A ritual and no Pearls

Book Two Run Four

[Dragon 2]

Scout materializes; Vidan fades out; Managaratha is asleep for a bit.

We explain what we have been up to with the three mages, and Nesh hands off the spider to Scout. Scout tells the spider he is in Blue, has more to report on the enemy’s plans at the conference, but will give details over a secure channel. The spider runs under the bed and vanishes.

We head to Mage Alexa’s tower. It’s made of ice. Warm ice. We knock. There is thunder. Nothing happens. We knock again. “Managaratha. You remembered. How nice.”
“What did I remember?”

She invites us into her lair tower. She says she has a ritual chamber prepared, and flies us all up through the tower of ice (also furnished with ice). The tower is clearly Blue spells, rather than an Artifact, so it could be dispelled, but it would be quite hard.

Ritual Take One

The room is set up as a ritual room. She suggests to Nesh that he drop his defenses, which he does. We all stand in a hexagon around her. “This will probably take… well, a few minutes to start, since it’s a ritual rather than a stupid wild spell the way that Marek did. Once it starts, it shouldn’t be more than an hour.” Scout wonders if we’ll go to another time and space? No, we’ll be here.

The ritual begins. It’s heavily Battle flavored, so Managaratha is not super tuned in to what’s going on.

Scout notices that there’s a green spell on all of us– oh it’s the Amnesia Mist. Nesh thinks it’s an hour later. Well huh. Diomarche wonders if using his Focus schtick would help. Well, it might. He remembers that we were being moved around the Battlemap, maybe observing what was happening, and then we were in the space where Sargeant Susie and the Orc (Slayer, in plate and with a large sword) were fighting toe to toe. It was in tableau, but then the orc looked over at us, and said “Nice.” And then the time stop faded some, and we were back in the ritual room.

Okay, she will think about this and we can try again in a bit.

Gale goes outside to test some theories. She tries to zap the nearest orc. Nothing happens. She makes all the Broken creatures on the battlemap visible/apparent. There’s lots of Broken creatures on the Battlemap. Huh. Normally rolling for 10s wouldn’t hit that Battlemap, but it’s… closer than it was…

Gale thinks she’s done with experiments, but Managaratha plays with water and the ice of the Tower.

“I do not understand why the Orc can break the time stop. The time stop is Purple and Divine, neither of those are my specialty. Given I do not understand that, while we can try again, I am inclined to avoid the orc and see what we can find out without interacting with it.”

Managartha offers to post-cog the ritual to see what we might have seen, but Alexa thinks it probably wouldn’t help if it weren’t Blue-Yellow. Alexa will give us air bubbles to protect against the amnesia mist.

Ritual Take Two

The ritual starts up again. We can see the room we’re in, and also another room. There are several people in it, a couple of whom are dead. Diomarche notices this is a room he broke out of– not through the walls, but the Thing that was trapping us here. The Breakout is notably bigger than Diomarche’s DI would support, however.

On the ground there is a sacrifice in the center of the square of the ritual. There is a Priest of the Nameless who is… tending to the sacrifice? They’re not moving, so it’s hard to say exactly what they’re doing. Managartha and Nesh remember that when they were in Red in Darstan, Managaratha pointed out a picture of Baron Volstack, and that’s definitely Baron Volstack on the floor. Stella thinks that the Priest of the Nameless is doing medicine.

There is a dead Priest of Navere on one of the corners of the ritual square. There’s an unconscious Priest of Orellian. (The battlemap seems to know the difference between dead and unconscious, and Volstack is not yet dead.) There don’t seem to be any priests of other religions

Scout looks around– there were definitely a bunch of people in this room who aren’t here now. Which probably includes us, but probably also includes the fourth priest, which by balance we’d expect to be a Priest of Jord. It looks like there was a stabbing, a round or two of combat time (maybe not combat here), and then there was a minute or two of non-combat time, before everyone froze.

The dagger is +10 damage, it’s well made, probably Orange craftsmanship. Alexa says “Where can we go that’s not the Orc?” We think the orc is fighting in a courtyard, so… not outside?

Middlesea Ritual We appear in a different ritual room. The ritual in here has been over for longer. There is a dead redcap on the floor, and Scout’s spirit says that this is where Middlesea was captured. It was definitely a big Green / Shamany ritual.

Stella makes a DI roll– the orc knows we’re here, we should NOT stay here long. She decides to throw the Hammer at it, and gets 14 successes with 8 DI on “What needs Fixing Here.”

The thing we should NOT do is let the Avatar of the Breaker out. The orc is not the Breaker, it’s the Avatar of the Breaker. We have a few more rounds before he will get to us. But each round we stay will let him Do a Thing. He will not escape unless he’s with us for more than an action.

What else would be good to fix? Here in particular:

• Bringing Middlesea back probably need fixing, Spirits are iffy, but better than Demons.
• Don’t let Volstack die.
• Don’t let Cara die.
• Don’t let the Prince of ‘al Jabar die.
• Marek is not in immediate danger, but if he dies, this will turn back into an Army combat, and the orcs will crush everyone. So don’t let him die, or leave, because his magic effect is keeping us in personal combat.
• The Artifact for Breaking Orange probably shouldn’t be allowed to leave. (That’s fuzzy, something is defending that.)
• Cataurs are unlikely to successfully kidnap Nesh.
• There are slith here.
• There’s a goblin, but it will probably be handled.
• Catching the half-orc assassin would be good. It’s not clear if the assassin is a half-orc or just working for the half-orcs.

Scout takes a Really Hard Look at the ritual that happened here, with DI buffed perception. 24 successes gets him:

Scout was unconscious on the floor over there Two redcaps doing the ritual with Solania Flint and Federico and Vidan and Diomarche came in, and there was a fight. Flint and Federico killed one of the redcaps. Silenalania ran off with Middlesea. F&F chased the redcap Vidan and Diomarche dragged Scout in the other direction

Gale casts Battle Diagnostics, to get a sense of the scoreboard.

• The orcs are winning.
• The <REDACTED> are losing
• The <OTHER REDACTED> are doing fairly well but they aren’t really in the battle.
• The cataurs have mostly lost.
• The goblins have left the field with their win.
• Orange Teams 2 and 3 are losing to <OTHER REDACTED>. (This is a different scoreboard; the are only in this battle because Marek put everyone on the same battlemap)
• Vidan’s allies are about breaking even.

There are things Gale is missing, but that’s all she gets.

Embassy Suites

Alexa suggests we could go to the Breaker’s Avatar for one round, but we think that is a BAD IDEA. So we go elsewhere. We’re in His Majesty’s delegation

Federico and Flint are fighting a redcap; there is a potted plant spreading an Amnesia Mist everywhere. Scout takes a look at the sigil– there are several. It’s not anyone from His Majesty’s embassy. Oh, one of them is Silenalania’s. Okay. The redcap looks outgunned, to Diomarche’s eyes, unless he has another giant thing like the Amnesia Mist to trigger. The Amnesia Mist is mostly Alchemy, with some Essence. An air barrier would be helpful to blocking it.

Scout puts down a hammer– that’s definitely Custard, the other Redcap was probably Cream. Scout didn’t know that Custard was a Green Mage, but had definitely brought some plants with him, so… Scout sighs.

Managaratha gets coordinates for the three places we visited– he’s a little iffy on the first location.

(The Breaker’s Avatar had four actions.)

Back at the Tower

Alexa ends the ritual. She sees why Marek needed so much effort– it was breaking an army combat, which is probably extra effort in general, and also it had the side effect of us all being in the same hex. That probably affects the “getting far apart is fuzzy” effect, since how big an army combat hex is is fuzzy. There are interesting implications for the interface between army combat and non-army combat that are probably worth investigating.

It’s not unlikely that an assault on a keep will turn into an army combat. The fact that the different factions didn’t turn into different units is where someone probably cheated. It’s possible the attacker only had one big unit, but Alexa would have thought the Pirates should have had a unit, and the cataurs would have a unit, and… That’s where someone is cheating.

Bringing down the effects in a particular order is important.

It’s interesting to think about whether the army combat knew that the Oasis effect was going to happen. Because the Named character would have escaped from the keep even if the keep was taken, unless they knew the Oasis effect was happening. So there may have been some coordination there, or the Breaker’s Avatar just knew it was coming…?

The removal of Middlesea’s spirit probably did a lot to disable Middlesea as a defensive military unit.

Named characters are unlikely to instantiate as a military unit, but a Squad of Paladins of Rush should be an army unit, in the way that they don’t appear to have been. Possibly Marek and Petrov could have been an army unit. But they could have joined an army unit.

If it’s an army combat on a board you can escape from, Named characters in an army combat will get away. The mooks will be on the ground dead or dying, but the Named people will generally escape. Given that there was no escape, then it’s more likely that in an army combat that the named characters go down.

There are two possibilities for that part of the muddle: The orcs are actually too big for individual squads to generate as a unit, and there was no single Leader to unite the Middlesea defenses (Cara was down). Someone forced the orcs into a unit big enough to make that effect happen, by Cheating. Possibly because Slayer prevents the orcs from being broken into smaller groups? It wasn’t Blue; it could have been Discipline saying“we are One Unit”.

The time stop is the thing that most prevents a win for the Breaker.

Alexa thinks that none of the Delegations were big enough to be a Decisive Battle for the Comet. It would have been a First Strike, and an effective one. She’s unclear whether Middlesea’s effort would have been successful.

In the short term, we have earned a battle or two of Alexa’s support for the Admiralty. It’s unlikely that further investigation of Marek’s effect would be worth further battle, but she’d be willing to negotiate for more.

Marek’s effect is not smooth; we’re not on a single huge battlemap. It’s several battlemaps hooked together. Marek broke the army combat using Extra Effort by throwing Blue Magic at it without an actual Spell. The thwackback is probably a Berserker Rage, but maybe that wouldn’t be a problem with General Petrov standing right there to take him down if he got out of control.

We report on all our mage negotiations to Captain Latiras via Yellow spell.

The sluagh reappears to talk to Scout. Scout is disappointed that the spider didn't go all the way to Green, but no, it was just to summon the sluagh. Scout reports provides a brief summary to the sluagh and can report more over a secure channel.

"Do you know his Majesty's name?"
"....no,"
"Interesting."
"I doubt he knows mine."

To Sea, To Sea

[Dragon 3] Scout gets a call the next day on the boat, and climbs to the Crow’s Nest to take it. He speaks in Elvish. Lady Asanriel, of His Majesty’s Court. He gives her a fairly complete report of both the older stuff and the things we just learned about from our look at Middlesea. We’ll be heading to the merfolk and Yellow, and then returning to the mainland, we expect. She will see if there’s anything His Majesty wants Scout to keep an eye on in those areas.

We sail back up to Northport and pick up the Kittiwake, which now has a Hold of Holding.

Does the Admiralty have any information on nearby merfolk. Not a very good one.

[Dragon 4]

Can we shop for presents for the merfolk? They like tridents more than swords. We pick up some water-resistant tridents and head back into the ocean, to where the closest merfolk communities might be.

[Dragon 6] Managaratha sends a clairvoy point to look around.

There's a small cave with a couple of merfolk - we go down and talk to them. Their castle is covered in coral and the king is asleep, under a curse, for the past couple of months. This seems like the sort of adventure we could do.

We are giving the merfolk a coral-cutting saw, and head back up to the surface. The cataur boat is still there. We sail towards the coral castle. Stella looks at it.

The king is here, under a curse. It's not an undeserved curse, but it's a bit overboard. Gather three perfect pearls and a gold goblet. Crush the pearls, mix with a drop of blood, and feed it to him. That will wake him up, and he can deal with the coral.

Managaratha determines the distance and direction to the nearest perfect pearl. It’s down there. We hypothesize about what to do with Giant Killer Clams, but then we go to look. It seems to be a clam farm, with nice rows. We discuss whether we should take the pearl, or try to buy it, or…?

Merfolk kings are the leaders of local areas, and are the focus for their magic.

Loot

• +8 EPs
• +8 SPs
• +0 perfect pearls