First Run

Middlesea is an island in the middle of the Inland Sea. There's a fishing village and you can walk up to the compound on the top of the cliff.

Day the First [15th Gazelle], people are arriving for what is expected to be a week or so of discussions. There's a dinner in the main hall where Cara gives a little speech.

• A ton of people from Red - they sent five delegations instead of one.
• 30-40 from Orange including servants (and some Saurians)
• Similar from Purple and Yellow
• Only about 8 from Blue, including the Mage (and one Saurian)
• Green has multiple delegations, once from each of the three Kingdoms, but they are all small. All named Elves.

A couple of delegations with centaurs.

A walled compound surrounding a walled keep. Outside the keep is an interesting (but successful) mishmosh of styles - a Victorian manor house, an open Roman palisade, some fancy gardens. It dates back to the war of the Lord and the Lady (hundreds of years) at least and has been used periodically as a meeting place, but is not usually someone's residence until Cara laid claim to it when she established herself as the Pirate Queen.

(Con roll! Alert! Alert!)

[16th Gazelle] Those with the most con start to hear "I think this one is coming around!"

Nesh sees he is on the road outside the gates, with the other six PCs. People are a little cut up. There are some fisherfolk from the fishing village. Where has the keep/compound gone? Nesh can see it, but the fishers can't. He heads to the gates, but they don't open. Nesh and the fishers mutually vanish when they go that way. Diomarch starts waking up (next in line with Con). It's the next morning, apparently. Diomarch and Managaratha can also see the keep.

Managaratha walks over to the doors holding on to one of the fishermen, but they both stop - doesn't make sense to keep going. Letting go, he can keep going forwards but when they do, the other guy vanishes.

Det Magic: some sort of purple + DI ritual - that's the thing in the walls, like a dome, but the stopping effect is not magic. Managaratha thinks that may have been a warning to prevent arms being ripped off.

Vidan wakes up, and wonders if that was him. Stella wakes up and does some actual medicine, cleaning cuts. Vidan helps with first aid. (Scout has no eyes, under a blindfold.)

The last thing Vidan remembers is that he was at dinner and Navere spent all his DI. He is wearing sliced clothes. Dioramic thinks everyone just ran through a wall.

Also a green spell, fading away

Everyone heads to the doors to investigate, creeping out the fishermen.

Vidan: Everyone is under a Navere-flavored Witnessing miracle (Rush + everyone else) Everyone is under a Broken miracle (where the Keep is) - covering the keep and environments Twins miracle / purple around the keep too

Scout: Giant demon miracle

Gale tries to go over the wall and finds a couple of hexes that she can travel, but then there's a purple something. Some people are in stasis not moving.

Scout does some scouting. At the edge down the road, there is a wound/hole/break in the demon miracle which is probably caused by people getting out (i.e. us). Someone much smaller than the miracle hit it and did... something. Probably Diomache's miracle, short circuited through Navere.

Vidan thinks the miracle should be wearing off but it's caught in the stasis field (!).

Is the Queen still in there? (one of the fisherfolk, who introduces himself as Trell wonders). Probably?

The other priests had more DI than this, so why are we the ones out? Vidan thinks the miracle on us is bigger than he could have cast.

Stella: What needs Fixing here? It's a big messy mess. There are at least three effects reinforcing each other.

1. Demon miracle: putting the whole thing in a bubble that no one can get in or out of
2. Purple + twins stasis bubble with a specific key to turn it off. Get the person with the key into the bubble.
3. Both of those should be smaller area, but there's a big Blue spell making it all one battlefield.

Once all that is fixed, a lot of things inside will need fixing really quick. One of the things in there is targeting Nesh, and it would be bad.

Gale: We are all on the battlefield with a big hanging blue spell. (not Gale's) There's a battle going on in there, though it's on hold. There were multiple battles in multiple battlefields going on when the Blue spell hit and unified everything. We cannot split up *too* far but we are still on the battlefield even if we leave. There are other things that aren't Blue interacting with that.

Maybe we have to go on a lot of quests to solve the individual bits and then finally drop it.

Trell thinks there's a trail that goes up to a house, on the other side of where Middlesea would have been. That's Managaratha's house. He didn't remember it was there. Time for tea! The fishermen will go down. Can they tell Captain Valgrand (from the Golden Falcon ship) to hold for a bit? Captain Velgrand is annoying and grumpy but Trell can carry a note.

(Vidan remembers the name Managaratha from a magic history class - that's what happens when you frag yourself. He has reportedly been present for several Comets.)

More introductions. Gale works for the Pirate Queen. Scout works for the King of the Forest. Stella is a priest of the Goddess and came with Orange. Diomarch is with the paladins of Rush who came from Red. Vidan is from Purple.

Most of the magic-capable kingdoms probably know something's wrong already since they won't have gotten reports back. And the ships would have seen the keep vanished this morning.

The purple key is probably a key in Truespeak. Maybe it needs the right person instead/too.

Back to Middlesea. Guys in orange livery arguing with a bureaucrat (not from the delegation).

Gale heads up to look around. Seems to be a sphere of stasis.

1. Hey, there are a bunch of orcs.
2. A section of the keep looks really wonky - hard to look at and eye-shatteringly moving (Yellow?)
3. Stormclouds over that section

Things seem to be centered on the keep, though fights with orcs are on the grounds.

The bureaucrat was sent to see what happened to the morning report, and Vidan should come home with him. Vidan convinces him that he doesn't have the authority and also as part of the delegation he should be here. ("I should go work on the official report")

The no-Middlesea space is a lot smaller - just a clearing. The orange guys go a lot faster going *around* it. They think it's about twenty-five hexes across.

Nesh wanders around a bit and spots lion pawprints on the outer wall in one section.

Vidan: Given these events, what do we need to see next? He vanishes.

Er, where did he go? Scout thinks his "get me out of there" wavered and he will be back eventually.

"I guess Team Serious is down one."

Is there a demon hanging around here? Scout tries to figure it out. The Oasis demon did the miracle. That's the biggest demon in the world, though it doesn't necessarily work for the Breaker. It isn't standing around here.

This seems pretty fast for a new Comet. Managaratha thinks that's not unheard of, but less common. Nine Comets ago, the Winter was fast. The Centaur/Cataur war started with the war. When the Rainbow River disappeared (the comet after the last run), that was a bang. The expedition to the Citadel was also early in the Comet.

We head down - about halfway down, we run into the Captain and his crew. Stella tries to explain. The captain really wants someone to come with him.

We divert to a tavern to write notes to everyone's delegation. Gale thinks we can escape out the back to her skiff if needed.

Managaratha has us all linked in a talking spell. Sneak and bluffery for Gale, Nesh, and Scout to get out first. Gale unfolds the boat.

"Thank you for your diligence. We'll be going now." Stella goes to get on the centaur, but the captain tries to grab her. We escape!

We fly over the keep. Nesh spots Beauregard, frozen and heading away from the keep.

This is about a stopping place, but we really don't know where to go yet. The Golden Falcon has in fact left.

The pirate fleet is on a nearby island. We go there. Gale haphazardly explains, and complains about the Golden Falcon, he's fair game to pirate. Nobody has a yellow mage. Alas.

There are a lot of Jord temples around. Temple of Rush less common. Temple of Navere about a day to the north.

Next day, [Gazelle 17] we head to a nearby temple of Rush. The priest here (Fred) is keen to put together an attack force, or at least to get that ball rolling. He might be able to figure out something about the battle we're in. He tries, and... stops moving. It wears off after a couple of minutes, at least. Oops. It was harder because Diomarch is under the influence of a Broken miracle. We might want to be careful about that. We are scouts rather than combatants right now, though we might become combatants first.

There have already been deaths in the battle. A number could happen fairly soon, in an odd definition of "soon".

The priest at the church of Navere is Dalarin. He can write a letter of introduction to send in if we are worried about setting off their Broken detection.

Temple of Navere next, another day North. [Gazelle 18] Nesh finds an urchin to send in Fred's note. The priest of Navere does not approve of completely loose cannons, which we seem to want to be.

She is willing to find out what someone's commanders orders are. Maybe she can do what their orders would be, if they knew the stuff the party knows? She can try. Diomarch has the clearest chain of command (Sergeant Susie), and is Fiveist to boot. Dalarin speaks in Sgt. Susie's voice. "Don't let the orc out. Keep the kid safe from the cataurs. Find out what the Fourists are doing."

Managalatha ponders the Oasis-- it has factored prominently in three Comets. The first was the centaur/cataur war; the second was the last run; the third was the Comet when the Rainbow River disappeared, when the Oasis moved to the desert beyond the Mountains of the east, and took it over.

Loot

• 5 EPs
• 5 SPs