Rinyan Redux

To Orange!

As Diomarche and Gale fade out, we are but five! But the Fivist doesn’ know what we’re doing. So we tell him we’re going to Red Orange, to find out about what’s wrong with Vidan, and to maybe do something about the new Broken miracle on us.

Managaratha does math, makes us fly up into the air, and then teleports us over to somewhere over Orange. He does some Navigation to figure out more clearly where we are– Stella can confirm we’re in the Orange Zone. Mangaratha asks Stella for a good place to have lunch, and she describes a restaurant, so we teleport there. Or… at least somewhere in Rinyan. Oops.

Stella takes us to the Temple, so that we can make a plan. Meraldi and Diana are the two other Priests there; Meraldi is there when we arrive. She asks if we’re back back, or just dropping in. Stella asks what’s going on.

Cassandra’s probably a little ahead of Tivoli. if they got in a fight, but they’re mostly not actually fighting. There’s been a couple of incidents with Orange magic going off, but she doesn’t have a lot of info– the Guild is trying to keep it relatively quiet. (She thinks they found some cursed daggers that were found shortly after we found the one that Gale is carrying. There was an issue with some horseshoes? She doesn’t know a lot about that. And there was a third incident in Rinyan, that was cleaned up darn fast. There were incidents in other cities as well. The Guild seems to be on it.)

The Saurians are up to something, it’s pretty clear, but everyone else is looking at it and not finding out much about it. They’re particularly displeased about the people stuck in Middlesea– that seems to be the focus of whatever they’re upset about. “Victor, is who they’re upset about?” asks Stella. Yes, yes that’s it. The other churches are mostly quiet. The Guild is pushing for some help with the pirates (on the Inland side)

[As an aside, Scout ponders how Country Turns work with Zones. He’s confident that it’s not simply one draw per Zone– His Majesty gets a draw that’s separate from Her Majesty or Their Majesty. The Empire might get one draw, but they’re probably a bigger Country. Countries in Red might each get their own draw, but not all the time? Blue is madness, who can say, really.]

Vidan asks if there is a Church of Navere nearby– there is a church of the Five, and Rafael is a priest of Navere. (Mother Jess, the head of the Church of Navere, is in King Richard’s Lands in Red.) Rafael is probably a bit bigger than Vidan, and definitely more involved in the Church hierarchy. There is also a Church of Rush.

We update Meraldi on the Breaker’s Plan to Corrupt the Orange Zone, or as much as we know about it. Well that moves looking into Orange Magic strangeness up the list.

Church of the Five

Stella sends a message to Ritasi that the Middlesea Free Rangers would like to set up a meeting. Then Meraldi takes us to the Church of the Five, and Vidan spends a DI to authorize us to carry these Broken Miracles around. The Church is bigger than the shrine of the Goddess; it’s clearly actively supported by The Church, in a way that Stella’s shrine is really just the three of them. Meraldi asks Pablo (a priest of Orellian) if Rafael is around; he goes to get him. In a while Rafael shows up and greets us, and is interested in Vidan. Vidan says he’s getting the lay of the land in Orange, and also looking for a reliable Priest of Jord, and of the Nameless. Have we had issues with unreliable priests before? Well, maybe a bit, in Red. Are there other Imperial Priests of the Five? Not really, no. What drew Vidan to Navere? He starts to think about it and decides that it is treading close to his Vow not to look into his past.

Vidan explains that we’re looking for a Priest of the Nameless who can talk to the Dead, to find out an important Secret. How long dead? Three months– that’s possibly doable, though he doesn’t know anyone off-hand. As for Jord, we’re trying to steal someone out of Middlesea on behalf of the Maharani. Ah, well. To deal with royalty, you probably want someone who follows the Merchant face of Jord; to actually steal someone, you want a Priest of the Thief face or Jord. Finding someone to do both might be tricky. Carlo is certainly someone we could talk to about the latter…

Vidan, having done the public work, asks if he can speak in private for a few minutes, and feels out Father Rafael about internal Church politics, and the Priests of Rush. The Paladins are less of a separate presence, though they do maintain an outpost, in case military issues arrive. He has concerns that the Church is unbalanced at present, but it’s not something he’s currently attempting to address. (Part of that is he doesn’t feel like he’s high enough in the hierarchy.) Vidan thinks Rafael has 7-10 DI, and is more focused on Governance than, say, Law or Justice. He feels part of his job is interfacing between the Guild and the Rinyan nobility (there is a Lord Rinyan, whose power is not as strong as he thinks might be appropriate. He seems to think that’s more of an imbalance between Navere and Jord rather than an imbalance between Navere and Rush. But that’s less the Church of Jord driving that imbalance.

Vidan gives him some info about how the Empire works, which Raphael finds interesting from a theoretical perspective. He seems to be more ecumenical than many, but then Orange is more ecumenical than most Zones.

Managaratha chats with Pablo, as the resident Priest of Orellian. Given that we have heard of Broken plots to mess with Orange and Yellow magic, we’re wondering if there is a way of consulting with Orellian for guidance. Pablo is fairly sure there are dangers to Magic this Comet, though he hadn’t know about Orange and Yellow in particular. It would be hard to find a priest of Orellian big enough to tell you about the Breaker’s Plans this Comet, so you might need a different approach.

Magic by its nature is chaotic and hard to control. That’s why spells have to be particular, it’s why awryage and burnout happens, etc. It’s not surprising that its nature is to change over time. And it’s not always the Breaker’s doing, e.g., the creation of Zones was done at the behest of the Church, or at least with the understanding of the Church. Change to Magic and attacks to Magic are certainly possible.

If this was a Comet focused on attacks on Magic, he would have expected to see more signs than he has by now. So maybe focusing on the local threats would be more useful. What is it Managaratha thinks is happening in Yellow? It seems that there’s a faction of the priest of the Goddess that is trying to take over Feelings Magic. Hmm. Pablo thinks the description sounds like that’s just Priests trying to gain power for their Goddess, and not necessarily Broken. But don’t let that stop Managaratha from defending Magic everywhere.

More discussion ensues. We tell him where we got the info about Orange– he’s curious about the “single Orange mage”. If it’s someone that big to mess with the whole Zone, they’re Terrifying. Maybe they have support from people who are hard to see? Priests, or Saurians (the latter would be more likely to be the Destruction of the Zone). Pablo can come up with a list of people who are powerful enough to maybe potentially be a threat on that scale. Managaratha thinks the stabby daggers is related to that. He can look into that.

“Do you know what was up with the horseshoes?” Scout asks.

“The horseshoes made the horses go extra fast, but destroyed the roads behind them.”

Should we go talk to Carlo? Well, he is a Crime Lord. A Crime Lord?!? We thought Stella was being overly dramatic. “Oh, no, he’s definitely a Crime Lord,” says Meraldi.

Scout asks Meraldi’s opinion about who to talk to about the Broken Miracle. Ritasi is the strongest Priest of the Goddess in Rinyan, but she doesn’t know his schticks. Leonardo is less likely to be able to do the ritual thing, but would likely be able to find someone to help. But Ritasi might be the actual right person.

When we get back to the Shrine, there’s a note saying that Ritasi will see us in the morning. So we ponder what we’re doing with the remains of the day.

An Evening Out

Nesh goes to the Saurian quarter, and asks around about where to learn about Saurian history. Has he been to the Library? There’s a library? Of Rinyan? No, the Saurian Library. Oh. No. He goes to check it out. “Can I help you?” Nesh explains that he was raised in the Rainbow Isles and

“Well you have to remember n hat Saurian culture was very much designed by the Elders when the race was reborn, and while it has evolved some since then, I would expect most clusters of Saurians are the result of two or three Elders moving to a place and starting a community.”

“Is there anywhere I can read about that culture?”

“Well there’s a great deal written about the Elders, you can read.”

“There’s more information about the Homelands– they’re there, but contact with them has been severely limited for… two Comets? And there is occasionally messages that go back and forth, but there hasn’t been regular contact for a long time. There is, in my opinion, information that’s somewhat more reliable than the information about the Elders. In part because the Elders valued their privacy in a way that the Homelands was just far away. Where do you want to start?”

Nesh says the Homelands. Okay, she brings him back to the stacks. What does he know already? Does he know the names of the Homelands? No. But he has 4 levels of KS:Saurians. Okay, that gives her a sense… let’s start with… “Karenina”

At the time the Homelands were opened and the rebirth occurred, none of the Elders seemed particularly religious. There were a bunch of humans in the Homelands as well, but the Saurians ruled by proxy. There were only about 100 Saurians at that time. They had a single religion of Birth, Life, and Death– faces of the Mother, Twins, and Nameless, specifically. Miracles mostly only happened within the relevant churches (on holy ground).

By the time the Rainbow River was scattered, the Homelands had a more standard version of the religions, although it was not a strong force there, as the power of Magic and DI was weaker there in general, even among humans. The Homelands were ruled openly by saurians at that time, although it’s not clear whether they became more populous than humans by that time.

Karenina was writing shortly after the Merfolk-moving comet. But the historical account of the Homelands is helpful.

Scout looks at the Treasure Map from the ghost ship– it’s near Kor, so we don’t think we can get there

Stella decides not to go talk to Carlo, but does BRING IT and find out what needs fixing in Orange. 19 successes with 12 DI.

• There is nothing serious in Rinyan that needs Fixing right now.
• Broadening to Orange as a whole, there’s definitely the Thing She Can’t See, even with 19 successes.
• The Orange Mages who are working to expand Orange and are likely to Break it need fixing, but that’s a long-term project, and you’ve already put some resources onto that. It will need more tending.
• Getting Nivad (Goddess-flavored Purple Guy) more direction is a good thing to work on. It will definitely be a step towards Fixing Things that the Goddess Wants Fixed.
• Vani has a Broken Plot that is proceeding, that it would be good to thwart. It’s not huge, but it’s the biggest Broken plot in the country that is imminent. (Orange Mages are larger, less imminent, and not everyone in it is Broken or Bent. There is some devil-on-the-shoulder going on, it would be good to find them and deal with them.)

The Goddess notes that Uncle Carlo and the Treasure Map are on Stella’s todo list, but they’re not on the Fix-It list.

Cult of Al’an

No one attacks us overnight!

We go to see Ritasi at the Cult of Al’an’s Compound in the morning. Leonardo is there to greet us. Are we going to trigger any defenses? Leonardo says that’s been taken care of. Although

Ritasi waits for us in a sitting room. He is over 70, plausibly over 80. He rises, and shakes Stella’s hand, and Vidan’s hand, and Managaratha’s hand (“Have we met?” “Oh yes, but it was years ago.”), and asks for introductions. Managaratha says we have two main

“Nivad, come out.” He drops some DI, and Vidan turns into Nivad. Whoa. “Do you have an update on your task?” Mike realizes that his Suckage is “Tasked, Doomed, and Fated to bring the Churches back together” was all amiss interpreted– he needs to be fixing ALL the Churches? Oh dear.

“I’m supposed to be uniting the Churches?”

“Let’s back up. When the Priests claim that the Priests of Lore cannot access the rest of the Goddess, that is false, and that they might be trying to do that is a means of Breaking the World. If they were more like the Cult of Al’an that would be good, but isn’t strictly necessary.”

Nivad realizes that he has been doing some recon in Yellow, so he relates what he’s found out about Love pursuing Feelings magic.

He doesn’t have suggestions for how to convince the Ladies that they should be cooperating rather than fighting. If the Maharani caught the Lady of Life trying to have her assassinated in a way that she could prove, she might be able to help, but it would also be irritating to have the Church smacked.

“Yes, it was irritating to have to deal with the factions. And they all wanted to recruit me.”

“They would do that. One reason to send a priest of the Cult of Al’an to look into it is that they would be less likely to try to recruit him.”

“The fact that

We update him on the Addenda to the Tarn Evidence Packet. He is intrigued that the Breaker’s Plan for Red involves

“All three Churches were damaged last Comet. The Three faces of the Lady are separated in Jabar; the Twins are separated from Balance and each other; the Church of Rush was separated from the rest of the Five. It sounds like the Breaker is only trying to exacerbate one of the three, but the others do need mending.”

“The details of that plan were kept between the Minister of Lions and myself and Mother Jess, to be revealed to you once things were far enough along that your immediate intervention was going to be relevant. It seems like, with the disaster in Middlesea, your time has come. I do not see exactly what it is that you will do to fix this, but you are the one who is most likely of anyone to fix the Churches this Comet. So if you have need of me or the Cult of Al’an in doing that, feel free to speak with me.”

“Are others, for instance Leonardo, informed on this?”

“Leonardo does not know the details. It was the Minister of Lions that approached the other two of us with the plan, and something having to do with Purple magic and The Yet, and the more people who know about it the more likely there will be Problems. It’s not clear if that makes it more likely to Fail. But the fact that you are most likely to help means you could be most likely to hurt the issue as well. But Purple is not my sphere.”

“As it turns out, it’s almost impossible to frag me with information.” says Managaratha.

“That would make sense, yes.”

“So if there’s information that you need to tell me you can probably do that privately.”

“We can talk afterwards.”

“The Destiny was there, we added things to help it out. I would presume that just waiting for events to unfold will not suffice.”

We talk a bit about the Ministries and the bureaucratic mess that is Purple Guy.

Would talking to Mother Jess be helpful to activate Purple Guy? Well, it’s probably worth talking to her, but if we’re not heading that way.

Broken Miracles

Scout mentions we’re also looking for someone to help out with the new Broken Miracle. Who looked at it? The Warmth of Summer. Oh. But he chose not to deal with it because it might interact poorly with the other Twins effects on us, not because he wasn’t big enough. Oh, well that’s better. All right, he will take a look.

“There are definitely things I am not seeing, and there is a lot there. The miracle in this case is one that is increasing your forgetfulness. It is tied to a Green effect. It does not seem particularly tied to anything else that I would worry about touching, but everything is entangled. Whether or not it is directly a part or not, there are connections between everything. In this case it appears that the strongest connection between that miracle and– well. That miracle is most strongly connected to the Green effect. The Green effect is also connected to the miracle of Navere, which is interwoven with a miracle of Rush, which is connected to the Oasis miracle. (Not all positive connections, they could be directly opposed to each other.)”

“The Blue effect and the Purple Twins effect are more closely tied to each other than to the rest of the mess, but they are connected to the Oasis miracle.”

“You cannot easily touch one without touching the others. But there is limited Goddess impact in everything. There is a small amount of Goddess effect on the Blue effect, but it’s not clear, and it’s not on us per se. That might mean there are other significant Red and Orange effects, since there are already Blue, Green, Purple, and Yellow…”

The effects are different sizes. The Oasis effect is the largest. The combined Rush/Navere effect is about the size of the Oasis.

He can’t see if the Broken miracle is just reinforcing the Green effect on us or on everyone. He can try to put something together to deal with that– if we come back tomorrow he will look again and have a better idea. He might be able to pull us out of Middlesea without getting rid of the Miracle, if that’s something we want? We’re not sure– we think it may be useful to have us connected to Middlesea for the time being.

We end the discussion for today; we’ll come back in the morning. Leonardo shows us out. He is clearly restraining himself from trying to get information out of us, and is grumpy about people having secret meetings with Ritasi without him being present.

Aftermath

Nesh wants to bring Vidan to the library; we also consider going to the X on the Treasure Map.

We decide to go look at the Treasure. After much debate about how to get there, Managaratha

There is a hill with a well-hidden door, with a giant Purple spell on it.

That is a discipline spell on it that only lets you in if you’re on the Right Side. If you don’t get through the spell, it sets off an alarm.

Oh. We bet the Buccaneer, one of the Lady’s Companions, is on the Right Side. Scout wilds a spell to see what Side he is on– he’s clearly His Majesty’s, and an essence spell on him doesn’t tell him which side His Majesty is on

• A bunch of rotted stuff
• 3 Loot of Gold and Gems
• 3 Blue items with Army-level schticks on them
  • 1: Lets an army unit fly
  • 2: Gives an army unit defense against Orange magic
  • 3: Gives an army unit more Martial skill

Purple Guy looks around with Detective; he thinks some of the stuff that rotted used to be uniforms. But he does find out that the alarm goes to The Master Trader. Oh hey, Scout asked the Master Trader to send a message to His Majesty when we were in Kor. He also had a name, so it’s not just the same guy as before, probably? Nesh has a name.

Stella decides to fix everything in the cache. 16 successes with 12 DI. Suits of uniforms, and medical supplies! The food that was here doesn’t get fixed. There are some maps, showing battle lines, etc. Things have changed somewhat. Kor is where it belongs. A couple of the towns shown with medium-sized militias in them are no longer there. There’s at least one medium-sized town that has arisen since them.

The medicines didn’t really get restored, so it’s less medical supplies than Stella would like, but the splints and bandages are all good.

We decide to take a few.

Loot

• + 9 EPs
• + 9 SPs
• Three blue artifacts, three loot, some medical supplies and uniforms (left in the cache)