Purple or Bust

Party Aftermath

Vidan, Stella, and Gale set up a meeting with Richard IV. Stella and Managaratha go to visit Lord Di Angelo. Diomarche hangs out with Elena until lunchtime.

Richard is aware that we helped him at the party, though he credits himself for a lot of his success, perhaps slightly more credit than we think he is due. Vidan emphasizes that we're primarily interested in international relations not turning into division before the Breaker's assault. Richard is willing to listen to our suggestions, but not rule out ever attacking anyone. Also, Vidan notes, we are trying to head off ill-advised rescue missions from Middlesea, because of the whole Avatar of the Breaker thing. (Note that the other most likely candidate for sending rescue missions is Darstan).

As we are leaving, we bump into Anne coming in with Carol. Coldly civil hellos are exchanged. Carol walks Anne to the stairs and then leaves. Gale sends a wind message to the Rangers to summon them, worrying about stabbing, but things seem calm. Vidan notes that Anne had a miracle cast on her earlier today, and Nesh spots red magic - several physical buffs, and some hanging Life spells, with an open connection which will go off when encountering the right person, between 5 and 10 successes worth. Nesh runs up to warn Richard (Anne went to her room), and he says he will take steps to be protected from an unknown medium red spell. (Perhaps Anne is trying to get pregnant?)

"Carol is the dark mistress of things that look perfectly reasonable".

Stella visits Lord Di Angelo - he has a lot of chronic issues. A lot of political history, not so much current goals. He'd be a good information source. What does he know about Carol? She is from Red, though her father was from around here and moved north. She moved into being an advisor to the Centurion fairly quickly, about six or seven years ago. He would have been in favor of Leopold; Richard is exciting but Julia is likely strong enough to not get dragged into Red messes too much. He thinks Viktor's an ass; he doesn't know what Pyotr was doing but seems to be pivoting into doing it with Lilya instead. (Could Carol be Red royalty? Probably not. She could be nobility; there are a lot of nobles.)

In the morning, Richard is selected as consort.

Bran comes in after breakfast to talk to Diomarche - Anne has left, Bran is going to go talk to the Lord Captain about Richard's new position. Diomarche notes that we have learned that Carol is from Red.

Giaconni comes by - how long is Gale around? She says we are likely heading to Purple shortly for at least a little while. Did Giaconni ever figure out who Vivian was going to stab? He says that Vivian is very interested in Leopold, but he isn't clear whether that means she was going to stab Leopold (if I can't have you no one can), or Julia (you can't have him). Tybalt is still thinking about "the stuff he was talking to your friend about" - so he's likely to go to Middlesea soon. Oh, good point - we should check in with him before we go. We agree to meet Tybalt in Rinyan to take him to Middlesea, lest he hare off there on his own.

Vidan goes to talk to Valentino (the priest of the Nameless) about visiting Purple and speaking to a ghost. Tier Lo is likely already in the Halls. He was in the Ministry of Redaction, so some preliminary paperwork is probably good to do.

To Purple

• A note appears on Managaratha - report to Subminister Kav for frag inspection.
• A note appears on Vidan - your report to Subminister Kav is overdue.

(Subminister Kav is in the Ministry of Magic.)

We go, though this is probably one of those bureaucracy traps. Last time we were here we were told by the Ministry of Lions to take Vidan to see Ritasi or Mother Jess. We took him to Ritasi and did a ritual but we never sent a report because Vidan is the only one who sends reports and he didn't remember any of it because he had purple-guy-swapped.

Subminister Kav puts Vidan in a time-stop spell and is quite cross at the rest of us that we have forgotten to write the report we promised. We explain we forgot that Vidan wasn't doing it - he handles all our reports. We are given 48 hours.

There is a Minister of Intermediation that deals (some) with churches, especially Balance v Bureaucracy. Vidan goes to visit there to handle the forms for talking to Tier Lo, though realizes he shouldn't traipse in with Broken miracles on him. He talks to them about the forms for the Nameless priest interrogation, eliding over other aspects like "some things have been promised to the Ministry of War to not make public". The form will need to be signed off on by the Chief Inspector or someone of equal rank, and you will need to talk to the Ministry of Redactions because he's one of theirs.

Off to Inspector Vok next. We have a priest - we are told that the number of questions we ask might be limited, so he should provide a prioritized list of questions for the investigation. Also here's this permit that needs to be signed. Vok says he will see what he can do - he succeeds!

The Trouble With The Purple Guy

Next is arranging for all the religions / ecumenical. Vidan is dealing with that while Gale calls a meeting of everyone else to discuss what to do about the report we are supposed to submit about Vidan, and the fact that it's all a big secret.

To recap:

• The Tan Kato wants us to investigate the death of Tier Lo as a national security secret because Tier Lo knows the key to the timestop. (Inspector Vok doesn't know that part, but if he solves his investigation he can probably roll up the half-orc spy network).
• Vidan / Nivad / Divan is handling unifying / fixing all the churches. That was set up by the Ministry of Lions with Mother Jess and Ritasi. Most of his frag is divine, but there's purple too.
• These are different plots and we cannot really use the Minister of War to shut down the Subminister of Frag.

OK, we need to get Vidan with an NDA to help with this. Managaratha calls Vidan to tell him to meet at the inn we stayed at last time. Managaratha puts up some scry protections, and then we carefully dance around the details ("If I wanted to throw a surprise birthday party and needed to fill out forms...") while asking Vidan for help, and fending off his suggestion that we just hire a different bureaucrat. We have a 48 hour deadline.

In essence, the explanation is: Vidan doesn't remember the conversation with Subminister Kav because he was in a timestop. There are also other secrets he doesn't know and we shouldn't tell him. As far as Purple goes, the Keep This A Secret directive comes from the Minister of Lions, who is trapped in Middlesea. The Minister of Lions outranks Subminister Kav, but is unavailable, as he is trapped in Middlesea. The Ministry of Redactions would probably also approve of keeping the secret, but the Minister of Redactions is also trapped in Middlesea (and is responsible for the purple timestop, as part of the other unrelated plot). So we don't want to file the report with Kav, but all our authority for not doing so is in a timestop. (Could we insist that we have 48 hours of the Minister of Lions's timeline? That's a kind of funny solution...)

There's a knock at the door. Nesh steps out to deal with the interruption. This is Subminister Tran from the Ministry of Repercussions, and he wants to know how long the conversation he shouldn't overhear will last? Nesh says not more than an hour - he looks annoyed by that, as he has other places to be, but he goes down to the common room.

Come to think of it, maybe Repercussions can help us here. There will be bad repercussions if we send Kav the report he wants. Nesh goes down to get him, noting that he's sitting at a table with Rakta, that priest of Tem who always follows us around.

"The odds are 96% that you have heard something from the Minister of Repercussions beyond what you knew the last time we spoke." -Tran

Vidan says yes, he definitely has more information. Also, Kav, the Subminister of Frag in the Ministry of Magic is demanding a report from my compatriots that we think would be bad if he got. Can Repercussions help with this? Tran starts working on a paper with a lot of purple math, and concludes that there is a 73% chance that such a report will stall him for several weeks, but that time will get shorter the more time we spend in Purple. There is a 17% chance that such a report will incentivize him to get an answer now, and a 6% chance that he will escalate to the Minister of Magic. (The Minister of Magic is one of the less predictable ministers). Just to be clear, is it a bad idea for him to know? Tran notes that there is a great deal of divine influence in this issue, which makes probabilities less certain. His best estimate is that the Subminister of Frag knowing specifically only increases the probability of bad things by about 10%. But every person who knows increases the probability, and those increases stack in a way that is unusual. It is not just the sum of that many individuals knowing, and he doesn't understand what that means. "Multiple people know" triggers bad things. He agrees to send a repercussion-report to Subminister Kav.

Vidan briefs Tran about his newer visions

There's a fourth-ranked traitor. The sword will soon be found. There are multiple candidates, all of them bad, but there are some worse than others. If we don't find Bad and Terrible before the timestop goes down and Catastrophic gets out, the Bad and Terrible candidates will be dead in a day.

(Hey, Scout could probably quest for the Bad and/or Terrible candidates.)

Gale goes to visit the Ministry of Lilacs to restock on perfume, and also brings exotic fruits and flowers she picked up from Orange. Their newest perfume is Mood perfume, which shifts depending on the wearer's mood. One variant tries to decrease the intensity; the other tries to bring others into the Mood. She buys some of both, intending to hand off the Decrease variant to someone in case of going berserk.

The next morning, Vidan gets the list of questions from Inspector Vok to ask the shade of Tier Lo (since we don't want Vok to hear us ask about the timestop, as per the Minister of War) and we go to pick up Valentino.

Valentino says he will be channeling the spirit, rather than manifesting it separately. Vidan asks Valentino to not remember the questions; he can do that though it will cost a small part of the miracle. Can we fill Tier Lo in first to explain why we need to know? As a minister of Redactions he will resist answering. Valentino says that it will depend on how deep in the Halls he has gone - if he still is a nearly full personality then yes; but if he is mostly gone and it is just his knowledge that is channeled, then not so much (but then maybe it doesn't matter as much either). It is possible to pre-load that as part of the miracle. Alternately, maybe he didn't go to the Halls at all (such as if the assassin ran off with his spirit) or he is waiting in the Paths or he went to the Dream. In that case, Valentino will not be able to get answers, but will probably know what happened to Tier Lo's spirit instead.

Everyone Wants These Answers

We go back to the scene of Tier Lo's death for the ritual, where Valentino uses some of his possessions to make a connection.

Inspector Vok and Rakta are in a nearby room just in case. Valentino's eyes go black and his body language changes, and we all make speed rolls.

Figuring that that means there's someone else in the room with us, Diomarche tramples everything that isn't in the ritual circle or is us, which includes someone who says "Ow". Managaratha casts an illusionary red arrow pointing down at the intruder.

The intruder asks "What's the password for the timestop", and Managaratha casts a lot of noise around the spirit as he says "I can't tell you." Nesh and Gale tag the assassin before he vanishes, and then Vok and Rakta burst in.

Q: "What's going on in here?"
A: "There was a half-orc assassin that tried to interfere"

Vidan gives them an irritated "Be Quiet" gesture ("Didn't you see that movie?") and shuts the door again.

Stella puts the assassin in time-out, wherever he is. Gale tries to wild-Blue get the assassin to come back and fight once he recovers, but he's not in the Zheldat area.

Next, Managaratha notices a purple sense-tunnel point that appears (with a different sigil than the teleport). Nesh grabs the anti-half-orc perfume and sprays around the room, especially there, and Managaratha puts up a suppress-purple field, shutting it down.

Lore is a Battlefield notes that the spirit was being literal when he said he couldn't tell the password.

Vidan tells the spirit: "You were assassinated to keep the key to the timestop out of the hands of the ministries that need it. I am authorized by the Ministry of War to do so. <What do I need to know about the key? (Not sure what the actual question was) >

A: "Part of the password is in TrueSpeak which is not true unless you are dropping the field."

Q: "I speak TrueSpeak - what do I need to know to generate the password?"
A: (answering in TrueSpeak) "The password is rabbit horse chartreuse vinegar [Now is the time this spell comes down] in TrueSpeak."

Stella notices that her time-out has been dismissed by someone else big.

Vidan asks a question that generates clue points for Vok, since we have the information we needed. A teleport bounces off Managaratha's success, and we try to burn through the questions as fast as possible.

Q: "What is your favorite color?"
A: "Purple."

A few rounds pass, and then there's another speed roll. Gale secret-detects bogeys in the nearby room with Vok and Rakta, and some shouting starts.

Managaratha puts up his "mwoh mwoh mwoh" Yellow scryguard. Nesh dashes out to the next room - there are four assassins, plus Vok and Rakta. Two assassins are asleep, one is trying to stab Rakta, and the fourth is standing over a downed Vok. Nesh and Gale double-team that last one, and he goes down.

Vidan, in TrueSpeak: "In Common, what is a good fake password to deceive those who are listening?"
A: "Tam and Tem we pray the that this miracle of thine be removed"
Vidan: "I've got it!"

Stella heals Inspector Vok - he's poisoned but that's a medium term issue, and she keeps him from dying from the pile of damage that he took in the backstab.

Does Vidan want to witness something? Yes, but he has no DI. Nesh converts on the spot to Hero of Navere and loans him some.

The voice of the Emperor comes out of the clairvoy point.
Q: "Why can't you tell us the password?"
A: "Because part of it is in TrueSpeak"

Valentino's eyes clear as the spirit is gone. Vidan's witnessing notes the Emperor is a half-orc descendant of the Orcslayer; the master of the Half-Orc we ran into in Elfheim; and he runs the Emperor's Spy Network.

(Managaratha vanishes due to player constraints; the other half-orcs can leave again now that the suppress is down.)

Diomarche tries to call on the power of Rush and stab through the tunnel - Vidan / Nesh witness that it fails because the place the Emperor is in is sanctified against all miracles (not just the good gods, the Breaker too). There is a priest there, but that's almost certainly what popped Stella's time out on the initial assassin. Vidan and Nesh are only getting information here because they are outside of it.

The Emperor spent a while setting up the anti-divine location because he is scared of Slayer, and: ”The timestop was set up by the Emperor to trap the Slayer.”

Vidan also realizes that the Emperor does not keep tabs on his assassins that closely, but someone knew what we were doing and what we were trying. So somewhere in the bureaucracy that dealt with getting permission to interrogate Tier Lo was a half-orc.

All in all, our questions gave Inspector Vok another 29 points of clues - he is now up to 84 of 100 for cracking open the spy network.

Loot

• 12 eps
• 8 skill points