Water Alliance

Scout vanishes, and Managaratha reappears. Has he met us? Yes! Has he met Lisatera? Yes, probably. Nesh takes the first perfect pearl so as to keep it out of future divinations.

[Dragon 14]

The next perfect pearl location is the oyster bed, which is in the sleeping king's lands. That kind of makes it his, so Gale yoinks it and gives it to Nesh.

The next nearest is off to the west, which puts us back in Queen Mab's lands.

[Dragon 15]

Things start getting stormy. The pearl is in some sort of large grotto in a larger coral reef. Nesh, accompanied by Managaratha's glowing light, goes exploring. The light gets lost. Stella has some ability to make tools and fires, so puts together an ever-burning candle that Nesh can put in a lantern. He goes exploring again, and finally gets to somewhere in the maze where he thinks something else (just around the corner) is moving. It's a giant anglerfish sort of thing! The glowing ball could be the perfect pearl! Nesh decides this isn't where he wants to be adventuring, and squeezes through some more coral, taking some damage. Now he finds some seaweed.

Meanwhile, the storm is getting worse.

Nesh ends up in a fight with the seaweed, and then retreats. We flee the storm, let Managaratha take a nap, and then he can teleport us back. But bringing Lisatera with us is harder. She's happy to let us go .

Back we go to the cave. Managaratha squishes down Diomarche. Stella has a trail of yarn to go back to the beginning, and Nesh will go first, as he doesn't get lost due to magical lostness. Heading back to the anglerfish (not that real anglerfish have pearls but that seems likely)

We fight the anglerfish, but that bulb was not a perfect pearl. On we go.

Diomarche and Gale get grabbed. The crab starts to submerge in the sand; Gale freaks out (claustrophobia) and casts a wild "water body" spell and dissolves in the ocean. (2 successes 7 awryage).

Vidan rescues Gale from the water, and Nesh finds the pearl. Time to go!

(We bring out some crab and anglerfish steaks)

[Dragon 16]

Then we go to the sleeping king's castle. Stella puts the potion together and feeds it to the king. Yay! Vidan introduces us and convinces him to be on board with the fighting plan.

We head back towards Melmane. Gale thinks here

[Dragon 17]

Meeting with the captain on behalf of the Admiralty. (People seem to notice Nesh more than they used to, though no one says anything. The Captain is baffled that he didn't notice before.)

We brief him on the mer. We have secured alliance with three out of four - King Lani, we've suggested that Berana deal with that because they can provide buffs for red sharks. Mag has a contractual marriage contract, Fal we uncursed, and Tabe we dealt with his mephits.

He notes that as the Buccaneer has returned - what is his plan for working with the Admiralty and the Saurians. The Buccaneer has traditionally been an Asset of the Country, not answerable to anyone in specific but they tend to be allied with the Admiralty or the Saurian city or both (both is possible but inconvenient).

We head to the north coast to talk to Philippa, after the captain arranges for a meeting. How did you come by the blade? Nesh says he has always had it. He assumes it was given to him by his parents, but he does not remember his parents. In Middlesea, he spoke with Petrov, who implied he had known his father.

She also asks "Captain Gale" about her plans, which surprises Gale - she says she still serves Middlesea under the Pirate Queen. Philippa asks that she make herself known to the Admiralty while she is here and when she returns.

Philippa duels with Nesh/the Buccaneer to take his measure.

We will be heading to Jabar - she thinks that they are fighting a different slith country and so coordination is not as important, and they are good at communication, so we don't really need to help on that front.

[Dragon 18]

Next - back to Northport to talk to Saurians., Nesh to talk to the librarian about cities. He has learned he is the Buccaneer, and should check in with someone? He also asks about general Saurian culture - they are pretty military, even not during the conflict.

If his goal is to maintain neutrality between the Admiralty and the Saurian forces here, talking to them is good but should make sure he can leave when he wants to leave. He's pretty sure he can just skip a run and be out. :)

Nesh and Diomarche go to check in with the Saurian military. They talk to a major. If we're going to Jabar, they are interested in hiring an illusionist against the Breaker's forces.

[Dragon 19]

Back to Alexa. She is absolutely not delighted to be introduced to a mage friend of Managaratha's. But they chat. Lisatera is interested in the interaction of magic and DI in defending Middlesea, and how did Alexa get around that - the answer she gets is that we have already punched a hole in those DI defenses, so when we are involved it is easier. She collects a yellow favor from Lisatera in exchange for the consultation, and gets a precog of when the next challenge Alexa is likely to face as a mage is. Lisatera thinks it's a couple of years away.

Lisatera can figure out a bit of what happened with the first ritual that we got amnesia-gassed for, and that we were able to act a few times without the Avatar acting, but then we were near him and he started acting. So it should be possible to sneak in without setting him off. Once he noticed this method, it won't surprise him again. But another method would be better, it might work to try the Alexa thing again in a while. He's resisting the divine part of the timestop more than the purple part. Letting him break the timestop enough times will just let him break it. Unclear what "enough" is. But he is also affected by the purple part, so harder for him to do anything farther than anything away. So safer (not safe) to do things farther away.

It's a permanent miracle probably because it was a death miracle.

Some of it could probably be taken down with big hammers or chipping - Lisatera thinks a warning might be possible for that. (Those of us who make our memory rolls remember that it was a half-orc who killed the person who had the key to unlock it. So the Breaker doesn't want it to go away? The Oasis could probably make it go away,)

Lisatera's report on the current people hanging out there: and who is trying to break things.

Orange is motivated but doesn't have a lot of ability to dispel purple. Purple isn't paying attention. Bits of Red are paying a little attention but not as a whole.

The other two green countries probably sent investigators too. There's a red force from Darstan still there.

Loot

• +8 EPs
• +8 SPs
• +Merfolk Allies