Casing the Middlesea Joint

Aftermath

Diomarche vanishes; Managaratha reappears. (Scout has not yet appeared). Stella heals Inspector Vok. The people who got jumped (Vok and Rakta) want to know what happened; we explain the non-secret parts and give Vok his clues. He notes there were three different directorates involved in the permits - the mole probably wasn't in Redaction, but both the Inspectorate and Remediation could be compromised. Does his security needs to be fixed in the next few days? Probably not, though it is not big enough for the task it needs.

Gale chivvies Vidan to go get his paperwork about why the Ministry of Lilacs was reopened. No powerful sponsor; their head is only a second-level bureaucrat. They were in the process of opening prior to Middlesea and that happens to be the day the paperwork came through. The mission statement is disappointing that their investigations into this area have been incomplete in the last few decades, and they think it would be a good thing to start up again. The Minister has particular talent for it, he spent some time in Green studying Alchemy - he is curious what can be done there without needing magic.

Gale also wants someone to talk to the Guiding Star. Rakta will pass the message.

Managaratha goes to the Ministry of Magic to recover his burnout. Someone comes in and reverses his limbs.

Rakta comes and says that the Guiding Star will see us - he'll be at the door of the temple of Tem. We go. It's a large black gothic cathedral, rather out of place with the nearby Purple pagodas. The Guiding Star is a man in his early 40s.

A Ministry Ain't Nothing But A Monastery Mis-Spelled

Apparently Gale is in charge of this conversation. She wants to know why he assigned Rakta to follow us around (it should not take a great deal of imagination to think of reasons to watch foreign priests with Broken miracles). Managaratha explains that there are a lot of things to do with Middlesea that we are pursuing. He tells us: on the night that Middlesea was closed, someone laid claim to the title of Emperor. They are not the Emperor, exactly, yet, but they laid claim to the title. People who dream or imagine or wish for an Emperor are dreaming or imagining or wishing of him. He expects there are ways to fight this. The impact on the way people think and dream about certain things was noticed. He has told Warmth of Summer - he did not notice the same thing - and he has not spoken with the bureaucrats, though at least some of them probably have an idea. Gale wonders if this is likely to be related to a broken Tem priest? He thinks it more likely to be Truth magic than a miracle. Stella wonders if there is anything in the Emperor being a half-orc that would be precluded. The laws of the Empire say that the wielder of Orcslayer is the Emperor; a half-orc is unlikely but not impossible. He has claimed many of the things that the Emperor is in charge of - that gives him ins into the bureaucracy. Is there something we should be doing? Dealing with the Emperor, preventing the orcish invasion would be lovely. Releasing those in Middlesea would be good but he does understand that that has to be done carefully.

Vidan notes that he is treating himself as High Priest of Tem, rather than working with the High Priest of Tam and a Balance counterpart.

Acquiring Tybalt

Vidan gets us to Rinyan and Stella's house. Managaratha calls Tybalt - well, he only just left Vani. He's in Fioli at an inn called the Gardens of Alexandria. OK, we will try to catch him in the morning.

Vidan grouses that Managaratha uses Orellian's Spire as a landmark, and that is not the same thing as the Twins Tower. We should absolutely go there to see this spire thing. Vidan disapproves.

Managaratha spends the night trying to find Fioli, and gets us there with a portal. He suggests that Vidan make a beacon; Vidan is not impressed by this little town and doesn't see the point.

We fly and then teleport and then unfold the boat, and head to Middlesea.

What is the ship situation? Less of an armada than there was, but there's definitely more ships than pre-Muddle. The Golden Falcon is there, as is the Monstrous Maw (Captain Byron's pirate ship). The town looks a little bigger and fancier. We sail in and dock, then fold the boat up and head up to the bubble, briefing Tybalt about everything we know about the Muddle.

There are Darstan flags around the bubble, and a small orange-ish camp with the Golden Falcon's flag (not a full army unit).

And Lisetera comes up and says "There you are! I was expecting you yesterday!"

Vidan goes to set up a teleport landing zone while we talk to Lisetera. At first they're talking shop about the casing - the unreality zone is less timestopped then the rest of it. Is the army likely to be difficult? It doesn't want people to mess with it. They stopped the Saurien (Josef) from trying to climb the wall. Yalanda is trying to see how deep it goes. Pho Jun from the Ministry of Lions is here. But then it segues into social chit chat.

Hey, maybe Lisetera could help us talk to Dinav and Nivad. Purple and Divine to make different versions of the same person. Can Unreality talk to them? Well, to some version of them. Between the two of them they can put together a ritual.

Gale wonders: hey, could you have me talk to a version of me who pays more attention to the boring stuff to tell me what I should have noticed?

An aide-de-camp from Lord Denis (the army unit from Darstan) shows up to see what we're up to. Of course we're not messing with it. Tybalt goes to reconnoiter. Nesh and the rest of us go talk to Josef. Managaratha casts detect magic, and notes some red spells at the Darstan group, and denser spells around the Orange and Yellow tents. And a green spell over there...

Nesh chats with Josef. Josef has heard of him. Can Nesh get in? No, though he is in some sense still in there. Nesh's 15 suppression is not even up to table stakes - General Petrov is in there. Josef can see it, and his suppression is at least table stakes. He is waiting to see what Yalanda can figure out, and if not, will go back and tell Uncle what he found. (Rasputin is his uncle; Lilya is his niece).

Managaratha is interested in the green mage - this is Lutenania, the elf who was here last time we were here as well. He's not there right now.

Pho Jun shows up to meet Vidan. He is with the Ministry of Lions, and has a base set up over there.

Managaratha wanders to his house - there's a note that says "Wait for everyone before you go in. Oh, and there might be an attack." Stella has Interpret Managaratha, and thinks this wouldn't be for "the final run", but is sometime soon. It probably means the party and not Thistle, etc.

We warn people about the potential attack.

Lisetera says she doesn't see anything until tonight, and there's a bunch of divine stuff tonight.

Channeling Nivad

Time for the ritual! We spring it on Nivad!

• Have we met? Yes.
• Do you know about the stuff Vidan doesn't know about? Who's Vidan?
• What is the next step to get the Goddess to cooperate better? Where are we on that? I'd like to be able to leverage the fact that the cult of Al'an can talk to all three faces to mock them into talking to more faces.
• What did we do in Jabar towards that? We talked to the Second Servant and figured out what the different churches are trying to do. Messing with Feelings magic, trying to take over the country via the Lady of Life's niece, and messing with the Varna system to change how the Merchant Varna works. Maybe they should help each other? But he doesn't know if he wants them all working together.
• What does he remember about the conversation with Mother Jess? He hasn't talked to Mother Jess.
• How about Ritasi? They talked about using the Church of Al'an - putting the church back together and bringing the church in Jabar more with Orange. The Church of Al'an has a hierarchy the way Stella's priests don't.

Tybalt returns. Getting things out of there is going to be beyond him unless it is going along with other things leaving with him. We are a crack in the big wall; he could slip in and out with us. Maybe with Lisetera faking time passing in the Unreality zone. The Unreality zone is changing even though time isn't passing.

Pulling the Prince out will take a fairly large expenditure of DI. And we will need a defense against the amnesia mist. And we should understand why Unreality is just affecting a part of it and not all of it. (Maybe that's a default security measure in place).

The Breaker's Avatar didn't start acting until he noticed us when we got close, and then he got actions. So he's moving in meta-time instead of actual time. But he hasn't physically moved. Maybe because we were doing things with a Blue mage, he could do Blue/Battle, Purple doesn't think that there would be anything fairness/balance-y, but divine theory thinks there might be.

Tybalt hopes that if get to the Prince, we can just leave after that.

Loot

• +8 EPs
• +12 SPs