Editing Adventures are Everywhere (section)

=A Tale of Two Parties=
Vidan didn’t realize there were two parties.
Master Cassandra Livoca.  Master Tivoli Dianori.
The two leading members of the Guild in the city given the absence of the Delegate to Middlesea.

Given that Stella is a local with some reputation, she weighs more as far as Party Influence, so Stella will go with one, and the rest to the other.  

Vidan tries to get more of  a briefing on Thistle.  Meraldi realizes he has 8 Charisma, and turns on the charm.  Vidan considers party-hopping with Meraldi rather than being assigned a team…

The party divides!  After some bickering, Gale throws Scout at Stella to go to the Tivoli party, and goes with Managaratha and Diomarch to the Cassandra party.   (She brings Giaconni as the replacement for Nesh.)  

There is a brief digression concerning licenses for Piracy from Purple, and the Ministry of Lions, and the True Nature of Purple Magic as opposed to this Vow nonsense, but it is surely not important enough to concern you, gentle reader.

Those at Tivoli's party:
Scout speaks only Elvish, as a ploy to get out of talking to lots of people saying “What should I say?”  (The Elvish comes out as “What should I say?”)

Master Tivoli speaks with Stella, after quickly writing off Scout as a lost cause, and proceeds to go through what he read in the Tarn Evidence Packet to validate the briefing he received is the same as the briefing she is giving.  He inquires as to the status of the delegates, and seems to know in detail the members of the delegation.  He does inquire as to whether Stella believes the lack of a priest of the Twins in the party is significant.  

The Sauriens are not as stand-offish here as they were in Kor, but still somewhat segregated.  There are a few elves, and very few centaurs– who are mostly segregated from the rest of the party as they are out on the patio.  

==At the Cassandra Party==
Meraldi is the epitome of grace and charm, and is well-matched by the stylish Vidan (who opts not to hold forth on the glories of Navere).  Diomarch and Gale make do, and Managaratha makes some wary with his waving around of an eye.

Meraldi and Vidan avoid Master Cassandra to speak with others.  Some discussion of the Fire happens; it is more “ah, what a tragedy that she was so careless”, as opposed to “that is suspicious.”  Meraldi deliberately crosses the Saurian-human divide; Vidan apologizes on behalf of Nesh, who surely would have liked to attend if he had not been called away by unforseen circumstances.   This inspires them to push as to what the circumstances are.  I’faith, they have not heard of the dire circumstances of the party’s plight– or much at all of the materials the party has been distributing hither and yon.  Zounds!

Vidan gives the Saurians a Tarn evidence packet - there is much sage nodding - see what happens when you get mixed up in foolishness like weird shit?  

Cassandra has heard of Managaratha and is disappointed that he is less knowledgeable about orange magic than she had heard. 
Managaratha asks about the magic of Creation vs. Uncreation.  She says there was one long ago who could do such a thing– create pits and the like.  Gale offers her the knife to look.

“If she starts stabbing us, this is a different party.”  – Mike/Vidan

“There are things in this I am not completely clear how this is done.  I could probably learn more if you left it a few days, I don’t know what your plans are…”

Managaratha holds forth about the knife and what we’ve learned about it and the workshop and Lisidor.  Master Cassandra does not react to any of this, but confirms that it was a spell gone wrong that caused the workshop fire, not just a Surge.  She confirms it is Lisidor’s work, and that Lisidor was the only one who perished.  She was working on…. something unusual.  “Sometimes experiments do not go the way one would hope.”

Managaratha discusses Orange magic with Cassandra; she is interested in knowing how it used to work.  Managaratha recalls– after the Surges, the Rainbow River disappeared.  When the Rainbow River disappeared, people started building the Zones.  People, Orellian… the Zones were deliberate in some sense, in response to the Rainbow River disappearing.  

Cassandra speaks with the party for 20-30 minutes before wandering off.

==Tivoli==
Scout Scouts!  Backstage is definitely agitated.  Servants and guards are definitely doing things.  An anthill has been disturbed.  He traces the disturbance upstream, and overhears: Yes, she's recovering.  She should be fine, but we don't know exactly what started everything.  Get the word to Master Dianori (Tivoli) that there are no long-term issues. 

==Cassandra==
Managaratha finds Diomarch to renew the shrinking spell.  

Gale tries to track down leads on Lisidor.  This seems to bring out the “Ah, you’re calling out the House, interesting” results.  Lisidor was a theorist rather than a practitioner, she’d happily spend all day theorizing rather than creating things.  Which is probably how she blew herself up, honestly.  There’s been a bunch of interest in “What can Orange do?” recently that she was probably part of / allied with.  Obviously that’s less important than making good product, and good product doesn’t get you blown up, so personally I don’t put much priority on that.  She was working for a time on whether you can use Creation to do some of the Saurien tricks, in which you need to not have Orange around to make it work.  Can you de-Orangeify your black powder creation to make black powder with Creation?  How do you separate the Fire from the Creation.

Was she working alone, or as part of a Mad Scientist Cabal?
There are other Mad Scientists, not clear they’re actually a Cabal.  The consequence of Creation is wanting to Make things.  i.e., Yes, I Paint in addition to casting Orange magic.  Sometimes that Making turns into a desire to make things that are… more theoretical, or don’t actually exist, so you have to spend a while figuring it out…  In the way that Battle runs to wanting to attack people.

Diomarch talks to the centaurs; the Yellow delegation did come through here on the way to Middlesea.  It did include a group of centaurs, so they’re interested in how centaurs work in Yellow.  Orange and Green don’t have Herds, in the way that Yellow or Red do.  (Purple has the One Giant Herd led by the Head Stallion.)  Centaurs are kind of a separate social stratum in Yellow, Red and Purple.  Yellow they have more ties into the human polity; Yellow herds organize more similarly to the humans, in terms of castes, etc.  Red has less of a united polity overall, but a single Herd might ally with a single Kingdom.  (The Centaurs here speak Common, even with each other, in a way that the Centaurs in Red or Yellow might talk to each other in Centaur.  The Saurians all talk Saurian with each other, but will speak Common when others are around.)  The Centaurs here are all in the Guild, and that is in some way taking the place of being in a Herd.

Managaratha takes a nap.

==Tivoli==
Meraldi and Vidan arrive.  Stella says that Scout had found something but it wasn't clear.  After a bit of trying to parse Scout's monosyntactical dialogue, Meraldi rolls her eyes and hits him with "Tell me your secrets!" and he can speak normally for a minute, and he explains what he found in the back rooms. 

Meraldi thinks that the likely "she" Scout heard about is Tivoli's daughter Ashley, as she is not in evidence at the party, and Stella thinks that an offer of healing should be made.  Meraldi smooths bringing this up with Tivoli (who is impressed that Meraldi figured this all out after barely setting foot in the house), and the group is shown to the bedroom where the girl is, with a bloodstained bandage. 

Stella gets 9 successes of Medicine, enough to say that it was probably a kitchen knife.
Vidan gets her to tell what happened.  She was getting ready for bed, Janine came in and was making her dinner bed snack as she always does, and then stabbed her.  And then Phillipe knocked Janine out.  Ashley does think the stabbing hurt, but also that this is a kind of adventure.  

==Cassandra==
Gale looks for plot hooks.  In a conversation where Lord Fandal is being gently taunted - such a pity that he lost a promising journeyman.  Yes, they did manage to rescue her final piece, the candelabra, that he gifted to Lady Cassandra.   Gale (and Giaconni) head over to Cassandra, and Gale badgers her into looking for the candelabra, which she has not yet taken notice of.  Yes, in fact, when Gale holds the candelabra, setting fires seems kind of fun.  Giaconni blows the candles out, and the feeling fades.   Gale impresses on Cassandra the importance of being cautious about the candelabra, though as she is giggling a little creepily (0 successes on charisma) it is unclear whether Cassandra will take the warning to heart.   

==Tivoli==
They track down Philipe; he has put the knife in the master’s study.  Stella confirms it’s the same sigil.  Vidan initiates a miracle of Witness– this is a small part of a larger problem.  He writes up a formal affidavit - legal anywhere - that the wielder was essentially innocent.  

Scout analyzes the dagger with a lot of DI– he thinks the dagger is wrong, but not Unholy.  It could be Broken?  How would he know?  Hmm.  Vidan chats up Meraldi, admits that he investigates royal genealogy in his spare time.  Vidan mentions his discussion with Luigi, and she has a moment of realization– “If you asked for what you needed to know now, and you came here to do this, why did you need to know now who the traitor is?”  He hadn’t considered that…