End of the Day

Fussing in the City of Lore

Managaratha fades in; Scout fades out. The Lady of Lore is interested in the phenomenon. She sends the Prince to see his mother, and when Vidan asks for permission to set up a purple teleport area, tells him that he can presumably find somewhere in the city.

We contemplate what we can do to help the Prince's mother without Stella having any DI - delusions are like red magic damage and hard to heal, as they are the Price for Unreality.

Managaratha is discussing maps with Gale, and checks his pockets for a napkin: there is a note that says "All plans that involve going west will be harder than you think." Hmm. Managaratha tries teleporting west by a few hexes. That doesn't work.

Gale buys a map of Jabar "with secrets on it", which includes the Lady's Treasures, the Mine of a Thousand Wonders, several Sandworm Breeding Grounds, a Secret Pass through the Mountains, and the Heart of Yellow (not far off).

Nesh looks for libraries - there are multiple city libraries, but no Saurien library. Odd. There are some sauriens around - Nesh asks a guy who runs a butcher shop. It's a somewhat covert library, apparently. He chats with the librarian, Labella, and explains about the Free Rangers and being the Buccaneer and the Last of the Line of the Eldest. Well, then, the librarian has a letter for him, from his grandmother Karenna.

"The Oasis is pushing to take the homelands. It has sent several [army units] of cataurs into the Homelands, searching for the Line of the Eldest to get into Nikolai's cave. She has left the homelands; she and her daughter (Ilyana) are headed for Blue."

It's not just teleport - Blue flight and even "drifting downstream" don't work so well.

Hmm. While we were doing the ritual to get the Prince out, there was interference from both the Goblins and the Oasis. The Oasis part seems to be causing the “going West (or away from the Oasis?) is Hard” effect. If it was done as part of the ritual, it might take a ritual to fix.

A boat sails up to us and passes a message - the Lady of Lore says we are ordered to return the Prince to the capital. Message received. Vidan translates this as, the Lady of Lore knows we're going to Blue and is telling us this in the most desultory way possible.

It is finally sunset! Vidan gets half his DI back, and does witness/sanctify. It's a change to the existing miracle rather than a new miracle, and was definitely done during the extraction ritual, by nearby cataurs. Basically, the Oasis is pulling on our shared battlemap - we're not sure if it's going "towards the Oasis" or "east" but in most cases that's the same.

We head back to the city. Vidan reminds Gale to not spill all our secrets, so Nesh is the one to tell the guard that we're under a new Broken miracle. After a while we get to see the Lady of Lore; we explain the difficulty in leaving.

Stella throws All The Hammer at how to fix the Princess. There are multiple solutions, depending on which version of her to bring back. No, wait, that's part of her delusion. That gives Stella insight: she was looking into 'My son has karma, what does that mean?' It's a Comet, that means he probably is going to be opposing the Breaker in some fashion. Then she was looking at Middlesea, and things that didn't happen, and she couldn't find a reality in which he didn't go to Middlesea. And that was confusing, because there are no actual fixed points. The reason the Maharani is so overprotective of her nephew is that Morrigan was so overprotective and it broke (almost Broke) her, and in addition to the family dynamics, there was also a Feelings feedback which transferred Morrigan’s care for her son onto the Maharani. The Goddess thinks that getting the Maharani fixed is more important than fixing Morrigan. Sanctification against Broken would help some.

Managaratha thinks about why Unreality caused a Feelings thwackback. Well, partly because magic is chaos and pushing hard enough makes it bleed; partly that the Maharani was the focus of danger to the Prince, and Morrigan was having a lot of feelings, and the Maharani might have had fewer defenses against her sister. Vidan thinks maybe nobody noticed that the Maharani has this effect.

Before we leave the temple, the Lady of Lore asks to talk to Stella. Stella briefs her on our new findings. The Lady also had a request - the local potters are close to forming something like a Guild. That would be beneficial (the Lady thinks) to their Varna. There are three people who would become Guildmasters - now, it is not technically legal to be a Guild per se, but it's under her authority to let them perform this experiment. But to the extent that the goal is to strengthen the Merchant Varna, having the Priest Varna tell them what to do doesn't help with that. Having someone from the outside to help advise would be better. The three people in question are Sarin, Kyesteron, and Tyrell.

Managaratha calls Bikarna Vesta (who has been looking into the Trouble with Feelings Magic), and leaves voice mail.

Gale is tavern-hopping when someone waves her over - it looks like Dubrecht if he was a half-troll. Now he needs a sandworm tooth. "Did you hear your song?" "Something like that."

Managaratha tries to teleport five minutes forward. Vidan and Gale put a bathtub where he appears. He goes twenty minutes. Vidan thinks the actual issue would be if we moved the zone while he was missing.

Loot

+10 EPs

+12 SPs