Year 30,000: The Drim (Dar) Acquire A Telepath

Previous history

     Year 0: The Dar's cave is crushed in an earthquake

For the past 30,000 years, the Dar (red arrow) have spreading out over the southeast.  There are a multitude of Dar-related clans all over the Big River region.  In this part of the world, they are called the Drim, for languages change over time (probably more than this, but I wanted things to sound recognizable to the Players).

Round 2 begins with a Gathering where the various clans of the Drim get together to exchange tales, hunt the giant water buffalo and trade knowledge.  There is a matchmaking ceremony, of the same kind that the Players had set up in Year 0, where brides are exchanged between one Dar clan and another.

One of the promised brides is Temu (F, 15), the medicine woman for her tribe.  However, at the Gathering, a scandal breaks out:  Temu is rumored to be possessed by evil spirits!  Without using magic at all, she can touch a person and know what he is feeling or thinking.  She cannot be a medicine woman, say the other tribes:  nobody would have her! 

Her tribe’s leader and father, Vock the Tall (M), says she is a better medicine woman because she knows where it hurts.  The other tribes at the Gathering are unconvinced.

The Council of the Drim get together and summon the Heroes, and make their plea.  "Dispose of these evil spirits for us!" they beg the Players.  "Kill her if you must, but drive the spirits away.  We have tried the Old Rituals for driving away spirits, and they do not work!"

("Connor!" said Joe the Leader.  "Thanks a lot.  You told them to ignore the Old Ways.  And improvise."

"Hey, it sounded like a good idea," Connor said.)

The Council of the Drim includes three people:  Golm the Carver, the toolsmith to whom all toolsmiths bow, wise in the ways of spirits and craft.  Cheb the Stick, the powerful hunter and disciplinarian, who has mastered the art of drawing maps in the dirt.  Last is Ral the Raven (F), a healer ahead of her time.  She thinks the evil spirits are in Temu’s head and they can be removed.

("I don't like the sound of that," said the Dave the Artisan.)

What The Players Decided

First, they decided to persuade the Gathering that Temu really was a better healer because of her power.  "Prove it," said the Council of the Drim. 

"Uh..." the Players said, never a good sign, and they immediately confabulated.

"We'll just bring some animal or something that's sick, and she can heal it, and that'll be that," said Joe the Leader.

"That just proves she can heal animals.  They'll want to see she's better at healing people," argued Dave the Artisan.

"I can see to it that some of them need healing," said Joe grimly.

"We'll just hold some kind of contest.  We'll get some animals — are there any animals around here that we could trap?" Dave the Artisan asked.

Yes, I said; there was a small proto-horse called the aguen, and a small ocelot-sized hunting cat.

"Hey, maybe we can get them to start domesticating animals," Dave said.  "We'll get some of those."

What with? I asked.

Dave rolled a few dice, hoping to successfully invent the first animal cage.  He succeeded, and the Players took a short expedition to go find some animals that they could use to test Temu's alleged healing prowess.  (I noted with interest that they didn't actually test the assumption that Temu had any healing prowess.  They were just going to stake their reputations on this ability sight unseen.  Making assumptions could get them into trouble someday.)

Once two similar aguens were captured they could begin planning this healing demonstration.  "All we need is for the animals to be injured equally," said Joe the Leader.

"Not equally.  We want Temu to win," Connor the Mystic reminded him.

"And do we really want to encourage a tribe to go around maiming animals?" asked Dave.  "We just want them to look sick."

The Players scrounged around for plants with a pharmacological effect, rather than physically injure them.  They drugged both animals, one more heavily than the other, and presented them to both Temu and to Ral the Raven.  Temu, of course, was to get the aguen who was less heavily medicated.

"We should test the effect of the plants," said Joe the Leader, who in Real Life is a nurse.  "Then we can time how long the drugs last.  Connor, how good is your Tell Time spell?"

"Uh ... I didn't take that one."

Boldly (because they had no choice) they proceeded with the demonstration.  The two healers, Temu and Ral, sat down before their unfamiliar animal patients.  Ral the Raven discerned that the animal had eaten something that didn't agree with it, and found some herbs she could use an emetic to make it vomit up all those lovely drugged leaves.  Temu, meanwhile, had simply touched her aguen and sat back placidly, doing nothing.

"Are you not capable of healing?" asked the jeering tribesmen at the Gathering.

"It isn't sick," Temu said.  "It's sleeping."

The diagnosis was confirmed when Ral the Raven's aguen vomited up its narcotic salad.  The tribesmen were convinced and the Players were off the hook.

As a finishing touch, Connor the Mystic taught Temu some magic spells to help her defend herself should her fellow clansmen again conclude that she was a evil soul-stealing witch.  (That she might really be an evil soul-stealing witch apparently never occurred to him.)

Result

The Drim tribes of the Big River area would now have a strain of telepaths, and possibly other psionic or psychokinetic powers to come. Furthermore, they had been given a great big push in the direction of animal domestication, although it must be admitted that the players weren't asking me for domesticable animals for their demonstration.