Waving the Prince under the Maharani's Nose

Still the Same Day

"So, the plan is to go and return the prince, break it to the Maharani that he has to stay with us, escape the Mahrani's prison, and return?" -Vidan

“You know, if we skip step one, we can also skip steps two and three.” –Scout

Vidan asks the Prince what he remembers.

• His range seems to be similar to our range pre-Ranger oath.
• He’s been under the influence of the Green amnesia mist, so he’s lost some memory, even around dinner.
• He seems to be reasonably good at getting up to speed, and is grumpy about the Broken miracle.
• He has a few popped Yellow spells, and some other protective effects that had been there, but no ongoing effects. Anything that had been cast then has worn off by now, which could have some utility in figuring out how to bring the whole bubble down.

The Prince has a point of Karma, which is interesting.

Diomarche actually brings him up to speed, and then Vidan breaks the news about being on the map.

“You can tell the Maharani that.” – Lisatera
“I get to go on adventures? Cool!” – Prince Vishnarani
(“One more for Team Goof!” –Scout)

Lisatera makes the Prince look like someone else, and we head to the Palace (the Prince does think this is the right thing to do, if not the thing he is happy about). Arriving at the Palace, The Prince is shuttled off– he resists a bit, but eventually gives in.

Suvatra calls us and says “Come to my office.” We go; we are briefly held at the door by a guard until Suvatra says “let them in”.

“Congratulations.”
“Thank you. You know about the complication?”
“No.”
We explain.
“That’s a complication.”

The Maharani is not in the city. The war is going… okay. Blue has not helped over much.

“It will be very difficult to get permission from the Maharani for the Prince to leave the city. You might be able to get permission from one of the Princesses,

“Can we get permission from the Prince’s mother?”
“That seems highly unlikely. She’s not in the city. She... wandered too far into Unreality, so her ability to make decisions is impaired.”
“His father is not in the picture?”
“He’s in the harem, he’s from a noble house, but doesn’t have authority over members of the Royal Household.”

There are two princesses here in the city. Alasta is the more military one; she’s here because she was injured in the fighting. Fixing her might get her points, but she has been looked at by a number of priests and mages, and is only recovering slowly. Miranelle is in the city and is holding her mother’s political alliances together, at least in part.

(Tasca is one of Love’s servants, but not in the city. And not really in the politics sphere, so may not count.)

“Well, it would be good to get Hirana out, but if she’s forgotten most of what she learned when she was there, then…”

“Most of us have suffered amnesia.”

Vidan wonders about the Prince’s mother. Her Majesty’s younger sister is named Morrigan, and is at the Lady of Lore’s keep, a good ways south of the city.

“I would be careful about taking the Prince to see his mother.” It could be emotionally complicated.

“Is the Prince a Yellow mage himself?”
“Barely. He has some training, he can cast a few spells reliably.”

Scout asks what his aptitudes are? That’s classified.
Nesh appeals, and gets a much better roll.
He’s competently trained as a swordsman, but not much better than most 13 year olds.
He has a strong potential to connect to the divine, which has been a source of some… complication.
That’s one of the reasons he was sent. He does not know that, however. He may or may not have awareness of his potential to connect to the divine.

We update her on our travels, including a bit about Mikhailovich. Princess Alasta would be interested in that information, but if he’s out of the country, he’s no longer Suvatra’s concern.

There have not been any further attempts that Suvatra has been aware of, but the list is still the same. The Prince probably doesn’t join the list of potential targets, he’s too young and male to seriously weaken the Maharani.

The Fire Giant is not very high on Suvatra’s list of priorities at present; she’s enquired about getting friendly giants to help drive it out, which could work but would probably cause a whole pile of damage from the fighting.

The Goddess’ Daughter has been mostly working with Lore’s Servants, which is slightly unusual, given that it’s Life’s Blessing. But she’s been merchanting it up, good for her.

Two groups of cataurs were caught with similar Weird Compasses (presumably pointing towards Nesh).

Suvatra notes that she will probably have more orders regarding the Prince by this evening. Okay, we are on a tight deadline. Off to see Alasta.

Killing Time, and Meetings

We get appointments with Alasta and Miranel for later in the day. Gale goes shopping, and buys a one-shot “turn the boat invisible for the day”. And some cool scarves. Vidan errands, and then wonders what our plan is if we get permission to leave? i.e., what do we tell Alasta we need to go do?

We consider going to Blue, on the theory that maybe we can help coordinate the war efforts against the slith. But who would we coordinate with, exactly? Hmm. That’s a tricky one.

Diomarche thinks the Admiralty is the default card-drawing organization, but they can’t draw MAG without enlisting one of the Mages.

We go to see Alasta.

“Ah, the Free Rangers, I understand you freed my cousin, good work. How can I help you?”

Vidan explains. The eyebrows go very high, very high indeed.

“I imagine you have not told him this yet, or else he would be packing.”

“If I were to let you take him out of the capital again, I would need something describing the situation that would satisfy the mages and priests that my mother would certainly employ to investigate the matter.”

“We think we can arrange sufficient documentation for that.”

“I assume this will not be added to the evidence packet?”

“No.”

“While you consider, we offer the services of our healer.” (Stella is out of DI, but does the Medicinal analysis.)

Stella gets 24 successes on a medicine roll (!). She has a nasty cut down her stomach, which has been stitched up. She’s not down hit points as much as Agility and Strength. It was done up competently, if not with 24 successes. (Although over 15.) It’s not worth undoing and redoing, that would probably set her back some. It’s probably another 7-10 days before she’s able to swing a sword again, and another 2 weeks before she’s back to full. Stella’s best guess is that the sword was coated in something like slith blood, that is transferring the magic/DI resistance into the wound. Finding the slith and killing them would probably defeat that effect. Purple time magic probably won’t help heal it faster.

Stella relays this, and Alasta tells us which slith unit she was fighting, so it’s probably the commander of that unit. She offers to try to help fix the wound, but not until tomorrow.

“We will probably have received orders from my mother by this evening, at which point I will not be able to countermand those orders. If I send the Prince to Blue with you, mother will be angry at me. And then I will not be able to take advantage of your offer, although thank you.”

“Should we also consult with Miranel?”

“She is less interested in the military matters, but you can speak to her. She might have some other reasons to establish contact with Blue. I doubt it would line up in such a way that both of us sending you would make sense, but feel free to talk to her, and see what you get.”

We discuss swapping some mages, which Alasta thinks could work. NOT Mages, that would be bad. Maybe one with some apprentices. We discuss details; Battle mages might be less useful than Weather mages. Yellow mages are mostly better at communication, even for Battle mages. Unreality is not so useful at the battle map scale, but Feelings is good for morale. She can probably only afford to send five mages, and she’d be reluctant to send them to the front lines.

Scout considers whether there are any elvish healers whose magic is less direct, and therefore might be able to help. The best elvish healer is a halfling, who has the ability to amplify the effects of rest for people under her care. That might be more useful than sluagh effects, which are probably more directed and therefore likely to be suppressed.

Miranel

“Good to see you again,” she says, offering us tea and snacks. “I hear you have issues with my cousin?”

“He’s delightful, but we can’t be separated from him.”

Vidan gives a spiel; Miranel has no objection per se, but imagines her mother will be grumpy that he is brought back and then left before she got to see him.

She thinks that one way to ameliorate the Maharani’s reaction would be to bring the Prince to see his mother. Our eyebrows raise at this a bit. There might be some utility conveying some letters to the Lady of Lore, and if anything arose there, that could be of interest.

Huh. Are we being sent on a spy mission? It seems we are.

“Could you tell us more about the condition of the Prince’s mother?”

“You have seen Lisatera? She is skilled at resisting the consequences of Unreality. Morrigan is not skilled at resisting those consequences, and spent too much time investigating certain things using Unreality magic.”

“Is it purely psychological, or is there a magical effect such that Purple magic would help?”

“That would probably not help any more than using Green magic to heal Blood damage.”

“Is the Prince related to the investigation?”

“Yes, she was investigating things to do with him; he’s not aware of that.”

“She was prone to taking risks with Unreality; there was a particular incident that pushed her over the line. If he was a trigger before then, I didn’t notice it, and I don’t know that anyone noticed it. But she wasn’t living in the palace at the time, so maybe I didn’t notice it. He was only brought to the palace after the incident.” Collecting the Prince We go to the Prince's rooms, and let him know that we'll be going on a Diplomatic Mission to Blue. He was expecting to see his aunt - well, we have permission from his cousin. He should pack now. Also, Nesh says we may be going by the Lady of Lore - we won't do that if he doesn't want to. He says he wants to do that.

Diomarche asks Lisatera for advice - "don't come back for at least three or four days. Also remember that you're in Yellow, so orders can follow you fast."

A few letters arrive addressed to the Lady of Lore. (Vidan has already realized that there is No Reason For Yellow To Send Letters, so we are really curious what these are, but we do not open them.)

Lisatera's advice for Diomarche getting into Unreality: "Pick your delusions carefully - try to make them not matter. Like 'the sky is green'."

Curing delusions is generally difficult, like curing Red damage. A good enough priest can usually give you temporary spells of clarity, for instance.

Off we go!

In the Realms of Lore

Vidan has to teleport to a magical location on a magical map, but happily, Gale has a magic map which will show the bend in the river, and he teleports us there. To the Temple of Lore next - we are still on the clock.

The Prince leads us to the entrance of the temple, which is like a monastery but more open. We accompany the prince. Gale walks up to the Guards Barracks and announces our plan

The yellow guy on duty starts to surreptitiously cast yellow spells. He says "Separation." Nesh sees someone going to take the prince away, and dives for him.

"We are not going to let a bunch of random people with broken miracles which are also on the Prince prevent us from separately checking the Prince."

"We did not rescue the Prince, wresting him out of the clutches of the Breaker, in order to let him be taken captive by the next people we met." -Vidan, suppressing Yellow.

Scout jumps in to say that we are the Middlesea Free Rangers and are sworn to protect the Prince, and puts his hand on the Prince's shoulder. Stella also stands by the Prince and says "let's not be hasty." Diomarche also tries some persuasion. Nesh asks can we wait for the Lady of Lore to show up?

Both sides manage to not start the actual combat. Stella asks the priests nearby - it would be nice to talk to someone with actual knowledge.

The Lady of Lore enters, and brings EPs.

• +10 EPs
• +12 SPs