Kolath


The Legionnaire said nothing, but there was a storm cloud building behind his expression.

<Marlith>

He almost felt sorry for Hollis ... almost. He certainly wouldn't want to be on =that= hot seat. He wished that he had some idea that would help move this all along. But he was not well versed in these sorts of things.

Jorlak

"I have no knowledge of how close this device might need to be. You said that it detected you moving a chair around. After that, did anyone notice it detecting anything else? That would seem to be the best approach for identifying the unknown kandar."

Hollis

Hollis looked around, to see if anyone could substantiate a reaction.

<Marlith>

"As I understand it, the proximity required for detection is proportional to the amount of power involved. That is, to detect a small usage, the detector will need to be fairly close. For a larger usage there can be more distance between the detector and the manifestation. Unfortunately I have no practical experience to put actual 'numbers' to that."

Hollis

"Ah," Hollis said, in a voice rich with sarcasm. "So all I have to do is haul the machine around the city, until I get a reaction. Does a stronger signal means the kandar we want is closer, or that I have simply stumbled on a more powerful practitioner?

"So ... say I get a signal. What next, move the machine to see if the signal gets stronger? Okay, but ... which way? How far? You people have to tell me how I am supposed to narrow it down without some method of determining directionality, or cross-referencing two signals."

<Marlith>

"You might be able to do all of those things. As I said, I have no practical experience. Just some reports and stories."

Hollis

Hollis rolled her eyes. "All rightie then. Let's test it. You two watch the machine, and I'll do something, and you make a note of what happens when I do it. Then I'll do it in different places in the room, and you see if there is some indicator that points direction.

"Then I'll use different power levels, and you see if there is an indicator for that. Are you with me? Somebody probably knows how the damn thing works, but we'll just have to figure it out for ourselves."

<Marlith>

He shrugged. It would clearly be simpler to just go along with her strange request than to try and reason with her.

Jorlak

The priest nods. "I'll see what details can be obtained from this."

Hollis

Hollis positioned the two so they could observe the machine and make notes of its reactions if and when it sensed her activities. She positioned it in the center of the room, for ease of verification.

then she stood off to the machines left, and with a wave of her hand, a chair slid across the floor to her.

"Okay, tell me what the machine says."

The machine makes the same squawking noise as it made the first time Hollis tested it.

Jorlak gets a read on it; the mental signature matches the first of the signatures he read the first time; the one that had seemed vaguely familiar at the time.

Jorlak

"This confirms that you were the human it recorded before. I can not find any additional detail."

Hollis

Hollis was a bundle of energy. "Okay, just to check. I'm going to put the chair on the other side of the room, and move it around."

Hollis did as she had planned, manually dragging a chair into the quadrant to the right of the machine, standing in the same quadrant, and with another twitch of her fingers, moving the chair around like a dancing bear.

"If what you said holds true, then the machine can't tell the difference between left and right, front and back. It just says it's me. Right?"

Once that was confirmed, she continued.

"What I am leading up to is this: we haul the machine around, and make note of all the readings we encounter. When we find the one that matches what the machine got before from the mystery kandar, we have our perpetrator. Right? Do we know the range on this thing, or do I have to come up with a test for that, too?"

Kolath


The tall Kandar crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his foot impatiently.

<Marlith>

"That will only work if the subject is actually manifesting power when we are in range", he pointed out. "That is why I suggested that we narrow the list of places to search."

Hollis

Hollis sneered and pointed her finger at her temple. "Which is why I asked you people to give us some ideas as to who it might be and where such people might hang out. Unless I take Kolath and use his offices to go door to door, and have him intimidate people into doing something, we need some winnowing to cut down on the work load."

Jorlak

"That was why I asked whether anyone noticed the machine at the time it detected that kandar. It should have made the same noise then that it has been making for you now."

<Marlith>

"Yes, the machine did 'react'. I thought everyone else saw and heard it", he said with an apologetic shrug.

Hollis

"You two are making this more harder than it needs to be. Was the signal it made exactly the same for the kandar as it was for me?

"See? Don't you get it? If all the machine does is beep in the same way, then it is useless. If it can differentiate between sources, so we can tell one source from another by the signal we get, then it is useful. A buzzer is nothing more than an annoyance. What we need is a differentiable detector."

<Marlith>

"Someone with the proper skill and training should be able to discriminate between the different auras left behind." But he refrained from mentioning that Jorlak seemed to have that skill since he was the one that mentioned the multiple resonances. It was his job to speak up ... if he wanted to.

Jorlak

The priest reiterates, "I was not here when it reacted to a kandar, so I do not know whether that sound was exactly the same as this one.

"I also can not imagine why the ability to record such detail was apparently not described."

<Marlith>

"It =has= been described, mentioned in the old texts at least. I would hazard a guess that, since the device has not seen much use of late, that much about it has been forgotten or overlooked."

Jorlak

"In any case, this device does not react to being in the same room as that chair, so we can assume that it would not be useful on any other objects that had been affected. A person with the Way of Vision or a similar ability would need to check such an object and compare it with the impression in this machine."

<Marlith>

He nodded. "I agree. My original suggestion was that ... once we had a suspect ... we would locate near the suspect and wait for that person to manifest and so have a reading to compare. But you are correct", he said to Jorlak, "that someone trained might also get a reading from an object manipulated by that person."