Discretion

SUMMARY: While staking out the Mul'niessa embassy hoping to identify additional Charn spies through their thoughts and auras, Rona encounters Walery and Aya. Their conversation covers the nature of discretion, spycraft, artifice, and Walery's underwear, among other things.

Walery is, at the moment, departing thr Artificers' Hall, and heading out across the Plaza.

Yelrona is sitting cross-legged at one end of the Plaza, near the Llyranesi Embassy, playing hopskotch with several children. She seems extremely distracted, though, and is not making a good showing. She waves idly to Walery as he passes by.

Walery eyes Yelrona and her hopscotch game curiously. "That's interesting," he observes. "Are you letting them win to enhance theie self-esteem, or some other purpose?" he wonders.

Yelrona chuckles, and steps away from the game, continuing to seem distracted. "Neither, really. I've just got something on my mind." She chuckles, as though at a private joke. Behind her, a pair of older sil walk into the Embassy and she blinks, frowning in concentration for a few seconds before relaxing again.

Walery follows the glace to the two sil, then back. "Watching the embassy, then? Have you become a spy?" he wonders. "That seems interseting."

Yelrona regards Walery curiously. "How often do you change your underwear?" she asks.

Aya has arrived.

Walery arches a brow to Yelrona. "Is that a code phrase?" he wonders, then replies, in a sort of wanna-be cryptic manner, "They chafe ferociously."

Yelrona shakes her head. "No, I was just curious. You really do seem to not understand the difference between things people talk about privately and things they talk about publicly, and I was wondering how far that extended. Have you considered lotion?"

Walery ohs, shakes his head. "I grew up in the guild, and we talked about all sorts of things," he explains. Though apparently social norms were not among them. He shakes his head about lotion, and says, "Oh, they don't really. I was just hoping that might be the right passphrase."

Aya enters the plaza from, of all directions, the winding path into the Redridge Mountains. The Arcanist Society and Artificer's Guild both receive glances as she nears or passes them. One never knows when a random ball of fire or other explosive combination could be ejected from either.

Yelrona nods. "It's possibly that the passphrase-exchange is several steps long, and "Have you considered lotion?" is part of it, isn't it?"

Walery ohs to Yelrona. "I'm not really cut out for this cloak and dagger stuff, am I?" he laments. "I suppose I've goofed that up now."

Yelrona notices Aya and grins. "Well, here's someone we could _both_ take lessons from. Hi Aya!" She waves.

Aya glances over as her name is called, and rer steps align with her sightline to bring her on approach to Yelrona and company. "Hello." A brief glance between them before she asks, "Are we still making public spectacles?"

Walery looks over to Aya, looks puzzled. "What sort of lessons, do you think?" he wonders to Yelrona. He smiles and waves to Aya. "Um," he says to her question. "I'm not sure. I don't think so..." Walery's social observation skills, though, are not reliable.

Yelrona shrugs. "Only if you count hopskotch. We could, though. Any particular spectacle you have in mind? We were just talking about Walery's underwear, for example. But mostly I was suggesting that you were a good person to study, if one wished to learn about discretion."

Aya ahs softly. "I prefer not to make a spectacle of myself on most occassions," her eyes briefly flit to Walery, "and I'd rather not discuss anyone's underwear. I do know something of discretion, though, by necessity."

Walery shrugs about being a spectacle. He's carrying a death ray over his shoulder, he's going to draw stares regardless. "I don't normally discuss them, either, but she asked." He shrugs. "Discretion? What's that?"

Yelrona laughs, not unkindly. "Discretion is, for example, not announcing your intention to kill someone in front of witnesses."

Walery smirks and taps the side of his nose with a finger, winking to Yelrona. "Is it? But your friend made his escape without actually being attacked. And any witnesses would swear I was attacking a self-admitted slaver. So it ended satisfactorily, I think?"

Aya looks to Walery somewhat dubiously. "Simply put, it is knowing when to act, and when to keep one's thoughts to one's self to act at a more opportune moment. It can easily be the difference between life and death."

Yelrona nods agreement. "And not just one's own." She thinks about it and continues. "As I understand it, artificers develop their own blueprints for their contraptions, right? You do research on Kulthian technology and work out how to adapt it to adventuring contexts?"

Walery ohs to Aya. "I see." He gives Yelrona a puzzled look. "Broadly speaking, yes," he says, then looks to Aya as if to check whether that admission was acceptable.

Aya arches a brow at Walery's glance, then the other as she appears to imply its meaning. "I expect that you know far more of the subject than I, and whether it is a dangerous one to speak of." A corner of her mouth lifts. "The somewhat vague caveat of your answer is laudable, though. You may have some talent at discretion even if you weren't aware of it."

Yelrona chuckles appreciatively at Aya's answer. Genuinely curiously, she continues "Is it conventional among artificers to freely share your discoveries... like, to publish the blueprints for them? Or are they more something to perhaps be shared with specific others when you choose to, perhaps sold, but basically a private thing?"

Walery admits to Aya, "Well, it's a complicated subject. I'm aware of a few designs and tenets of Kulthian mechanics and artifice. But much of what I design isn't adapted, per se. At most it might be inspired by Kulthian designs, but in most cases, it's based on goblin, or gnomish designs, or else wholly original." He shakes his head to Yelrona, "It's not common, but mostly because another artificer would get little utility from it without so much study that he might as well have worked it out on his own."

"I'm not a student of artifice, nor magic, specifically," Aya admits, "but knowledge of any kind can have value. If it was freely shared to all, there would be very little need for many guilds or schools. They would lose their power. I doubt that such a free exchange of information would ever occur."

Yelrona nods to Aya -- that's more or less where she'd been headed, though a typically Aya take on the subject. That said, Walery's explanation _wasn't_ where she'd been headed, but he makes a good point. "That's a form of discretion as well," she replies to him. "Sometimes you know things that it's just not _useful_ to tell others, because as you say, if they had done the work required for them to understand it in the first place, they wouldn't need your explanation. And in the other direction, also... some things it's just not _safe_ to share with people who haven't done the work required to understand it. I dare say that if I were to obtain your blueprints and somehow make enough sense of them to try to follow them, I would be lucky if they simply didn't work, rather than take my arm off at the elbow."

Walery admits to Aya, "Some of what the Kulthians did would cause considerable ... dismay, I suppose, if it were generally known. The fact that we /don't/ do those things anymore is actually kind of important. But that sort of thing tends to get lost in sensationalism." He peers at Yelrona, and says, "I think if you found my blueprints and read them, it would take you years to make anything of them other than a mess. I've been training for over ten years," he explains. "And I'm fairly new."

Aya dips her chin to Walery in acknowledgement. "I'm well aware of misconceptions or assumptions from sensationalized history, or even present. I imagine that there are those who believe that you should not study what you do, based on the past."

Aya adds, with a wave of hand to Yelrona, "So that you or others don't lose an arm, for example."

Yelrona nods. "Oh, there certainly are," she agrees. "Especially when the Guild building went for a walk, it seemed Alexandria could speak of nothing else for WEEKS." To Walery she adds "Oh, I've no doubt I would make no sense of it at all! To begin with you use your own language, right? Kulthian? But even if I translated it... as you say, it takes training to understand the concepts. The same goes for wizards. It fascinates me. it's different for divine spellcasters, of course. In our case it really _is_ public... Tarien shares the knowledge of his spells freely, and all those who can use them are simply granted the knowledge as insight from the gods."

Walery nods to Aya. "I think there are. And there are one or two things that ... yes. Goblins are particularly fast and loose with safety issues, for example," he agrees. "And that further worries people. Though they tend to have as good a safety record as most." He nods to Yelrona, "Ah, I see."

Yelrona laughs. "Aya will remember a particular goblin carrying explosives through the middle of the city recently. That was... interesting."

Walery looks curious. "Did something bad happen?" he wonders.

Yelrona smiles. "Well, that's a complicated question. It turned out the goblin was actually a doppleganger, and involved in a slaving ring we broke up. So... well, bad from their perspective, I suppose."

Walery says, "Oh, I see. Well, it's good that you stopped it, then."

Yelrona nods. "It is. We were lucky," she adds, with a Tarienite blessing gesture over her medallion.

Walery nods about luck, and says, "Many Tarienites find themselves lucky. I suppose that's their blessing?"

Yelrona nods. "Luck is part of Tarien's grace, yes. Back when I was a Luckbringer, it flowed through me more reliably, but even now I am often blessed with it."

Walery nods quickly. "No one is unhappy to have luck on their side, I think. But you're no longer a priest, then?"

"True enough! And, yes. I... had a convoluted path to get here. I was raised in an Elunite temple, and my mother expected me to be a Seer of Eluna. Instead, I declared as a lay follower of Tarien, and studied a fencer's path, and an acrobat's, and the like. And then Tarien called me to his service more concretely... first as a Luckbringer, and then later, when a different spirit had been convinced to relax her claim on my soul, as his Inquisitor."

Walery tries to follow all that. "Your life has been more complicated than mine, then, I think."

"Oh? How did you come to follow the Way of Kulthos?" she asks curiously.

Walery ehs, "It's not really the Way of Kulthos anymore than a paladin who swings his sword is following Kor. We're using techniques superficially similar to those used by Kulthos. But if we were to actually use those techniques, we'd be facing the same ruin that fell on them. Which is one reason we don't do it."

Yelrona looks interested. "Ah. That makes sense," she acknowledges. "So... how did you come to be an artificer?"

Walery ohs, "Well, when I was young, my parents felt I was destined for something greater than farmwork. So they sent me to the city. And the wizards sent me to the Artificers, and the Artificers let me join their school, and I trained there since."

"Oh!" She nods. "I'd always had the impression that it was more of a calling, but it sounds like for you it's more like a profession, then? Like being a soldier, or a siege engineer?"

Walery nods in agreement. "Oh yes. Quite a lot like a soldier, since I'm a warrior as well as an Artificer. Not like the heroic warriors of the Guild, of course. But I serve the City as best I can. My mentor had planned an entire company of us, but the funding got cut, and he had to depart the city, so there's just me."

"That's lovely," Rona replies approvingly. "The city needs as many defenders as it can get." Curiously she adds "Have you been facing any threats I ought to know about?"

Walery admits, "We faced a band of goblin brigands recently. And some odd jobs before that. Nothing large scale, though."

"Defense is important at every scale," Rona replies, with the air of someone quoting. "A single assassin can be just as deadly as an army if not opposed."

Walery thinks about that. "I do think they're deadly at different scales. An army can despoil a large swath of land, which a lone assassin can't. Though a wizard could."

"As could an artificer... and, some assassins are wizards and artificers. But even a mundane assassin armed with poison or the like can despoil a whole region. Not as efficiently as a wizard, perhaps, but still. I mean, you're right of course that the army is the deadlier threat... it can do damage much more quickly. But primarily an army is simply more capable of overcoming defenses. If the defenses aren't there to begin with... the situation is different."

Walery ehs, but says, "Yes, I suppose every situation is different. You have to match the capabilities of your skillset to the situation you find yourself in."