Exchange of Realities

For this week’s Impractical Applications, I’m going to look at the fine art of bait-dangling.

(Yes, it’s a bit of a stretch from the week’s topics. Let’s just say I don’t plan my Friday sessions around the rest of the week’s blog entries and leave it at that.)

So, in pursuit of throwing the perfect party (and following up on a request made by a good friend of theirs), our heroes went out to the home of a group of—well, they’re an outgrowth on a question I asked myself once about the consequences of god-promoting familiars. In their world, they’re outsiders, halfway between the two major social groups, but on the plus side, they hear a lot, and nobody takes them seriously. This makes them the perfect resource for my group, who are outsiders, halfway between the two major social groups, and rather difficult to take seriously themselves.

It’s their second and third contacts who really give me the chance to give them the hooks and let them bite. The former was a rather hyper fluffball, patterned off of a corgi, who ran messages, designed kites, and liked having people to talk to. A lot. So I let them ask questions. By the time it was over, she’d recommended to them two artists (counting herself), acquainted them with the current political situation, and dropped a hint about a scandal that may or may not end up having some effect on them in the future.

Then there was the third. Szila was a friend of a friend, as far as they were concerned. This wasn’t so much PLOTHOOK in the usual sense—most of the hints she dropped were just things for them to look into on their own time. But there were a lot of them. Szila knew more about the history of one of their friends than said friend seemed to. And about one of said friend’s old contacts. And about another of their acquaintances. By the time she was done talking, there were five or six potential lines of research the group could look into.

And all I had to do was take advantage of their own curiosity and give them people to ask.