The Eagle Pie Loophole

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Perin
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Joined: Tue Apr 24, 2018 7:16 am

The Eagle Pie Loophole

Post by Perin » Sat May 05, 2018 6:21 am

[Perin Fole and her hellhound familiar are alone in a sheltered corner of the Weald.]

“Decadence, hold still.” Gnomish hands were precarious handlers of human ledgers at the best of times. Balancing the ledger on the flank of a hellhound intent on scratching his ear only made it worse.

A slight pause, a tilted head, and then Decadence’s rear paw was once again at his head.

“By section c of article 5 of our covenant,” Perin informed her hound, “I request and require that you hold your flank still until further notice.”

Decadence snorted in protest, but the scratching stopped.

Perin opened the ledger to its last filled-in page. A dozen line items ran half-way down the paper. Some entries were dull. She’d written these herself, with blood, in the Common tongue. The rest glowed like coals. They were written in Infernal, and she did not like to think what power had placed them there.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she said to herself. She’d meant the trip to Skal to allow her to start paying down her principal, leaving her room for an additional grant of power. Instead, her debt had grown.

As she watched, another glowing line was added to the account. Perin couldn’t read Infernal, but the figures in the right-most columns were simple enough to take in. Assets, minus one ten-thousandth. Liabilities, plus one ten-thousandth. Interest.

She flipped to the last page of the ledger and took a quick look at the total. It was closer than she’d like to all she had to offer. If things didn’t change soon…

“How’d you like to move back home, boy? Would you like it if mommy joined the Blood War?” Decadence turned his red eyes to face her and carefully whined, to avoid moving his flank. “Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

Perin turned the pages back to the entries she’d written for Skal. With a few minor exceptions, they all had the same numerical values: Assets, plus zero ten-thousandths. Liabilities, plus zero ten-thousandths.

Oh, wait. No. There had been ONE correction by whatever passed for auditors in the Hells.

The gnome blinked.

“Seriously?”

The description was hers. She remembered she’d written it in a dilution of blood obtained from Ser Lowell. It read,

“Paladin Petra Bigstep of Cyrell *scratched out* *scratched out* Sear Lolly *scratched out* halfling hearth goddess: convinced Paladin to cooperate with Banites, and extend friendship to them.”

Last time she’d checked, the double entries had both been zero. Now, a correction in the auditor’s oily orange: “Liabilities: plus ten ten-thousandths. Assets: minus ten ten-thousandths.” There was a footnote. She looked it up, and found it was written in Infernal, Common and gnomish. “Footnote 29. Divine penalty: working against the creditor’s interests.”

“Against the cred- Decadence, what do YOU think? She’s a paladin! I convinced her to work with evil cultists! How is that NOT corruption?”

The hellhound flicked his ears.

“Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough. Or maybe it was the mis-spelling…” Perin took a folded note out of her bag. “C-y-r-r-o-l-l-a-l-e-e. Okay. Let’s try this again.” She’d even splurge for the fancy ink - blood of the serial murderer and warlock Jack Beagle, drawn by her own dagger, which she kept in a broken minotaur horn sealed with corpse fat.

Perin dipped a fresh stirge quill into the blood and wrote in her best hand:

“Debtor corrupted Petra Bigfoot, paladin of Cyrrollalee, by persuading her to cooperate with Banites and tolerate their presence in local government.” Which was true - it wasn’t her fault the cultists had fled to the mainland.

The response was immediate, oily and orange. Instead of figures, a short note in three languages: “See Footnote 29.”

This was not good.

In desperation, she tried again. Devils were notoriously hard to bluff, but she was running out of options.

“Debtor’s talks with Aurilite clergy played a part in electing Mach…” What was his family name? Had she ever heard it? “…of the Frostblades to the local council. This individual is irredeemably chaotic, with thoughts as wild as his magic.” She was running out of room. Time to make her letters as small as Akanax fine print. “As one of three councillors, his presence corrupts the council beyond hope of law or justice.”

She set down her pen and waited. After a few seconds, coal-glow zeroes appeared in both columns. That was bad.

A few breaths later, while she still stared, the figures were replaced with an oily orange “Under Review” in Infernal, gnomish and Common.

That was worse.

“Son of she-wolf!” She tossed her quill away in anger, with raw magic behind her throw. There was a death squeal and the tell-tale drone of negative energy as something tiny had its strength sapped. Perin didn’t bother looking. Whatever she hit must have survived the first impact, because Decadence finished it off with an exhalation of flame. He tried to snack on the charred remains, but couldn’t do so without moving his flank.

“Just a bit longer.”

She looked over the Skal entries again. If she were still keeping books in Chessenta, and this was just forensic accounting work for Assuran’s temple, what would it look like to her?

Almost every line she’d written showed corruption. Except for the puzzling case of the paladin, where the auditor disagreed, and possibly her latest desperate claim, nothing went AGAINST the Hidden Lord’s requirements.

She’d been very efficient. Whenever she’d set out to corrupt the worthy, it had taken the slightest of whispers, the tiniest of well-placed kindnesses and carefully tended truths, to effect the desired result. Everything happened just as she wished, and quickly.

Perin pulled one of Petra’s eagle pies from her pack. As she did so, she noticed a rag at the top of her pack, stained with Lowell’s blood. He’d given it to her freely, and she’d even obtained his formal, open-ended permission to harm him with magic. It had taken seconds.

She served herself a slice of pie with an ice dagger.

Maybe, she thought as she chewed, that was the problem. Everything was too easy, too fast.

The hellhound whined and licked his lips piteously.

“Okay, you big baby.” She summoned another dagger and tried to carve out a second slice of pie for Decadence. It was a lost cause. The top cover of pastry collapsed on itself and fell into the soggy meat filling.

Perin absent-mindedly slid the whole pie to a very grateful hell-hound.

As he wagged his tail, her blood ran cold.

‘The slightest corruption at the base can topple the tallest tower,’ the saying went. Once the corruption is there, once the weakness is in place, any force is enough to make the structure fall.

Just like the pie.

The reason her Skal entries merited zero - at best - was not that they did not count as corruption - they did. The problem was that she was not the first mover, the cause of the corruption. She was just the clueless bystander leaning against the compromised tower.

All of Skal was already corrupt. Hopelessly, irredeemably corrupt.

Maybe it was the Furies. Maybe Auril’s power was inherently nefarious and rubbed off on all who lived here.

Maybe only the false in heart made it to the is- No, wait. There was that paladin. And Janix. And Lowell was too simple-minded to be devious.

Maybe someone, or something, was getting to her targets before she could exert her own influence? She looked at the glowing ‘Under Review’ letters again, hearing only Decadence’s slurping tongue and her own heartbeat.

Yeah. No. That was not worth considering, because if THAT was the deal, then all hope was lost. She might as well start saving up for armour to wear in the Abyss.

Okay. So.

Deep breath.

Assume the worst. Everyone and everything in Skal is already corrupt or as perverse as that paladin. The town - the whole island - is a sliced-open eagle pie. There’s nothing left to gain credit with, because everything’s ready to collapse. No influence needed.

What can you do? Leave?

Cordor is tempting. There’s plenty of order to undermine there, but the ships won’t be sailing for another half-year, and by then her liabilities may grow beyond her ability to pay. As long as she kept her powers - and there was no provision for losing them - interest continues to accrue.

The orange letters began to change. Before they could settle, Perin slammed the ledger shut and replaced it in her pack.

“Decadence, you may move your flank.”

The hellhound picked up the now-empty pie plate and held it in front of Perin, begging for more. His tail was wagging wildly, and she could swear his eyes glowed PINK.

“Sorry. No more. Go eat your kill. I can’t bake another…”

Hold on.

If she baked another pie, it would be sound when it left the oven, and crumble when she sliced it with her dagger.

The slightest corruption at the base can topple the tallest tower. If the tower is already compromised, and you need a sound one for corruption to count as a credit… build your own tower.

This had promise.

She would find someone vulnerable, build them up into a paragon of virtue, protect them from any and all unsavoury influences - except her own, at the very last. She would nurture, protect, corrupt and betray.

That should be quite the plus to assets, and fall in liabilities.

Do it properly, and at the very least she’d buy time. Enough time to repeat the procedure, or try it for a whole group - the council? In the worst scenario, she only needed to stop her interest from growing beyond hope before she could establish herself in the mainland.

Perin grabbed the pie tin from her hellhound’s mouth and tossed it, smiling as Decadence ran to play fetch.

The night was endearingly dark, and it was time to head back to town.

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