Completed [Institute of Higher Learning] Methods of Deception

[Irriari]

88th Day of Spring, 513 AV

Irriari snarled as she walked into the Institute of Higher Learning. The petching humans that had gathered around the center of Ravok had made walking nearly impossible. They were grouped tightly enough that her wings brushed against each and every one of the walking bags of flesh. Eventually, she had taken to the sky, ignoring the screams and angry taunts of the citizenry below. It was common of them to insult her from below, when they imagined themselves safely hidden away from her claws. The distance she had to cover in the air was short, and after four chimes, she walked into the Institute.

The door closed behind her with a reverberating thud, and Irriari took a moment to familiarize herself with her surroundings. The large stone walls loomed to either side, and were decorated with various statues and figures. The ceiling intrigued the zith far more than the sculptures of famous humans. The ceiling was reminiscent of the caves where she had been born. While she had seen a good number of caves in her lifetime, none were half the height of the towering Institute. If attacked in the Institute, Irriari knew that she would have plenty of room to maneuver, though she loathed the gold paint on the ceiling. The tone contrasted her skin and fur to such an extent that she knew even a novice archer would have no trouble finding her form in the air above. Satisfied, Irriari approached the Headmaster’s Office.

After a quick talk with the Headmaster confirming her subject selection, Irriari wandered off in search of the Interrogation teacher. Having found the correct office, she breathed in and opened the pine door. A loud thwack shattered the silence of the room, and as Irriari tried to identify the source of the noise, pain rapidly blossomed in her shoulder. A quick glance to her shoulder confirmed what she had guessed- a throwing dagger had imbedded itself an inch into deltoid. Snarling, she scanned the room to find the idiot human who had decided to harm her. A second later, she was thrown against the door, her head snapping back against the door frame as her wings were forced to bend and shift against tendons that had already been stretched too far. Her eyes found the face of the man who had dared to harm her, and bile rose to her throat as she saw the markings of the Ebonstryfe on the mans leather armor. Before she could speak, he twisted the blade and pulled it out of her shoulder. She swore loudly as the dagger twisted and blood poured forth from the jagged wound. The commander laughed and placed the blood soaked dagger at her throat before speaking,

“Before you arrived, I was told a young zith and recruit to the Ebonstryfe was interested in interrogation lessons. However, I would have never dreamed that the Ebonstryfe would recruit one so foolish as you.”

The blade pressed deeper into her neck and Irriari tried desperately to control her panicked breathing as she felt a few drops of blood well up on her throat and glide down her neck. He continued:

“If you come in again without announcing your presence, I’ll make sure this blade ends up through your eye.”

With that, he pulled the blade away and wiped most of the blood on his leather armor. After a deep breath, Irriari noticed the belt where he returned the blade. The black leather belt was large with many loops designed to hold implements. While the daggers were easy enough to spot, Irriari was confused by many of the other metal and wooden devices. She looked up at him as his booming voice spread throughout the room.

“Lesson number one- image is everything. A sylirist traitor might not have the slightest idea what these tools can do, but I assure you that the fear they feel will conjure up the most interesting of ideas. The image you create of yourself can create enough terror that you will not need to speak, and the words you seek will come flowing out of their mouths like the blood of a freshly butchered lamb. Do you understand?”

Irrari nodded,

“Yes, commander.”

He eyed her before pointing to a chair on the other side of the room.

“Good. Now we continue to lesson two.”

[Irriari]

"

The commander returned to his chair and stared at her, unblinking, for 30 seconds. While she was unnerved, Irriari stared back, hoping to understand the purpose of the exercise. Was this a test? What was she supposed to gain from such a mundane exercise? The zith’s small amount of patience wavered and snapped as the seconds dragged on. Her eyes flicked from his leather armor to his scar covered hands. Just as Irriari was about to say something regrettable about the lack of coursework, the commander spoke to her again, in a slow drawling tone.

“While I’m sure the nest that you came out of taught you plenty of fascinating things about interrogation, you’d do well to forget them all now. Your zith ways will hinder you here, and I have little tolerance for sloppy work. If you want to lose control and gain your information by ripping out fingernails, do so in Syliras.”

Irriari’s claws dug into the edges of the chair, and her partially open wings snapped closed as she focused her entire line of sight on the commander symbol emblazed on the leather armor of the human that sat in front of her. Her vision ran red as every insult that the man had managed to pack into his tirade ran through her head. Did he truly believe that Zith were born in nests? Perhaps he would take more stock in the ripping of fingernails if a few of his own were pulled out. As her thoughts became crueler, the commander spoke again,

“As I said, forget everything. Anything you have achieved so far has been by luck. I intend to use tactics and technique. Now, onto lesson three. You must know yourself. It might sound stupid, but you won’t get a drop of information out of a knight if you walk into a cell with a mace that you don’t know how to carry. So, what is it that you can do?”

Irriari looked up and pondered her skills. Compared to Korin, and some of the other fighters she had witnessed around Cyphrus, she seemed to have no skills at all. The elders would have mocked her, and set her to duel the clumsy human slaves that were blind from working in the deepest depths of the caves. Was travelling a skill? She had surely spent enough time traversing the lands until she had stumbled upon Ravok. She spoke quickly, mindful of the time she had already wasted by thinking,

“I fight with a short bow and poison. The poison can be put on arrowheads on my claws. I prefer fighting in the air, and I’m learning to identify plan—“

Irriari stopped short. Botany and philtering had little to do with interrogation, unless the commander was going to teach her a tactic that allowed her to bore her subjects to death. The zith did not blush like humans, but the weight of her inadequacies bared down on her as the commander glanced at her claws.

“You forgot the most important thing you possess. You’re petching scary to most of the people in Ravok, and elsewhere. A seasoned warrior will see you as just another animal to hunt, but the average craven scuttling around the city of Rhysol will fear your wings and claws, poison tipped or not. Use that to your advantage. And stop being so damned scared.”

Irriari nodded in affirmation,

“Yes, commander”

The commander sighed and began his seemingly endless lecture again.

“Before we get into practicing these methods, I want you to have a working knowledge of the techniques I use. I don’t expect you to use more than one. You’re too new to this, and you don’t have the abilities needed, but you will learn them all to my satisfaction. You could be at the other end of the rack some day, and I want you to know what those pretty boy Syliran Knights will be doing before they cut you bits. First off: you can remind the subject of the consequences of not giving you the information you want. Assuming that you have adequate control of the situation, which should ALWAYS be case, you can threaten to feed them to the dogs in the street. Remind them of the consequences of angering you, and many of the weaker subjects will break. If they don’t react to you reminding them of the consequences the first time, you will have to introduce another element to the mix. It hardly matters what it is, at your level. Break a finger, slap them across the face, stab them in the shoulder with a dagger…”

The commander chuckled at his joke and eyed her arm, which was still oozing blood,

“If you don’t follow through with another element, they won’t believe your threats and lies. In order to make yourself more believable, you need to add in props and other augments. You can have another associate, or a battle axe. Hell, you can take them down to the edge of a canal for all I care. Whatever you do, pick out your augments ahead of time. Make sure they fit the situation and you’ll more than likely get the information you need. Do you understand?”

Irriari’s head swam with the wealth of knowledge that the commander had presented her with. Even more staggering were the implications for each lesson he had instructed her in. The first lessons were focused on skills that would improve more than just her interrogation abilities. The zith hadn’t considered the large number of facets that went into interrogation. She nodded.

“Good. I want you to think about this before our next lesson. Practice it if you’re feeling frisky, but remember that I’m not teaching the bullshyke rhetoric of the priests and scholars. I’m teaching you how to get information through intimidation and power. Bandage that shoulder. That will be all, for today.”

Irriari walked out of his office after muttering a brief thank you to the commander and prayer of thanks to Rhysol. While her shoulder burned and stung, the chaos and discipline of the commander was far more easy to understand and tolerate than most of the human attitudes she had run into. On the way back to Tarsin’s Boarding House, Irriari recited the lessons back to herself in her head as many times as she could stand. Doing so made the walk back far more tolerable than the one to the Institute.

[Verilian]

. . Thread Award . . Irriari +2 Interrogation You Question My Logic? : XP explanation goes here. Lores: Always Remember to Announce your Presence, Lesson One: Fear, Lesson Two: Forget Everything, Lesson Three: Know Yourself, Interrogation Techniques Reputation: +1 Ebonstryfe Notes: Good thread, Irri. Keep it up, and keep writing! Notice As per the request of the Founders, threads cannot be graded unless your CS is up to date. This means you need to add threads to your thread list when you make new threads, keep your skills up to date, ledger, living expenses, ect. If you aren't up to date, you'll get a PM from me before i grade your thread. If you are up to date, disregard this notice.