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Lylandra's War of the Burning Sky continued
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<blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 7168024" data-attributes="member: 6816692"><p><strong>A rather strange audience and a sneaky daredevil</strong></p><p></p><p>The group spends the rest of the day in Bresk as they try to familiarize themselves with the still pretty unknown city. Balan shows them around a bit and – due to the cold weather – they come to prefer the underground parts of the city. </p><p></p><p>The next day, their audience with the Queen is about to take place. Before they get to the Queen, the party has to witness a strange questioning of the crazy man Tinuviel had seen in prison the day before. They are estranged by the fact that underneath his irritating babble the man seems to have two different memories on the same incident and that one of these memories points to Jinis and Lord Gallo planning to assassinate the Queen and her children with poison. </p><p></p><p>They all agree that something clearly isn't right here. Cuin'halar asks Tinuviel whether he can sense some kind of second soul in the guy and Tinu tries to get in touch with his surrounding emotions. He is instantly overwhelmed by the feeling of losing his mind as some kind of “madness” tries to overpower him. Cuin is shocked to see his friend in such a dire condition and tells him to show him what's wrong with him. Tinu manages to project some of his feelings to Cuin and he then immediately begins singing the song of forms quietly. Torrent realized what's going on and she helps the elf by chanting along. This doesn't reveal any hidden or incorporeal Trillith, but it helps Tinu to regain control of himself.</p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Note: To their own luck, they were a midst a crowd of spectators, so the quasi-fainting elf wouldn't draw too much attention. I decided that Madness/Nina would be directly responsible for the man's steadily increasing insanity, so Tinu's Empathy backlashed horribly during the hearing. </em></p><p></p><p>As “madness” in this case was a mental effect, I let them use the Song of Forms a bit more liberally. Of course they could not give the effect physical form, but I decided that the song would suppress the effect on Tinu.</p><p></p><p>Nina Glibglammer ends the hearing and tells the crowd that she can get no clear answer from the man and that she suspects some form of mental control or enchantment on him. She suggests to postpone the process until she can get the magic off the man and the Queen agrees. They open the sheets of the windows in the throne room (it had been quite dark during the questioning) and as soon as more light fills the room, the eerie and disturbing presence seems to vanish. Tinuviel tries to gain a glimpse at Glibglammer's emotional state, but she seems somehow either in total control of herself or shielded by some other effect. </p><p></p><p>Steppengard then calls for the audience to begin. After three rather mundane requests from her citizens, the party is called forth to state their request. At first, they give their condolences for her loss. Then they do their best to convince the Queen that Dassen should not risk a non-aggression-pact with the Ragesians as they would clearly march into Seaquen and occupy what is essential Dasseni land. And even if the Ragesians kept word and she'd consider Seaquen to be no “real” part of Dassen, she'd still open up a backdoor for the Ragesians as the swamp between Dene and Seaquen is not as easily defended as the Alydi Gap. They explain that they had a similar situation in Gate Pass before (as the Ragesians “really just want to conquer Shahalesti”) and that the Ragesians still wanted to take every magic-user into custody. And surrendering every mage of Dassen to the Ragesians as well as having a battle-hungry army marching through the mainlands surely wouldn't be in the best interests of Dassen.</p><p></p><p>The Queen states that she clearly understood their statement but that she has already lost too many of her children and doesn't want to lose any more. She says that she has spoken to the Ragesian ambassador and that he convinced her that no Ragesian would come to harm if they'd give Revulus' army safe passage through their country. </p><p></p><p>She exchanges words with Nina frequently during this talk and at some time, Cuin becomes a bit unnerved and interrupts her during their chatting. He calls her naive if she'd believed the Ragesians kept word and that maybe her Lord's and Lady's proxies would have an opinion in this matter, too. Steppengard gets pretty angry and asks him how a boy like him could even dare to think that he could understand how it feels to lose those closest to him. Cuin replies that, while he has not lost a child (he's a bit too young to have children), he did lose his mother and his entire people to a person's murderous will. He then says that he, in contrast, doesn't hide behind another one to tell him what to do and that he will continue to stand up for the safety of the Seaquenians, even if they are neither his race, nor his people. He then turns to the proxies and says that he's sorry that the Queen's loss left her so broken that she now lets her counselor decide the fate of Dassen.</p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Note: I really had no good candidate for the “How many have you lost?” speech. Every one of them besides Balan (and I didn't want to turn this into a NPC-NPC argument) had lost people they cared for. So I used it when Cuin started to become overly “uncourtly” in his behavior. I had a very hard time finding arguments for Steppengard that made her not seem like a complete naive, lunatic or delusive person as the party's own arguments were just that good. So... yeah, they underlined the strong impression they made on the proxies the day before.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p>The Queen gets fully enraged over that accusation and orders them to leave her court immediately or else. She gives then a three day ultimatum to settle their business in Bresk and leave the city for good. </p><p></p><p>The party leaves the throne room rather disappointed. They wait outside till the whole audience session is over in hope to be able to speak to the proxies once again. They are lucky and manage to meet up with some of them. They state their fear that, after what they have seen during the audience, the Queen might not be in charge of Dassen anymore and that the country is quasi run by Glibglammer. They say that they have to obey the Queen's demands but that they hope that the proxies will send word to their respective Lords and Ladies about the matter.</p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Note: The whole Steppengard-Glibglammer scene had a very strong King Theoden-Grima Wormtongue vibe and so my players interpreted it that way immediately. The arguments and evidence they had up to that point were spot on and only a direct authoritative Word of Queen was able to stop them this time...</em></p><p></p><p>The four head back to the Golden Griffon and discuss what they could do next. They know that they have three days and they plan on using them wisely. As they heard (and saw) that there were Ragesians present at court, they decide to take a look into their guest rooms in hope to find any clue that might link them to the assassinations. </p><p></p><p>Cuin'halar and Tinuviel, both masters of stealth and camouflage, sneak back to castle Steppengard and use their hats of disguise to look like nondescript Dasseni. On their way to the guest tract they overhear a loud conversation in Melanie Ursin's room. From what they hear it seems like someone of authority accuses her of allying with an “enemy of the Queen”. They ask her about her connection to Tinuviel and the rest of the party and she truthfully states that she didn't conspire with them and that she only made negotiations for her Lady.</p><p></p><p>The Talon police officer seems satisfied for now and leaves her office. Both elves wait until the guy is gone and enter Melanie's office. After they closed the door, they turn back to their original selves and try to comfort the visibly frightened proxy. Tinuviel apologizes for dragging her into trouble, but Melanie explains that it was her own fault for being so careless. He offers her to take her with him should they leave the city in three days as she might not be safe in Bresk. Melanie thanks him but declines the offer as she says that both she and her Lady would seem like traitors should she leave the city without any good reason. </p><p></p><p>The brothers see reason in her words and ask her for one last favor: They need to know where the Ragesians have their guest rooms. Melanie can give them direction and they thank her for her help.</p><p></p><p>Then they sneak up to said rooms, check them for measures of security, disable them and enter. Unfortunately, they find nothing suspicious. What they do find is a booklet containing methods of gathering information through forceful questioning written by none other than their favorite Inquisitor Guthwulf. </p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Note: They could neither know nor suspect that the Ragesian “HQ” was in the dungeon. The very same dungeon/prison Thurask had taken Tinuviel to before. </em></p><p></p><p>Utterly disappointed, they want to try one last thing: They disguise themselves as maids and ask one of the chambermaids where Nina Glibglammer's personal room might be (they did a good bluff and used very innocuous talk to get their info). And then they try to enter this room, too. So while maid Cuin'halar does indeed clean the corridor in front of Glibglammer's room, Tinuviel sneaks outside, climbs the wall while being invisible and tries to enter through the window. </p><p></p><p>And then he gets really, really lucky. He barely manages to spot and not trigger a well-hidden magical trap on the window. Inside he finds a total mess of a room and more traps. He searches the suspiciously clean desk only to -again barely- avoid a poisoned needle trap. Inside he finds a note stating “haha, you're dead, dummy!”. Tinuviel doesn't give up yet and then tries to search the mess. And this time he finds a small vial containing some red substance. He carefully takes some of the substance and fills it into an empty vial before he leaves the room.</p><p></p><p><em>Note: I have to admit, I really used some pretty lethal stuff inside Glibglammer's room. But curiosity kills the cat and I wanted to show him that messing with Glibglammer's private stuff wasn't the best of ideas. But Tinu's player rolled ridiculously high and the little daredevil found and disabled both magical and mundane traps. I thought he'd leave when Nina so obviously trolled him with the note, but he persisted. So in the end I gave him a sample of the red madness poison which Nina would later use on the proxies. This lead to a very funny (and clever!) scene later on.</em></p><p></p><p>They head back to Balan and tell him (and Torrent) what they just did and Balan almost suffers a heart attack. He calls them mad and suicidal and says that, even worse, they did endanger him and Torrent as well. Tinuviel halfheartedly apologizes but he also says that they found some interesting substance which they want to have examined by an alchemist as soon as possible.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lylandra, post: 7168024, member: 6816692"] [b]A rather strange audience and a sneaky daredevil[/b] The group spends the rest of the day in Bresk as they try to familiarize themselves with the still pretty unknown city. Balan shows them around a bit and – due to the cold weather – they come to prefer the underground parts of the city. The next day, their audience with the Queen is about to take place. Before they get to the Queen, the party has to witness a strange questioning of the crazy man Tinuviel had seen in prison the day before. They are estranged by the fact that underneath his irritating babble the man seems to have two different memories on the same incident and that one of these memories points to Jinis and Lord Gallo planning to assassinate the Queen and her children with poison. They all agree that something clearly isn't right here. Cuin'halar asks Tinuviel whether he can sense some kind of second soul in the guy and Tinu tries to get in touch with his surrounding emotions. He is instantly overwhelmed by the feeling of losing his mind as some kind of “madness” tries to overpower him. Cuin is shocked to see his friend in such a dire condition and tells him to show him what's wrong with him. Tinu manages to project some of his feelings to Cuin and he then immediately begins singing the song of forms quietly. Torrent realized what's going on and she helps the elf by chanting along. This doesn't reveal any hidden or incorporeal Trillith, but it helps Tinu to regain control of himself. [I] Note: To their own luck, they were a midst a crowd of spectators, so the quasi-fainting elf wouldn't draw too much attention. I decided that Madness/Nina would be directly responsible for the man's steadily increasing insanity, so Tinu's Empathy backlashed horribly during the hearing. [/I] As “madness” in this case was a mental effect, I let them use the Song of Forms a bit more liberally. Of course they could not give the effect physical form, but I decided that the song would suppress the effect on Tinu. Nina Glibglammer ends the hearing and tells the crowd that she can get no clear answer from the man and that she suspects some form of mental control or enchantment on him. She suggests to postpone the process until she can get the magic off the man and the Queen agrees. They open the sheets of the windows in the throne room (it had been quite dark during the questioning) and as soon as more light fills the room, the eerie and disturbing presence seems to vanish. Tinuviel tries to gain a glimpse at Glibglammer's emotional state, but she seems somehow either in total control of herself or shielded by some other effect. Steppengard then calls for the audience to begin. After three rather mundane requests from her citizens, the party is called forth to state their request. At first, they give their condolences for her loss. Then they do their best to convince the Queen that Dassen should not risk a non-aggression-pact with the Ragesians as they would clearly march into Seaquen and occupy what is essential Dasseni land. And even if the Ragesians kept word and she'd consider Seaquen to be no “real” part of Dassen, she'd still open up a backdoor for the Ragesians as the swamp between Dene and Seaquen is not as easily defended as the Alydi Gap. They explain that they had a similar situation in Gate Pass before (as the Ragesians “really just want to conquer Shahalesti”) and that the Ragesians still wanted to take every magic-user into custody. And surrendering every mage of Dassen to the Ragesians as well as having a battle-hungry army marching through the mainlands surely wouldn't be in the best interests of Dassen. The Queen states that she clearly understood their statement but that she has already lost too many of her children and doesn't want to lose any more. She says that she has spoken to the Ragesian ambassador and that he convinced her that no Ragesian would come to harm if they'd give Revulus' army safe passage through their country. She exchanges words with Nina frequently during this talk and at some time, Cuin becomes a bit unnerved and interrupts her during their chatting. He calls her naive if she'd believed the Ragesians kept word and that maybe her Lord's and Lady's proxies would have an opinion in this matter, too. Steppengard gets pretty angry and asks him how a boy like him could even dare to think that he could understand how it feels to lose those closest to him. Cuin replies that, while he has not lost a child (he's a bit too young to have children), he did lose his mother and his entire people to a person's murderous will. He then says that he, in contrast, doesn't hide behind another one to tell him what to do and that he will continue to stand up for the safety of the Seaquenians, even if they are neither his race, nor his people. He then turns to the proxies and says that he's sorry that the Queen's loss left her so broken that she now lets her counselor decide the fate of Dassen. [I] Note: I really had no good candidate for the “How many have you lost?” speech. Every one of them besides Balan (and I didn't want to turn this into a NPC-NPC argument) had lost people they cared for. So I used it when Cuin started to become overly “uncourtly” in his behavior. I had a very hard time finding arguments for Steppengard that made her not seem like a complete naive, lunatic or delusive person as the party's own arguments were just that good. So... yeah, they underlined the strong impression they made on the proxies the day before. [/I] The Queen gets fully enraged over that accusation and orders them to leave her court immediately or else. She gives then a three day ultimatum to settle their business in Bresk and leave the city for good. The party leaves the throne room rather disappointed. They wait outside till the whole audience session is over in hope to be able to speak to the proxies once again. They are lucky and manage to meet up with some of them. They state their fear that, after what they have seen during the audience, the Queen might not be in charge of Dassen anymore and that the country is quasi run by Glibglammer. They say that they have to obey the Queen's demands but that they hope that the proxies will send word to their respective Lords and Ladies about the matter. [I] Note: The whole Steppengard-Glibglammer scene had a very strong King Theoden-Grima Wormtongue vibe and so my players interpreted it that way immediately. The arguments and evidence they had up to that point were spot on and only a direct authoritative Word of Queen was able to stop them this time...[/I] The four head back to the Golden Griffon and discuss what they could do next. They know that they have three days and they plan on using them wisely. As they heard (and saw) that there were Ragesians present at court, they decide to take a look into their guest rooms in hope to find any clue that might link them to the assassinations. Cuin'halar and Tinuviel, both masters of stealth and camouflage, sneak back to castle Steppengard and use their hats of disguise to look like nondescript Dasseni. On their way to the guest tract they overhear a loud conversation in Melanie Ursin's room. From what they hear it seems like someone of authority accuses her of allying with an “enemy of the Queen”. They ask her about her connection to Tinuviel and the rest of the party and she truthfully states that she didn't conspire with them and that she only made negotiations for her Lady. The Talon police officer seems satisfied for now and leaves her office. Both elves wait until the guy is gone and enter Melanie's office. After they closed the door, they turn back to their original selves and try to comfort the visibly frightened proxy. Tinuviel apologizes for dragging her into trouble, but Melanie explains that it was her own fault for being so careless. He offers her to take her with him should they leave the city in three days as she might not be safe in Bresk. Melanie thanks him but declines the offer as she says that both she and her Lady would seem like traitors should she leave the city without any good reason. The brothers see reason in her words and ask her for one last favor: They need to know where the Ragesians have their guest rooms. Melanie can give them direction and they thank her for her help. Then they sneak up to said rooms, check them for measures of security, disable them and enter. Unfortunately, they find nothing suspicious. What they do find is a booklet containing methods of gathering information through forceful questioning written by none other than their favorite Inquisitor Guthwulf. [I] Note: They could neither know nor suspect that the Ragesian “HQ” was in the dungeon. The very same dungeon/prison Thurask had taken Tinuviel to before. [/I] Utterly disappointed, they want to try one last thing: They disguise themselves as maids and ask one of the chambermaids where Nina Glibglammer's personal room might be (they did a good bluff and used very innocuous talk to get their info). And then they try to enter this room, too. So while maid Cuin'halar does indeed clean the corridor in front of Glibglammer's room, Tinuviel sneaks outside, climbs the wall while being invisible and tries to enter through the window. And then he gets really, really lucky. He barely manages to spot and not trigger a well-hidden magical trap on the window. Inside he finds a total mess of a room and more traps. He searches the suspiciously clean desk only to -again barely- avoid a poisoned needle trap. Inside he finds a note stating “haha, you're dead, dummy!”. Tinuviel doesn't give up yet and then tries to search the mess. And this time he finds a small vial containing some red substance. He carefully takes some of the substance and fills it into an empty vial before he leaves the room. [I]Note: I have to admit, I really used some pretty lethal stuff inside Glibglammer's room. But curiosity kills the cat and I wanted to show him that messing with Glibglammer's private stuff wasn't the best of ideas. But Tinu's player rolled ridiculously high and the little daredevil found and disabled both magical and mundane traps. I thought he'd leave when Nina so obviously trolled him with the note, but he persisted. So in the end I gave him a sample of the red madness poison which Nina would later use on the proxies. This lead to a very funny (and clever!) scene later on.[/I] They head back to Balan and tell him (and Torrent) what they just did and Balan almost suffers a heart attack. He calls them mad and suicidal and says that, even worse, they did endanger him and Torrent as well. Tinuviel halfheartedly apologizes but he also says that they found some interesting substance which they want to have examined by an alchemist as soon as possible. [/QUOTE]
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