In the Court of His Majesty of the Forest

On the Steps of the Palace

We are standing outside a building made of trees– the Palace of His Majesty of the Forest.

We go into the Palace, and are escorted to a waiting room.

A human comes in and says Danang would like to see us. Danang? The Foreign Minister from Purple. OH. Right. We go see him. There is a Delegation from Purple here, mostly servants. He uses his casual conversation roll to get all of the information out of us. We manage to avoid telling him about the Hearts of Blue and Yellow. He’s here to talk to the King about sending forces to help fight against the Orcs.

The Foreign Minister says the three kingdoms are not at war, and have not been at war for hundreds of years, but

Vidan thinks about the Royal line. He thinks they are siblings. Huh. Interesting.

An elf comes shortly before dinner. We are shown

He recognizes the Buccaneer, and he has met Managaratha many times (but not this comet). Scout gives him a full briefing, including the list of the Breaker's plots. (That suggests to His Majesty that he trade military for DI help, with Purple).

"We shall be UPDATING THE EVIDENCE PACKETS this evening" - Vidan

Scout asks His Majesty about being in the last Comet. Yes, that is true. But Scout doesn’t remember it. I see. How far back does he remember? Huh. It gets very fuzzy before losing his eyes. He does think that the goblin’s plan was to take my eyes to draw my friend so that they could capture her. She’s a spirit of Observation.

Stella asks the Goddess: What needs fixing? 19 successes 12 DI.

• Get rid of the Spiders
• Break the Knife
• Don’t Let the Knife talk (That might be hard)
• It would be good if there could be a Priest of the Goddess in town, everybody _else_ has a representative

That’s all Stella gets, which seems low for the amount of Bring It that was Brought, so there are probably other things being hidden.

By the Light of Day

In the morning, we gather information.

The Arbae was killed last night. Knife wounds. Well that’s not good. Stella thinks that she got not a lot of information because there are defenses up on both plots, but the Goddess thought it would be useful to give pointers on both.

Nesh asks around about the murder. There’s surprisingly little of an underground network here, because there are no mooks. Huh. But he does get the name of 6-8 people who _could_ have done it, although nobody has a motive.

We go to the Arbae’s house. Vidan brings the Detectiving. There was one assassin, schticked up– probably assassin schticks, not DI-based schticks. There were defenses on the house, but they were not triggered. The body is no longer here, so we can’t look at that. Human-sized, rather than a Troll or a halfling, probably. He had about 12 successes of No Detectiving.

Scout communes with the spirit of the House, which is kind of like a brownie, tidies up, etc. A man came in around midnight, looked like a human, in a full-on ninja suits. He stabbed the Arbae twice (but he didn’t wake up). There were guests a few night ago.

(Of Nesh’s list, only a few have master-of-disguise kind of schticks; a few.)

There are some notes about losing track of a couple of spirits over the last few months, and wanting to look into it. One was a mushroom spirit in a faerie circle, about ½ a day south, and a river spirit in a brook, a few hours west. Both of those spirits were pretty stationary, so it was easier to notice them.

Scout thinks Spiders are demons; the Knife is an assassin. The Arbae was a 12-20 DI shaman.

Diomarche talks to the local Priest of Rush, a dwarf named Hammerstrike.

• “Oh. A Paladin. What brings you to town?”
• “You’re not with the centaur in the palace, then.”
• “No. You heard about the local Arbae killed?”
• “Ay. I’d say it was a tragedy, but, you know.”
• “We hear there may be demon attacks.”
• “Ah, that would be a reason to kill the Arbae.”

He asks after assassins, maybe called the Knife. There haven’t been any priests of Jord in the area lately. If you needed an assassin, there are some sluagh who could do that, maybe a halfling if they’re on the way to becoming a redcap. Broken things around, huh? Let’s take a look.

There are definitely hidden enemies in the area. Can’t tell if they’re Broken, they’re well-hidden. They have to be to get by in the court.

Red Mage, high elf named Leandran who was born in Red. She’s put a preservation spell on it. The first strike should have been fatal, but there was some kind of healing response, but the second hit got through that. The body was definitely healed by a spirit miracle.

We go back to the Palace, where Hammerstrike is talking to Minister Sandro.

Gale looks at the Life is a Battlefield scoreboard while talking to Minister Danang: The Spiders have a point on the scoreboard.

(Not enough to beat 12 if it's that.)

Matcho, Kirin and <...> are the names of the Ministers talking to the General/Admiral.

Scout goes to brief the King on the Spiders point, and explains that plot further. His Majesty takes out a map.

Staring at a map, there is a small glow in the Palace, and a large glow at the edge of town.

"It appears there is a minor demon somewhere in the Palace, and a major demon there. And the Arbae is dead."

(Scout thinks that was an Essence spell.)

Vidan can get us to the big dot. There is a brief kerfuffle about not being to teleport Nesh, the King loses patience and sends us through a plant.

Battling Spiders

We look around and don’t immediately see anything. Gale has enough show-spiders Mojo to notice them.

The Spider comes for us! Scout gives everyone see-demons mojo. A baby spider crawls in Gale’s ear, and mind-controls her. She zaps Scout before Stella purges her. The spider has eight limbs that have to be defeated in sequence. After we clobber three legs, the Spider has decided it has had enough, and tries to flee. We give chase and take out a fourth leg. The Spider HAS HAD IT, and a purple mage (Purple 3) appears beside him, and starts to teleport out. We valiantly try to prevent them from teleporting away, but can't quite manage before the Mage gets a spell out.

Aftermath

We head back to the Palace, to try to do damage control. Purple 3 was in the Purple delegation, but we hadn't seen him; he was one of the key negotiatiors. The negotiations are falling apart, but Vidan and/or Nesh try to persuade them to keep at it.

Vidan gets 6 Karma successes, and around 11, takes a walk, and overhears:

• “You are not fulfilling the arrangement any longer.”
• “We will complete tonight’s. Last night’s you will have to deal with yourselves.” (The Drow)
• “You will owe my lord for this.”
• “He can take that up with my mistress.” (The Drow)

Vidan leans out, Calls out a Witness miracle with 16 successes, 10 DI. “Treachery! Let all take notice!” A drow and a ninja are there. Combat time starts. In 20 the King’s voice calls out “Why is there a Drow in my palace?!”

The drow vanishes. The ninja looks up and says in TrueSpeak, "I serve a true heir to the throne. You are interfering." and vanishes into the shadows.

Managaratha sends Scout, who can see the ninja enough that the king can entangle him without requiring a long combat. Unfortunately, he triggers his poison tooth before we get to him. He has no weapons.

Apparently Minister Sandro was the drow. The throne must be to the Empire.

The scoreboard ends with 0.5 points for spiders.

Loot

• 20 EPs
• 20 SPs
• A reward each from Ambassador Strong from Her Majesty’s Court (for revealing that Futeau is the traitor)
• A gift or other ?