In the city or Westmore, after speaking to the Duke, presenting him with the books, and gaining permission to use the library.
Mia went looking for Henri to find out if he knew more of their church...
It didn't take long, asking around the main street of the town, for Mia to hear about Henri, of the rainbow robes, "just like yours ma'am." As Mia fought down the embarrassment, she listened to the directions, a series of right and left turns several blocks away. With the assurance that "you can't miss it," she set off to try to find him.
A few blocks east of the main street, the streets were empty and the houses closed and lifeless. Most of the city was still like this; but it was eerie in a way unlike all the orc holes and forests had been. This should have had people in it; but there was nothing, not even ghosts. She was sure she had missed it, when ahead at a plaza where a small fountain splashed she saw a single banner outside a doorway, rippling in the slight breeze. A banner graded in color from red to violet.
As she approached the building, she could tell the building was not a house. The other houses in town had many windows facing the plaza; but this one was a bare facade of stone on the south side. The double doors were open. "Hello?" Mia called. "Is anyone here?" After a moment she stuck her heads in the doors, into a darkened vestibule. "Hello?" she called again.
"Hello!" a man's voice replied. A moment later, Henri came through the doors on the other side of the vestibule. He was wearing his rainbow robe, although he had hitched up the front of it into his belt. The pants he was wearing under the robe were quite wet from the knees down. "Mia, isn't it? Good to see you back." He noticed his robe, and, a bit self consciously, tugged it loose so it fell back to cover his pants. "Um, let me show you around. I'm glad you found the place."
Her eyes had slowly been adjusting to the dimness of the vestibule after the bright courtyard. Henri ushered her in through the other doors into the interior of the building. Her first sense of the room was that it was empty and light; it was rectangular, longer than it was wide, and shafts of light came in through the roof in bright spots on the floor. At the far end was a plain block of stone; arranged facing it were a pair of simple wooden benches, and a bucket, mop and brushes sat incongruously in one corner, where the floor was wet. It was quiet and peaceful.
"Watch the lights a few moments," Henri said, his voice just above a whisper. Puzzled, Mia looked at the shafts of light again. Suddenly, she realized that they did not all come in at the same angle. As she watched, one of the white shafts of light broke into colored spots on the floor, that moved apart and then coalesced again. It seemed as though the coloured lights were moved around by an errant breeze, or dancing by themselves. Henri smiled. "I could watch it for hours. There're some openings up top, and some mirrors and hanging crystals. The light gets reflected down here, well, it did once I got the place cleaned up." He nodded over to the bucket. "Now I'm working on the floor." He gestures for her to follow. "Come on. Let me show you something else."
He led her into the center of the room and gestured up. In the front of the room, over the altar area, she saw a broad beam with panels of color. There were seven panels, each about six feet by six feet. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, ordered left to right in the colors of the rainbow. On the ends were two blank panels, the color of the building stone, that filled in the distance from wall to wall. Opposite this, on the back wall, the same colors in reverse. "How did you find this place?" Mia asked.
"I'd been trying to teach some folks who wanted to be adventurers some of the healing arts." He grinned. "There's a lot of demand for healers among those who want to go adventuring, and the other Church doesn't like to teach such things. Unless you're willing to sign up with them to be a priest for life. I figured it was a good way to get converts, to not be, how to say it, quite so hidebound. Time for things to change a bit, I think. Anyway, I'd been trying to find an unused building that could be used as a church or meeting place. I got the idea of trying to let chance lead me, so I flipped a coin every time I got to a junction. Wandered until I got to the west wall, late one afternoon, and realized it was a lousy idea. I just tried to head straight back."
He continued, "There was a sudden rainstorm as I was crossing the plaza out there, so I ducked in the nearest doorway, which happened to be this one. I looked inside, since the rain was pretty fierce, and saw the colors up there." His voice grew quiet, and he shrugged. "I knew this was it." He smiled again at her. "But, boy, does it need a lot of cleaning."
He wandered over to a spot on the floor, and pointed at a small hole. "I'm pretty sure that there were benches fastened to the floor here, but that center area was left clear. Looks like everything in here was carefully taken up and away. Even the benches. All the other rooms here are empty, save for the crystals upstairs, and they look like they're embedded in the rock. Pretty different from the other buildings in town, where they left clothes and food and furniture." He grinned wryly. "Wish I knew why. I sure wish they had at least left a book. I asked around at the Palace, but there had only been a cursory inventory of this area, and no one mentioned anything having been here. I requested that the Duke deed this to me, but haven't heard yet."
He led her over to one of the benches. "So, now I spend part of my day teaching those who want to learn about the religion, or at least teaching them how to heal. Evenings wandering the inns to see what I can learn. And mornings, scrubbing." He smiled at her, and gestured for her to sit on the bench as he also settled in. "But, tell me, how went your quest for mages and books?"
[You might want to pause here to think about Mia's reaction to the above before continuing; I'm about to jump to the second day. A lot of the details of what happens depends on your/her reaction and questions. I'll presume that Mia winds up helping. If she wouldn't, we'll have to change this.]
Mia was back the second day, as she worked with Henri on the floor in the middle of the room. When examined closely (say at the end of a scrub brush), she could see that the surface was rough, unlike the smooth stone of the surrounding floor. Tiny ridges ran at angles to one another, all over the hard floor. Designed, she thought, to make it hard to clean.
She sat back up to stretch, Henri did the same and smiled at her. A soft breeze moved through the room, and at that moment one of the shafts of light broke into its multicolored dance. The red light spot flashed past her, reflecting wildly and brilliantly off of the grooved floor. She blinked, the bright reflection still bright in the afterimage of her closed eyes, clearly shaping the word `Before'. She looked at Henri, who was looking at her in shock, his smile suddenly gone. "Did you see that?" he asked.
They scrubbed with renewed vigor. Again the lights did their dance of color, and now in addition to first word, `the' appeared in green. The acolytes Henri was training showed up at their appointed time, to find the two of them still madly scrubbing the huge open area. Class was canceled for the day as they all set to work. At the end of the day, they were rewarded with a violet `first,' just as the sun set and the sky turned to red, ending the dance for the day.
Tired, Henri looked at the floor. "`Before the first.' I think I'll write that down." He grinned wildly and laughed. "Mia, they did leave a book! And a book as different from the other church as you can imagine. Not locked up in some back room where only the initiates get to see it, but out here in the open, where everyone has to practically walk through it to get where they are going."
Enzo, the largest and dourest of the acolytes, raised one eyebrow. "Sure wish there was an easy way to turn the page."
Each day, another line appeared. The next day, the third, was `In the Time before Time,'. The fourth day, it was `There was All.'. The fifth, `There was Nothing.' The sixth, `They were One.' The seventh day, during the ceremony, which Henri kept considerably shorter than the equivalent other Church ceremony, the lights spelled out for all the congregation (such as it was) `In Time came the three:'.
[And there are opportunities to discuss other things Henri knows--perhaps one or two spells you don't. Whether or not you get into what you know about the religion is up to you.]
Re: Wearing the Rainbow Robes
[SF: About the wearing rainbow colors disad: I'm truly not happy with it, Anyhow -- I like Mia, I'd rather not scrap her as a character, but right now I'm not at all comfortable with what's happened.]
[GM: Well, let me give you some background. I have the church of the unnamed god, which is the one you in your village have known as long as anyone alive knows. It's the state religion, the whole shebang. Priests tend to dress in
white for formal occasions, or a plain brown "priest robe" for the rest of the time (think Friar Tuck). The church of Chaos has not been even a rumor.
In setting up the two churches, I needed a spell effect that was "opposite" to white without being black (black being the color of evil priests et. al.), and chose rainbow colors. Both priest, sorry, priestess, package deals come with "dress like cleric", and the church of chaos is rainbow colored. Basically, not dressing that way would mean that you couldn't call on the Rainbow Gods, i.e., your priestly spells wouldn't work.
So, I can see two ways to go. First, we go back in time and have you chose the other cleric card, you can dress in more standard colors. Second, you stick with the rainbow card, but don't dress that way. Much of the time, your healing (and other cleric spells) won't work; you have to put on the "hated" colors and then they might work. As the campaign goes on, you buy off shyness and paint the town red...and yellow and green and blue....]
[SF: In accepting the cleric card, is there an implicit promise to wear the robes?]
[GM: Well, it's a promise in the sense that you've "promised" to wear the colors in exchange for being "given" the clerical spells--which is why they won't work if you're not wearing them.]
[SF: That works -- so long as she doesn't _have_ to _want_ to wear the stuff that's great! How would wearing rainbow colors but concealing them under a cloak be? Or should I wait and find out? At the moment I don't think she'd do that yet (simply not wearing them might be more her style -- as long as she could use the excuse that she doesn't own any to wear! :-) ), but I would think the next step after she realized she couldn't use any of the priestly skills without wearing the clothes would be to hide the fact that she was wearing them... It all depends on how much information she has regarding both the religious ideology towards wearing them (if the dogma she knows states that she has to wear them she will, but hide it. If it's just she doesn't get godly favors when not in them, she can live with that, after all she's lived most of her life without godly favors! :-)]
[GM: Well, as far as the chaos gods are concerned, you're a priest that is supposed to be spreading their word. So, if you are hiding the colors, you're not spreading the word, and they aren't going to help you. The "want" is there, because you'd like to do these things (after all, it costs you points :) ), but it is not an overpowering urge, no zombie walk to the rainbow clothes rack. So, yes, you'll be a conflicted character.
As for dogma--you know the ceremonies of the church, when to stand, when to kneel, etc., but you are missing the "everyday" knowledge of what the church stands for. Don't worry, you're in the same boat as everyone else in the party. :) Sheryl and Mike are both members of important Orders, they know because Order is always capitalized. Now... if they just knew what they were sworn to do...]
[SF: Well -- I've actually gotten rather attracted to the process of changing Mia that way -- though it wasn't what I originally intended her to end up like. It could be fun, and like Barry (and my favorite author -- Lois McMaster Bjould) say -- conflicted characters are fun :-) The problem is in having to do something so totally out of character.]
[GM: It will be interesting to see where you go with this. Just to be clear, your magic spells will work, but your healing ones won't, as long as you don't wear the colors. If you only put the robes on temporarily, the gods can decide what to do, on their whim. It will definitely play off your idea of not wanting to see people die, and conflict with that. :) Authors love to focus on that sort of conflict (I haven't read any Bjould, but it's the same with all good stories) because it is interesting to watch-- so don't be surprised if it comes up in a game. :) You sure you don't want to switch cleric types? :)]
[SF: How much does Mia know about both religion in general and her new faith in particular? It'd be nice to know for role-playing. I mean does either church preach some kind of morality? social structure? cosmos sturcture? how to treat people? animals? magic? Unless she's supposed to be awfully ignorant about it all and get "bonked" with it when she meets other rainbow types and transgresses something -- which could be fun, although terribly frustrating for Mia! Also, I assume if I buy it that Mia will know that she can heal and whatever other spiffy things can come with the priest schtick? As far as water spells go, I was sorta attracted to the list of 4 basic ones you were passing around as level one for each type of mage ...]
[GM: You have the everyday knowledge of the church of the unnamed god. Supposedly the upper level hierarchy of the church knows the name of god, but you don't. It's the church of the state, and supports the existing secular order. It preaches hard work, tithing to your church and paying the lord's taxes, listening to your family, etc., etc. Man is superior to all other beasts; people here are superior to all other people. Envision any awfully conservative state religion. The church of chaos, now, you don't know anything about it, save the ceremonies. You'll need a book to find out more. :)]
"Rainbow Church" copyright 1999 P.Shea. The contents of this site are copyright 2004 Sheryl A. Knowles unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved.