Entering without the breaking

[all_too_familiar]

So, Savril has picked out a nice little mage estate that promises to have some interesting books he hasn't stolen copies of yet, and defenses that can be cracked. It's not the easiest of all houses, because - well, he's already broken into all of the easy ones. He is on intermediate difficulty for burglary. But since the triplets broke into the Larivias house (which had, from Savril's acquaintance with sneakery, made it past intermediate difficulty before they teleported inside) they're cleared to come along after the place has been properly cased.

That is, if they have parental permission. Savril does not want to upset the parents of terrifying children. Parents of terrifying children tend to also be terrifying themselves.

Comments

[pythbox]

The parents of the terrifying children permit the expedition. Savril is invited to take a lovely afternoon picnic with the triplets.

[all_too_familiar]

Excellent. A lovely afternoon picnic sounds like a fantastic idea.

Savril brings delicious cookies.

(And also all of his burglary tools.)

[pythbox]

The triplets bring a picnic basket stuffed with assorted delicious food, and the triplets' parents don't go along at all.

"We have food!" says Tierval when they are all assembled at the picnic site.

"We should discuss tactics," says Serin.

"After food," says Orion.

[all_too_familiar]

"Food is important," he agrees. "Then tactics."

Food! Delicious food and delicious cookies.

[pythbox]

Everything is very delicious. The triplets are companionable without being especially talkative.

When Orion has finished eating his final cookie, he says: "Tierval's best at magic analysis. Serin's best at scrying. I'm lazy."

"Comes in handy when we need to use a bunch of mana quickly and I've already used most of mine on weird experiments," says Tierval.

[all_too_familiar]

Savril nods. "That does seem useful, yeah. Uh - I'm stronger than mom and Kavetnia, just by baseline, but I kind of lack easy peers to compare myself to, ability-wise."

[pythbox]

"It's convenient that there's three of us," says Serin.

"Always nice to have a spare," says Orion. Tierval snorts and hands him a cookie. He rolls his eyes slightly and eats it.

[all_too_familiar]

Savril raises an eyebrow. He has Opinions about people being spares - that is, that there is no such thing and people are inherently irreplaceable. But he doesn't comment.

"I might have the benefit of experience, but I don't exactly know how many houses you've broken into. It might be more than I have."

[pythbox]

"Just the one," says Serin.

[all_too_familiar]

... This is surprising. Savril wasn't expecting that answer. They are so insanely good at this that he just sort of assumed they'd done it at least a few times. Instead, they managed to get past his house's defenses on the first try. And then improve them. He reassesses why they picked the Larivias house - it is not the latest in a long line of libraries, it's one that was inherently tempting enough to justify breaking in all on its own.

"I think I'm flattered on behalf of my family," he says, because actually he really is.

Just from getting to know them, he thinks the challenge in breaking in was part of the appeal, but he suspects they might have known about the thievery before even entering the house. But that's not required. They're one of the few small mage families that have a lot of books on magic. And obviously if they got caught (... which, they did) a smaller family wouldn't be as able to enact vengeance as a larger one. Or as willing to try it; they have a lot more to lose.

He has so much information to digest from this three word statement. He'll be assessing the implications of it for days, he thinks.

[pythbox]

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," says Tierval.

"Lots of things do when Tierval's around," says Orion.

[all_too_familiar]

Savril snorts.

"I mean, the end result worked out well enough. Now you have mage friends from another family where you didn't before."

[pythbox]

"See?" says Tierval.

"Can't rely on that sort of thing," says Serin.

"Watch me," says Tierval.

[all_too_familiar]

"You probably shouldn't rely on it," says Savril sagely, "but you can happily take full advantage of it when it happens."

[pythbox]

"Exactly," says Tierval.

"Poor strategy," says Serin.

"Is not," says Tierval.

[all_too_familiar]

"My experience with strategy is that it's extremely fluid. It might be a poor strategy to take advantage of good end results, but often it's not. Writing off a single set of actions as universally poor can add some constraints where there were none - just like saying a single set of actions is universally the perfect solution does the same."

[pythbox]

"Of course," says Serin.

"It's poor strategy to act like nothing bad is ever going to happen, but that's not what I do," says Tierval.

"Sure it is, you're just lucky enough to pull it off," says Orion. Tierval snorts and pokes him.

[all_too_familiar]

Savril lacks experience with Tierval to really comment on whether he does or doesn't do this specific thing. So he doesn't.