Promises Promises
Ministry of War
[All Gazelle 30] Vidan and Stella vanish, and Nesh reappears. He still has tons of effects, but happily while the reverse gravity is still in effect, so is Gale's fly spell.
The bureaucrat thinks this whole vanishing thing is very annoying.
Zheldat is due south of the tower, in line with the rivers hitting the coasts. It's the capital of the Empire of the Orcslayer (Purple)
We go to the ministry of War. It is set up for centaur, and there are centaur walking through the halls. Fewer other races. (Other buildings have not been set up for centaurs, but this one has.)
Managaratha remembers– Zheldat was founded when the centaurs came back into the world; this building is not that old.
“I was hoping to speak with Vidan, but apparently I am speaking with you all.”
“I have read Vidan’s report. It appears that you all are the only ones that can get into this… whatever this Oasis miracle is. I will have to treat you as… we will not say ‘agents’, but we will have to work together to determine how to undo the time effect. There are some things I will need to share with you, but I will require a promise of secrecy first. (An Oath. It will make it difficult to share the secrets but not impossible, so it won't be accidental, and he will know.) For Vidan and Stella, he'll have to bind them when they return, and by tomorrow will have something to provide for them.
The minister wonders if the kid is one of us? He says enough of this floating Saurian nonsense, and Nesh comes to the ground for now. He emphasizes the importance of this secret-keeping, as if Nesh is a child.
He puts together the purple Oath and we all agree.
He thinks the timestop effect is the result of the death of Foran Zakar, Minister of Redaction. He was a priest of the Twins as well as a mage, and was one of the leaders of their delegation; he had an effect of that sort prepared on his death. The key to open the time stop was in the knowledge of Tier Lo (subminister of the second rank), who was assassinated in Zhaldat the night that Middlesea happened. The fact that they want the effect to stay up and we want the effect to stay up, he finds interesting. But he can't force it open anyway. Who knew the internal affairs of the Ministry of Redactions, he is not sure. The other fifth-level Bureaucrats were probably aware. Other ministers of redaction probably.
The Ministry of Redaction is not under the other fifth-level Bureaucrats; it keeps Secrets.
It’s not clear to the Minister whether the weaponization was intended to be on a smaller degree or not. The general purpose of the effect is to catch the assassin or whoever so that the Ministry of Redaction can put together a team and extract them. Someone is of the opinion that the bubble should not be opened.
Gale wonders if the key can be recovered magically? It’s unlikely; possibly Yellow could do it. He does not speak of the possibility of what Yellow can do.
A Nameless priest could maybe do it? That’s a plausible route to follow, if we have a Priest of the Nameless who could talk to a dead priest of the Twins. Probably easier if we tried for Tier Lo.
It’s possible the key could be deduced; Zakar is the sort that uses suspenders and a waistband. The Ministry has not been able to perform a complete search, as they are not acknowledging Zakar’s death.
Inspector Vok has been assigned to investigate Tier Lo’s death. He likely is already running into issues with the Ministry of Redaction. His reports thus far have not been very enlightening. His post-cog has indicated that it was a single ninja that killed Tier Lo. (Ninja are known to be a thing, but not culturally associated with anywhere specific.)
There is not a new Minister of Redaction; the Ministry is pursuing the matter in some degree, but it has lost both its Minister and the Subminister that would have stepped in. There are discussions going on internally.
Managaratha “That sounds exciting.” “Exciting. Indeed.”
One assumes a post in a Ministry by proving one’s self, so there are Rules about how the next Minister is chosen.
Ministry of Lions deals with unusual threats and is also in the Middlesea miracle. There is a subminister of war there.
He is Tan Kato, the Minister of War.
Does he have any advice for us? His focus is on the orcs invading - he does not expect us to join that fight.
We are outside the scope of Ministry politics, which should give us some flexibility. We are welcome to investigate the assassination.
He assigns us Volda (the bureaucrat we’ve been running into, as it turns out) to point us around and help us with contact.
Fifth Level is the highest rank of Bureaucrats.
Volda gives us the list of the delegates from Purple. We get a briefing on the orc invasion. Strong push to get them a foothold in the north of the Empire; they’ve been less coordinated since then, and the Minister and Head Stallion have been holding them at bay. They didn’t take any obvious strategic locations, but it was definitely an invasion, rather than a raid.
Ministry of Repercussions is responsible for keeping the probabilities of outcomes updated. Ministry of Fortune is small– probably not more than 5-10 bureaucrats total. The current Minister is the first Minister of Fortune in a few decades. Its role is primarily to take advantage of unusual opportunities.
There are 88 ministries currently active; it changes moderately regularly.. 323 Inactive ministries currently. The most recently reactivated ministry is the Ministry of Lilacs, which regulates perfumes and herbal remedies and some Green mages. (Why? Gale is going to have to investigate. That sounds like an adventure). Volda later confirms that they reactivated *on* the Middlesea Day.
Ministry of Fortune
Ministry of Fortune Volda takes out a book, which generates a map. A small building. This is not designed for centaurs.
Seilin (she/her) greets us enthusiastically. Welcome to the Ministry of Fortune! She is a bureaucrat assigned to the Ministry, but not a subminister. She takes the Tarn Evidence Packet and goes to read it while we have tea. (Volda is unimpressed with the tea.)
Managaratha tries to pump her for information, such as he can. The Minister of Fortune didn’t report since arriving at Middlesea.
The Ministry has pushed forward to see what can be done with the troubles in the country. Displaced people in the north, for example.
She gives us Tourist suggestions. The Empty THrone can be viewed two days per week; there is a theater that has a new work showing.
She will prepare a report for Opportunities When Taking Down The Bubble.
Ministry of Lions
To the Ministry of Lions next. It's larger than the Ministry of Fortune, located in an upmarket area of town, close to the Temple district; we see people in Twinsish regalia.
They have a large antechamber, big enough for centaur. “What do you need?” He sees Nesh floating. “Oh.” He sends a messenger to get Tan Ri. Gale asks about forms for being a Registered Pirate! “Registered Pirate, or Privateer, or Unregistered Naval Officer?" The first, but it would be the Ministry of Naval Trade, which is missing its minister also.
Lots of people are interested in talking to us, apparently. We are about to go back in, but Scout notes that there’s a big Twins miracle back there. We advise them that we have a Broken miracle on us, so please don’t get us. Ah. Let’s go talk in the park.
We go to the park; the bureaucrats spend some time getting Nesh back on the ground, until dusk. They ask us lots of questions about what’s in the packet, expanding and collapsing details. They run Purple diagnostics.
The thing that’s not in the packet, that they think is true. We’re under a Broken miracle; a Blue spell; a Navere miracle; a Rushian miracle; a Twins miracle. There are a lot of miracles on us people, and they’re not interacting perfectly. If it was Magic (and some if it is Magic) it would probably have sorted itself out. There would be an effect on us at this point. It’s mostly miracles, and they continue to fight with each other more, so it’s more fluid effect, that they would not count on staying the same. For instance, we’re missing two people now rather than one. Some other sorts of miracles may have trouble affecting us.
Gale wonders if the miracles are being directed by the Gods, in the “do what you think is best” way– is that happening in real time? The ministry people disagree with each other, and start to geek out about theology.
The Twins miracle is not actually big enough for the Twins to have a hand in specifically what it was doing when it was creating. But the ongoing fight, some of them think the Twins are paying attention to. It’s a Balance miracle. The Rush and Navere miracles are both quite large, and could have had some “The God is stepping in to make it work this way”, they think. The Oasis is huge, but they’re less familiar with spirits and demons.-- would the Oasis way over there have had to send a specific miracle. They don’t identify anything Goddessy on us at present.
Nesh pays attention to what they’re saying in the background– the ministry people are speaking another language with each other sometimes, and then seem to be translating back. They don’t seem to be concealing anything particularly. We are definitely getting looks from people in the park.
Nesh notices there is a guy watching us from outside the park, and relays that to us.
After an hour they start to move from diagnostic to thinking about Treatments. Managaratha attempts to distract them with more theoretical questions!
We’re supposed to all be trapped in the broken miracle, but the Rushian miracle was supposed to break us out, but the Blue spell says we’re all in the same place. They expect that if we got too far apart we’d fall back into the Not Here miracle.
Gale says she wants a full report on specific treatments! Producing reports is one of their weaknesses… though there are clearly some experimentalists in the group who would be willing to just Try It Right Now.
Why Lions? There’s an extent to which it’s tied to cataurs, they think. The history geek says the Ministry of Lions is one of the oldest ministries, founded during the first comet during the founding of the Empire. The issues at that point, they could have been Ministry of Fish, if we wanted to deal with the merfolk. No one had a good evocative word for dealing with Orcs. And there were a fair number of cataurs in the area at the time. They’ve mostly retreated to the Oasis by this point. At that time, as best the historian puts it together, there were not many cataurs anywhere, since they were just reappearing. But there was a group causing trouble out of the Broken Lands, that seems to have been mostly dealt with.
There are no cataurs within four miles, as we discover when Managaratha asks “how would we find a cataur?” and someone says “I could just cast summon cataur with purple.” and does so.
Managaratha asks about other things that have happened– they seem to be quiet about the status of the Minister of Lions, which makes us think they do have some information.
The sigil of the Purple stasis is the Hide-my-sigil Sigil, it’s about 150 years old.
The guy who’s watching us has some kind of “In The Shadows” Tem-ish effect.
Nesh springs the trap! The guy is a follower of the Guiding Star (who is the head Priest of Tem)
What are our dreams? What do we dream of doing? ('All of it!' -Gale) He'll keep following us.
We interrogate Rakta, the priest who’s following us. He’s mostly here because the Guiding Star knows we’re in town and wants to keep an eye on us. We ask if there were other strange happenings in the capital that they know about on the day of Middlesea; Yes, says Rakta. Can he tell us more? We’d want to ask the Guiding Star. Can we do that? He’ll let the Guiding Star know we want to talk to him. He recommends we do not go in the Temple, where the Guiding Star is likely to be.
Ministry (sort of) of Foreign Affairs
There is an invitation to dinner with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. We go! Not to the Ministry, to the Minister's house. (Dunang) He has met Managaratha in the past, when he was younger.
He treats us to a lovely dinner, and is a lovely host, and he casually gets lots of details about our backstories without us really noticing. Hmm.
Having chatted a while, Nesh notices that he seems to be disappointed that we actually are as clueless as we look.
Scout lets slip that Futeau is the traitor - Dunang is surprised to hear that, and Scout asks him to get that to Her Majesty just in case. (Futeau, it turns out, is one of the Queen’s advisors.) He seems to indicate that he can see to that.
The Minister offers us his seats at the theater. We’re in the diplomatic box; it has room for centaurs and the theater is clearly set up for at least some centaur population.
The play is a reasonably interesting opera-y thing. Not much plot, but the singers are quite talented. The convention is that the audience is at a social event, and people walk in and out. Nesh invites the priest of Tam into the box with us.
About ¾ of the way through, there’s a knock on the door. Nesh answers; there’s a glowing guy that asks if he can come in. Sai Ko Ti, high priest of Tam, the Summer’s Warmth. He asks for an evidence packet, since he has not been provided with a copy yet as he is not in the Ministry. He is curious about what we remember about what happened to people in the Delegation, but it mostly seems to be a social call, rather than an Interrogation.
Scout notes that if we were actively Broken, the Warmth effect would be actively painful, rather than just getting warm.
"Does he do that a lot?" "*Constantly*."
Gale develops a crush on a singer and sends them a lilac.
No Evidence for Orcs
Some people wake when the screaming starts; Nesh wakes up the rest.
Orcs have surrounded the inn. There are about 10 mooks; Scout notices one of them is a priest, but she is using some kind of mojo to look like a mook.
The mooks charge upstairs, looting the rooms for the Tarn Evidence Packets, while half the party cuts them apart and the other half goes after the priest.
The priest spends her DI to bring 4 of the mooks back from the dead, resulting in more chopping. Managaratha notes that the priest invokes Grumuush when doing the miracle to bring back the dead guys.
The orcs (even the dead ones) disappear again at the bottom of 3rd action; luckily, the one orc who had found an evidence packet dropped it when Nesh killed them.
The local forces appear at the top of 4th action, and are confused that there are no orcs. The witnesses and post-cogs tell them that yes, there were orcs. They are dismayed that the priest does not show up in post-cog.
Loot: +5 EPs +5 SPs