Day of the Maiden Part One

Catching Up

We think a holy Day of the Maiden is coming up sometime soon; we try not to look too hard at the calendar.

Diomarche and Scout both have visions. Scout's is confusing, but seems to mostly be about things that happened last Comet, when he was at Middlesea; Diomarche's is a nice conversation with the Maharani's nephew.

We think the plan is to try to assess Richard, and see if we can make him a Good consort, rather than a Problematic consort. And there’s some mention of wanting tickets to King Richard’s Fair, whatever that is.

Vidan goes to talk to Angelina, the priest of Navere in Vani. With only one fortune success, Angelina has nothing for him. Each of the choices will have consequences, but she doesn’t have strong opinions as to which is noticeably better. Her sense of the consequences is not divinely inspired, but is from living there. Going back to Lord (Viktor) Mikaeli would be a pretty strong snub to the (Leopold) Horenths– going back to a previous consort after you’ve left them would indicate that the one(s) in between were distinctly substandard.

Those consequences would be more significant once Isabella is back from Middlesea, as she’s just a better Head of House than Leopold. Angelina has no sense of why Julia is considering Pyotr, but she clearly is. The Saurians are a plausible power bloc, but they’ve never been part of the politics of the city. It’s also not clear why Pyotr is so interested in the position. He’s more competent than she had given him credit for, but he’s not the best politician.

Richard is… exciting. And a sign that Julia is looking to exert Vani’s influence more broadly than it has been in recent years. That’s not necessarily bad, but it’s a thing you’d want to keep an eye on. Vidan is interested in increasing inter-Zone/Nation entanglements against the Breaker and his forces; Angelina is clear that Richard is increasing entanglements, but how much that’s against the Breaker is not clear… Mikeli is another for entanglements, but less likely to focus on opposing the Breaker. Isabella, once returned, might be more interested in opposing the Breaker, or might be more interested in rebuilding, it’s hard to say.

Angelina asks for a briefing on the party, which Vidan gives. She suggests investigating the saurian/slith might be a way of finding info / getting dirt on Pyotr. Her impression was that Fyodor (the disguised slith) was not particularly connected to Pyotr, as he was newly arrived, but it’s unclear what credentials he offered.

Scout goes to the Lord’s House to do some research into what happened after the War of the Lord and Lady ended. It looks like most of the War tension evaporated pretty quickly. The Lord and the Lady were still definitely the most important political figures in the world after that. At least for the next 10-15 years, the alliances they made stayed intact. There were definitely still camps– the Lord’s stuff and the Lady’s stuff were managed separately. After that, they were mostly just in charge of Orange and Blue, respectively. They had never been officially in charge of the other Zones, but the Lord had effectively been King of Orange, and that didn’t seem to have fallen apart in his lifetime. The city states still existed, but he was effectively the head of the League of City States, and she was effectively the Archmage of Blue. There was no annual celebration of the formal peace that was made, and there was definitely treading lightly for a while, to make sure that tensions were eased. Scout thinks it’s similar to how Green is ruled– there’s not necessarily active hostilities, but they have different opinions on how things should be run. So rivals more than enemies. The peace was apparently signed just outside the Plains of Geddon. (Aiyeee!, thinks Scout.)

Gale goes out looking for potential Adventure Dates appropriate for a pirate and a princeling. There are definitely discussions about pirates. Although the pirates are mostly based in the Inland Sea, and they mostly don’t have bases in Orange. There are some pirates in town, from the Dolphin, so just one crew. They don’t talk about what they’re doing here though. And then she runs into Giaconni, who she met in Rinyan (in To the Heart). He’s interested in talking to Stella, saying her uncle says to talk to Tybalt.

She also thinks Thistle is no longer in town.

Diomarche goes shopping for appropriate Day of the Maiden clothes. Stella hears there’s a party in celebration of the event tomorrow night. It’s at a hall, rather than at the Temple.

Beginning to Meddle

Over lunch, we check in. We think going to talk to Richard is probably a good plan, but Scout wonders what the score is. Gale looks:

• Leopold: 5
• Vivian: 2
• Pyotr: [redacted]
• Lilya: [redacted]
• Richard: 4
• Anne: 1 (Princess Anne from Berani?)
• Viktor: 3
• Candace (captain of the Dolphin): 1

Candace, Anne, Vivian, and Lilya are not Consort candidates, but they are on the scoreboard. Interesting…

Princess Anne arrived yesterday. Captain Candace is denied to be in town but nobody believes that. And there's a new Saurian in town named Lilya who arrived yesterday. There is some debate about how good we are at being Subtle. Perhaps not, but sometimes we’re Sneaky!

We go to the place where Richard is staying, to go see if we can suss him out. “The Pig in the Top Hat” is the name of the inn– as we recall, the Top Hats were Princess Anne’s faction. (Princess Wendy’s faction were the Roses.) We try to see him, giving our name to the person at the door who stops us. He’s in a meeting at present, but we can wait if we want. We decide to stay, to see if we can meet with him (and see who he’s meeting with– see! Subtle!). Princess Anne is also staying at the Pig in the Top Hat, as it turns out. As we wait, Gale checks the scoreboard– Anne is up to 2! Aha!

(Thistle was staying at the Needle and Thread; we are staying at the Steaming Cauldron.)

Vidan considers the politics of Richard and Anne– it probably increases the risk of a war against Darstan, and probably strengthens her claims in Berana if there’s a civil war there at some point. It probably strengthens the relationship between Berana and Richard, so that’s good, though? Hmm.

Gale considers what she thinks of Candace. She’s a competent captain, definitely one of the ones who was less pleased with Cara declaring herself Pirate Queen and taking charge of everything. She’s certainly not above taking the opportunity to do something while Cara is missing. It seems improbable that she’s here to pirate Vani, but conspiring with Viktor to move against the other pirates is plausible. (Viktor has led raids against pirates before.)

Stella brings a Hammer to see what needs fixing with this plot. 17 successes and 15 DI is not enough to get too much on the scoreboard itself, because there’s another priest involved in this effort. Lilya, Candace, and Viktor need Fixing the most. Plus [redacted] also needs fixing. Not so relevant to the scoreboard, per se, but they do need some kind of Fixing. Hmm.

Vidan wonders what happens if no one succeeds at being a good enough match. Well, she’d still be the Centurion, but she doesn’t technically need a Consort. He thinks politically, that not having a Centurion leaves her politically weaker. It’s mostly the case that the failure to sign a new Consort agreement before the old one expires will leave a year before the new agreement takes effect. Hmm. That could be more problematic? We’re not really sure.

• Leopold: 5
• Vivian: 2
• Pyotr: [redacted]
• Lilya: [redacted]
• Richard: 4
• Anne: 2
• Viktor: 3
• Candace: 1
• Vidan: 0

Scout’s friend goes in to see what’s going on with the meeting; they’re talking and drinking wine, but she’s not clear if they are flirting or talking politics. They don’t seem to have any miracles on them, or weird Life spells or anything.

After an hour of waiting, we’re brought in to see Richard. Gale and Diomarche both talked to Richard at the party.

“The Middlesea Free Rangers, yes? What can I do for you?”

“We thought we’d talk to you about the Consort position– is that something you’re actively pursuing?”

“Actively pursuing might be strong, but I’m in town and interested.”

“Well we’re considering throwing in on the effort, but wanted to see if we could get some assurances.”

“Well I’m not sure I will be able to give assurances…”

Vidan assures him that we’re interested primarily in ensuring the various nations/factions are able to unify against the greater threat.

“Were I to become consort, the question of whether the arrangement is driven by a direction of Vani’s influence were driven by my choices or my fathers– in evaluating whether I’m a good choice, I’m not sure you’d be able to say if the choices are good or not. “

Gale tries to poke at him a bit (well, she thinks that she's trying to be more straightforward and that Vidan is being too politically wordy. Turns out he is of the "politically wordy" camp too.).

Vidan thinks that he’s definitely not treating us as a full-blown player in whatever this is. He’s clearly aware of the fact that we’ve done some things in Red, although we’ve never been in King Richard’s Lands. So we’re kind of 7 random people from the conference that failed, rather than a Force to be Reckoned With. But to get Assurances out of him, we’d need to convince him that we’re Serious Players– at present he doesn’t really Respect us. But it definitely seems like he’s looking for someone to fight. Vidan recalls that the theft of the seal in Darstan was potentially set up by people from King Richard’s Land, to give them a casus belli.

When we were in Darstan, we found out that one of the things to Fix was preventing the war between Berana/Darstan/King RIchard from starting.

Richard notices Vidan’s flex of mentioning Anne. He does note that Victoria has not asked for assistance against the orcs yet.

We leave the meeting; we think he gives us more credit than before, but isn’t quite clear what we’re doing.

We go to see Pyotr, to ask after Lilya– our auguries indicate that she may be in need of aid. She is recently arrived, but doesn’t seem to be in any distress. She has considerable resources, but not in the divine category. She’s likely staying at The Green Lizard, if she’s not staying with a friend. She is not local, but she is well known.

Separately, we ask him if we could visit the location where the slith teleported out at the party, so that we could see the sigil. He says the mine is not typically open to the public, but he’d be willing to escort Vidan (and Scout) down to see it.

Vidan looks around. It was a reasonably long-range teleport– outside of the city, definitely. Scout spends some DI and looks into it. It seems to have not teleported anyone, which is weird. But he has a fairly clear idea of what the sigil is, although he’s not clear he saw the sigil in Yellow.

Scout looks around– he’s pretty clear that nothing has been mined in here for centuries. But it’s definitely Part of the House, in that the schticks of the House probably apply here. The age of the House itself is unclear. He would guess that there was some fairly useful natural Orange metals or ores or something down here. There don’t seem to be much left, so maybe it got played out. There may be more deeper into the mine– there are other exits to the mine.

Vidan asks how Pyotr became the caretaker– the Keeper, Pyotr corrects. He had been a servant for 15 years, and was selected by the last Keeper when they retired. Hmm, okay.

To the Green Lizard!

We are the only group of non-saurians in the bar, and that raises a few eyebrows. It has a more mixed-class feel than the other inns we’ve been to. Any individual table is largely one class, but there doesn’t seem to be any segregation overall. The waitress talks to Nesh– he asks after Lilya, who is not in. We leave our contact information– she doesn’t seem to have heard of the Free Rangers. Nesh has Gale give her a tip.

• Thistle: Needle and Thread
• Us: Steaming Cauldron.
• Richard, also Anne: Pig in a Top Hat
• Lilya: The Green Lizard

No changes in the scoreboard

We go to the Needle and Thread; Gale says she wants to talk to Candace. They'll send a message. Psst, Scout, follow them! They go to the Pig in the Top Hat and pass a message.

Back at the inn, Giaconni comes in with Tybalt. They give him a bit of a briefing on the problem– he definitely wants to think of it as a Heist, not a Rescue. But he’s willing to work on it, particularly if

The well-dressed gentleman from Candace’s inn comes in, and gives Gale a note, which reads: “Really? Fine. 10 o’clock, Temple District. – ‘Daphne’” That’s about 2 hours from now.

A saurien comes in and gives Nesh the message in Saurian – Lilya can meet 9am at the Library.

Bran comes in to talk to Diomarche, to see if he knows what’s going on with Princess Anne.

Loot

• Sigil of the saurian/slith Fyodor – maybe the same as Mikhailovich?
• +8 EPs
• +12 SPs