Editing Keep in the Broken Lands (section)

==An Unexpected Visitor==

[Phoenix 13]
On day two, we travel, and Nesh notices a woman on horseback is following us.  She’s wearing nice clothes, and has a sword.  Nobody else notices her– after being elbowed, Scout thinks there’s a Yellow effect behind us.  We alert the sergeant, and Nesh drops back to talk to her.

When Nesh gets close, he realizes that she’s kind of translucent– it’s more than a 9 success spell, so his Per roll let him see her.  “Can I help you?”  “Maybe– I’m looking for the people who escaped Middlesea.”  “Oh, then I think we can help.”  He convinces her to come join us.  

“Oh hi Managaratha.”

“Have we met?”

“He asks everyone that.”

“Yes.  Or if not you, then an unreal copy of you.”

“I just don’t want to frag you.  Who are you?”

“I’m [[Lisetera]].  You taught me a Detect Frag spell.”

The sergeant listens to this.

“I’m going to need to look at you people some more before I go to Middlesea.”

“Are you going to Middlesea?”

“I can’t get the Prince out without going to Middlesea.”

“The Goddess says don’t bring it down.”

“I won’t be taking it down.  If something is there, and you don’t want it there, that’s Unreality.”

“Or Creation.”

“That’s different.  You don’t want..."

“Which Prince?” – Scout

“Prince Visharani.“

“From… Yellow?”

“Yes.  A prince of Jabar, definitely.”

She talks about the different kinds of Unreality, a bit, and how you have to use the right kind.

“If the Prince weren’t trapped, and you ran into me, what would we talk about?”

“Yellow Magic, probably?  You don’t know unreality, so you consult with me sometimes.”

<Managaratha checks in with the note from Run Eight>

She’s apparently the best Unreality mage in Jabar, so here she is.  Unless she’s deluded, but she doesn’t think so.  Apparently Diomarche has potential to learn Unreality; Nesh asks if he does, but she doesn’t think so.  She makes lots of Unreal copies of Nesh.  Scout thinks they’re definitely Yellow magic rather than people, but it takes thinking about.  “That’s not right.  But cool!”  “That’s 

We make camp that night; we’re about one day’s ride from Queen Iona’s forces, and then we’ll be in the Broken Lands.  Whoa.

Lisetera does some experiments.

“The thing I need to do is find out the kind of Unreality you’re… not stuck in, connected to is probably closer.”

“Aren’t those two <Diomarche and Gayle> unreal?”

“Yes, but they’re not the right Unreal versions.”

Lisetera gets us to stand in a circle, turn away from each other, and run.  Stella and Vidan opt to observe rather than run.  After about 10 minutes, it’s definitely harder to run in that direction.  The people in the camp have the impulse to go towards one of those directions.

“What would have happened if they’d kept running?”

“They probably couldn’t have.  They’d have gotten to the edge of the map.”

“We’re all on a battlemap.”

“You’re all connected to the Oasis’ unreality miracle.  Or the Oasis’ miracle, which is like an Unreality.  So whatever you’re doing to be here, will only get you so much… you can only push so much.  It’s probably not, but, it’s mostly not a map right now.  I mean we’re on a country map.  We don’t have an instantiated map right now.  Do you want to fight some Paladins of Rush?”

“No.”  – universal acclaim

Lisetera does a frag check, at Managaratha’s request.  She thinks Vidan is interesting, so Scout takes a look at him, spending some DI.  There’s a big Purple spell in his past that created his current future.  Neat!  Lisetera makes a whole bunch of copies and looks.  

“You’ll probably have to look into that, but not until he’s further along this one.”

“This future?”

“Yeah.”

“How many does he have?”

“This is… two?  Three?”

Vidan remains stoically uninterested in any of this, and mutters darkly about being taught not to trust the Yellow Mages.

The oasis miracle she thinks she can deal with; the Time-stop is giving her some trouble.  It won’t help to bring the Prince out if he’s still time-stopped.

The Oasis miracle is what makes it hard to look at.  She 

Nesh remembers the Yellow dinner– Sarasani was kind of a butt.  Well, not a butt, but insistent on protocol.  Vishnarani, Lady Hirana.  Lord Vesalen was very clearly the guard.  And three priests, and a bunch of merchants.  Serafina and her centaurs were guards.  Lady Hirana was the best Unreality Mage, says Lisetera.  It’s probably her work that the Unreality field.  

What does she know about the Oasis?

Not her specialty, but a giant demon that lives across the Mountains, the cataurs live there.  It’s not as bad as the Broken Lands, but they’re a problem.  The Queen is more worried about the slith invasion right now, but they’re probably up to something, they’re normally up to something.  Managaratha thinks there will be two big wars, slith and orcs.  Maybe the cataurs aren’t doing war things.  They have a lot of good mages, and priests… well, not priests, but… miracle people…  They’re not united, they have Prides, and the Prides fight a lot.  So they’re less threatening to Yellow.  But they all listen to the Oasis when it has something it wants.  Usually that’s to get bigger.