Another Stabby Dagger
Talking to Leopold
We have our appointment with Leopold – after some discussion, we decide regular clothes are better than Fancy Party clothes. Purple Guy insists he will not use Discipline to make our normal clothes more firmly pressed.
It’s a large-ish house, but it’s a house rather than a mansion, in a fancy part of town, not the Temple district. Presumably the Noble district, though not so close to the Centurion’s office. Nesh cases the joint (well, looks around at the stuff, anyway), and thinks everything is quality if not overly fancy. The house is walled with a garden around it.
Lord Leopold arrives in the dining room, he is early 30s and wearing good clothes. He welcomes us and is interested to hear about his sister (Guildmaster Isabella). We give him what details we know, although we don’t have awareness of Isabella after dinner– though she was one of the ones that Silenalania was speaking with, in pursuit of something underneath Middlesea. We expect that is the Lord’s treasure room, although we don’t tell him that.
There is some discussion of the search for a new Consort. He doesn’t expect much trouble from the contest, and isn’t worried about foul play. He thinks the Consort doesn’t have much direct power, but there is influence shared in both directions. Leopold is exuding more confidence than he’s feeling, but he does seem to think he has a good shot. He’s not really a Merchant, he’s more of a Noble; he prefers hunting and swordplay and military matters, over economic ones. He’s monitoring Isabella’s interests but it’s not really his forte.
Scout asks about who gets to be Consort, is it frequently a saurian? Pyotr is well-respected, and the keeper of the Lord’s House is a position of some influence, but no, not frequently.
We pump him for info about the Lord– the Lord was a Noble from Orange who rose to prominence on his skill with Orange Magic, beginning some time before the Comet was in the sky. He had been the Lord of Earth and Fire for at least a decade before the Comet appeared, although the title mostly showed up as the Comet appeared. But he was clearly the preeminent Orange mage for some time before then. Eventually, the forces of Blue and in particular the Lady of Air and Water… well, the details are in dispute, but actions were taken by Blue that Orange and the Lord took offense to, and that started the war. He doesn’t know a lot of the details of the war. The Lord maybe wasn’t originally a Vani noble, but this is where he organized his forces. The last Lord was about a century ago, the House is maintained as a point of local pride. He imagines there must be something similar in Blue, although they are somewhat less… civilized there.
Breakfast is over, and we are shown out.
Talking to Carol
We go to meet with Carol. She has her own office rather than being in the larger open Bureaucracy area. There is some brief confusion as they were only expecting Stella, but they find us a conference room. “Stella is it? What can I do for you?”
We’re in town due to some concern from the Goddess about what’s happening in the City. There is a Broken plot in the city, so we’ve been investigating the major plots in the city, to see what might be the focus of the plot. We know Carol has been involved in the Consort succession plot, so we were hoping that she could update us on that and the candidates.
It’s Carol’s opinion that the selection process has been going well, and there’s little reason to rock the boat. Isabella having been gone for several months, there are some setbacks in the Guild, so there is some opportunism going on, but Carol sees no need for a change right now. Nesh wonders about assassins, even though it’s not Purple– it’s not unheard of as a tool, but she doesn’t find it likely that anyone is invested enough in the position to employ an assassin.
Does she know about anything having been stolen? Julia was asking around about whether anything was stolen, and Mario mentioned a dagger had been stolen.
Viktor and Leopold having a tussle over who will be Consort is not unexpected; Viktor was consort several years ago, he would be fine, she supposes, but she believes Leopold would be better for Julia. She has no idea what Richard and Pyotr are doing in the mix– she would start with why are they even here? There is an event in the Lord’s House this evening, we could probably drop in on that. The Lord’s House is open to the public in general..
Managaratha wonders about why Pyotr would start engaging in politics now– well, he’s not staying out of politics, his position is one of the more influential outside of the Noble and Merchant houses. He’s on par with the captain of the Paladins of Rush, so he has some influence that makes sense. He is the most prominent saurian in the city. The Saurians do not generally speak as a group, but if there was an issue affecting the Saurians, his voice would have weight.
She supposes the other thing slith could be trying to do is if there’s some trade negotiation going on within the Guild, they could be trying to disrupt that. If they were supplying things to Blue, maybe? But they could be trying to assassinate a major mage, say.
Stella recalls that the slith plot is not the same as the Broken plot we are here to fix, and that probably means they’re more recently arrived than our first divination.
Thinking about it, Carol was much more comfortable talking about Slith and candidates than about assassinations and stolen objects. Well that’s suspicious. She was definitely careful about her phrasing.
Gale looks at the Map - it is in the middle of Orange, not precisely but in the north center of the hills.
Talking to Mario
Something was stolen from the lab, yes. Was it a stabby dagger of stabbiness? Mario doesn't find that particularly meaningful. Nesh shows him the Dagger of Destruction that Gale has.
"Well, that’s not my work." He takes a look, and Charles has to look up his notes, so it is probably not related (OR IS IT). He thinks it is Lisador's work - and yes, we think that is who made it. We explain a bit of that. He thinks his knife is a particularly potent item, and it was meant to be deadly.
In terms of getting through Mario’s defenses in addition to the house defenses, he was instrumental in putting up the defenses on the House in general, so the defenses on the workshop itself are not particularly harder than that. In fact, once one is inside the overall defenses, the lab has some locks but is not a fortress.
We ask if we can look around, and Vidan BRINGS IT– 16 successes on Detective.
It doesn’t look like anything in here was broken into or rifled through or anything like that. What Thistle said was either they were ludicrously good, or it was an inside job. Ludicrously Good could be good enough to not leave that many clues, but Vidan’s impulse is that it was an inside job.
Stella engages him in conversation about Forge craft, and the cool things he’s working on, looking for info on the dagger. He’s slightly cagey, but only slightly. The goal of a dagger is to Destroy, so if you link creation and Forge together, you can make the dagger reach a level of lethality which is higher than just a standard bonus multiplier. He hasn’t figured out how to make it last yet, so he doesn’t think the dagger can be used often. It will probably destroy itself after a few uses. (ALARM BELLS START GOING OFF IN OUR BRAINS.)
Who might be interested in that sort of thing?
He doesn’t have a particular person in mind who would want to steal it. Nesh is confident that he didn’t knowingly give it to someone.
Managaratha asks him about other people who are working on this sort of thing. There are a number of people who are investigating pushing the boundaries of Orange. He gives us 3 or 4 names of people who he writes to about it. There’s nobody else here in town, and doesn’t include Sandro. Stella thinks she’s heard of one of those names before, in relation to the sale of swords to Queen Iona.
Fiorello he wouldn’t have let look at it, because he irritated Mario last year. But he’d never admit that Mario’s work was better to try and steal it. Fiorello has a tower inland from Kor.
Managaratha asks, When did we last meet? Four years ago, doesn’t he remember? No, he’s fragged. Ah. Managaratha inquires about the Breaker’s plan to corrupt Orange, and frames it in a way of “have you noticed any weirdnesses, or know any of these people who might be acting recklessly?” rather than saying “J’accuse!” He mentions an orcish rainbow mage.
He knows Federico (who is not an experimentalist). Obviously the person you actually need to talk to is the Lord, but who knows where he is. Why? Because he’s the best Orange mage. Lisidro is not on his list of people of worth. He doesn’t seem to have considered any political effects for him personally about the dagger being stolen and used to kill someone.
Managaratha tries to chat Mario up about how to find the dagger, and they start thinking about a ritual to find it with Orange and Yellow. He seems to have a “it’s not wild if it’s a ritual” schtick. They start figuring that out, while Scout says “um, do we have several hours to spend on this? I could just find it.”
Hunting for Daggers
Scout goes with Gale, Vidan, and Nesh to look for the dagger. With 10 DI and 13 successes, he is led… to a waiting room in the House, where there’s a secret compartment with a dagger in it. Huh. Well, okay. Vidan looks around. He doesn’t think this compartment gets used regularly. Someone may have planted it here to pick up again later, or to hand it off to someone? It’s probably not being handed off, actually, because Thistle has heard nothing about it. So it’s probably someone inside the House. So it will be here.
The dagger itself is definitely a magic item, it’s Orange, Scout can’t tell much more than that, but it is also Broken-ish, in a way that rocks from the Broken Lands are Broken. The Dagger of Destruction is similarly broken, at least sort of similar. The materials it is made from and the magic are intertwined.
Managaratha does some postcog, and 3 successes is enough to go back the last 48 hours. A woman shows up and puts the dagger in there. Stella thinks she saw her in the big office room.
Managaratha calls Julia on the yellow-phone, and guards are immediately incoming. We are not quite arrested, but it is close but for Vidan's bureaucracy.
We are escorted to another waiting room, and 15 minutes later the Centurion comes in. “I understand you found the stolen dagger, and know the person?” Well that’s definitely a description of Vivian. That’s uncharacteristic of her, but she is one of relatively few people who would know that there is a secret compartment in the room. The Centurion would be surprised if she’s Bent, but I suppose they always are.
She doesn’t think that Vivian would be targeting Richard; if anything, she probably invited him.
She also doesn't think her choice of consort is likely to be a Broken plot, but we really think otherwise.
Stella asks the Goddess for insight about this here plot in particular. 21 successes with 15 DI. No information is available at this time. That makes us think it's Carol who is Bent.
Nesh asks if Vivian is jealous of someone? Yes. Then Nesh is seriously concerned that Carol is Bent, given her being very careful about the ideas of assassination and the Consort.
If Carol is using Vivian for an assassination, then that wouldn't happen until she picks a new consort, and that won't happen at dinner tonight. Julia’s best guess, assuming we are accurate about Carol and about Vivian, then there is no likelihood of an assassination any time soon, but they will hear that the dagger has been found, which means that they will do something, which means she should probably speak with Vivian as soon as possible. So unless you have anything else in particular, I will be speaking with Vivian, and Carol is likely to be at the party tonight. There will be a number of Saurians present, so if we’re going to confront Carol, that could be a good time to do so. She says she’ll talk to us before the party.
We go back to talk to Mario. Vidan Sanctifies the dagger. 9 successes of Analyze Item tells Stella it’s a x15 dagger, but it only works once. But it’s not Fatal now. Mario is disappointed by that. It’s not Broken any more.
He says all the ingredients were locally sourced; none were sent by his correspondents, though some were suggested by them. Looking at his safe of ingredients, nothing registers as Broken. Hmm. None of the ingredients are really Yellow or Red that could be combined by an Orcish Rainbow Mage in that mad way to become Orange. Although this is a vial of Unicorn blood (or maybe semi-unicorn blood), which sends us on a tangent. Most of the ingredients are more clearly in the earth/metal/gems area. We look at the blood– they’re not actively magic, but they’re definitely potent? That one might be Broken, because it’s wyvern blood, and wyverns are Broken sphinxes, plausibly? They’re typically Broken, anyway. He did use wyvern blood in the dagger, he’s fairly sure. Lots of the ingredients are fatal– cyanide and arsenic and hemlock and other things. The process of creating the dagger used all three Orange disciplines.
Managaratha calls Thistle, and they arrange to get dinner (Gale buys). He analyzes the spell, and thinks that it’s not solved yet– it’s certainly smaller, not as pressing. It likely wouldn’t have triggered on what’s left, but given that she’s here… Managaratha invites her to come to the party, and she agrees.
Someone comes to get us to talk to the Centurion. She says that she has spoken with Vivian, she confessed to taking the dagger, she seems overly distraught about certain things. Julia thinks she doesn’t have an active miracle or spell on her now, but her decisions could have been influenced in the past. She had certainly been talking to Carol about her concerns, but nothing she said specifically seemed obviously incriminating. But Vivian would likely have recognized that. She had stolen the dagger to potentially use herself over the next few days, depending on how things went. But she’s not currently clear whether those choices were influenced by Carol or not. And she is therefore unresolved about what to do about the fact that Vivian made poor choices. She is currently in agreement that they are poor choices. She is likely still susceptible to making poor choices again, which if Carol is behind it, means she’s still vulnerable. Carol is a powerful enough priest that if she decides to cause problems directly, she can cause problems directly. Given how she’s played it so far, Julia would not expect her to be suddenly more obvious about what’s going on. She must know by now that the dagger has been found, but she has not fled. So it’s hard to move against her politically without more direct evidence. She is likely to be at the party, keep an eye on her, see what she does. Vivian will not be at the party. If Vivian had been going to use the dagger it would have been on Leopold.
In the interim time, Nesh researches expeditions to the Homelands. There haven’t been many since the Oasis got big, two comets ago. The most recent expedition was a fairly public, organized attempt to send people to the Homelands about 2 years ago. It got a fair amount of support from Saurians throughout Orange. 50 people went, no one returned. Six months ago another attempt was made, but with less support and fewer Saurians, and they have also not come back. Details of teleporting there are less common in the Saurian library, but you’d want to leave from Melmane. You could potentially get through the mountains (and therefore out of Yellow) and teleport from there. The problem with that as a plan is that teleporting back from the Homelands is hard, with fewer dice / more suppress / higher difficulties. There are humans there, but there’s not a lot of value seen in going there unless you’re a Saurian.
Loot
- +8 EPs
- +12 SPs