Editing The Once and Future Queens (section)

==The Wake==

The group attends the wake for King Olason.  Some of the better-informed are familiar with us as the slith-catchers, while others aren't sure who we are. Vidan pays his condolences to Queen Mary (King Olason's marriages were all political except for this one, which was a love match), who is interested in relations between the Empire and Victoria, that Vidan is more informed about.   Vidan discovers that Queen Mary is the doubler for the Roses faction, and she seems willing to listen to his advice - no one playing the mechanic has a briefing, so they will all be playing fairly randomly.   

Vidan's miracle of witnessing gives him his Koalition instincts, including that the wake - the card Germany - is the largest one available.   So whoever takes it will have a starting advantage.   

The party investigates the mechanics - we can uncover specific cards by talking about things they care about, and then can decide whether to play them or put them back.   This lets us add more cards (at a cost of using them up) for the teams we are interested in, or pull more cards on small countries for the factions that we're trying to spike.

Between the fact that Vidan has started by talking to Queen Mary and the fact that we are strongly in favor of alliance-building, we kind of fall in behind Roses, though not without a lot of wavering about "should we figure out who is best?" and "but the most important thing is to make ''someone'' win".  


Roses come out on top of Germany; the points are divided, and Vidan gets another insight: the lose condition is clearly "nobody has enough points at the end".  We can tell that the points are apportioned based on who had the most card points, but not exactly how: Roses and Lemons did the best; Fists and Crosses did the worst.   

Someone sneezes when Gale and her half-orc perfume comes near them - their card is the two of acorns, which is a surprise because they weren't in the mechanic.  Clearly the Acorns are the bad guy faction.   Vidan does recall "thwart the broken priest" as another option for Adventures.     Nesh checks the half-orc's pockets - he seems to be from the Empire, but doesn't have anything obviously incriminating.  However, being a half-orc is suspicious enough, so we surreptitiously surround him. 

Not surreptitiously enough, as it turns out.   He puts his hand in his pocket.   Vidan calls on Naverre, and declares that Minions of the Breakers shall not interfere.    Everyone paying attention can tell he's a half orc.   The guy says "Sorry to bother you..." and vanishes, using the thing in his pocket.  Oh well. 

Vidan gets the steward to get Lord Henry to invite Gale and Diomarche and Nesh to the hunt tomorrow.