Work Text:
VISUAL CALCULUS [Medium: Success] — In order for the perpetrator to have reached the third floor in time, they would have had to scale the treillage. You're not close enough to tell exactly, but there may be indicators of stress on the wood.
YOU — How hard would it be to get up there within thirty seconds?
VISUAL CALCULUS — Quite. The gaps between the bars are tall and would require significant flexibility to climb quickly. Either you're looking for a professional athlete or there's some other route to the third floor.
SAVOIR FAIRE [Medium: Success] — Wrong again, Puzzle Face. He's no athlete, but he could climb that *easy.*
LOGIC — Huh? What are you talking to me for?
SAVOIR FAIRE — What? You were the one talking about the trellis.
LOGIC — That was Visual Calculus. Do we INT skills all look the same to you?
SAVOIR FAIRE — No! I just wasn't looking. You do all *sound* the same.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] — You do, too. Harry's entire internal monologue sounds like us, even though our voice is nothing like his.
YOU — Why *do* you guys all sound the same?
CONCEPTUALIZATION — That's a mystery, isn't it? Your conceptualization skills are healthy enough to personify us like this, giving us bodies and names, but not enough to give us separate voices.
At the same time, the voice we do have is completely different from yours. That's not how internal monologues are supposed to work.
YOU — There has to be *some* origin.
INLAND EMPIRE [Trivial: Success] — It's buried deep, if it wasn't annihilated in Martinaise. You have no idea when we appeared, and among us the subject is hotly debated. Perhaps, if you take enough time, you *could* find out where this voice comes from, but it wouldn't be easy.
YOU — [Conceptualization: Challenging 12] Dig into your memory for the origin of *the voice.*
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Challenging: Success] — You were a child... that's all I've got. A fragment of a fragment of a memory. Dwell on it, will you? See if we can't crack this nut.
THOUGHT GAINED
BE NOT THY TONGUE THY OWN SHAME'S ORATOR
Research time: 4h
Temporary research bonus:
+1 Drama: Dissecting the narrator
PROBLEM: You have a fairly deep voice. It's scratchy, gravelly, and Suresne. It's loveable -- it carries the same "sad has-been" energy as the rest of your shambling horror. You don't *think* in this voice, though. Some smooth, even deeper-voiced Vespertine jackass has set up shop in your head, and now every time you look at Kim or swing your leg over a fence you have to deal with him narrating what you've already noticed. Even your skills talk like him! Why? Did you sound like that at one point? Was your dad a guy with a really heavy Vespertine accent? Is it a curse? The explanations swim in your head, but only one of them can be true...
KIM KITSURAGI — "What do you think, detective?"
YOU — "I don't think they climbed up the trellis. Look at the..."
YOU — Put him down.
BREAKTHROUGH IMMINENT
MISCHIEVOUS GARDEN GNOME — You set the gnome back down in the soil.
YOU — (Leave.)
BE NOT THY TONGUE THY OWN SHAME'S ORATOR
SOLUTION: ...and none of them are true, actually. None of those, in any case. You were a child, too young to read just yet. Five, maybe? Regardless, every Sunday there was a reading at the local library for some children's book or another. There were a few different readers, but one of them stuck with you through the years. A black man with a thick Vespertine accent. His tone and cadence were not at all affected by the fact that he was reading Mother Goose. ('07 printing.) He delivered each line with a seriousness you would expect from someone reading Sixteen Days in Coldest April. You loved it back then, and the memories warm your heart now. You don't know exactly when he started to pop up in your mind, but it was around when things started to get really bad. You needed a narrator for the world, and the first thing you thought of was that Vespertine drawl. You've toned it down, as a matter of fact -- at his worst, that man was nearly unintelligible, especially to a group of kids. You hope he's doing well, wherever he is, and also that you never meet him again. Having to distinguish between him and your skills... you shudder at the thought.
Bonuses from the thought:
All passive checks grant +1 XP