Visions of Middlesea

Vidan

Accidentally unread for a year

A message from Minister Dae

“Father Vidan. You are not in the Bureaucracy. You are not required to take my advice. I am not required to examine actions you propose to undertake.”

She smiles wryly. “But I am in the Bureaucracy, and responsible if I do not follow my own advice, even if I do not see the purpose of it. So I have some things to tell you.

“First, you should know that the outcome of this Conclave is less clear than anything I have previously encountered. In my experience, this lack of clarity implies the exercise of a great deal of Divine power in the immediate future of the Conclave. I expect you have more experience with that than I.

“Second, you have no doubt heard of the increase in the probability that the Sword that was Lost may be found, and the line of the Orcslayer returned to the throne. That is not a good thing.

“There are currently three possible candidates to sit the throne of the Empire. The first would merely be a bad king - damaging, but survivable. The second would be Terrible - there would be civil war and parts of the Empire would fall back into the Broken Lands. The third would be… Catastrophic. If you do not find at least one of the first or the second by tomorrow, they will be dead by the day after, and either the third will take the Throne, or the throne and the empire will be destroyed. Understand that is better than the third taking the Throne.

“I do not understand how, but there is in fact a strong possibility you will find one or both of the first two by tomorrow. Perhaps your Goddess can provide assistance that the Twins have not provided to the Bureaucracy. I believe if you find the second, you will not choose to put him on the throne, but you must know you need to protect him until the third is dealt with. If you find the first… I urge you not to place him on the throne, and simply to ensure that the bloodline continues for another day, but recognize that your Goddess may disagree with that determination.

“Third, you should know there is a traitor among the Ministers here. The fourth ranked ones. If you can identify the traitor before tomorrow, tomorrow will go better than it would otherwise. That is less pressing than the preservation of the line, but not insignificant.”

A message from Minister Julan

“Ah, Vidan. I have not spoken to you previously,” [was there an odd strain on the word ‘you’?], “but I believe it is time. I am the Minister of Lions. You are, and will be, a Lion Hunter.” He waives your notes in your general direction. “It doesn’t look like you’ve met any of your companions yet, although I think there are some close encounters here. The Yellow Centaur with Red, the Orange Priestess - Goddess, not Rush - both seem promising. And you should take Luigi up on his offer to speak with Ritasi as soon as possible, although obviously not tonight. You do need to start gathering the rest of the Hunters tonight, though.” He stands up from your desk, dropping your notes, and comes towards you, where you are standing stunned by the door. One arm on your shoulder, he turns you and walks you both back into the hall. Shutting the door behind you, he gestures back down the corridor towards the common area. “Off you go. There’s no time to waste, the Lions will be here soon, if they’re not here already.” He turns and walks up the corridor towards his room.

Gale

Conversing with Cara (2023-08-05)

After her speech, Cara came back and sat with you and the rest of the Captains.

"Well, what did you think?"

Federico was first to respond, as befits her First Mage - "They were listening and nodding at all the right places. It went as well as could be hoped for."

Captain Drake, that ass, was next. "Well, I for one still don't see how we're going to make a profit off this. Even if they sign on to this 'everyone fights the Breaker' plan, this party alone is costing you months of tribute, if not a full year. You're never going to make that all back. And furthermore"

"ENOUGH, Drake." Cara cut him off. "It's my tribute I'm spending, not yours. You're not losing a pence on this party, and I'm tired of hearing about it."

Brightwall piped up with "Well, I for one will be grateful to have some help from the bigger powers if a squad of Sirens rolls out of the Broken Lands into our waters. That's certainly worth some work to acquire. As long as the price doesn't involve us heading out of the Inland Sea anywhere. The Silver Gull's not going to be any help to anyone on land."

"Oh, I don't know," Captain Jane added. "I think a trip elsewhere could be fun, and if we're ever going to get a chance at it, this is the time." She waved out over the crowds, a couple hundred delegates from every country. "This room is full of mages, priests, money... more than the whole Rainbow Isles could pull together. If you can't figure out how to make a profit off that, Drake, you're not trying."

Cara smiled. "Thank you Jane. I'm glad someone is open to the possibilities here, not just the problems." Turning to you, she added "And you, Gale? What do you think?"

You looked out over the room. "What do I think? Obviously, I think we have just started on a Grand Adventure." Cara laughed, and someone (Brightwall?) threw a roll at you.

"Of course you do." Federico said, with a grin. "Enough. We're just repeating what we've all said before. Captain's set the course, and we're heading out. Let's eat, before the storms start rolling in."

Scout

Memory 1 (2023-07-05)

After the Pirate Queen's welcoming speech, the delegations are seated and dinner is served.

There is way more seating for the Green delegation than is needed, and for a minute you think you're going to get to avoid the other rulers' people, but Middlesea's servants are quite good at casually making sure you're all seated at least reasonably close to each other. Not intermingled, but speaking distance.

In addition to the six of you, Their Majesty of the Plains has three representatives:

• Furoosh, a Sluagh (and a relative of Their Majesty somehow, although it sounds like it's a "returned from hearing their song and are related now" rather than a "born to the same parents" related)
• Silenalania, a High Elf, and
• Sunbeam, a Sylph

Astros has clearly met Furoosh and Silenalania before, and says hello politely. They spend most of the meal fencing about how of course everyone realizes the Breaker's return is the most important thing on the table right now, and other matters are minor considerations, and they're all good enough you're not sure how much they really mean it. You'd guess not a lot, given Their Majesty's overall failure to be reasonable about anything ever, and the number of different "minor considerations" that are raised.

You can't tell which of the two of them is head of their delegation, or if they're doing a joint-representation thing for some unknown Sluagh rationale. Sunbeam is definitely not the head, she's Silenalania's lady's maid, the way Custard and Cream are Astros' valet and cook. So maybe that makes Silenalania the head, since Furoosh doesn't have one? Or maybe that just makes her a high elf instead of a sluagh. The servants are all seated with the delegations for now, anyway.

Her Majesty only sent one person, a dwarf named Flint. He's... very Dwarf. You'd think he was using Essence magic to make himself more Dwarf, except that wouldn't really be a thing a Dwarf would do, now would it, so he's probably not. He does not join the fencing between Astros and Their Majesty's delegation at all. "This is eating time, not talking time."

Westly, of course, picks that up and runs with it. "Is it talking time yet? Oh, it looks like it's drinking time. Do you think there'll be dancing time?" Flint's replies are monosyllabic, but it doesn't seem to dissuade Westly, who keeps up a steady stream of chatter. He occasionally tries to drag you and Vrok into it, but Vrok is nearly as stone faced as Flint, and you're trying to pay attention to the actual politics going on, even if you're not adding much to the conversation.

Custard and Cream mostly content themselves with talking to each other about the service. They apparently judge it satisfactory, although they note it seems to take a lot of humans to do the work one halfling would be doing. After the first couple of courses Sunbeam joins that conversation too, and the three of them seem to have the only actually friendly chat, as opposed to fencing or needling.

Memory 2 (2023-07-22)

After dinner, Middlesea's servants start clearing away the tables to make a dance floor, and a reasonably good (for humans) group of musicians starts playing quietly. The delegations don't immediately split up - they definitely stay clumped to start, with a few people moving between them.

From Green, the servants stay put, continuing their chatting, and Flint doesn't seem to be going anywhere, so Westley keeps needling. Furoosh and Silenalania both head out though, Furoosh towards the Pirate Queen's table and Silenalania towards the Orange delegation. Astros (with Vrok tagging behind him), heads after Furoosh, and nods at you to follow Silenalania.

It's hard to sneak across a mostly empty dance floor, but you did your best. She certainly knew you were there, but possibly she didn't actually think you were following her, just heading to Orange yourself. As you approached the Orange delegation, a woman you now recognize as Stella headed out, towards the Purple delegation.

Once you hit the Orange delegation proper, you lost track of Silenalania for a while. You just got swarmed with people asking questions about Green's positions on things. Fortunately you didn't really know a lot, so you couldn't give much of anything away, you were just here to be helpful to Astros, not to negotiate. After a bit the swarming stopped as people decided you weren't very useful after all, and you could recover a bit. You realized that one of the "advantages" of having lost your eyes is that people can't really tell what you're looking at very well, so you were able to start tracking Silenalania's movements more easily without it being obvious to whoever was talking to you at the time what you were doing.

She had also been swarmed initially, you're pretty sure, but by the time you spotted her again, she had maneuvered herself into a private conversation with one of the Guild Masters. Who'd have guessed a High Elf Ambassador was better at socializing than you? Anyone paying attention, probably.

Still, once you had your "eyes" on her again this time, you kept focused on her. You realized that not only could the person you were talking to not realize you were watching, neither could she. Which meant you noticed, when probably no one else did, when the Guild Master slipped her a note at the end of their conversation.

She put it in her pocket without reading it and moved on, chatting with the rest of the four Guild Masters in rapid succession. At least one more passed her a note. You couldn't quite tell if the Saurian did, he was harder to see. One didn't. She didn't read any of them when she received them, but you managed to position yourself to "see" her while not looking at her as she headed away from Orange and slipped them out to read. "South Stairs, 10 pm." "Stables, 11:30." "'Library', 11 pm." Well. That's interesting.

Memory 3 (2023-08-19)

After seeing Silenalania's notes, you lost track of her in the room when one of the more insistent delegates tried to talk to you about trade arrangements. By the time you'd convinced them you didn't know anything, she wasn't in the room anymore.

Another interesting tidbit - what did she have to do that was more important than talking to the delegations? Isn't that what she was here to do?

Well, you were here, at least for tonight, to figure out what she was up to. So no point in you sticking around either.

You did spend a little time trying to figure out which way she might have gone, but tracking is hard on well-swept stone floors. You might have been able to find her with some actual Shaman tricks from your spirit, but you weren't quite willing to do that in front of all the delegates. Someone was bound to notice, given the number of priests in the room.

Well, if you didn't know where she was, you knew where she might be going. Time to take a look around.

The South Stairs was the easiest to find, and the earliest time, so you headed there first. They were relatively small and narrow, for servants' access rather than guest access, definitely. Nothing obviously to make it a meeting place other than being out of the way. But that didn't sit right, so you looked harder. After some searching, you discovered a trap door under a rug that opened into an unused store room. The stairs down were covered in dust, except for a pair of footsteps that had gone down and come back up again. You looked for a minute, and decided you could plausibly sneak down in those footsteps without leaving new tracks, but they only went to the bottom and turned around. Heading into the actual storeroom without leaving obvious tracks wasn't going to happen. You closed it again and left.

Stables next, since you'd seen them when you arrived. They were outside of the main building, on the grounds, but nearby. Large. There's a couple of elephants being stored there, for Essence's sake. More people around, too, although not a lot of them. Nothing obvious, again, but your 'eyes' were drawn to a little shack just behind it. Opening the door, there was a staircase down. This one wasn't dusty, so you headed in, and discovered yourself in a dank hallway heading off in two directions, and a Feeling. Definitely a larger Spirit down here somewhere. You were considering whether to spend some DI to try and talk to it, or just pick a direction to head off in, when a voice from the top of the stairs yelled "Hello? Is someone down there?"

Break it. Astros wouldn't be happy to have you caught sneaking. After a moment you yelled back "Yes! Can you help me please? I seem to have gotten completely turned around." A man in fairly rough clothes came down stairs with a lantern, and found you. He definitely did a double-take at your missing eyes (really the first person to obviously do that all night - not a diplomat, this one) and then said "Oh, yes. Uhm. Let me help you back upstairs" and took your hand. "This way." As you headed back out, he was shaking his head and muttering to himself "gonna have to put a lock on that door. Second person lost down here tonight." Once you got to the top, you assured him you could find your way back to the main keep by yourself, but he delegated someone else to take you.

As you got close to the keep, you asked for directions to the library. Your guide looked at you, and very clearly decided it wasn't her place to ask, and said she could take you there. In the main keep, Northeast corner. Fairly large, with a servant on duty even at this hour, although they certainly couldn't watch all the rooms at once. He asked if he could help you find anything in particular. After a minute, you asked for a history of Middlesea. He told you to follow him, and took you through a couple of rooms to a stairs down, where there was another warren of shelves. He headed right to a particular one, pulled a book down, and handed it to you. Then he escorted you back up and out of the library again.

So what's underground that Silenalania's looking for, and why are the Orange delegates helping? And why is their help secret, even from each other?