Caravan Part 2

Caravan: Day 4

We have seen Talinda sneak into two tents, but not what she is doing. (Stella thinks Hawk Seller is also suspicious).

Managaratha wanders around looking for magical sigils, especially Talinda's birds. No spells on the birds right now. The merchant tents have different sigils, the military has all the same sigil. He also thinks that we should ask Lissa Terra for help because yellow is exactly what we need to watch invisible people.

Vidan's thoughts from people-watching: Suvatra is clearly publicly important. She's not easily approachable in this context, as the Queen's Representative. Lissa Terra is just Lissa Terra-ing it up, being mildly eccentric and approachable and doing whatever.

We ask Lissa Terra for help. She can "do an unreality" to see what happened.

Stella talks to Fasanta - yes, she is aware Talinda snuck into her tent. She appreciates the concern.

At lunch, Lissa Terra comes over and casts a little mini-diorama of the tent. The flap to Fasanta's tent opens, and Talinda is inside and turns visible. They have tea, and talk about roses. Lissa Terra waves her hand - they talk about the history of the third queen of the second dynasty of the last comet. She keeps waving her hand and it keeps being random esoteric subjects. Too many defenses.

She tries another tack, with a different sort of spell (precog?) on things we want to know: there are reasonable odds that we catch someone that we think is an assassin - not someone we've met - but reasonable odds that we don't.

Stella wanders around to gather information, and gets 5 karma. She hears:

• Centaurs complaining about the drought
• "No, really, some time next week I'm going to meet my true love, the seer in the Golden Tower promised me"
• Two of the priests of Life in the military unit push her on branches - they mention that Talinda is Love's servant. Vestal is Life's servant. They don't know if there's a Lore's servant around, there might be, they're less obvious.

Vestal is a name we haven't heard before. Ahah!

Gale gets that Vestal is in the merchant caravan somewhere, and Lieutenant Meskana is second in command of the two-leg military unit and Lieutenant Konstantine is in command of the centaur cavalry.

The two-leg unit is Captain Asan's but he is also in charge of the pair, so Meskana is dealing with day-to-day in the two-legs. Captain Asan is also the person who talks to Suvatra the most.

Diomarche talks to centaurs; one is from the herd next to him. He's heard a rumor that the cousins are spreading the dryness.

We remember to ask Alasfal (our temporary servant who we have forgotten about) about what she has noticed.

• The military is more on alert than when we started. Slith are a possibility to be in the neighborhood at this point.
• The merchants have not made a ton of progress in making a presentation that will actually change anything (for anyone but them)
• She thinks something is up with Jabril and she can't tell what it is.
• She's not sure what Talinda is doing, but has noticed she's doing something. She agrees with Stella that Talinda is not a very good merchant.
• She does not think Vestal is up to anything, which is interesting in its own right.
• Suvatra and Lissa Terra are working together more than they appear.

We decide that:

• We are all against assassination unless the Maharani is actually working with the Breaker
• Stella doesn't like inefficient merchanting and Managaratha thinks heroes of the Comet should be rich, and no one is in favor of inefficient merchanting, so we are cautiously on that side.
• We are really unclear what is going on in the love plot plots (Talinda?, the Golden Seer true love plot) but that is clearly Gale's problem.

We get Alasfal to organize a dinner party tomorrow to invite merchants to.

Vidan goes and sneaks around in his sandy cloak with some DI in witnessing and being supposed to be there. He sees the defenses on Suvatra's tent, which are decent, and maybe a little relevant? And Talinda is going to visit Merindal. That's important but not to the assassination. Vidan thinks she's Stella's opposition, but that's not right.

Managaratha dodders over to near Vestal and nods off.

Gale asks after the Seer in the Golden Tower. Nobody knows where the Golden Tower is, but they are someone to consult when one is on a quest. But people run into the Golden Tower even when they are not on a quest.

Day 5

Gale asks Dalin what Talinda is up to. She is a Feelings mage - that's how she trains her birds up. She uses that to make her birds do things better. She was wondering whether that would work on horses. (But that's clearly not what she talked about with everyone else. And why invisible?)

WAIT WHAT? -Managaratha

He talks to Talinda. She hasn't noticed anything weird with feelings. Has she accomplished what she wants to accomplish sneaking into everyone's tent? Yes.

No current spells on Dalin. Can Lissa Terra tell if that's what they actually talked about? Or was that just another bounce? She gets an unreal "merfolk gills or tails"?

Gale brings Stella - a large DI hammer to fix him. She thinks something very small was removed. Vidan does a detective conversational interrogation. Now he remembers that she cast some spells on him that he didn't remember before. Not forgotten, just made unimportant.

Lunch of Merchants

Stella makes her persuasion roll, with Vidan's assistance, and gets 8 successes.

• Jabril is the most interested of the not-big-4.
• Vidan passes around contact information - Vestal trades in incense.
• People notice that Talinda and Jabril are paying more attention to the fact that Stella is the one making the spiel.

(Laura now thinks Jabril is a secret Lore cultist of Allan).

Some people look suspiciously at Vestal when she says she's from the capital.

Vidan makes a good pitch for the final four after everyone else has left (Vestal followed by Gale). 8 successes of solid moving things forward.

Then Vidan talks to Suvatra - were this the Empire, here is my list of people who need background checks.

Vestal: merchants based in the city and the other merchants in the city think that is an odd statement. Make sure you do Vestal first. <4 merchants>

Talinda: probably not involved in the problem we are discussing, but this one is obviously love.

The Captain rides up and says there's a force of slith between us and the capital, and they need to discuss it.

Loot:

• +8 EPs, +10 SPs