Four years already. (Although I’m sure to some of you it feels like it’s been that long just since the last update. 
) I’m not sure whether to be amazed that this project has gone on so long or to marvel that the time has gone by so fast. As I do every year, I’d like to thank our readers, both those who are just finding this thread and those who have been reading since the beginning, without your participation this thread would not be the same; my fellow players, who have made for not only great games, but great friends, and of course, Fajitas who gave us all a reason to roll the dice together.
Happy Birthday.
Part the Two-Hundred Sixteenth
In which: Church Politics! Spies! Intrigue! A typical week, really.
What with one thing and another, the week before the arrival of the archmages passes.
[sblock]If the preceding sentence sounds like a gloss to you, that’s probably because it is one.
Many of you have probably noticed that this story hour thread doesn’t update as often as it used to. In fact, two of three times a week has become once every two or three weeks. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, in light of the reasons for it) I don’t see that changing back in the near future. In the last six months, I’ve gotten a new job, and it’s a job where I’m not being paid a pittance to answer phones and do filing in between writing 10,000 words of story hour a week.
That plus a commute that averages more than two hours a day, and my writing time—especially writing time for story hour—has dwindled.
And so, we’re skipping a subplot. Not because it isn’t a good subplot. But it’s two sessions worth of set-up that doesn’t pay off until after the new Chancellor is selected, and at current pace of updates, it doesn’t really make sense to interweave the two. So for the time being, suffice it to say:
What with one thing and another, the week before the arrival of the archmages passes.[/sblock]
Anvil pours over the dusty tomes in the Temple library. Thatch dutifully attends his accounting classes, Eva by his side.
Until one day, Eva decides she has had enough.
Eva is tired.
Sure, she’s done her share of the work involved in the security arrangements for the visit of the archmages. But it’s not that.
Eva is tired of looking over her shoulder all the time. Tired of the anxiety keeping her up at night until the best rest she gets is when she drops off in the middle of one of Thatch’s classes. Tired of the fear and paranoia and uncertainty, and most of all, she’s tired of
nothing happening.
Which is why, when she finds a piece of parchment inside her pouch that reads…
Meet me at the Fortunate Traveler
-K
…It’s almost a relief. Even though it’s in the coin purse no one’s supposed to know she carries. But still, as she reads it, she thinks to herself,
Oh, why not. The worst they can do is kill me, right?
And, without telling anyone else in the party what she is doing, she makes her way to the Fortunate Traveler.
***
The Fortunate Traveler is an Alirrian bar. A strange place, she thinks, to meet a Sedellan. But then again, Kemmer is a strange Sedellan.
She enters the main room and looks around. She doesn’t see any obvious sign of Kemmer… nor does she necessarily feel like continuing to indulge him in these cloak-and-dagger games.
So she boldly makes her way up to the bartender and says, “I’m looking for a man named Kemmer. Is he here?”
The bartender jerks a thumb up the stairs. “Third room on the left,” he grunts.
Could’ve put that in your stupid note, Eva thinks to herself as she makes her way up the stairs and knocks on the third room on the left.
“Nobody’s home,” says a voice right in her ear.
Eva jumps three feet in the air and whirls… to find Kemmer standing behind her, grinning.
She forces herself to resist the urge to knock the smirk right off his face. Experience tells her that even if she did, it would be back in a moment.
“Care to join me?” he asks solicitously, as he makes his way back into the third room on the
right. Eva hesitates for a moment. This is the man she has been afraid of seeing since she ditched her bugged holy symbol in Ebis. Does she really want to enter a room with him, alone?
But then, she thinks,
if he’d wanted to kill me, he could have done it here in the hall right now.
Or when he slipped that note into my pouch.
With that reassuring thought, she enters the room.
Kemmer is watching Eva closely, as if he can see the thought process playing out in her head. He motions her to sit on the bed. She does.
“You gave us quite a scare, there,” he says, finally. “When you ‘lost’ that holy symbol of yours. Some of us were afraid we were going to have to resurrect you again.”
“Accidents happen,” Eva says, guarded.
“Indeed they do. And you appear to have been a most fortuitous one.”
Eva blinks. That’s not exactly what she expected to hear.
Kemmer continues. “The others didn’t agree with me. They thought you were just a mindless dupe who would serve our purposes and not ask any questions. They didn’t think you had anything going on above the neck. Couldn’t get past your appearance, you see.”
“Great,” Eva mutters.
“No, they couldn’t imagine that anyone so plain looking could possibly have an interesting thought in her head. But I always knew…okay, I always suspected that somewhere, deep down, buried away where no one else could see it, somewhere in there just might be the teeniest, tinsiest shred of intellect. And I was right. There
is the teeniest, tinsiest shred of intellect.”
“Did you ask me here just to insult me, or is there a point to all this?” Eva demands.
Kemmer laughs. “See. That’s what I mean. Fiesty. I like it.” And suddenly he leans forward, smiles, and asks, “So how would you like to come work for us?”
Eva blinks again.
And then pretty much explodes. “Come
work for you? What in the Hells have I
been doing for the last six months?”
“You been being used,” Kemmer responds, good-naturedly. “Now we want you to
actually work for us. How does that sound to you? A bonafide member of the Advocates?”
Eva scowls, remembering the break-ins to her room, the suddenly appearing notes. “Do I have a choice?”
Kemmer feigns insult; at least, she’s pretty sure he’s feigning it. Eva’s not sure he’s ever shown a genuine reaction in her presence… or anyone else’s. “Of course you do. You could walk away. Go back to being another girl from Dar Darine, run off from a bad engagement, a Fortune Rider playing cards and drinking bad ale while the world marches on.”
Eva frowns and Kemmer abruptly leans forward, stopping with his face inches from hers and plants a finger firmly in the center of her forehead.
“Or, you could be an Alirrian. If that’s the sort of thing you
really want to do.”
Kemmer leans back. He’s smirking again.
Bastard Eva fumes to herself…. but… she considers the offer…
###
Meanwhile, Lira finds the time to touch base with her brother Questors. Devon is gone, and the new chapter administrator is a grizzled adventurer, filling the unglamorous post for the church in order to earn a
regeneration spell to replace his legs, which have both been severed just above the knee.
Now laboriously pulling himself about the office in some kind of wheeled chair, he clearly chafes against his current position, both administrative and physical.
When Lira introduces herself, she can almost see the mental process wherein he glances her over and decides that in the Questor categories of “doer” and “talker” she clearly belongs with the latter group.
Fine, Lira thinks,
I’ve been dismissed by better than you. She feels too tired to argue with him, and also not sure that, “Hey, on my last Quest I got killed,” will score her any points besides.
And in fact, Lira discovers that the urge to tell tales of daring and adventure has paled, and finds herself drifting to the fringes of the room as the night wears on. Which is where she nearly collides with Artimus, who barely three months ago had been her date for Alirria Rising.
“Lira!” he grins, kissing her lightly on the cheek. “How are things?”
“Complicated.”
“Your mission?”
“Can’t really talk about it.”
Artimus nods understandingly even as he tucks a medallion that had half-fallen free back into his tunic.
Lira raises an eyebrow. The medallion wasn’t a Questor holy symbol.
Artimus catches the look and guides them farther off towards one corner of the room. “You’ve heard about the Purists?” he whispers.
“I’ve heard they’re still active.”
“They’re not the only ones.” Making sure that no one is watching, Artimus draws out the medallion for Lira to see. It’s wooden, roughly the size of a standard holy symbol, but instead of the sign of one of the gods accompanied by a sect designation, it shows a crescent moon, and bit of arcane script. “Some of us have decided it’s time to start looking after our own.”
###
Of course, as far as Anvil is concerned, the most important event of the week is Wednesday’s meeting of the Universal Law Caucus. At Anvil’s insistence, the entire party is in attendance—some more grudgingly than others—and as Tenacious promised, there are several at the meeting who are eager to make the party’s acquaintance.
Fortunately for group unity, most of the party finds it more amusing than anything else that they are usually recognized as, “Oh, you’re one of Anvil’s team…” before being asked to field questions about their adventures.
Once the meeting is formally called to order, the main event on the night’s agenda is Gemstone the Just’s report on the Justicar’s Quadrennial Conclave which has just concluded in Dar Darine.
(Note 1: this is, in fact, where Mountain the Just, chief Justicar of the Islands of Agramount was when the party was busy deposing the Count.)
(Note 2: the Justicar’s General Conclave is now colloquially known as “the all Justice Just-off.” The DM would like to extend his most sincere thanks to jonrog1 for that little gem.)
Gemstone is not known as a charismatic speaker, and her address is certainly on the dry side, but the bare facts are chilling enough to make up for any lack of rhetorical flair.
“The Pillars of Kettenek have declared that they will no longer recognize the cause of the Arcane as Just. At this time they have chosen not to make a declaration that the cause is UnJust, but their members will no longer act in support or defense of Arcane practitioners, institutions, or their allies.”
Eva, who has never made a habit of keeping track of the sects of either one of her
own goddesses, never mind Kettenek, leans over and whispers in Lira’s ear, “Is that a change?”
The sorcerer nods. “When we knew there was going to be an attack on the Academy, the Pillars were one of the only religious groups in the city who sent people to help.”
“Oh.”
Gemstone is still speaking, “Although the sect leadership has previously stood neutral on the question of the Arcane, leaving the matter to the consciences of their members, leadership cites recent activities of the so-called ‘Arcanists League’ against the anti-arcane group known as the Purists. The Leauge, in its few public statements, has claimed their members only act to defend themselves, or in retaliation for specific Purist acts, but the leadership of the Pillars seems to think that the vigilante action of the aforementioned League has been responsible for collateral damage and casualties beyond those stated targets.”
Lira’s throat goes suddenly dry. If this is correct, then the attempts by the Purists to sway public opinion that Professor Alexandra spoke of would seem to be working.
And in two days, the five most powerful arcanists in the Halmae are due to arrive in Dar Pykos.
Beside her, Thatch’s hands reflexively tighten in his gloves, ready.
They’re going to have their work cut out for them.
I'll buy it. 
