Editing Promises Promises (section)

==Ministry of Lions==

To the Ministry of Lions next.  
It's larger than the Ministry of Fortune, located in an upmarket area of town, close to the Temple district; we see people in Twinsish regalia.

They have a large antechamber, big enough for centaur.
“What do you need?”  He sees Nesh floating.  “Oh.”
He sends a messenger to get Tan Ri.
Gale asks about forms for being a Registered Pirate!
“Registered Pirate, or  Privateer, or Unregistered Naval Officer?"  The first, but it would be the Ministry of Naval Trade, which is missing its minister also. 

Lots of people are interested in talking to us, apparently.
We are about to go back in, but Scout notes that there’s a big Twins miracle back there.
We advise them that we have a Broken miracle on us, so please don’t get us.
Ah.  Let’s go talk in the park.

We go to the park; the bureaucrats spend some time getting Nesh back on the ground, until dusk.  They ask us lots of questions about what’s in the packet, expanding and collapsing details.  They run Purple diagnostics.

The thing that’s not in the packet, that they think is true.  We’re under a Broken miracle; a Blue spell; a Navere miracle; a Rushian miracle; a Twins miracle.  There are a lot of miracles on us people, and they’re not interacting perfectly.  If it was Magic (and some if it is Magic) it would probably have sorted itself out.  There would be an effect on us at this point.  It’s mostly miracles, and they continue to fight with each other more, so it’s more fluid effect, that they would not count on staying the same.  For instance, we’re missing two people now rather than one.  Some other sorts of miracles may have trouble affecting us.

Gale wonders if the miracles are being directed by the Gods, in the “do what you think is best” way– is that happening in real time?
The ministry people disagree with each other, and start to geek out about theology.

The Twins miracle is not actually big enough for the Twins to have a hand in specifically what it was doing when it was creating.  But the ongoing fight, some of them think the Twins are paying attention to.  It’s a Balance miracle.  The Rush and Navere miracles are both quite large, and could have had some “The God is stepping in to make it work this way”, they think.  The Oasis is huge, but they’re less familiar with spirits and demons.-- would the Oasis way over there have had to send a specific miracle.  They don’t identify anything Goddessy on us at present.

Nesh pays attention to what they’re saying in the background– the ministry people are speaking another language with each other sometimes, and then seem to be translating back.  They don’t seem to be concealing anything particularly.  We are definitely getting looks from people in the park.

Nesh notices there is a guy watching us from outside the park, and relays that to us.

After an hour they start to move from diagnostic to thinking about Treatments.
Managaratha attempts to distract them with more theoretical questions!

We’re supposed to all be trapped in the broken miracle, but the Rushian miracle was supposed to break us out, but the Blue spell says we’re all in the same place.  They expect that if we got too far apart we’d fall back into the Not Here miracle.

Gale says she wants a full report on specific treatments!  Producing reports is one of their weaknesses…  though there are clearly some experimentalists in the group who would be willing to just Try It Right Now.

Why Lions?  There’s an extent to which it’s tied to cataurs, they think.  The history geek says the Ministry of Lions is one of the oldest ministries, founded during the first comet during the founding of the Empire.  The issues at that point, they could have been Ministry of Fish, if we wanted to deal with the merfolk.  No one had a good evocative word for dealing with Orcs.  And there were a fair number of cataurs in the area at the time.  They’ve mostly retreated to the Oasis by this point.  At that time, as best the historian puts it together, there were not many cataurs anywhere, since they were just reappearing.  But there was a group causing trouble out of the Broken Lands, that seems to have been mostly dealt with.

There are no cataurs within four miles, as we discover when Managaratha asks “how would we find a cataur?” and someone says “I could just cast summon cataur with purple.” and does so.

Managaratha asks about other things that have happened– they seem to be quiet about the status of the Minister of Lions, which makes us think they do have some information.

The sigil of the Purple stasis is the Hide-my-sigil Sigil, it’s about 150 years old.

The guy who’s watching us has some kind of “In The Shadows” Tem-ish effect.

Nesh springs the trap!
The guy is a follower of the Guiding Star (who is the head Priest of Tem)

What are our dreams?  What do we dream of doing?  ('All of it!' -Gale)
He'll keep following us. 

We interrogate Rakta, the priest who’s following us.  He’s mostly here because the Guiding Star knows we’re in town and wants to keep an eye on us.  We ask if there were other strange happenings in the capital that they know about on the day of Middlesea; Yes, says Rakta.  Can he tell us more?  We’d want to ask the Guiding Star.  Can we do that?  He’ll let the Guiding Star know we want to talk to him.  He recommends we do not go in the Temple, where the Guiding Star is likely to be.