The Giggling Dark: Session Two

A few weeks later and Xellous visited Kora's family's farm. As he walked through their rice fields he bumped into Threen, Kora's mother. She asked to talk to Xellous. People would begin to wonder about why Kora was pregnant and, with her father Altus being dead, the family's reputation would decline. Threen asked Xellous to marry Kora immediately, to preserve appearances for the family.  Xellous said he would talk to Kora about it.

Xellous went upstairs, to Kora's room. Kora was sitting there, on her bed, dishevelled. The smell indicated that she had not showered in weeks. Her hair was greasy. She nodded when he came in, and the two sat down to talk. They talked about her pregnancy, about how powerless she had felt, how much she wanted to have that power back. Xellous asked if she wanted to help him take the demon heart and make something of it.

It's here I break the fiction that I normally write with, because the next part did not really happen in game. Kurlak, Xellous' player, wanted to make a bow that would keep Kora safe. We sat down to figure out exactly what he wanted. The list was steep. He wanted to make a bow that could hurt spirits and hurt even a god. Considering that Xellous' Enchanting ability was gray-shaded from his Prodigy trait that part wouldn't be a problem. But Kurlak was greedy. He pumped bonus after bonus into the bow, over my balking about the difficulty of what he was doing. Contrary to my players' very popular belief I am very much their number one fan and want them to legitimately succeed. And Kurlak was setting himself  up for a huge failure at an Obstacle 15! 10's the normal max, but Kurlak had done everything possible to just... his chances of success was not great. 

Yes, Ob 15. 

Now, Kurlak had picked every single advantage in Enchanting he could, and so he had 7 gray shaded dice to roll with. He rolled.... and got 14 successes. He burned the Fate point to roll one of the open-ended failures, and got it. 

Xellous had made a bow that could deal a G15 wound to everyone and everything, capable of  tickling a god.

Fifteen days went by as Xellous and Kora labored over the bow. When it was done, Xellous handed it to Kora and the went out to a tree near Xellous' rice field. The bow was red and scaly. The arrowhead glowed red-hot when drawn. The tree shattered into a million burning pieces, flying all over the rice field. And Kora's smile was bigger than it had been in a long time. Xellous caught Kora up in his arms and asked her to be with him.

Kora laughed and asked "Aren't I with you already?"

Xellous laughed, swallowed, and said "No, that's not what I meant. Will you marry me?"