk of releasing papers and doing lectures and such. Things that engages on their level. It's also worth noting that the head of the college has tenure for life (as all scholars there do), which means if she's done something to really jeopardise the college's status, one of her subordinate rivals might make a play for her chair. There's a grand tradition of stepping over the corpse of the former head of the tower in order to "inherit" their tenure.


Start writing a series of Void for the Layman books. Wirte in such a way that the lowly normal people can understand it, and make sure it isn't peer reviewed or anything proper like that (at least not at first and not by your own actions). Add to this random classes and lectures on the subject of the Void as time premits on your travels.

What this does is not so much beat them at their own game, but refuse to play their game at together. Since they get their power from hordeing knowlegde, giving it away to the common man will disrupt the system greatly. If your lucky they will have a kneejerk react and link Void with you. Thus they will try to discredit anything to do with the Void just because it's linked to you, and history will show them to be great fools.

Really and revenge is going to have to be long term so only plant the seeds now.

Yep, I think there's mileage in this. My character just wrote a (brief) treatise on Void, so getting that copied (I don't believe there are printing presses; though some random bit of Elder technology that survived the Dawn War may well do that) and circulated before the lecture might be a nice way to drum up interest and start the process.

It'll probably annoy the Vault Keeper, who is all about restricting knowledge to the special few who merit access to it, but I'm not that bothered about being in his good graces.

the_druid_droid
2014-12-15, 09:24 PM
Well, having spent some time in academia myself, the best way to piss off your rivals is to find some method of magically shrinking their offices, or perhaps to erase their names from the invite list of the next big elemental magic conference. :smallwink:

Failing that, the publicity idea isn't bad, but I think you should think bigger. If you really want revenge, don't just publicize your findings, start by engraving them in the stone of their own academy an inch deep (Or maybe enchanted permanent paint? Whatever's easiest to work with given your magic, cash, and the dextrous hands of several hundred eager urchins bought with a shiny coin). Bonus points if you find a way to do it in broad daylight.

EDIT: Alternatively, push the lecture series idea to the breaking point. Between actual interest and crowd members you've purchased the attention of (see above shiny coin remark) make a spectacle they can't ignore every day on the steps of the academy. When they finally decide to come see you, challenge/goad them into a public debate they can't refuse, and drop science on them in the medieval academician's version of an Epic Rap Battle.

Qwertystop
2014-12-15, 11:40 PM
I generally agree - make it public.

Unless you think they might send a more competent assassin. Be careful of that situation.

Friv
2014-12-16, 12:55 AM
Publicizing your Void learning is a good start. Here's another.

Every time you reach a town or city with an academy, find a way to steal a new secret from the towers of the Six Dragons, and publicize that, too. Every academic secret that they keep to themselves, every rare spell, every forgotten treatise. Steal unique books and copy them for the peasantry. Start a grassroots movement teaching poor children to read and write, so that when they get older they'll be able to join in the fun.

Burn down their precious stockpile of secrets around their ears, and do it by making the world a better and more knowledgeable place.

(Note: Depending on where you are, you may get some kickback from the nobility. That should be fun.)

Kiero
2014-12-18, 06:49 PM
Well, having spent some time in academia myself, the best way to piss off your rivals is to find some method of magically shrinking their offices, or perhaps to erase their names from the invite list of the next big elemental magic conference. :smallwink:

Failing that, the publicity idea isn't bad, but I think you should think bigger. If you really want revenge, don't just publicize your findings, start by engraving them in the stone of their own academy an inch deep (Or maybe enchanted permanent paint? Whatever's easiest to work with given your magic, cash, and the dextrous hands of several hundred eager urchins bought with a shiny coin). Bonus points if you find a way to do it in broad daylight.

EDIT: Alternatively, push the lecture series idea to the breaking point. Between actual interest and crowd members you've purchased the attention of (see above shiny coin remark) make a spectacle they can't ignore every day on the steps of the academy. When they finally decide to come see you, challenge/goad them into a public debate they can't refuse, and drop science on them in the medieval academician's version of an Epic Rap Battle.

My character could engrave them in stone with his bare hands - another way of demonstrating what practitioners can do that mere scholars cannot.

I like the notion of using hired urchins to cause extra chaos.

My only fear with pushing them to the point of a challenge is that my character is only 2nd level (soon to be 3rd), so he might struggle if they find a competent practitioner to back them up.


I generally agree - make it public.

Unless you think they might send a more competent assassin. Be careful of that situation.

Ironically, it was a failed Perception check that ultimately allowed the assassin to be so successful.


Publicizing your Void learning is a good start. Here's another.

Every time you reach a town or city with an academy, find a way to steal a new secret from the towers of the Six Dragons, and publicize that, too. Every academic secret that they keep to themselves, every rare spell, every forgotten treatise. Steal unique books and copy them for the peasantry. Start a grassroots movement teaching poor children to read and write, so that when they get older they'll be able to join in the fun.

Burn down their precious stockpile of secrets around their ears, and do it by making the world a better and more knowledgeable place.

(Note: Depending on where you are, you may get some kickback from the nobility. That should be fun.)

My character's patron is the Truthseeker (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim/Icons#The_Truth-Seeker) - the arch-nemesis and anathema of the Vault Keeper. So he'd be doing his patron's bidding by spreading the knowledge around.

I do wonder how easy it would be to steal any of their secrets I don't already know about without getting into trouble, though. This is a pretty big one in it's own right, in the end.

Khedrac
2014-12-19, 08:54 AM
If you want a really stinging rebuke that will leave them wondering but you in the right...

Turn up at their next big public appearance - and publicly and politely thank-them and return them the poison they "gave" you (or something that looks like it - and it really wants to be obviously poison here). Add in a remark about the flavor not being to your taste.

This way people know they tried to poison you, but they will be left wondering what your real game-plan is - you can't really be that nice and friendly after they tried to kill you.

The more honest you can be the better, and the next step is to leave them to stew in their own paranoia, whilst trying to explain why they tried to poison someone.

You can then go your way without doing a single thing they can object to without putting themselves even more in the wrong.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-19, 03:24 PM
(Note: Depending on where you are, you may get some kickback from the nobility. That should be fun.)

Assuming Friv means the good kind of kickback(s), I'd actually make this a priority. Do all of your "wandering teacher" stuff with an eye on improving the position of the local lord through decreased dependence on the academy for practical knowledge. Then, one day, once you're good and famous, start calling in favors. My suggestion? Ask all the nobles you've helped to invest in a rival academy founded and run by you, with the stated mission of making elemental knowledge freely available to the masses.

theNater
2014-12-19, 04:33 PM
If you want to hit them where it hurts, you need to target their reputation. This is the main elemental college in the foremost center of learning on the continent, so if you can prove you know something they don't, that'll get 'em right in the pride.

Come up with a flashy experiment that hinges on the existence of void. Perform it quite publicly, then offer a reward for anyone who can explain and/or duplicate it. Either they publicly admit to knowledge of the void, or they look like they've been outwitted by "a mere practitioner who isn't even published". Either way, you win.

Friv
2014-12-20, 11:09 PM
Assuming Friv means the good kind of kickback(s), I'd actually make this a priority. Do all of your "wandering teacher" stuff with an eye on improving the position of the local lord through decreased dependence on the academy for practical knowledge. Then, one day, once you're good and famous, start calling in favors. My suggestion? Ask all the nobles you've helped to invest in a rival academy founded and run by you, with the stated mission of making elemental knowledge freely available to the masses.

No, I meant kickback in the form of nobles sending thugs around to your schools to break them up, on the grounds that peasants should know their places.

Most feudal societies depend on a mostly uneducated, obedient peasantry to prop up the nobility and allow them to succeed and prosper. The more you teach poor people, the more likely it is that they will stop being content about being poor, or will try to better themselves, and so on, and while that's great for society in the long run, it's not so great for the people who have current dominance over education and prosperity. Education is anathema to feudalism.

Certainly, opening those schools is going to be a quick road to distinguishing the nobles who actually care about their workers from the ones who only really care about themselves.