Aphonion Tales: The Archducal Council -- Unedited notes; later posts are edited transcripts (posts MWF, update 3/1/23)

CPaladin · Feb 13, 2023

Session 150 (December 14, 2022)

20 O-Tar
They have all returned to Canberry City. The day passes uneventfully.

21 O-Tar
In the early morning, a hesitant tap at Dame Brionna's door awakens her.

"Honored Dame, Sergeant Pickles reporting. We just noticed that there did not seem to be a patrol in the lower northwest quarter near [ ] Church. We went to investigate, and we found the patrol. They're all dead."

"Of what?"

"Large holes in them. They were slaughtered. It was in the Lower Quarter, but..."

"I don't care where it was. Is the priest alive?"

"We didn't check the priest. He's an older man, and we didn't want to wake him."

"Ring the bells in that quarter with a stay indoors klaxon. Take a double strength squad and secure the priest of that church. I'll take an investigation squad and another three squads to examine the bodies."

Dame Brionna immediately heads to the kitchen, and passes both a warning and a request for information to Elly, one of Kit's people who can contact people who might not listen to the bells and also people who might know if there's anything going on in the sewers. She also warns Elly that if whoever did this can take out an entire squad without warning, Elly's people should not engage. She also tells Elly that if she's out when a message comes back, it can be left in her office in her desk's second drawer, without thinking about the fact that Elly's probably a rogue and that the unlocked first drawer of her desk is filled with random gold coins for when Dame Brionna needs money to give people on behalf of the Archduchy.

Dame Brionna rides out to where the bodies are. She notes that there is no priest present, except the one she brought. She detects el, and detects some fading evil. The guards were city guards, not her people, but they were ripped apart. Only one guard even cleared their sheath with their sword. They were tossed about, and the batons appeared to have been ineffective. The wounds look like they were made with natural weapons, or possibly cestuses. Dame Brionna thinks there were six attackers. Her priest observes they all died within seconds.

A guard hurries up.

"The priest?"

"Dame. He's dead, disemboweled, heart torn out, and tongue cut out. Also, the speculum was broken, which had to be deliberate--it's twelve feet off the ground. It looks like he got in a good hit though on the way down--his mace was covered in a strange black goo. Also, some of the people heard the bells and came to the church, thinking that it would be a safer place. But..."

"Clear the body away. I mean, have the body transported with appropriate reverence to the cathedral. Have no one touch the goo--put it into a lead casket, and contact someone from the Ministry of the Mind to examine it. Send squads to all of the other churches in the quarter, and check on the midwives of Gunnora in the area as well." She then follows her tracker, who finds some clear marks--some from giant bird feet, other dog prints. They follow it to where a grate is broken.

They continue following the trail into the sewers for some 300 feet, at which point they come upon a dead rogue--probably wrong place at the wrong time. He was disemboweled and had his tongue and heart removed, just like the priest, and unlike the guards. Dame Brionna has a mental note made to have someone speak with dead on the guards at some point.

They travel to a four-way intersection, where there is a raised platform in the center so that workers can rest, store equipment to clear obstructions, and so forth. It is empty, but evil is rolling off the center of that platform. Dame Brionna instructs one of her mages to check for invisible things there.

"Nothing's invisible there. Oh... there's a sigil written there. I don't know what it is. You would need a summoner, or maybe that devil lady."

"What would happen if I put holy water on it?"

"It might disrupt it. It would probably disrupt the magical energy of it. But I would wonder who would put a sigil like that in a sewer platform?"

"Can you put a circle of protection around it to seal it in?"

"Oh, yes, of course. I should have thought of that myself. But there's something else here, as well. I can see it floating here."

Her psion looks at it. "That's a psionic teleport pad. It lets people aligned with it to teleport to the next pad. I didn't think they could manage that here. They can't in the upper city, but perhaps here in the lower city, they can."

"Can we disrupt it?"

"That's beyond my capabilities. But I can pick up the psionic signature. He did nothing to conceal it. Definitely male, and arrogant." The psion pauses. "I have it. I don't know if the circle will interfere with the teleport pad. It will prevent things from being summoned to here, and prevent them from returning to it if they were summoned here and then left."

"What about salt?"

"In sufficient quantity, that would suppress it."

---
Kit awakens to find a note under her door, informing her that Dame Brionna has taken a guard group to investigate the murder of an entire squad.

She pings Dame Brionna over the mindlink. <<I'm fine, but several of both my and your people are dead.>>

<<What do you need?>>

<<A diabolist and some psions. There's a summoning rune and a teleport pad. Also, you need to communicate to your people that they need to get out of the sewer. If they can seal up the sewer grates, terrific, but even surrounding them in circles of salt should help.>>

<<Should I send one of Dame Agatha's people to you, or have it brought to her? Actually, I'll ask her--she'll know which is better.>>

<<Also let the cathedral know that there's a dead parish priest and there will be people panicking.>>

Kit sends a runner to tell her people to get out of the sewers and then seal the exits, then sends a page to inform Father Waters. She also sends a message to the Minister of the Mind to warn him about the psionic teleport pad. Dame Brionna plans on continuing to follow the enemy.

It takes her tracker 18 minutes of studying to figure out whether he thinks anyone proceeded onwards. By that point, she is receiving reports that the other local priests are all fine.

One of the people coming back with news to Dame Brionna brings a young priest with him. "Dame. I be thinking that maybe... maybe you need to know... that a long time ago the parish where I saw all your guards when I came this way, was tasked with guarding an ancient key. They did not know what it was to, nor do I even know whether the importance of the key was passed down through the priesthood. It was a key made of crystal, like the rock. My ancestor was the priest there, and the story came down through my family. My ancestor was tasked to guard it and hide it until it was needed. I never saw it, nor did I know where it might have been hidden."

"Go with this set of guards, and search that church thoroughly."

Dame Brionna's psion, Dustin, says, "That has to be an elven key. I can tell you right now that those sorts of keys were made to control planar niches to keep creatures under their control or to hide items they wanted to keep hidden. And it would be Noldor, without doubt."

<<Kit, we also need to inform the Zorplona-Moriquendarim embassy.>>

<<Why?>>

<<They were trying to get a Noldor key to a planar niche.>>

<<I'm also going to tell Lord Davion. And this is the point where I'll wake Alistair.>>

Kit hurries into Alistair's bed chamber and shakes him awake.

"Darling! Good morning!"

"No, it isn't a good morning."

"Oh, this isn't that sort of morning visit."

"I love you, but this is not a good morning." She quickly gives him the briefing.

He suggests that they check with Lord Davion whether that signature is the same as the signature of the Twilight Elf who is supposed to be dead, so they arrange for Dustin to return to the palace, heavily guarded.

A page knocks on the door and informs them that Dame Agatha is in the receiving room. They instruct the page to fetch food and drink, and walk out to join Dame Agatha, with Alistair casually pulling on a silk dressing gown as he walks into the other room.

Kit explains the situation. "The first thing we wanted to ask is would it be more useful to you or your people to see the actual location and to see the sigils and things in situ or can we bring them back."

"If it is a demonic seal, do not copy it."

"All right. I will tell them that. So it would be more helpful for one of your people to see it onsite."

"I will go myself."

"Travel in force, Dame Agatha," instructs Alistair. "We can't risk losing you."

"Oh, thank you, Your Majesty, I appreciate your concern." As she leaves, she mutters to herself that she hopes that it's actually diabolic, but probably not--it's likely demonic.

They hear a rap on the door and the bright cheery voice of Lord Davion.

"Good morning, Lord Davion."

"Good morning!"

"How are you so cheerful?" asks Kit. "It's good to see you, but it's very early."

"My griffin is going to give birth."

"Oh that's wonderful news!"

"Almost unheard of in captivity, took a lot of care."

"Baby griffins!" coos Kit. "Oh, that is adorable, and I cannot wait. I absolutely need some adorable baby griffins at the end of this day. But before we get there..."

"How can I help?"

"First, are you aware of a Noldor key that was kept in a church in the lower quarter?"

"No. There are several Noldor keys that were lost, but I did not know of one within the city."

"The priest of one of these churches that apparently was charged with protecting such a thing was murdered this morning, along with a squad of guards who were nearby."

"And near that church," adds Kit. "We suspect it was to steal that key."

"Further, there is now a psionic teleport pad in the sewers, not far from that area, and likely a demonic seal at the location of the teleport pad."

"Do we have a signature for the psion?"

"The person who has that is on his way back to the palace under heavy guard. We're hoping that you know something about the key."

"I can hazard a guess. It cannot be the Moriquendarim. It is beyond the level of their capabilities of creation. It could be Curinirim, but I do not know of any keys that were lost. I know that none of the key from my house were lost. But both the House of the Spiders and Goldurim have lost keys. I would guess that it is of House Goldurim. In the case of Goldurim, the man is mad. I don't know if he lost it, or simply threw it out of a voller somewhere in a fit of rage."

"What of the sixth house? Could they have a lost key?"

"They could, but they are normally not outside Krashmere. They don't drift far from the homeland. But they could and no one would know, because they share nothing."

"What's the most likely way that this church would have come by one of these keys?" asks Kit.

"There is a legend, more than a rumor, that hundreds of years ago, a human rogue fooled Lord Goldurim, wormed his way into the ranks of his slaves, and stole the key and escaped. Goldurim had every slave that served at the same time--over a thousand-- executed horribly. He denied that the key was stolen, though he admitted that an attempt was made. For what it is worth... it is a legend, but it is a legend that my House believes, and that it was a key to a sizable treasure in gold and items."

"When would this have been?"

"Three hundred years ago, perhaps."

"Are any creatures of the eldritch held in niches like this behind keys?"

"It could be. Lord Goldurim was involved in the war, and he never believes in destroying anything that he can maintain somewhere for purposes of eventually finagling an advantage from it."

"And I could believe that a human rogue, of let us be clear, truly outstanding capabilities might have learned of such a thing, and decided that Lord Goldurim could not be trusted with it, especially as his mind wanders, and thus that it needed to be in the keeping of the Church of Glordiadel, instead."

"And of course, if they did that, and knowing that Goldurim alone among the great Houses could be incited to a war against the younger races if they believe that in any way they had cheated him, they might wish to avoid giving it to the keeping of the Holy See of Light, where Goldurim might think to look." Lord Davion nods sagely as he explains that.

"But give it to a humble parish church where the mighty Lord Goldurim would never ever look and it's still in the hands of the Glordiadelians." Kit nods as well.

"Exactly."

"The Eldritch did, within the last year, launch an attack on the treasury of the Holy See of Glordiadel," notes Alistair.

"They did. We figured out some of the other things that they were after, but they may have thought that that was there, too."

"Were I the Eldritch, I certainly would have assumed that it would be placed in in the Holy See or some such place, not a random parish church in the northwest lower quarter of Canberry City." Alistair pauses. "Do these keys have a psionic signature of their own? Can they be traced?"

"You would have to see them to make a good trace."

"We don't know if there's anyone who's seen them."

"Oh, there were several people who saw Goldurim's key, which, as I said, he denies is missing."

"Who then has seen it who is reachable and friendly enough with us to be to help us with this?"

"We need to find the sexton of that church."

Dame Brionna adds over the mindlink, <<The other thing we need to do quite frankly, under these circumstances, is talk to the Archbishop about making an inventory now of all of the little forgotten relics and mysterious treasures in every parish church, starting in the city and working our way outwards.>>

Kit replies, <<Yup. A grand tour with psion detecting psionics in every church."

* * *
A group of guards approaches Dame Brionna, nonplussed by the fact that they must accompany Dame Agatha, who is being carried by three imps flying along.

Dame Brionna says, "Dame. Is there anything you could tell me quickly, before I go deal with these monsters that are killing people in our city?"

"That is a greater demonic sigil. Whoever created it is very powerful. It could summon allied demons--not binding, but summoning allies. Vrocks are likely. But they would have an officer with them."

"Dog-like tracks?"

"Hmm, yes, that would be the officer. Possibly a nalfeshnee, possibly the other one... there would only be one of them, but capable of knocking the vrocks about a bit and much more deadly than they in general."

"Weaknesses?"

"Well, in addition to stupidity and arrogance, which the vrock have in spades--I've heard the word 'bird-brained' used about them--the dog-demons will be extremely arrogant. Let me see what else I recall. Glabrezou, that's the other one. It could be a nalfeshnee, though I wouldn't expect a nalfeshnee unless there's a great deal of knowledge involved. But the glabrezou... obviously they can be... controlled is the wrong word, but cajoled; they can be driven back with holy items; striking them with any weapon that is not truly enchanted or holy is meaningless. They are susceptible to sonic or psionic attacks, but they are immune to any form of electricity or poison, and they resist acid, cold, and fire quite effectively. They're not very dexterous. It's not that difficult to hit them with things. You just have to hit them with something that can damage them. Normally, the unit of vrocks they command is somewhere between two and five."

"That makes sense--we think there are six of them total."

"They can confuse others at will; they can dispel magic at will; they can reverse gravity at will. They can veil themselves, but only themselves. They can at will cast unholy blight. Once per day, they can use power word stun. I believe that if he is in command of a group of vrocks, he will not be able to summon additional demons. Normally, he would be able to, and that is somewhat outside my expertise. Fortunately, they will likely not be able to hide from you, particularly with a passel of vrocks following them." Dame Agatha also gives a quick run-down on the capabilities of vrocks.

Dame Brionna turns to one of the other guards--a particularly fast one, to serve as a messenger. "Please send a message to Archbishop, to alert the entire Order of Valor. I'm sending in the cavalry, and we are literally the cavalry."

<<With permission, I'd like to pursue these trails.>>

<<The teleport pad was openly visible, correct?>>

<<Yes, but the tracks were hard to find.>>

<<That suggests the ones who went through the teleport pad were a diversion, with the group with the key fleeing through the tunnels.>>

<<That makes sense. I will keep pursuing. Your Majesty, perhaps you could tap into your connection to the city and the land.>>

<>

"Dame," says Dame Agatha. "I will accompany you if it is permissible."

"Yes, m'lady. We'll be moving pretty fast. I will take the help, but I will warn you, that we are going to be doing a lot of good aligned attacks in the course of this if we encounter them directly."

"It will be necessary. Otherwise, they will defeat you. So that is good."

"Yes, but therefore I trust you to make sure that your allies stay out of range if we need to detect evil with extreme prejudice."

"We will do this." She will several of the rings on her hands, and four winged female figures with small horns and bows appear. "We fight demons, you will accompany me, and you will defend me."

They bow, and then she twists a toe ring, and a pit fiend appears as well.

The group is traveling as fast as the tracker can follow the trail, which isn't easy through the muck and water of the sewer. He struggles a little here and there, but he keeps them on track. "We're heading to the outlets, Dame. Although... I wonder why they didn't just teleport away."

"Maybe they can't with the objects," says Dame Brionna. She quickly relays that question to Kit and Alistair.

<<They probably can't,>> replies Alistair. <<I'll ask Lord Davion to confirm.>>

Lord Davion says, "Most of them were dimensionally locked. You don't want them disappearing when you need them."

<<If they're heading to the outlet, where the sewer dumps into the river... We want a voller at that outlet. It's probably the fastest way to get there, and we need to get a force of paladins and wizards to that outlet.>>

Kit quickly coordinates that from the palace.

Alistair is still running through the palace towards the area where the tree is so that he can actually touch the ground and try to use his link to the land. As he rushes there, he vaguely tosses on a tunic and a chain shirt, just in case. As he hurries through the corridors, people see him and fall to the ground in shock, and he pays them absolutely no mind. Finally, he reaches the fey tree.

It is agitated. Its branches shake, though there is no wind. Alistair says, "Hello," and touches it reassuringly as he also reaches down and touches the ground with his other hand. He immediately senses a lesion in the lower city, or below the lower city, presumably the summoning sigil.
[cont'd]

CPaladin · Feb 16, 2023

[Session 150, cont'd]
Father Waters brings the Archbishop to Kit.

"Your grace."

"My lady. How can I help? Father Waters believes there is a problem of significance."

"Yes. There was a powerful Noldor artifact in a church in the lower quarter. It was stolen by a group--we suspect by the Twilight Elf allied with the enemy that we have been fighting for the last some time. They have summoned a group of demons that killed the parish priest and the guards that were patrolling that area. The Knights of Valor have been summoned, and they are in pursuit right now. The body of the late priest is being brought to the Cathedral. The people of that parish are going to be very upset and will be looking for solace, so there's that, and then also the great unholiness that has been brought into the City. That area will need to be cleansed and reconsecrated."

"I will go personally."

"We ask that you not do that quite yet until the area has been secured."

"But the people need..."

"The area will be secured very quickly, if I am correct in what's about to happen. So please don't go immediately, but as soon as it is safe for you to go, we will let you know. And thank you."

"Your grace. I'll just wait out here then."

Kit has one of the pages get the archbishop whatever he wants to eat and drink.

Father Waters remains with Kit.

"Our very handsome young archbishop... the people love him. He reminds the old people of their child, and the young people of their brother or parent. It's working for him."

"Good. Considering what's going on in the City right now, the more devotion people have to the face of Glordiadel and to the leadership, the better."

* * *
In the tunnels, the tracker says, "Dame, we're nearly at the entrance!" Nearly at the same moment, the front rank of her guards are engaged by the vrocks, which spray bursts of spores at them and then rip into them. Several fall almost immediately.

Just outside, the voller filled with paladins approaches the mouth of the sewer onto the river. Suddenly, an invisibility shield drops from a Noldor war schooner, which fires three death lances at the voller, inflicting substantial structural damage as well as killing many of the sailors. The ship is still flying, but only barely. The captain concludes he has two options: try to make a controlled landing or attempt to ram to allow the paladins to start a boarding action. He swings his voller around and rams the war schooner. His ship is falling apart as he rams, but two ranks of the paladins can make it across, which is enough to get 24 of the 25 Knights of Valor across. One of the two surviving crew members also leaps across as the captain, the remaining living crew member, the last paladin, and the dead bodies on the broken voller crash to the ground, killing at least the crew member and the captain.

Dame Brionna transmits through the mindlink, <<We've engaged the vrocks. Heavy fighting here, but no sign of the demon commander.>>

<<Likely a rearguard to slow you down while it tries to escape, then.>> A runner gives Alistair a report about the engagement between the vollers. Alistair says to Lord Davion, who accompanied him to the courtyard, "There's an excellent chance that that Twilight Elf who's been giving you trouble is on the deck of that voller, where those paladins are."

"I will join the paladins. Do not send additional wooden ships-- as long as the death lance is operational, they will be slaughtered like sheep, and you need some sky navy."

"Understood."

Lord Davion heads rapidly towards a point where he can teleport.

<<If you can use your connections, Alistair, to find any place where we should be heading once we've dealt with this group...>> sends Dame Brionna, forgetting in the intensity of the combat to use an honorific.

<<That voller was almost certainly planning on picking up the key when the demon exited the outlet, but I'll see if I can sense anything else.>>

Back at the battle, the pit fiend uses its innate ability to teleport without error to teleport past the vrocks. It runs forward, hunting the officer, while taunting it in Abyssal: describing demons as weak and stupid, saying that it was killing demons back when that meant something, and so forth.

Dame Brionna smites the vrock on one side with two smites and a normal blow.

The erinyes throw their entangling ropes, and miss.

The clerics each cast Dismissal. The two unwounded vrocks make their saves, but the badly wounded one decides to cut its losses and disappears entirely.

The psion flings an energy bolt, dealing 13 damage.

One vrock continues attacking the badly wounded paladins in the front rank. The other shrieks, stunning some of the various combatants.

Two of the wizards cast Shout, inflicting a bunch of damage on the vrocks. One vrock saves both times, but the other doesn't. The other casts Confusion on one of the vrocks, causing it to flee at best possible speed.

Outside, there is a flash on the deck of the ship as Lord Davion appears. At almost the same moment the glabrezou exits the outlet from the sewers, just as the Noldor appears and unleashes his aura of awe. The glabrezou sees this, and leaps into the river below. The pit fiend, chasing after it, doesn't hesitate at all to dive in after it, hoping to grapple the glabrezou and tear it to pieces.

Dame Brionna strikes the last vrock several times, though not smiting to save her smites for the officer.

The clerics then cast soundburst on it three times.

The vrock, on its last legs but being a vile and hateful creature, tries to take someone with it, hitting a badly wounded paladin with both claws, a bite, and a talon, enough to kill another paladin outright.

One wizard casts confusion again, but does not make it through spell resistance this time.

The last standing paladin smites again, killing the last vrock, which says in Abyssal as it falls, "The Queen will return!"

Dame Brionna pushes forward, while shouting for the clerics to keep the rest of the group alive.

Back on the deck of the ship, the battle is robust. The crew is a mixture of drow and uruks, but Lord Davion can cut through them, especially reinforced by the paladins.

Meanwhile, the glabrezou and the pit fiend struggle. The glabrezou can't really damage the pit fiend, so eventually the pit fiend will tear the other apart. Once Lord Davion has carried the battle on the voller, he teleports down to watch the glabrezou and the pit fiend struggle. <<The Twilight Elf was not on the voller. Nor is the key, and the glabrezou does not have it either. I cannot sense its emanation here. I suspect the Twilight Elf carried it forward on foot, with both the voller and the glabrezou as additional diversions.>>

Alistair talks to the tree, explaining what he's trying to do as he touches the ground and reaches out. "I'm trying to find a very powerful psionic object, that I believe has moved through the city sewers, and has now exited and is traveling away. Can you help me find it?"

He gets an imprecise sense of "west," almost immediately, and relays that to the rest of the group.

Kit goes to Lord Silverleaves to ask him if he can search for the key, despite his injuries.

"One of the great keys, you say. My people didn't tend to make them, but we're certainly aware of them. And you think the Twilight Elf took it to the west? Let me see. He is a master of deception, but perhaps..." He focuses and concentrates for two hours, by which point the pit fiend has finished tearing the glabrezou apart.

<>

The pit fiend emerges from the river, cleaning gobbets of glabrezou off its claws, teeth, and tail. It smiles at Lord Davion, and says, "And that's how it is done," with a great deal of satisfaction.

Meanwhile, Dame Brionna says to Dame Agatha. "We need to destroy the demonic gate, now that you have a chance to examine it thoroughly."

"Indeed, it must be destroyed, otherwise anything on the abyssal side can simply pass through."

"Whatever resources you need, Dame Agatha."

"Do you have any pure diamonds? We do not normally maintain them, because we don't use unbound sigils. It's insane. You never do that with devils, to say nothing about demons."

"I suspect we can donate some from the treasury."

"Good, get the mortar and pestle, and a couple of my assistants, and we'll get to work on it. We'll get rid of it as quickly as we can. Hmm. I feel the pit fiend being proud of himself. He must have finished off that glabrezou."

"Thank you. I'll post a bunch of guards here until that's done."

Kit and Alistair work on assembling a team of people to respond once Grandmaster Farsensor has a location for them.

Kit sends, <<Let's see--what kinds of people would be best to oppose him? Probably more paladins...>>

<<Your grace,>> queries Dame Brionna. <<Do I have permission to engage this fight.>>

<<Yes.>>

<<Thank you. Stay at the palace.>>

<<Lord Davion, would you have any objection if we asked Princess Curinirim whether any of her shall we say champions wish to join in on this?>>

<<That might be wise.>>

<> adds Dame Brionna.

<<Her general would be useful.>>

<<Also, may I requisition a banner?>>

<<By all means,>> replies Alistair. <<Also, I will play you a song before you depart. And we will ask Bishop waters to send the most combat capable priest from the City. We'll also have other priests cast Death Ward on all the people who are going.>>

<<That makes sense. We're not trying to be subtle about this, are we, once we figure out where he is?>> asks Dame Brionna.

<<Is Lord Davion of House Aufaulgautharim, accompanied by a paladin bearing a banner that burns with the Light of the Sun, accompanied by a general of House Curinirim subtle?>>

<>

<<I don't think subtlety is something we need to worry about. We need to worry about whether we can catch them. But we should also do a divination shortly before they leave to try to find out if there's anything they need to do in pursuit.>>

<>

<<Dame Brionna, don't get yourself killed if you can avoid it.>>

<<No, that's one of the reasons why I'm carrying the Banner.>>

<<And we should get them an archmage. Whoever the best we can muster is.>>

<<How about Ellard Sheffield?>> suggests Dame Brionna.

They reach out to Princess Curinirim's general, who they have previously discussed hunting the shielded voller with, and they tell him that we have captured that voller but its captain, as it were, is still at large and that they hope to hunt him soon.

Shortly after they send these messages, the people who guard the area where teleports can arrive report to them that a very elegant elf in very, very expensive looking armor has appeared. They call for him to be sent in, and shortly thereafter he will come in wearing his battle armor, which of course is laen from head to foot.

"The possibility of killing him is tempting, though it would be a difficult task. He is a wily character. I would not trust it yet, but I'm here, Lord Davion."

"We must try. He's very powerful. He has not the power of his master, but he has been known to coerce powerful warriors into slime molds."

"A particularly gruesome fate for them. My Lord David, I am ready, when you are as well. I gather we are taking some other people with us?"

"Oh, we'll engage with them!"

"I believe I can at least protect myself," says Dame Brionna. "And this banner may aid us all."

"I could not deny you the right to do this combat. This fellow bedevils my mistress greatly, as I know he does your master. And you, Your Majesty, it is good to see you again."

The results of the Divination are delivered: "Worry not for the man, it is not given to you to kill him. Worry for the item, which is given to kill you later."

"So incapacitate the elf, and take the key," interprets Kit.

"And we can always hope that means that it's not our fate to kill him, but the Lord General's instead," says Dame Brionna.

"We must try," replies the Lord General with a grim half-smile.

"Lord General, I wish that I could accompany you," says Alistair, studiously ignoring the appalled reaction on the general's face that momentarily appears before it is smoothed out. "But please, listen to the song that I composed about this hunt." Alistair plays and sings, and because he is bolstering a Noldor and a Twilight Elf, he includes psionic flourishes in the song as well as magical ones.

When Alistair finishes the song, they applaud politely, and the general sends to Lord Davion, <<Remarkably close to proficient for the younger races.>>

<<Oh, yes, he's quite good, in my opinion.>>

Kit, of course, hears that clearly in her mind, and relays it with amusement over the mindlink. <<My lord Alistair will take that as the compliment it was intended as.>>

<<Really, if I can get close to what the elves consider adequate, that's a good day.>>

By this time, Dustin has gotten back to the castle, and they have gotten the signature from him.

"I still recognize it," says Lord Davion. "I wonder if this isn't a clone. Well, enough time for that later."

"As I believe we have mentioned to you before, we believe that it is."

"I think you believe correctly. Unfortunate. I wonder how many of them there are."

Lord Silverleaves projects a map into Kit's mind. "That's as far as I can follow him. The key vanished at that point. I think it must have been placed in lead."

"Well, he's still moving. He can't teleport with it. We know his location. Let's get some people to him."

"Let us go, and they will go to a teleporting area and follow the map at the same time."

<<Do we know how large it is?>> asks Alistair

<<Yes, a fairly small item, perhaps half a cubit in length, at most, some of them smaller, made of laen.>>

<<So that means that it has to be a fairly large lead casket, perhaps the size of a breadbox. We can have people locate object on the casket. Because a lead casket can still be located, even though you can't locate something within it.>>

They plan on organizing large numbers of priests, spread out in a search pattern--100 priests of the minimum power to Locate Object can cover a square mile, and they can move while detecting.

"It's very likely that the priests who end up closest to the elf will end up getting killed in the process," says Alistair. "But we'll try to raise them afterwards, and as soon as we find the object, the team can go after the object."

While they implement these plans, the sexton comes grumbling in.

"Your Most Imperial Majesty. I never hoped to see you. Which is not the same thing as saying, I hoped never to see you, but you know."

Alistair will, in a not particularly imposing way, reach out and take the sexton's hands in his own. "We thank you for your service to the Empire and the Church."

"Thank you, Your Majesty. They killed him, they did. My priest."

"We know."

"And they broke the speculum."

"Was there an object of crystal visible within the speculum?"

"Yes, Father thought it was an artifact of the Church."

"It is, in a sense."

Kit explains, "It was given to the Church as a gift, many generations again, and it was more powerful than anyone realized."

"Well, they stole it, they did."

"Yes, and we're working on getting it back. But anything you could tell us about it would be very helpful."

"On midwinter night, it would shine every year."

"Just at midwinter?"

"Just midwinter night. We thought that was the divine power of Glordiadel as the Sun began to return demonstrating preeminence." He struggles with the last word, but he gets it out. "There is one other thing. Sometimes, when the sick pray in front of the speculum, sometime they were healed, but there was always a change in them."

"What kind of change?"

"Well, I remember one man, crippled from birth, with a broken back when he was a baby, you know, what he does is he prayed earnestly for 30 days, and his back was healed. But he grew three feet-- he's the biggest man in the city! The others happened before my time. I've heard the story of an old lady, who could not walk, neither in town nor in field, 'cause of her feet, and then she could, but then she could not stop dancing for 10 weeks. That was before my time. Didn't happen often, but it's been happening for hundreds of years. We even got small numbers of pilgrims who came to pray in front of the speculum. It was good money for the parish, begging your pardon."

"Oh, quite understood." Alistair continues over the mindlink, <<That's all consistent with Goldurim-style redaction. Healing, but also changing and morphing things. And the changing and morphing things style of redaction is really what Goldurim is most famous for.>>

<> agrees Dame Brionna.

Kit sends a message to Lord Davion, checking whether Midwinters is a special day for the Noldor.

<<Nothing of importance, certainly nothing that I would expect to make a Noldor key glow. The legend is that it was stolen. I do not know why that would make it glow on Midwinters night.>>

<<There can't possibly be a Glordiadelian saint of Thievery, can there?>> asks Alistair.

<<Maybe there is now...>> adds Kit.

<>

<<Which may mean that it's a very good idea to have me along, frankly,>> adds Dame Brionna. <<Along with our navy, but...>>

"Your Eminence," Alistair says to the Archbishop, after they call him back in, "Would it be possible for you to travel to that that parish that you wish to go to now and also check, and you might do this yourself, or if you think there is someone who might be more suited, I think there may be a particular blessing of an unknown saint of Glordiadel at that parish. If you might be able to reach out and seek contact with the saint..."

"If you could give me a name, it would be most helpful."

Kit sends over the mindlink, <<I'm going to send some of my people to just sort of be around. Maybe it will recognize another thief who's working for a good cause. Some of my most devout thieves.>>

<<Ask around among the knowledgeable storytelling elders of the guild about whether there are any guild legends of a holy thief, or of a profoundly devout supremely masterful thief, from Canberry City.>>

<>

A little while later, Kit is told of a legend of a holy thief. They say that a few hundred years ago, there was the legendary three-eyed man. He was guild master for a while, then went off on a holy mission and when he returned, he dissolved. <<I'm trying to get more information on that but yes, his given name was Reuben. So, Reuben the Three-eyed Man.>>

After a little while, she has only a handful more details. When he returned, it is said that he dissolved, that he just fell apart into motes of light and disappeared.

<<That's sounds like ascension,>> says Dame Brionna.

<<Yes, it does, but one doesn't normally ascend just because they're a saint. So that might mean that his blessedness preserved him from, for example, traps or whathaveyou that would have killed a normal mortal so that he could finish out his last mission before dying.>>

<<Or he suffered some kind of harm when he was in Goldurim's domain.>>

<<Or indeed, that he may have died in the attempt, and then miraculously succeeded after his death. I think we have discovered St. Reuben the Three-Eyed.>>

<<Patron Saint of Righteous Thievery! This is really excellent,>> gushes Kit. <>

<<One suggests that it might be appropriate for you to endow a church or a chapel for him in Lyneham...>>

<>

<<And the other thing: the Third Eye.>> notes Dame Brionna. <<Suggests to me that he might have been psionic.>>

<<Even better. And that would help explain how he was able to survive in the Goldurim realm, and how he was able to find the key and hold on to it, if he was psionic and communicating with it.>>

<<If that's not simply that his third eye was open in the metaphoric sense, that also suggests that he may have not been entirely human.>>
[End Session 150]

CPaladin · Feb 18, 2023

Session 151 (January 19, 2023)

21 O-Tar (cont'd)
Alistair comments through the mindlink, <>

Dame Brionna immediately responds, <<You remember what happened the last time you went to a parish church.>>

<<Yes, I think I might be the right person for this job,>> adds Kit.

<>

<<So you would just go over to a place that just got attacked by incredibly powerful evil people.>>

<<We'd bring some guards,>> thinks Alistair sheepishly.

<<Guards or not, it's a given that your captain of the guard and your best bodyguard are going to be away doing something else.>>

<<Oh, very well, very well.>>

<<If any of us go,>> adds Kit, <>

<<Also, you're not the actual rogue, Your Majesty.>>

* * *

Dame Brionna flies along on her flying steed, carrying the War Banner of the Unconquerable Sun. Lord Silverleaves is flying above her on the vollers, along with a group of priests. The five vollers are spread out in a formation to allow them to most effectively search, while Lord Davion and the Curinirim general fly separately under their own power. They have flown for about an hour, slowly going west, when one of the priests abruptly screams, "I have a ping to that farm!"

They begin repositioning and preparing to approach the farm, when Dame Brionna, her steed, and the banner are suddenly perfectly encased in a globe. The globe is inwardly reflective, so the light from the banner is bouncing around inside with her like mad and not escaping.

<>

For perhaps a quarter of a minute, the light flashes around inside the globe before the globe reluctantly dissipates, apparently do to an effort by one of the great elves.

<<Now we know he's within about 400 yards,>> transmits Lord Davion.

Dame Brionna swoops down and begins reaching out, sensing for evil as the great elves levitate down towards the farm

The farm couple and their children have come out and are groveling on the ground on general principle. They have no idea why all of these vollers, paladins on flying horses with war banners, and great elves are here, but they assume it warrants groveling.

Meanwhile, the vollers are circling the farm, but not finding anything. Dame Brionna sends some of her ordinary paladins to get the family away, because this is not a good place for them. The moment he tells them to move, they move.

Suddenly, not far from the farm family, appears a tall figure with a muscular frame, eagle wings, a dog's face, and huge tusks. It immediately begins to move at great speed--faster than the vollers' top speed--away to the northwest.

The three great elves all begin flying after it, as fast as they can, while the vollers turn to pursue as well. <<That will have the box.>> pronounces Lord Davion. <<It's the fastest thing he has bound. He hopes to outrun us.>>

Lord Silverleaves starts in that direction, and then turns rapidly and parries with the laen rod he often carries. Dame Brionna can sense, even from where she is, the strength of the fanatic's attack that hits him, albeit partially deflected by his parry. Lord Silverleaves is a Farsensor, not a Coercer, and the attack is powerful enough to nearly breach his shields.

Dame Brionna can tell that the attack came from over near the farmhouse, not from the fleeing creature. She raises the Banner aloft and calls upon it's power to send a ball of blazing light, like a fireball but entirely radiant, at the area. The Banner's ball of light is as a 10th level caster, maximized and empowered.

The flash of light is considerable, and then flame begins to spread because of the heat associated with all that light. This at least momentarily frees Lord Silverleaves form the attack, so he can at least turn to face it.

Dame Brionna also sees, for just a moment, an elven shaped form in the light. As soon as the flash of light fades, he is gone again.

<<It's the Twilight Elf,>> thinks Kit.

One of the vollers turns and meaninglessly fires its powerbows into the air where he was. Its captain has decided that keeping everyone alive by engaging the biggest threat takes precedence. The rest of the group races on to the northwest after the daemon.

Lord Silverleaves broadcasts on declamatory mode, <<Surrender. There's always a way back to the West.>>

Dame Brionna is pretty sure that's a waste, but he tries anyway and they love and respect him for that.

A tremendous blast of psionic energy erupts against Lord Silverleaves and anyone within a 110 feet of him, catching the paladin who went to warn the family, though Dame Brionna hopes the family was clear. She looks and can see that they are clear and still running.

The paladin makes his saving throw, but even so, blood spurts from his ears and he collapses to the ground. Lord Silverleaves parries with that crystal rod again, as the rod glows brilliantly in the colors of the Guild of Farsensors.

<<I'm going to withdraw. I can't survive too many more of those,>> sends the Eldar.

<<Yes, keep yourself safe,>> responds Kit, still listening to the mindlink from the palace.

Meanwhile, Lord Davion and the General are catching up to the ossysodaemon. The ossysodaemon is shocked, because it moves really fast, but Lord Davion is somehow accelerating the two of them forward. The vollers are now falling behind--rare indeed that individuals can fly faster than vollers. It wears a massive coat with faces swimming about it--they see some drow and a couple of others. One of the faces suddenly vanishes as the two Noldor approach. It squares itself in regard to Princess Curinirim's general, and casts Harm on him. He saves, so only takes 90 points of damage. He unlimbers his laen sword and joins battle, while the creature draws a short halberd.

The creature has a 34 AC, but its Dexterity is limited by the small casket it carries under its arm. He wishes its master had allowed him to kill those farmers. The creature casts a quickened cloudkill, which the great elves shrug off, though large masses of passing birds and insects die. Lord Davion and the General hack at the creature, hitting 4 times each. The general does 113 damage, while Lord Davion does 185, smiting each time, killing the ossysodaemon by 1 hit point. It disappears in a burst of stinking oily smoke as it dissipates from this plane and goes back to Hades. The casket falls towards the ground, and Lord Davion throws a hawk from his menagerie at it, which catches the box as it falls towards the ground.

The throw is clearly lost, and recognizing this, the Twilight Elf can suddenly not be seen anymore. The grassfire started by the light ball is spreading and has now reached the house. Dame Brionna organizes her people to use overlapping detection spells to see if they can find anything, but they detect nothing.

Lord Davion sends a message on an intimate mode, <<Without the key, he can apport. Knowing that he had lost the key, he fled. He knew he could not stand against two of us. And your able assistance, of course. Hmm. The casket is very heavy, not from the lead I think.>>

<<To the cathedral, or to the palace with it?>> asks Dame Brionna.

<> replies Alistair.

<<Right, so we'll meet Dame Agatha and Princess Cecilia outside the palace.>>

<<Once they discovered where it lay, they will not let it be. They will make other attempts,>> warns the Curinirim general.

<>

<<Oh, yes, clearly it's been touched by the guy. There's no question.>>

Dame Brionna tries to keep her expression as neutral as possible--he is a very valuable ally, even if "the guy" is a sacrilegious way to refer to Glordiadel.

<<You absolutely should maintain it. We will never let Goldurim know where it is.>>

<<Thank you.>>

<<Lord Quinliart can only attempt to steal it. Lord Goldurim might be insane enough to appear with the entire House Goldurim fleet to reclaim it.>>

<<That is not something we need right now.>>

<<Or ever.>>

<<We thank you again for both your service and your discretion in this matter.>>

<<My lady,>> He sends with a nod of acknowledgment. <<As you know, the House of Curinirim and the House of Goldurim are not allies. The Princess is very pleased for you to regain this. Goldurim is better than Lord Quinliart, but only marginally. I also recommend you never use the key. No one can imagine what Lord Goldurim might have put in that niche.>> He then turns to Lord Davion. "Well, Davion, old chap, it's good to see you again after all these years."

"Yes, indeed."

"Do you ever intend to return?"

"No."

"I thought as much. The Princess wishes you well. And here's the west gate of the palace. Oh, what happened to the diabolist who was normally here?"

"I'm afraid she has passed to the Hells."

"Oh, yes, that does happen, doesn't it?" And he vanishes.

Lord Davion says, "He's not as well versed in human matters as I am."

"I gather, but very well versed in combat, and that was what was called for."

"Oh, yes, the princess has the best warrior in Curinirim in that regard. His psionics are a bit weak for a member of the Twilight Elves, but combat-wise, he's perfect."

"We were very grateful."

"You're carrying a lead box," says Princess Cecilia as she meets them at the entrance to the palace.

"Yes, we need you to look at the box carefully before we bring it inside."

She looks at it intently. "It's a lead box."

"I think she meant to look at what's within the box," says Dame Agatha, with a long-suffering tone.

"Oh! Why didn't she say so?"

"In order to examine it, we'll need the box opened."

Lord Davion steps to the side and then carefully opens the box with the tip of his laen blade. Inside is a sullen-looking crystal cylinder.

"Oh! It's attached to a planar niche. There's much gold in there, and also a small army. I'm not sure what they are... they are twisted and angry and want to get out. They're clearly not diabolic. No, they're the same substance as those awful people we've been fighting. Someone trapped them in there, and they can't get out."

"Would they be able to escape if we brought them inside our wards?"

"They can't get out," replies Princess Cecilia. "This is powerfully built. I've never seen anything like that. I don't know any mage that could do anything that even resembles this."

Lord Davion gives her a little side eye and says, "Indeed, no human mage could."

"Oh, yes, I don't know so much about the others."

"Is it also holy, though?"

"Yes, but the crystal is holy. What it's connected to is highly unholy. But the crystal is holy--it's filled with Glordiadel."

"What she means is 'infused,' Dame Brionna."

"Let's get it in the palace."

"Can we put it in the chapel, if it's holy?" suggests Lord Davion.

"Yes, let's put it chapel for now. But I would very much want the Archbishop and some experts from the See of Light, and some other experts from other disciplines, to take a look at this. And honestly, possibly the Reverend Mother of Gunnora, given that she knows more about these than any of us."

"Wouldn't be a bad idea," comments Lord Davion. "Now it's lighter. It became much lighter as soon as I passed the threshold to the palace. I think the crystal was trying to make itself heavier to prevent them from stealing it. Futilely, but nonetheless..."

They bring it to the chapel, and then summon people to examine it.

They also send out instructions to finish gathering a group of religious thieves. They are tempted to have them come into the palace to venerate the crystal object, but they decide that--even if the Guild is loyal to the Crown--they don't want a large group of thieves traipsing through the palace, examining its wards and protections, and seeing the location of an object that must be kept safe.
[cont'd]

CPaladin · Feb 20, 2023

[Session 151, cont'd]
Finally, the Council reassembles. Kit starts. "Remember how we were thinking of getting Lord Sheffield to help out? He's unavailable. He was murdered. He was on a voller heading south on imperial business, and he was murdered en route. The aide-de-camp to Major General Lord Overfifer, Dame Ingrid, is a Master-level Farsensor. She saw a vision that told her that he was murdered, but it was made to seem like a natural thing. The general says her visions are never wrong. The murderer is still on the voller." Kit suggests deputizing a group of about six people to investigate, and they make it happen. [Message attached.]

Dame Brionna has a report from Field Marshal Brightspan. [Attached] They now have enough food in the southlands. They still have a shortage of both troops and especially of clergy. Small groups of bounty hunters would also be welcome. Also, there are about 300 warlord skaven who have turned to Glordiadel, and Skarit, their leader, has offered to turn them into an irregular unit in return for both the ability to move their females and ratlings to a single location and a promise of religious service and training in growing grain and birth control.

The Council is of course happy to agree to that. But Skarit was formerly a champion of chaos, and has some severe body modifications--he burns with bluish, hellish flames that will kill anybody who is in close contact, and his eyes offer him limited precognition, but are liquid pools of black oil. He converted to Glordiadel, apparently assuming that these "gifts" would vanish, but they didn't, and are now actively trying to kill him. The clerics that have tried to remove them have stabilized him, but they can't cure him.

The Council agrees immediately that they must send both powerful priests and a powerful Redactor, since removing unwanted body modifications is most clearly a matter for Redaction. At the same time, they want the priest to take the lead, to reinforce loyalty to Glordiadel.

Dame Brionna says, "All of this makes me continue to think about the need to get more clergy of Glordiadel to the Southlands. Could we, perhaps, educate and ordain some of the newly-converted Sytryites who have seen the falsehood of the Blue Sun?"

"We could," responds Alistair.

Kit thinks for a moment. "I wonder, in that case, if it would be better to sort of do some reshuffling, because in the South we want people who are very secure in their faith, and who will be good at spreading it to the Skaven and to other new populations, and so we don't want brand new converts for that. So keep the until recently Sytryites closer to home, because we also want to keep an eye on anybody who had anything to do with Sytry, and shuffle the more experienced, more faithful to the South."

"And of course some of them are just returning to what I'll describe is orthodox Sytryism, and we can't really discourage that because of the Ecumenical Council," Alistair notes.

"Yes. But the ones who are gravitating towards Glordiadel, we can absolutely encourage that."

Dame Brionna stays focused on the logistical questions. "So what are the things that we really need to do to get a bunch more clergy, even of relatively low magical power, but with as much capability as possible down there?"

"We have had some plans to open a seminary in the South to train new priests. I think we need to make that happen," says Alistair, "but it's going to take a few years to really get going. The other thing I wonder is if we can establish a program to train up a large number of additional priests. What if we reached out to all of our churches in Canberry and other civilized areas, and suggested that any of their acolytes in their late teens, the sorts of people who might normally be going to seminary in a few years, could be ordained through an accelerated program. Perhaps one year of seminary training, then ordination as deacons, and then sent South with a plan that they would then be rotated through a full seminarian program down there. Then we can augment them with circuit-riding priests."

Kit says, "I like that. I was also thinking that we could find some people who could be accelerated through seminary--people who sort of work in clergy-adjacent professions, and who already know something about it."

"You know, we could make a push for a bunch of late-in-life ordinations. Retirees and grandparents and the like who had to pursue other matters in their adulthood but might feel a call now."

"So recruiting at both ends, my lord? Sounds like we want the people who mostly spend their time arranging the flowers of the church services and such."

"The other thing is that, historically, the Church has almost exclusively recruited men for formal ordination into the priesthood, and that means that there's likely a very significant number of women among the faithful who might well be interested in serving as priests but who never had the chance to demonstrate a vocation."

"Let's give them that opportunity," says Dame Brionna.

"Absolutely," agrees Kit.

Dame Brionna says, "I'm also looking at the list of our various orders. I know that the Brothers and Sisters of Time kind of owe us one."

"We also owe them quite a lot..." replies Alistair.

"I was wondering if the Society of Compassionate Workers might be particularly worth reaching out to, given our needs. Perhaps the Ever Virgin Sisterhood of the Archangel Tophiel, as well?"

"That's a healing order, of course," notes Alistair.

"Also the Brothers of Saint Dillygaff of the Fields, given what so many of the people the South need to relearn."

"They are, in a word, pastoral, not in the religious sense, but in the literal sense. An agricultural order."

"The South needs some agricultural know-how."

"Good, so we can recruit them and get some other siblings in there," says Kit. "That's what we need."

"That exhausts what I know of St. Diligaff, because he's not exactly the sort of saint that you hear a lot about in the chapels of the nobility."

"Maybe he's venerated more among the common folks, my lord."

"That's my point."

"What about the Society of Compassionate Workers?"

"They're monks. They are involved in directly being with the most traumatized and marginalized communities that they can find. They care for orphans, which is usually more done by nuns, but they care for orphans. They work side by side with people who have absolutely nothing. They educate people so that they have basic skills like how to write their names."

"So pretty perfect for running refugee camps."

"Yes, these are exactly the people we want helping out right now," agrees Kit.

"There's a specific order of Hospitalers of the Borderlands. What's that about?"

"Those will be specific to the Shadowline," explains Alistair. "That's a crusader order dedicated to holding the Shadowline. Believe me, when you are the illegitimate son of a high noble, you get certain hospitalers trying to persuade you that you would fit in well in their order. I would not have fit well in their order."

"No, you wouldn't have," says Kit with a laugh.

"What about the Order of Holy Comforters? How are they distinct from the Compassionate Workers?"

"They're more withdrawn. They're less likely to be out running a school, more likely to be praying for the comfort of the downtrodden in their abbeys."

"Well, that's all very well, but I think the Society of Compassionate Workers and the Brothers of St. Dilligaff are the people we really need to mobilize on this."

"And the Order of the Misty Dawn. They're a large order, so even though they're not exactly matched to the type of people they would be serving, they can do a lot of good."

"My lord, what about the Sisters of Purity? Are they problematically 'pure?'"

Kit answers. "The Halo's been keeping an eye on them for that very reason for a while. They so far have not proven to be problematically 'pure,' but it's very difficult to watch inside. Not impossible, but very difficult--they're a good-sized order, but not huge."

As they conclude the discussion, they send out requests to implement the main suggestions: calling on relevant orders for aid, and suggesting to the Archbishop that they implement both the accelerating young people and recruiting irregular older people into the clergy, especially women who may have been interested but not seen opportunities. The Archbishop strongly supports any idea that accelerates young people into religious service, given his own youth. He's starting to learn how to play the game.

* * *
The next thing they turn to is a general message to the Council about the ongoing Sytryan schism. [Attached.]

The Halo is still a work in progress, and mostly focused on Glordiadelian religious matters, so it has as yet developed little information on the Sytryan situation.

"Do we know where the anti-patriarch is based?" asks Alistair.

Kit says, "The Halo hasn't reported anything about that. But we might be able to figure it out."

"Let's start by asking Bishop Waters if he has any idea."

Father Waters attends on them. "Oddly, I don't, and I find it very difficult to consider his condition at the moment. And that's very odd, because I was taking notes on possibilities just a week ago."

"So they've done something, so we don't know," says Kit. "Bishop, you said you were taking notes. Do you still have them?"

"Oh, I'm sure I do. Let me go to my chambers. I'll return shortly." He departs and comes back 20 or 30 minutes later with a fairly complex set of notes. "These are my notes, but I can't quite make much of them," he says as he lays them down with a puzzled expression.

"If if you don't mind, Bishop Waters, may I look at those?"

"Oh, by all means," and he pass through the notes to Alistair.

Alistair in particular tries to see if this might be indicative of him being in the southern continent. But while he can read the first several pages, all of a sudden, as he's looking at them, the characters begin twisting and changing in front of him. The first several pages are perfectly clear, and it's very clear that he wrote the whole document very clearly, but the later pages can't be read.

Kit looks at the notes with her glasses of reading, and she can read the whole thing, but her glasses are putting out heat, which they've never done before.

"Something is trying to make this unreadable." As it starts to approach a temperature that would burn her, Kit quickly moves the glasses away. "Not the face!"

"We definitely don't want any injury to your lovely face," agrees Alistair, while Dame Brionna just rolls her eyes.

In the brief period of time before her eyebrows get too hot, she can see that there are records from orthodox clergy that the antipatriarch was moving with a group of chivalry loyal to him int a group of small, unoccupied islands to the east of the Magocracy of Purdun.

"What's there?" asks Dame Brionna.

"Yes, and also, what kind of power would it take to have this kind of effect?" asks Kit.

"Divine power, and not clerical," opines the Bishop. "Somehow it is interfering with people's ability to track him, apparently, and you're glasses were strong enough to get through it, because they are what they are, but apparently it has the side effect of producing increasing amounts of heat when you're looking at it."

Dame Brionna examines Kit's glasses, trying to determine the divine signature. After a moment, she says, "Elberith. The First Daughter. Not what I was expecting."

"That can't be the blocking effect, though. I didn't know that my glasses were elven work," says Kit.

"Neither did I, and I commissioned them! But then, I just asked the Minister of Magic to arrange it. Apparently, some elf got involved in the process."

"A good thing, too," adds Father Waters. "If they were purely human work, I think they would have melted on her face."

Dame Brionna then focuses on the papers, trying to sense the magic that's blocking or attempting to block her. As she looks at the divine signature, it lashes back at her. Not very well, but it does the best it can.

"Father Waters. Do you have the Detect Eldritch spell that we've been given prepared?"

"Yes. I have it memorized." The Bishop casts the spell. "Huh! It is eldritch, but overlain with the signature of the servants of Arthranax."

"Well, yes, that makes sense."

"Can you get this off my glasses so that I can use them again without burning my face?"

"Yes. I also memorize that other spell. If you just put them on that table..."

"Yes, assuming we've gotten all of the information that we need from them before they get cleaned off."

"Yes, let's not do it twice."

"The other interesting thing is that the wards don't appear to have triggered," comments Alistair.

They call for Lord Silverleaves to see if he can explain anything about it.

"Yes, that's because when we attempted to reach outside the wards, you created a conduit to attempt to find him. The energy follows the conduit back in. It's good that it won't be able to manifest beyond the object that's been affected. The more interesting thing is that the wards didn't trigger when the document began to change."

"Yes, that's what I meant," says Alistair.

"That's more complicated. That is strange, now that you say it. Very strange."

"We've seen things that affect people's knowledge of a thing or a person," muses Kit. "That's what's going on with the Usurper. Is this similar to that?"

"Yes."

"But that affected people's consciousness, not physical documents."

"True--but it may not have affected the document. Who saw the text change?"

"I did," says Alistair.

"Your Grace, if I might... This may be somewhat uncomfortable..." Lord Silverleaves plunges a mental probe in much more strongly than usual, and Alistair feels fingers riffling through his brain. "The block was set when you weren't in the palace. It is affecting your vision of the writing, not the writing itself. You must have traveled somewhere since he began this move. This is a domain level divine spell, backed by psionics to a certain degree. We wouldn't be able to get through it at all, except it's less powerful than it could be. I can remove it if you'd like; that will allow you to read it."

"I think that would be best." Alistair feels a series of things like someone pulling a hair out of his head, and the rest of the Council sees little pieces of energy pulled from his head and then explode.

"Do I have it, too?" asks Kit.

"Oh, yes." Lord Silverleaves proceeds to remove the same sort of energy from her.

"I was the only one of us who went to the to Holy Cortose..." says Alistair.

"I was trying to figure that out," comments Dame Brionna.

"Have you been in mental contact?"

"We're always in mental contact."

"Contagion. It's an old magical principle," Bishop Water says.

"Indeed, anyone who has been in mental contact with you could get the same exposure." He turns to Dame Brionna. "I suppose it's inappropriate for me to apologize to you for the discomfort--code of a paladin and all that--so I apologize to the rest of you for the discomfort you will feel." A few seconds later, he speaks again. "There, you're all free of it, and if you don't mind, I'd like a cup of tea, that's more work than I expected."

"Oh, of course."

"Oh, and you should check young Lord Brightspan as well, because he is fairly often in psionic contact with one of us."

"Oh, dear! It's going to be more disturbing for a child. I'm sorry."

"Thank you. That felt like they were spiders running around in my brain."

"So sorry."

"Well done," commends Kit. "You were very brave."

"Is there anyone else who might have been exposed to the contagion?"

"Or anyone that goes with you when you went there. They won't have been exposed by contagion."

"Oh, check Jamie," Kit exclaims. "He's always playing around with psionics. Not that he can read, but I don't want anything interfering with his brain."

"He may have been able to protect himself, but it's it's wise to check."

Lord Silverleaves examines him. "He is safe, but he is on guard. Not a bad place for someone at this age, but surprisingly so."

"Can we help him bring his guard down?" asks Kit. "I'm worried if he's feeling threatened."

"How extensive is his vocabulary?" asks Lord Silverleaves. "I can try to reason with him, but it's probably better than you do."

"He doesn't have a vocabulary," responds Alistair. "He's an infant."

"He doesn't have words. He wants things, and he feels things, and that's really all."

"Oh, I apologize, Lady Lyneham. I'm afraid that would be completely beyond my ability."

"Alright. I'll just keep him calm and cared for, and we'll keep an eye on it."

"It may pass with time."

"I'm glad that thing didn't get in his head."

"He will be very powerful--much more so than a normal human child."

"Yes, that's his special destiny," Kit responds, though her opinion of that isn't entirely clear. "Lots of blessings. Not looking forward to when he's a toddler or a teenager and in a bad mood."

"And pre-born blessings, at that. Threshold will be dangerous for him."

"Well keep an eye on it to make sure that he comes through it safely."

"The only other person who was in Holy Cortose with me was Lord Davion. He will have been exposed, but I would presume he will been able to protect himself. I'm somewhat surprised he didn't notice."

"Oh, it's not his field. This is not Coercion. This is a form of Redaction, but it's mixed with divine power, which is why I could undo it. It may be that this is not Lord Quinliart himself. He is primarily a Coercer--incredibly powerful, but not a Redactor."

"Can I ask a potentially awkward question about shall I say your distant kin?" asks Alistair.

"Yes, of course."

"I have been told that there are reasons to think Lord Goldurim has done things that would ordinarily be unthinkable for a great elf of any kind."

"Yes, we're all aware of this."

"And if I recall correctly, Lord Goldurim was also the one who personally went through the gate to the enemy's planes, and drove something back, in the last incursion."

"That's correct. He's very powerful, very formidable."

"And my understanding is that his house is the master house of Redaction on their side."

"Yes, exactly."

"Ought we to be worried about the possibility that Lord Goldurim's madness is a sign that he was corrupted by that experience? Corrupted, not in the sense of his obvious corruption, but in the sense of insidious alteration of the Eldritch?"

"Our Overqueen has been concerned about that for several millennia, since before I came to Singing Leaves. She has been concerned he might well have been changed by that experience. He did not become utterly corrupt, as their servants are. But he may have been changed into something far closer to them. He was too strong a lord to have yielded to them and to become one of them. But she did not believe he was too strong to have been changed. If he were the face of the enemy, I fear we would be doomed. But he is also never, even to my other cousins, a friend, and the world he would make if he were ever in a position to make the world... It would still exist, which is not true with the enemy, but it would be horrible beyond anyone's comprehension. I would not worry as long as the Houses of Aufaulgautharim and Curinirim still stand. They will not permit it. If he remains when they are gone, he might make a play. The other Houses know they're not capable of opposing him."

"We've also worried that should both of those houses pass before him, he might launch a final kinslaying and carry it to the end."

"Very likely, and for that he could get the other great Houses that remained to back him. The greater danger, however, is that he outlasts all of us, and remains with only your people."

"I assume that the only thing that could cause him to leave other than for some similarly powerful figure to battle him would be if he chose to pass on."

"Yes. Even the Bleeding Lady of whom you may have heard, when her rage and hatred are exhausted, there will come a time when she will be able to pass to the West unhindered. Her rage apparently is justified. I've done research on that. Her husband was slain and by ambush. Despite attempting to surrender, when it was clear that the ambush had defeated him, he was slain, and she was left alone. And so she rages and hates, but even so, she will be able to go to the West. With Lord Goldorim, and with the atrocities he has committed in his madness, the Brothers will reject him utterly."

"I had thought that some of the Noldor went to the East to be with Morgroth. Is that also foreclosed to him?"

"That is the choice for some of those who follow Morgroth. But even Morgroth would not receive Lord Goldurim at this point, and Goldurim will never seek a human god. There are some of them that would receive him. The Eldritch chaos that you struggle against would certainly receive him, as would Borsh'tro or the like. But he knows that they fear him, and he is contemptuous of them. He would not demean himself to serve such as they."

"Given enough time, he might well be like unto a god of chaos himself."

"Oh, that is very possible. Indeed, if he cannot be killed, that might be our best hope. Because if he ascends, he will not conquer this plane, but just become locked in conflict with the other gods. He would be one more like the others."

"When that's the hope, I don't... wow," Alistair peters off.

"I really feel like killing him might be easier," says Dame Brionna.

"Now that we can read these notes without them changing," Lord Silverleaves says as he finishes sipping his tea, "What do we make of them?"

They remind Lord Silverleaves to cure anyone else who might have been infected--especially Lord Davion, who as it turns out didn't notice the attack and therefore didn't prevent it.

The notes indicate that the antipatriarch is in the archipelago of islands or atolls near the Empire of Tarhanna. The islands are largely between Tarhanna and the Confederacy of the Inner Isles, but sufficiently small that most maps don't show them at all, and if they are occupied, Canberry has no records of it.

"A reasonable place to set up the head of your faith, if you're weird Eldritch island ocean people," comments Dame Brionna. "What are our relations like with the nearby lands?"

"What's left of the Magocracy of Purdun is basically friendly. They are mostly Glordiadelian. Much of the Magocracy was destroyed in the intaking--essentially all of its mainland holdings. Tarhanna is a major maritime empire. They're one of the principal trading empires anywhere, and also Glordiadelian. We spoke with their emperor at the Archbaroness's funeral. I think some distant relatives of mine have lived there. If I remember correctly, there was some branch that ran off to Tarhanna and became privateers or whatnot. They also lost some coastal territories on the Khamista mainland, but now they are only on the islands. They have a largest merchant fleets in the world, and also a large surface navy to protect them, and most people, even people who would ordinarily attack those merchant ships, will respect the Tarhannan flag because of the understanding that Tarhanna will stop at nothing to defend its merchant marine. They apparently believe in ruling the seas, or something like that.

"The third nation in that area is the Confederacy of the Inner Isles. That's the Black Witch's domain-- a matriarchal color-linked magocracy. It is Paranswarmian, and the Black Witch herself is loyal to Paranswarm, and therefore part of the cause of of fighting the enemy. But, on the other hand, the primary industry of the inner isles is piracy, and a substantial portion of what they import is slaves. So they're not so much what you would call pleasant. I believe that they raid essentially entirely westerly because of understanding that they are far too close to Tarhanna to pick a fight. They may also raid Purdun a little bit. I don't know. And I I think they have very bad blood with Tarsh in the same way that the White Witch does, particularly since they find Tarsh very easy to raid. They do not stick completely to traditional piracy. It's not unknown for them to sail a small fleet into a small port or a large fishing village and blast the Hades out of their defenses, land, take what they want and leave, including possibly engaging in slaving. They're not nice people."

"Not that even not nice people deserve to be consumed by Eldritch horrors, but..." Dame Brionna can't muster more than the barest sympathy for them.

"Fortuitously, many of their principal victims are other Paranswarmians."

"But as evil as they are, those people don't sound like they would be complicit in this kind of plot," observes Kit.

"No, I wouldn't think so. I would be very surprised if the Black Witch would have anything to do with with this, and also Sytryites would in general hate them. She might well also be from the parts of the Paranswarmian tradition that would be happy to toss any Sytryites they got their hands on onto a pile of burning stuff. Which, honestly, is also a reason we might talk to them about the antipatriarch being on islands just to their east."

"But only the Blue Star folks. Ideally, those that can be would be redeemed," says Dame Brionna.

"It's hard to imagine that the Black Witch would not think that that was a great opportunity to settle some old scores assuming that she didn't get the mind infection thing. But I don't quite see how this serves the goals of the schismatic Sytryites."

"Are there Sytryites in Purdun and Tarhanna?"

"They're all notionally Glordiadelian, but I'm sure that they all have significant Sytryite minorities. We know Tarhanna is roughly a third Sytryite."

"Great," mutters Kit. "But if the Tarhannans have ships that go everywhere, and that pride themselves on keeping the peace and defending things, they sound like people that we can recruit to go look for a stronghold of badness."

"I suppose that this indicates fairly clearly that the antipatriarch is himself corrupted."

"I think there's no reason to suddenly move your location with the Eldritch if you're not," observes Dame Brionna.

"Right. Schisms can happen without massive corruption. I think that in our own period of the Three Patriarchs in our faith, the conclusion was that one was a true patriarch, and one was fallen or something, and the other was deceived. I don't remember exactly, but these things can happen. But I agree that here, it's probably not just an innocent error or deception. So, do we want to reach out to Tarhanna about it?"

"Yes, let's get them looking for it, and warn them not to engage," agrees Kit.

"We don't have an embassy. We spoke with the Emperor, but we've never had an embassy because Canberry has no ports. But to be fair, the Empire now has ports."

"Which is actually an excellent excuse to talk to them. Now that we have a port we can open up an embassy there. So let's talk to somebody from Tarhanna, and while we are, in the neighborhood, ask them about this. Do our clergy have contact with their clergy?"

"No doubt, but regular contact will take long periods of time, going back and forth. They are almost exactly on the opposite side of the planet from us."

"Sendings?"

"They would have to know the person they're sending to directly. Presumably, our various vassal states that have significant ports, like, for example, Tang, would have embassies. That means that they would likely have places to which we could teleport in the Tarhannan capital, where they could then make appropriate diplomatic introductions. I think Tang may be the best possibility. It's a large country, it has many ports, and it's solidly aligned as part of the Empire. Their ambassador can then escort an imperial ambassador, who is teleported in to meet with the Emperor and announce a desire to open a new embassy. I don't think that we can rush this too much."

"Yes, but I don't think we need to," replies Kit. "We want to get in done, but I don't think there's a fast ticking clock."

"Agreed, and the other thing is that the antipatriarch is currently positioned in a place where you would expect him to be safe, but weak."

"So you think it's possible that he's not making an offensive move," comments Dame Brionna.

"Right. Normally, you'd want to be building your power base."

"This seems more defensive."

"It's possible that they have deeply running ties within Tarhanna and Purdun, but that's something we need to know."

They decide to set this in motion, and then have to figure out who to send as an ambassador. It has to be a Glordiadelian, and should probably be a mage who can teleport there. An obdurate mage, immune to psionics, would be perfect, but they do not have any.

"They're fairly rare," notes Kit, "and we may have some and not know it, because psionics were not a thing that we tested for reliably until recently."

They then decide to ask the Minister of Magic if he has recommendations for mages capable of teleporting who would be resistant to psionics, and obviously they need to be someone who is of sufficient social standing and who is good at diplomatic matters. They also confirm that, while the Eldritch cannot teleport across oceans, humans who are not aligned with the Eldritch can without difficulty--likely because the Utter Mother, the Glordiadelian goddess of the sea, won't let them.

The Minister says, "He's not highly seasoned, but there is a young magus that I have in mind that I think could fulfill those things. Not from noble birth."

"That's not essential, but what is his background?"

"Common town boy in Grimcliff. He's been with us since his parents began to realize that... well, he read, and that disturbed them. So they brought him to a local magus, and he was able to verify that he was capable. And so they turned him over, and he's been with us ever since."

"How old is he now?" Kit asks, taking the lead on questioning the Minister about him.

"Oh, he's 19. He's young, but he's socially competent."

"What about him makes you think that he's the right person for this job?"

"He also has some mild psionics. What are they called, wild talents? Two of them. [The Minister mentions one, but my notes were garbled.]"

"What's the other?"

"I don't know what the second talent is, I'm afraid, but we know he has two. We had him examined by the Minister of the Mind, but I believe that it's not possible for him to fully learn psionics-- too late, too old, too something or other. But that's what he has, and those can't possibly be bad for ambassador. And he is socially capable--he's just not from a noble background. I don't know. I thought those things could matter with diplomacy."

"They can. I don't know how much Tarhanna would care."

"A good man. I think he's the right answer. I think you'll be pleased. He's very loyal, incredibly loyal."

Kit asks her people about how much Tarhanna will likely care about nobility of birth and reports back. "Actually, someone from a merchant family, from a decent size city, might actually be the kind of person that they respect."

"That does mean that he needs to look like he comes from money."

"Yes."

"Even if he personally doesn't, he needs to be projecting that we are a rich empire, which, of course, we are, so it's not hard for us to arrange that. And that also means he needs an actually rich merchant as a trade attache, and his entourage should be larger than might be expected, with a substantial number of personal servants and the like. Fortunately, Tarhanna does not have slaves, so that is good."

"And those personal servants can include some Toes..." adds Kit.
[End Session 151]

CPaladin · Feb 23, 2023

Session 152 (January 26, 2023)

22 O-Tar
The Council gathers for their morning working meeting. Both Kit and Dame Brionna have letters, both of which they consider important but not time sensitive.

Dame Brionna has a report [Attached] from the Ecsillian Archbaronial Guard that they have captured a pair of Hanalian agents, sent out by the Usurper, trying to destabilize things. They have sent out many other agents, especially in the Southlands, including reaching out to warlord Skaven clans and Clan Pestilence to try to reach an agreement and to hire them.

The Council talks about trying to identify more people with the gift of true sight. Reaching out to vassals hasn't produced much of anything. They decide to push the church networks, using parish priests to try to identify children with an odd touch or who can always guess people's secrets.

They also discuss the importance of engaging in diplomacy with the skaven. Some of the skaven are naturally merging into the new South Kingdoms, but there's still an important need to draw in more of the warlord clans to pacify them and to spread the worship of Glordiadel and Gunnora to them.

The skaven are largely impressed by anything shiny, which makes it easy to see how to build up the prestige of skaven leaders that associate with the Empire. They decide to send titles, coronets with eternal fire effects on them, and mithril swords to the skaven that are loyal. Coronets with eternal fire effects should be the shiniest of shinies, and mithril swords will both be extra-shiny weapons and actually materially superior to the weapons of others. All told, it should both strengthen the positions of the skaven who have declared loyalty to the Empire, and simultaneously give them reasons to be even more loyal.

The Council also decides to push more counterintelligence efforts to try to catch the agents of the Usurper, with a particular awareness that the refugees need to be supported at the same time as they will surely include infiltrators.

Kit also has a message saying that we're very short on fingers and also, to a lesser degree, toes. [Attached] Arms and fingers tend to be domestic--she has received some reports on them, but doesn't have much coverage. Now that they have more domestic areas to cover, they need a lot more. Kit suggests promoting the existing ones and instructing them to recruit more fingers to replace them. They also need more budget.

"How large is the orphan population in the Southlands?" asks Dame Brionna.

"Huge. Roughly half overall, about a third of whom have no family at all."

"What about recruiting some of the scrappy teen-agers? Not children, mind you, but the sorts of young adults who would be apprenticing for trades, if there were trades."

Kit also suggests recruiting some peddlers and traveling merchants.

There will also surely be opportunities for the Naughty Bits to gain some coverage, although perhaps less so than usual in frontier contexts because of the gender skew. Still, they figure that some of the traveling entertainers and peddlers and the like will probably double by providing companionship in the villages they pass through, and those will make particularly useful agents for the Body.

There are also many grandmothers and the like, and Kit decides to make sure they recruit tons of old ladies in the South--they go everywhere, know everything, and no one is surprised if they were gossiping (if they noticed at all).

Kit also plans on talking to the Guild leaders. There are surely some rogues who could do more good working for the Body than in the Guild. Also, with the rapid expansion of the Empire, it is necessary to take stock of Guild operations in newly incorporated sections of the Empire. Some of those Guilds are likely not tolerable and useful, in the way that Canberry's is, and many of them may not have the special relationship with the Body (and explicit loyalty to the Archduke) that Canberry's has. The Guild of Canberry will need to take a leading role in making sure that the rest of the Guilds are loyal and understand their role, and to crush and replace any that are instead threats to the Empire or too oppressive to the populace. [delegated to email]

* * *
The Council then identifies three tasks to follow up on: Talking to the senior midwife of Gunnora; Kit and Saint Reuben; and finding out whether they have anything from the voller overflight of the Great Mine.

Kit travels down to the church that used to hold the key. There is a new priest there, who has not been fully filled in, and he's quite befuddled. Kit begins explaining why there are many very sincere but sketchy people coming there.

"I think the people have realized that this church is special to one of their own, who has now taken his place in Glordiadel's heavenly service. There was a relic here for many years."

"I'm pleased to hear that, my lady. And you are here to pray here also?"

"Yes, to venerate Saint Reuben."

"There are no formal prayers for Saint Reuben. I think he must be Blessed, I don't think he's been formally sainted. I can't find any record of him in the official lists of the Church. Still, if he was holy and a loyal servant of Glordiadel, it's all to the good to have him be venerated."

People have moved kneelers over to the front, so they can get as close to the speculum where the relic was. The speculum is glowing nicely, which may be part of why the priest is discombobulated. As Kit reaches out psionically to the speculum, she touches a weak, glittering presence of Light. She feels a feeling of warmth--it makes her feel like she's been blessed. She also notices that all of a sudden, a pouch on one of the rogues briefly glows, and then the glow fades. She thinks his tools have been blessed.

Kit asks the priest who that guy is, but the priest doesn't know his name. She asks around, and finds out that it is Ronald the Deft. She also asks that anyone who feels a blessing or who encounters unusual success after praying to the Blessed Reuben pass the word up the Guild to her.

She then heads back to the palace, making a substantial donation at the poor box on the way out, and returns to the palace. She then goes to the chapel, and prays to the saint again at the key. She receives an unambiguous blessing ("Your fingers tingle and your rogue skills are increased by +4 for a full 24 hours. In addition to the much more clear blessing: You are not sure what the other blessing did - but I do

"). When she reaches out to the relic psionically, it seems cold--entirely sealed off, like a wall. She suspects that that's deliberate. But it still has some of the touch that she associates with the Blessed Reuben about it. She decides to attend services at the chapel more regularly, and to devote some of her prayers to and through the Blessed Reuben.

Alistair also sends a formal letter to the Archbishop informing him of credible reports of miracles by an unknown saint, with a small following for the Blessed Reuben. He asks him to formally begin proceedings to determine if the saint should be recognized by the church.

They are also amused to know that that parish will become the parish where all the members of the Guild go, even the mostly irreligious members but especially all the pious ones. That also means that it will suddenly find itself with ample financial resources to care for the poor and needy of the parish, even if the parish priest can never quite figure out how his parishioners find the wealth to be as generous as they are.

* * *
A guard reports that the voller that was sent to overfly the Great Mine has returned; that it was listing badly, but still flying; and the captain will report shortly.

Before too much longer, the captain stomps in, with a bandage on his left shoulder.

"Imperial Majesty. We have completed the overflight. Despite maintaining altitude, something down there hit us with one blast. We rose, and there were no more blasts, but a half-dozen creatures flew up to engage us. We fought them off with the help of the two paladins and the priest that Dame Brionna sent with us. They were instrumental in the defense of the ship-- we would have lost it without them. The officers and crew can fight, but not like that.

"It is clearly active, and the mine is open. I could see that one of the seals still existed, but had been broken. And there are people in and out in substantial numbers. I will also say that when we were at a greater angle, they vanished, and it looked like an abandoned mine again. Now, that leaves me uncertain as to whether they were an illusion, and it is abandoned except for spirits, or whether the appearance of the mine as still abandoned is an illusion to cover what they're doing there."

"I bet it's that second one," says Kit.

"Especially because something definitely attacked you and then sent additional attackers after you," adds Dame Brionna.

"That was also my guess, but I don't want to discount the other possibilities, and the mage, while he was incredibly helpful, was unable to break the illusion, whatever it was, because of our range. We could have gotten closer by landing, but I was afraid, frankly, that the damage to the voller was sufficient that if I landed or came close to landing, I might not be able to get the lift boxes to work again and get us back aloft."

"No, you did just as you should have. We needed this report to to come back, and we thank you."

Dame Brionna says, "We will need to send a separate squad of people to your ship before anyone disembarks to make sure that the other creatures who attacked you have not tainted anyone."

The captain looks very concerned. "I've left my ship."

"Well, yes, we'll need to check you as well. Everyone else should stay on it until they have been cleared."

"I have not given them liberty, so they will remain there until someone does."

"And I will set a squad to go examine them."

Alistair calls in young Lord Brightspan to take that message for Dame Brionna, thus ensuring that he'll be able to check the captain.

Young Lord Brightspan looks at Kit significantly as he gets the message. Kit immediately adds him to the mindlink, while Dame Brionna discreetly steps between the captain and Alistair.

<<He's not tainted, but he will be dead within a day if someone doesn't remove that poison.>>

"Let's see if Bishop Waters can minister to your wound while we continue discussing matters," suggests Alistair.

"Oh, thank you, Your Majesty, but it's not anything I haven't felt before."

Kit sends, <<Yeah, I kind of think it is something he has never felt before...>>

"Can you describe the flying creatures, or draw them?" asks Alistair.

"I could draw one of them. I don't quite know how to just describe them. They were like nothing I had ever seen before."

They hand him a piece of paper and some pencils.

He draws what looks to be a relative of a vrock. They're not the same, but they have a similar look, with vulture like head and features, though the wings are leathery, not feathered, and the body is much smaller. He draws the ship for scale as well. "My men had a devil of a time hitting them, but your cleric didn't, nor your paladin."

"Unholy creatures, then," says Dame Brionna. "That makes sense."

"I struck one of them."

"Did your weapon leave a wound?"

"Not as large as I expected, but yes. I think their flesh must be very dense. My sword has been blessed by the Church, though."

"That's why you were able to hit," says Kit.

"But even then resistant," comments Alistair. He pulls out an elven codex with pictures and drawings of some pterodactyl like creatures that fly over the eldritch islands. "Can you look at these pictures? Are they what you saw?"

"Maybe they are, actually. My drawing isn't perfect. This is from an actual artist. I think so, Your Majesty, he's just better at drawing than me."

The Council does their own comparison between the pictures, and agrees that they look like efforts to draw the same thing.

"The other thing we've been told about are corrupted griffins, but these don't look like that at all, right?"

"Oh, no, I know griffins. Once in a while, if you're carrying live stock, they'll come after it, you know. These weren't griffins, not even griffins that had been changed. I've never seen these things before."

"That's the first report we've had of these things inland in this incursion," comments Alistair with concern.

"And it also eliminates any doubt about who this is that has reopened the Mine," adds Dame Brionna.

"Did you see any structures on the ground when you were when you were able to see the broken seal and so forth? Were they building anything or just working on the mine?"

"Looked like there was a fortification in front of the mine mouth."

"Do you have any estimates on the number of people that there might have been in the operation?"

"We saw over 50, coming and going. Don't know how many there were in the mine itself, though."

"Over 50... but you didn't see dwellings for more than however many could fit in the fortification?"

"For a few hundred, perhaps, without cramming. But no, I didn't see any dwellings besides the fortification. At least, not outside the mine itself."

"But the fortification couldn't hold thousands."

"No. Even slaves need more room than that. Oh, we did see a small bevy of slaves being taken in. Shame they were too far away for us to do anything. They arrived in wagons."

"That, we could track," comments Dame Brionna.

"Didn't look like any of the wagons around here, though."

"How were they different?" asks Kit.

"They weren't as well built. Even farmers have good wagons here. We're a successful nation. These were barely holding together. They were shoddy."

"Did they look like they were old and wearing out or new and poorly built?"

"Just poorly built. It's real important to build them right when you start-- my brother-in-law is a carpenter."

"Did you see the teamsters at all?" asks Alistair. "Were they humans?"

"They were not. Not sure what exactly they were, but orks or some form of ork-kind, I would think."

Alistair turns to his councillors. "The other thing that's interesting about those slavers is they can't possibly be the Aragoni. They would never tolerate ramshackle wagons."

Dame Brionna scowls. "I hate that the reason we don't think it's that other bad group that we know about is because they wouldn't tolerate low-quality wagons in their slaving operations."

"My starting assumption was that maybe they were dealing with the Aragoni, and then I thought, they would use high-quality slave wagons. Even if it were orks or uruks following the Aragoni, instead of drow or the like, if they had wagons like he's describing, the Aragoni would make an example out of them and destroy them."

"Right," agrees Kit. "But that also means that they are limited in the skills and resources that they have."

"We knew that there were some orks that were traveling farther north to the old caves, and so they may have fallen in with this group. But the other thing is, that implies that tons of people are dying in this operation, because there's not nearly enough people there to account for the people we know have gone there. And if they're also bringing in slaves, presumably doing some of the unskilled labor..."

"That's what makes me think that there's a high death rate," says Kit. "I don't think there were only 50 people--I think there were probably a lot more than that in the mine itself and not seen."

"I'm sure. But trying to persuade stone masons that they should live underground as opposed to building proper homes and then traveling into the mine for the day, and then coming out, would be a hard task."

"It doesn't seem like they're caring much about the quality of the accommodation for anyone here," replies Dame Brionna.

"No, but that's part of my point. They are doing things that would require them to be maintaining fear and oppression the whole time if they're forcing them to stay underground the whole time. They started with people who traveled there because they're being paid a lot of money to work on a project, no questions asked. Those are going to be people who are perfectly willing to go underground and haul things out and work with some weird monster standing nearby. But you start telling them that they can't ever come back to the surface, and now they're going to revolt. So, either they don't care, or they are letting them back to the surface, or the people just don't last very long. It seems more likely to me that as each group arrives, the older people there warn them that things can get dangerous down there, but they live on the surface, until they die as well."

"The first thing we really need to do then is to really cut off the supply of stone masons," says Dame Brionna. "I know we've done some work on that, but we need to tighten it up."

"The other thing is if we have slavers who are traveling out and traveling back in, then we have people we can grab and squeeze for intelligence."

"They might be going to the Underdark, but even so."

"But these ones were arriving in wagons from the surface, right? And from the underdark they would they would hit the drow, who know that this area is forbidden. So let's start with the surface slavers. We need to talk to the mason's guilds and get them to send out an alert warning people off from this. Kit, maybe you could do that through your dad."

"That's what I was thinking."

"And then follow the slavers. I don't know if aerial patrols can do this effectively. I think we need to put boots on the ground--let's say 10 or 20 miles away, close enough in that they can patrol and catch them, but far enough out that they're not going to get spotted by the establishment itself."

"Pretty good duty," notes Dame Brionna .We can use that to give some practical experience to some of the new troops we're trying to train up."

"It sounds like the sort of thing that a full legion is probably overkill on, but it might be good to have some backup. Especially because we really do want them to make a clean grab, because we don't want anyone escaping and bringing word back that our troops are on the ground."

"We need to also work to cut off any stone masons coming in as well."

"A thousand troops isn't enough to maintain a cordon, but it'll still do something."

Dame Brionna turns back to the captain. "Can you describe the blast at all?"

"It was like a yellow ray with a glob of yellow mucus on the end."

"Yuck, that's gross," says Kit.

"That doesn't sound anything like a death lance. Those just shoot a purple light beam. It's not totally dissimilar to energy lances--those throw a pure white ball of energy with a trail of energy behind it. So this could be something like a corrupted or eldritch version of an energy lance."

Shortly thereafter, Father Waters enters. "Your Grace."

"This man appears to have been poisoned. Please cure him if you can, and also let us know what the poison is, if at all possible, and if not, we need to know what other help he needs. He was struck by a creature of the Eldritch."

"Ah. Let me see." He sniffs at the wound and looks at the discoloration. "I'm familiar with this poison. It's a magnified form of a forest spider venom. It's good that you called for me, Your Majesty, it would have stopped his heart within hours. A painless way to go, but not desirable. I can neutralize it easily. They must have been dipping their weapons in it."

"Claws, actually."

"That doesn't sound like a common sort of poison," notes Kit.

"No, an alchemist would have to do the work of concentrating it."

"So that's a question. Do they have an alchemist there to fashion them a weapon? Is the venom rare?"

"Rare? No. But it's not normally enough to be used to poison weapons or claws. That's what would take the work concentrating it and building up enough of a supply."

"They must have a lot of it if they're dipping claws in it. We'll need to check everyone else on the voller--anyone else who has wounds might be poisoned, and even a scratch could be deadly."

"That's another supply that they'll be getting in, though," notes Kit, "And so another another weak point that can be leaned on."

"I had no difficulty curing the poison. However, the wounds did not respond to my spells. Perhaps they could be treated by a Redactor. I had already heard about wounds made by the Eldritch that shrug off attempts at healing, at least by priests."

"That's going to be devastating if we are dealing with more of them," comments Dame Brionna.

"Is that something that we can modify our healing magic to counteract or something like that? In the same way that the priests of Morgrath were able to develop the detection magics that were customized for the Eldritch, can we develop healing magics customized for this as well? It offends me that Glordiadel's healing magic not be able to heal their wounds."

"We can certainly experiment with the healing. The Morgrathian Mother of Death for the continent developed her modified spells through experimentation. I can try experimenting with the injured.

"And, Captain, would you be willing? I certainly will not order you to participate in such a process, but..."

"I serve the Empire."

"We thank you."

"And if the wound needs to be healed and the experimentation is not proceeding fast enough, make sure that he gets proper Redaction."

"Very good, Your Majesty. Come along!"

"And Bishop Waters, if you could coordinate with Dame Brionna's squad, to make sure that all the rest of the people on the voller have been taken care of?"

"Of course."

Somewhat later, they receive a report back: Except for the paladins, everyone on the ship who was wounded has the same unhealable wounds. The paladins appear to be immune to that effect.

"That's interesting. A paladin's primary immunity is an immunity to disease, which includes magical diseases..." muses Alistair. "That makes me wonder if the application of of a remove disease effect would then allow for normal healing. I'll share that idea with Bishop Waters."

"And if it is a disease, then we need to make sure that there aren't other effects besides the obvious effect on healing," says Dame Brionna.

Bishop Waters reports back in a few hours. "An adequately powerful cure disease allows the wounds to be healed. I was able to do so. And at my suggestion, the canon who was directing the priests on the ship was able to do so. However, a regular priest who had only recently been gifted with cure disease had no effect."

"I didn't think that cure disease varied that way," comments Kit. "I thought it was either you could do it, or you couldn't."

"It usually doesn't."

"Are there any other diseases that react this way to priests of different degrees of experience?"

"There aren't all that many diseases to be cured, because the Divine Compact limits disease to a three-day spread. But there is one example I can think of. Diseases spread by Clan Pestilence of the Skaven have the same effect, where lesser priests cannot cure it but the most talented and blessed of healers can."

"Oh, that's very interesting!" exclaims Kit.

"Do we know if the Horned Rat is formally part of this group working with the Eldritch?" asks Dame Brionna.

"We know that the Horned Rat was driven by them into flight from his world to here," responds the Bishop.

"So the Horned Rat should be opposed to Eldritch," says Kit.

"He has actually provided intelligence to the Ecumenical Council."

"But that could just be a trait of some diseases from the place that they both came from," reasons Kit. "So, not necessarily that it's the Horned Rat who is involved with this particular disease. But that that's a traditional disease from that place."

"We can talk with the midwife of Gunnora, and she may know more about that," suggests Alistair. "We'll have to inform our various allies about this as well. Do we want to to talk with Princess Curinirim about this? She was also sending a voller to do an overflight."

"Yes, let's see what they found," replies Dame Brionna. "Maybe they found different things. Maybe they have different scrying techniques than we do."
[cont'd]

CPaladin · Feb 25, 2023

[Session 152, cont'd]
They ask the duty Farsensor to reach out to her duty Farsensor, and Alistair is patched through immediately.

"Your Majesty."

"Your Highness. First, I wish to send our sincere thanks for the assistance of your general. It was invaluable in our effort."

"I'm pleased that it was helpful."

"I'm certain that he has reported on the outcome of that."

"Yes."

"The other matter that I wish to mention was that we had discussed reasons to believe that the Great Mine had been reopened. Our voller has completed an overflight. They were assaulted by something that was similar to but different than an energy lance. They were also attacked by a group of six flying creatures of the Eldritch. They survived, and they were able to observe signs that the mine had, in fact, been opened--though they could see those signs only from directly above, but not from an angle.

They also observed that one of the seals was visible and broken, but not removed, and that there were a meaningful number of people on the site, but far fewer than we know have traveled there."

"Yes."

"I wanted to pass that information on to you, and see if if your overflight had revealed anything else that you could share."

"Yes, I've received back the captain of the schooner I sent along with a few of the crew. The bolts are a form of energy lance that uses entropy and counter-changing mixed together. My schooner did not maintain enough altitude. Once the schooner got close enough, the Farsensor onboard could pierce the veil and was able to determine that the mine was active. They're losing a great many men to keep it open, because the one that haunts it is powerful and different from what they have experience with. Now, they have to deal with the radiation within the mine, which is killing many of them, and they have to deal with a balrog appearing from the darkness, killing their miners, and then fading back into the darkness. They lack any method of dealing with him. I would have difficulty dealing with him. After all, he is of the nature of the Valar. But I could do it. I think they cannot. He's now a mobile threat, so their answer is to throw more and more people at it. They are obtaining the ore that they're looking for, and then there are other things that they're looking for in the mine, we think. Unfortunately, when the schooner did a low pass, it was hit twice, which was more than it could sustain. The captain apported back here. The shadow elves on board the ship--twelve of them, including the Farsensor-- went down with the ship. The only way to safely approach is apparently by foot. I believe that they are now relying entirely on slaves--slaves that are being apparently delivered by former servants of the lord of the Eighth Region who have left his service. He's considered quite decadent by the other lords of the Aragoni, and has little interest in standard slaving techniques. Therefore, many uruks have simply left his active service, and they're finding both villages that were ravaged in the attack on the Spicelands, and refugees rounding the Horn to be pretty easy prey."

"We intend to send some ground troops to address at least that part of it. Our condolences on the loss of so many members of your crew, and we hope that your god has taken them to his bosom. We also wanted to inform you that we have determined that it is possible to use clerical magic to heal wounds that are inflicted by the Eldritch that would otherwise not be healable by clerical magic if you have an adequately powerful remove disease effect before you apply the other magic."

"I will pass that on to the clergy of Morgrath."

"I know that is less relevant for your people, because Redaction is so much more of your ordinary approach to healing than it is for us, but nonetheless."

"There will be a dirge of the seven voices for the lost crew in 6 days time. If you wish to send a representative, they would, of course, be welcome. It's not a terribly long dirge, only about six hours."

"We will do so."

"Thank you. I am not sure how to suggest proceeding. I think your plan with ground troops makes the most sense. Possibly our cousins' longest range weapons could outreach it, but based on the amount of damage each blast did, that is a siege-level projector, similar to our siege-level death lances and their siege-level energy lances. And of course, among your folk, the siege-level flame cannons of Hanal and Masque."

"And I assume that those are then larger and heavier than the weapons that a voller can carry."

"Yes, effectively immobile. They can be transported, but moving one is a major undertaking and requires disassembly. They're usually permanently mounted on towers, and their construction is heavier than ours."

"Which also means that they've devoted enormous resources to this--more than we've seen anywhere, except at the Eldritch islands themselves, and perhaps more even than there, I suppose."

"Yes, besides Hanal City, and Hanal City is a combination of their power and the power of the former. Lord Quinliart and not their power alone. This appears to be."

"Yes. And for that matter, the Usurper's as well."

"Yes. We must hope the creature continues to harass them and that they do not find the method of killing it. It will slow what they gather and prevent doing purification there."

"If they can't do the purification there, do they need to move large volumes of ore?"

"Significant cargos, at least. It depends on how much they want."

"If they need to be sending the equivalent of large caravans, then there's a substantial chance we can intercept this."

"It's a worthy effort. I'm not exactly sure what they intend to do with the material, and thus how much they need."

"Do we know what the material is? I take it that it's more than just fresia."

"I believe they are purifying dark heartstone, but that is based on my knowledge of the Great Mine, not on any particular knowledge of their intent. Normally there are small bits of it scattered through fresia deposits. Its power and ability to alter other substances is much greater and much more dangerous than fresia itself. Indeed, it is possible that fresia is a result from the decay of dark heartstone, though I am not certain as it is not my field. It alters creatures very easily. Goldurim would know more, but we ought not to contact him about it. But to get usable dark heartstone for anything other than simply changing things around it would require a ratio of at least 100 to one. But I cannot even imagine the concentration that would be required to get into a state that they are seeking to make. If they are, yes, they will have large caravans. It would allow them to do certain things they might otherwise not be able to. A pound of it could be snuck into, for example, Zorplona-Moriquendarim, and in a few days would wipe out the population of the Enclave and make it permanently uninhabitable. I'm not saying it is likely that that would be their plan, but simply as an example. My understanding is that it would eventually lose its capabilities, but that it would take a long time, even by the standards of my people."

"And that also means that, say, a pound of it could be sufficient to destroy Canberry City."

"Oh, yes."

"So if we recover it," asks Kit, "how can we dispose of it safely?"

"Lead. That can contain it--it's the primary reason the dwarves mine it. It would be better to use lean, but lead is much more readily available."

"We should just invest in lead," mutters Dame Brionna.

"Always good," agrees Kit.

"Yes, the dwarves get pretty good money for it compared to what they ought to. It's otherwise a not very useful, soft metal. But you want to buy enough to contain however much of the ore you recover."

"So then, what we want to do is when we send ground troops in,we want to also send them with wagon-sized lead caskets, or perhaps multiple coffin-sized ones."

"If they're carrying fresia ore, unconcentrated, it's unlikely to harm much. If they're carrying anything that they've begun to concentrate, then yes, you want to put all of it in lead, and then actually destroy it. I recommend volcanoes. They won't try to recover it, and nobody will get at it. The only people I know of who have concentrated dark heartstone before were the drow. They use fresia to power their weapons, and they wondered what would happen if they super concentrated only the most potent bits, whether they could make even more capable weapons. They destroyed a couple of their own cities millenia ago--they never made it to the point of weaponizing it, but simply concentrating it was enough to destroy the cities they did it in."

"What happened to the dark heartstone they concentrated?"

"I presume it's still in the ruins of those cities. They are still abandoned and unusable, and while we could have sent in people in lead protective clothes, we did not see any reason to take the risk to recover something we could not use anyway."

"Where are those cities? If the enemy knows about it, they will try to recover the dark heartstone, and they will consider the risk immaterial."

"Oh, that makes sense. That's concerning. The city ruins are under Southern Drucien."

"Where exactly under Southern Drucien?" asks Kit. "That's a big area."

"Hmm. Do you need to have a map?"

"Yes, please, Your Highness. That would be most useful."

"I will supply you with one, and also identify the two lost drowan cities for your people."

"Thank you. We greatly appreciate that."

They thank her again, and then make sure to find someone who's really into Noldor culture and would find listening to a requiem dirge for six hours to be an enjoyable, valuable cultural experience. (Kit suggests they just send someone they hate.)

* * *
The chief midwife of Gunnora joins them shortly. "Your Majesty. Your people are doing very well. All the pregnancies now are normal."

"Were they not?" asks Dame Brionna.

"Ah! We found a couple early on with a touch of the, well, Ram, but those have been taken care of, and all the pregnancies now are normal. Although, Miss Stabens, I'm going to attend to myself when she delivers."

"Why?"

"Quadruplets. Those are very rare among the big folk. They're very rare, mind, among my people, but even more among your folk."

"Yes, they are," agrees Kit. "Please give her all the good care that you can."

"I shall. I will trust it to no one younger than myself."

"Just to clarify, you said 'Miss' Stabens," notes Dame Brionna with more than a touch of disapproval. "Is there, then, no father to help with the quadruplets?"

"There is a father."

"I mean, obviously, but..."

"And I mean, on the helping part... He cries constantly. You know how this sort of thing happens. No thought at all. And while the father is around, he's completely worthless. And she'll have a hard time making a good life for herself, whatever he does. She's been active in her parish, though."

"Oh, is she Glordiadelian?"

"Oh, yes, yes. In the lower quarter. Would you like her mother's address?"

"If you could give it to me, yes."

"I'm not really sure her mother does know how it happened."

"How old is she?"

"Her mother? Oh, you mean Miss Staben?"

"The the mother to be, yes!"

"No more'n 14."

"And human?"

"Oh yes, all human, I assure you."

"You should absolutely be there to care for her."

"And I shall be."

"Happily, you'll have any resources you might need for that. But beyond that, I'd like to send a message to our local parish priests there about getting that family some help."

"Oh, please do. I don't really have much contact with that priest. I've been considering asking you to help out, as a paladin."

Kit interjects, "Yes, and also having people of that district well educated on how to not have babies."

"I think the boy is even younger."

"Sheepskins, until and unless they really and truly are ready." If any of them are aware of the irony given that Alistair and Kit are only about 5 years older, they don't note it.

"Oh, I'm not thinking she's ready, mind you, but I do think she'll make a good mother."

"Yes. Well, she would have been better able to do it 10 years from now."

"Yes, I do not doubt it."

"Yes, and preferably not because of carelessness or foolishness," adds Dame Brionna.

"Well, apparently, she thought... Well, I'm embarrassed to say it. I should be giving these education classes. But I do not think your temple would approve..."

"I think we could work out some arrangements," Dame Brionna replies.

"Oh, she did not think this could happen this quickly. That's the actual way to put this."

"Yes, perhaps you and I should have a separate meeting on this, and I can get the Archbishop's approval," continues Dame Brionna. "I can't imagine why you wouldn't think this was something on which you could be a moral leader and set a good example. And perhaps sponsoring education classes with midwives for everyone in the poor quarter. All the quarters, really, but frankly, those in the upper quarter are likely to get an education already."

"What about Kaitlyn?" suggests Kit.

"That seems like an excellent suggestion. We can introduce this as something that is the custom in her other kingdoms that the Empress is now bringing to Canberry. As part of the standard education classes for girls and boys."

"And boys definitely, definitely. Well, you do know that these multiple groups are more common with very young mothers, even among my people."

"And just to be clear, there's no reason to suspect that this is anything other than ordinary."

"No, I met her lad, and he'd be younger than she is. The both of 'em should probably be spanked."

"Just ordinary teenagers, having ordinary bad judgment," observes Kit.

After having been mostly silent during the discussion of sex education policy, Alistair finally says, "So, we have a few other matters we wanted to discuss with you.

"Oh, yes, by all means."

"The first, and I think most pressing, is that there is a large mining operation going on at a place referred to as the Great Mine. It was sealed off by some of the great elves, because there's terrible stuff in there. Apparently, a balrog in there is among the least bad things, and it's actually being somewhat helpful by preventing people from taking the other things out."

"My."

"Yes, precisely. The Eldritch have built a major operation there. It appears to be entirely an Eldritch-run thing. It doesn't appear to be run with any of their local allies, but they have brought in humans. But there doesn't appear to be any of the demon cults or Hanalians, or any of that sort of thing there that we know of. We believe that they are mining fresia and dark heartstone, but we don't know that for certain. And we wanted to know what, if anything, you knew about any of this."

"Well. The drow will collect fresia and use it for its energy. I know that's pretty easy. But primarily to empower their weapons. I also know there's a large outcropping in Masque in the Brown Lands."

"Yes, apparently the Brown Lands were basically created by an explosion of fresia."

"It slowly alters the people and creatures near there, and monsters now seek to escape. Dark heartstone... I'm aware of heartstone. It is occasionally used by the elves. Very occasionally. Dark heartstone... I did not think it had any use."

"We think that it's primary use is that, if concentrated, it becomes deadly. A pound of it could wipe out a city."

"Oh, we think he's trying to buy time that way?"

"You think it's possible?"

"I think they're trying multiple options, really. This is their second shift, as they come close to extinction, or to losing the service of the outer ones. In their heart, no matter how well they think they're going to pull the great lord and lady in for their power, they know they're going to be consumed. They are trading temporary power and status for their own destruction. Only the most powerful of their allies actually hope to survive--certainly the Queen of Chaos is playing a game where..." The midwife realizes how her voice has been changing and smiles before continuing with a rather different, educated accent. "You know, when I talk about the very theological subjects, I have to drop my folksy accent. I apologize, Your Majesty."

"That accent is actually an affectation?"

"Oh, completely. It's expected of us. It's not an affectation for all of them, but I have responsibilities for all of Southern Drucien, and I both have to have a deeper education, on the one hand, and have to sound like a midwife of Gunnora is supposed to, on the other. It works particularly with the common folk, which is what we really deal with most of the time, but it can also have advantages with some of the nobility, who think 'how quaint.'"

"What does Mommy Cupcakes actually sound like?" wonders Dame Brionna.

"Mommy Cupcakes sounds like Mommy Cupcakes. She's a very skilled and talented nurse-maid and governess, but actually has the background she seems to. The high midwife, however, for the southern half of the continent needs to be highly educated. So what I was saying, before that diversion, is that the Queen of Chaos has a plan. She is is playing a double game--she hopes to get free from the prison, and then be able to eject them. And they know that, but they need her and her allies and many servants, despite being imprisoned in the Abyss. Now the catlord, the catlord was simply trying to gain power himself, and cares for neither them nor the Queen of Chaos."

"They're all backstabbing each other. We all got that."

"And I cannot determine the position of the Queen Empress, who I still struggle to remember is not really the Queen Empress, despite my best efforts."

"The only thing I will say clearly there is that she has been a Noldor before she betrayed them, and then she was an archdevil before she betrayed them, and now she's a demon princess who's in the process of betraying them, so I think I see a pattern."

"And then she's aiming for godhood."

"Almost surely."

"It is the only remaining step. So she must be preparing to betray all of them, including the One Other."

"We think so, but perhaps not Arthranax. Perhaps she is planning on betraying the rest of them, including the other two with him. It's not entirely clear."

"Well, it is a right mess," she drops back into her normal patter, "I be telling you, Your Majesty, it is a right mess, and none of them are going to easily stick."

"Let's just hope they don't drag us all down with them."

"That's the danger now. It's what happened back home."

"We also found out that certain wounds that are made by the Eldritch can be cured by clerical magic only if a powerful cure disease effect is placed first. Not just any cure disease, but a powerful one."

"So, they be like the Horned Rat's diseases, then."

"That was what we thought as well, that perhaps they learned that trick from the servants of the Rat, or the other way around, while they were in the old world."

"Well, they went through our land like a dose of salts, as you know, and they drove the Horned Rat and his minions before them. So they, sure enough, had time to learn it. I will spread the word. Not that many of us cast powerful care diseases, but for those who do."

"We also wondered if there might be any other effects of that disease, and since it seems to be long lasting, we're concerned that, like with the Rat's diseases, it may not be as fully blocked by the Compact as most disease."

"That could be. I will consult with your Archbishop, and together maybe we can arrange a committee to examine those possibilities."

"There is one other thing we wanted to know if you could give us perspective on."

"Thank you. As always, it was a pleasure to see you, Your Majesty."

"If you would not mind coming with us into the palace chapel."

"Oh, of course."

"We recovered an object, and we must ask that you keep this most confidential, that seals off an extra planar niche, and while the object is holy to Glordiadel, and we think to a saint of Glordiadel, the niche that it seals off is not, and we believe that it is filled with the Eldritch. We were hoping you might be able to provide some additional insight on it."

"Yes, let us look at it." She gives Father Waters a friendly wave. "Hmm. It emanates a fair amount of power."

"It is, we believe, a very powerful psionic object that has then had a blessing placed upon it."

"The blessing is great. The seal itself is far beyond the ability of any of my people to open, and has no leakage that I can tell, at least. Somebody's going to come after this if it becomes public knowledge. Crystal like this is elven work... no, I'm wrong. So someone among the Noldor, you think, were dealing with the Eldred to a point where they built this for them?"

"I think that in the first war, one of the Noldor lords sealed an Eldritch army away, but then did not destroy them or leave it completely sealed, but rather kept it so that they could access it if for some reason they decided they wanted to. But we don't know for certain, and we can't exactly ask."

"It is not able to do anything currently. I don't think it will leak, but I would bury it deeper than this. I fear someone will talk. Wait... the temple in the lower quarter with the sudden death of the priest and the vandalism, and the guard all about it... was this there?"

"Yes."

"So something already happened."

"Yes, we recovered it. The Twilight Elf that serves the Eldritch sought to steal it. We recovered it from him, although he escaped. The Eldritch know that it's here, at least broadly speaking. The Noldor who created it does not."

"It has a property of anchoring, that much I can see. It will not be easy to move it by any non standard method. If they know where it is now, they will try to come for it, although your palace has put paid to a number of their schemes in the past. They may try again with heavier resources. I would see to my defenses and increase the watch on the gates."

"We will think about your suggestion about concealing it further. It's difficult, because it is a holy object as well."

"Yes. And to transfer it to your Holy See would almost certainly have to be done by boat. I'm not sure that a voller could remain in the air with that aboard."

"Its anchoring is that powerful? We knew that it would block teleportation or the like, but to even block a voller."

"It's the strongest anchoring I've ever seen. How it was stolen and gotten this far from its creator escapes me. The thief must have been very good."

"We think that he was both very good, and also very highly blessed by Glordiadel."

"That is a strong indicator. I doubt they would look this far, until apparently the Eldritch did. That's to your advantage--the Eldritch will never share its location with its creator. But that is a reason to not move it to your Holy See--if its creator heard of it there, I do not think any human fortification, however blessed, could withstand an assault by a Noldor lord."

"Yes. There's another reason why I think we cannot move it to the See of Light. Suffice to say that I think that it would be inappropriate to disrespect a saint's judgment that it does not belong there."

"Reasonable."

"I think we understand why the saint would have thought that. Of course, the saint also didn't think it belonged to the palace, so..."

Dame Brionna says, "Yes, but also it got stolen from where he put it."

"Well, it seems to me that the Protector of the Light was not in the palace in the saint's time," comments the midwife.

"That's fair. My family has always been Glordiadelian, but they have not always been quite as positioned in the Church. I think that most of my ancestors have been about as personally faithful as I am, and most of them have also understood the rule requiring that the Archduke or Archduchess must be extremely devout regardless of how devout the person holding that office might be."

She almost remarks on that, but stops herself. "I would offer to leave a few fighters here to help guard it, but your palace is guarded as well as any palace can be."

"Yes, I think that your people's efforts are better spent elsewhere."

She bows slightly to the relic. "I do sense the presence of your god about it, and the presence of someone else. That may be your saint. What is his name?"

"Reuben of the Third Eye."

"Ah. The third eye is for sight, but not the face's sight. The sight that humans sometimes receive, that we very rarely see, that they need for psionics."

"That was what we had thought."

"I'm certain that that is what it is. That may be how he was able to slip in and out of a Noldor's holding."

"That's what we thought, too."

"They are too arrogant to accept the idea that the humans could outsmart them. That was true for many races in our own world, too. But their arrogance makes them blind, in a way that the humble can see accurately. Thank you for your confidence, Your Majesty, my ladies."

"And, as we said, it is important that this stay secret. There are many people who must not know what is here."

"Oh, no one will hear about this. I will be far too busy worrying about Miss Staben. And the children. And the young scallywag, their father."

* * *
They spend a while discussing how to get the troops to patrol the area near the Great Mine. The most obviously available army is the field army in and around Lyneham, though it is doing important infrastructure work and helping with the resettlement of the refugees. They discuss sending it west, to the Cities of Trade, and then moving it into position--using a story about increased tariffs on military movements from Gates to justify it. But that would take a long time--months at least--to get into position. They could airlift troops by voller, but that's both limited by their small number of vollers and not at all subtle for an operation that they want to take the enemy by surprise. Finally, they decide to send two legions from the field armies in the west of the Archduchy. That's only about 200 miles, so perhaps 10-20 days to get them into position, which is about as fast as they could get troops there piecemeal by voller. And because they're already in that region and patrolling, it can be done reasonably subtly, beginning with extending patrols further in that direction. They decide to not send additional troops moving beyond that until they start getting reports back, but they make sure they have good leaders and plenty of lead with them--perhaps even a thin layer of lead placed over their armor to protect them, although the dust from that would not be ideal.

[End Session 152]

CPaladin · Feb 27, 2023

Session 153 (February 21, 2023)

6 Vaen
After a peaceful week or so, Kit has a report from the Naughty Bits she dispatched to Enclaves, who have gathered a report on the Marchioness. [Attached]

"These Naughty Bits are very good," Kit commences her report. "I mean, possibly that, too, but they are very, very good at getting information, and very politically aware, which you can see from their exhaustive report. The Marchioness is actually a Marchioness of Hell, dispatched by Lilith, Queen of the Seventh Hell, to serve as a money-maker in a pleasure palace owned by the Zorplona-Moriquendarim. Lilith agreed to this in exchange for a viable Noldor seed--which the Proconsul supplied. Our Naughty Bits think that Lilith may have also had other motivations for the deal as well. I think this might be quicker to deal with, because I have no idea what we can actually do. There may be more to do than I can figure out myself, but we have this information now."

"This seems like a terrible plan on their part, I must say," comments Dame Brionna.

"Yes, most deals involving devils are terrible," Kit agrees.

"Also, if she's done it once, what's to stop her from having multiple offspring?"

"And why does she want to have half-Noldor, half-devil babies, anyway?" asks Alistair.

"That is a really good question. What advantage would she get from that?"

"I think it's time to call in Dame Agatha, who, I believe, has a contract directly with this same Lilith."

"I hate to admit that I agree," replies Dame Brionna. "It's not that I really like calling in that resource, but I think that she is absolutely the right person to talk to in this case."

"The other thing about a Marchioness of Hell-- what we're talking about is an extremely major tempter devil, being set up in a high-end brothel. The potential for massive corruption there is enormous."

"Oh, yes," agrees Kit.

"I don't want to overly disparage my own judgment," adds Alistair, "but if they had done this a few years ago, the results could have been disastrous."

"Yes, indeed," replies Dame Brionna fervently.

"Anyway, let's call for Dame Agatha."

"Good thing there hasn't been any temptation of that kind recently," comments Kit.

"Now, how could anything tempt me when such a beautiful lady as yourself is mine?"

"Oh, you know I love you, but I also know you."

"Fair, and you know that I love you despite all that you know about me."

"Anyway, let's get Dame Agatha in here."

Dame Agatha is much brisker in responding to summons than the late Dame Constance was. "Your Majesty, you summoned me. Honored Councilmembers."

"Indeed. We have some questions that we would like to ask you about a diabolical deal that we have found that one of our, let's say, allies but not a close ally, has entered into. Are you aware of the the Zorplona-Moriquendarim Enclave in the City of Enclaves? They operate a very high-end brothel in the Enclave of Glittertowers. This is not particularly surprising. It's the sort of services that the Zorplona-Moriquendarim provide to make a profit, especially now that they no longer engage in slaving in that region. However, we have found out that the, shall we say, star attraction of that brothel is one Lell, Marchioness of Night."

"Ah. That's why she's become unavailable."

"Yes, she is apparently physically present, and frequently occupied in every sense of the word in Enclaves."

"Oh, she should command a very high price."

"Apparently she does," comments Dame Brionna. "Also, apparently she is pregnant."

"I assumed that it was Lilith who was pregnant," Alistair responds. "What we know, in any event, is that the Noldor who heads Zorplona-Moriquendarim was able to secure her services in exchange for providing some viable seed to Lilith. We don't know for how long he secured her services, and we don't know how strongly he secured her loyalty. The Lord Proconsul is very young, and he's a full Noldor. He's quite powerful for his age, and he's very young in the sense of being some few centuries old, not young in the way that humans would reckon it, but nonetheless."

"So barely in puberty."

"Indeed. He probably has no other offspring. I believe we think that one of his companions is his chief concubine, or some such, but I don't know if there is any meaningful bond there in the way that elves sometimes do and sometimes do not develop."

"So. She's making a new play."

"First, can I ask, to what extent can you discuss her plans without endangering yourself or without causing conflicts of loyalties?"

"Cautiously," replies Dame Agatha with a grim smile. "She has for some time desired greater authority. A partially Noldor-blooded offspring, in a few centuries, might give her that opportunity."

"How would it do that?" asks Kit.

"As much as the Eldar and the Noldor are an arrogant people, there's some reason for their arrogance. They're part of the purity of early creation. Everything else came later, including the devils."

"So it's essentially partaking of the essence of the two great elven gods as opposed to, for example, the essence of human gods."

"Exactly right. I don't think she could do it with an Eldar, but with a Noldor, for the possibility of bringing some of Morgrath's power into her line, I can see her being willing to bargain away her chiefest servant for a while-- a century, perhaps."

"The Marchioness is her chief servant?"

"Yes, her chief of assassins."

"What would they do with this child? When would it be a child?"

"It will be a child initially. She will raise it, teach it loyalty to her, and she could then move up in the hierarchy by using its abilities when it's old enough."

"I know that in the outer planes, deities can control the flow of time in their domains to a great degree. Can archdevils and the like do the same in the Hells?"

"To a lesser degree, yes, she can speed the process. I'm not sure if she would. I do not even know if her plan will work, but I'm fairly certain, knowing her as well as I do, that that is her plan. Now, of course, this will make her vulnerable for a period of time, so that might move her to attempt to speed things up at that."

"Vulnerable, because of the pregnancy?" asks Dame Brionna.

"Her chief of assassins is absent, and it is Hell, after all. So the Marchioness also fills, well, your position, Dame. Whether the pregnancy would also make her more vulnerable, I don't know. She may be, but she is definitely without the full competency of her guard."

"How likely would it be for the false Empress of Hanal to be aware of this?"

"That's very difficult to say."

"I do not count your mistress as our ally," clarifies Dame Brionna, "but I do count her as the enemy of our enemies."

"And she is. I do not believe that the false Empress has any spies in Hell. In the Abyss, yes, but not in the Hells. Or at least so I estimate."

Alistair raps his fingers against a table in thought. "Surely, if our people were able to get a positive identification of the Marchioness within days of their arrival, that cannot be a closely held secret."

"She may not be hiding who she is. It's part of the draw."

"We had heard of her as the Marchioness, even before we heard her full title, so I suspect that she is not."

"But anyone who knows Hell's politics and what you're saying would recognize the weakness that represents in Lilith's court," notes Dame Brionna.

"Oh yes, yes. I will endeavor to, forgive my bluntness, commune later with Lilith, and give her warning."

"This is something for you to phrase, Your Grace."

"Yes. I also think that we may wish to engage in a little bit of disinformation there to try to head this off. For example, we could spread the rumor in Enclaves that this is not, in fact, the Marchioness-- that this is indeed a sexual fiend, but not not, in fact, the Marchioness, and that people are being deceived. That would suggest that this is some sort of trap that's being set up in the Hells, to try to make them move a little cautiously. This whole thing is bizarre, so I don't know if this is a good idea. But..."

"I can't think that it's a bad idea. I must admit, I did not expect this."

Kit says, "We need to think about her reaction. It sounds like she wants to be known. So, if she hears these rumors, from what we know of her, it sounds like her reaction would be to double down, and boast about who she is and her power. Is that what we want?"

"The other aspect of this is that our tendency will be to think of her as being a diabolical courtesan, of paramount status, because that's what she's being currently employed us. But if she's actually principally a diabolic assassin of paramount status, who simply has a sideline in using sex as a tool for her assassination purposes, then..."

"Then I also wonder who she wants to kill in Enclaves," says Dame Brionna.

"And that also means there may be people who can hire her for that. If we can find this out easily, albeit with a subject matter expert to aid us, there are others who know this as well. And so then there will be a steady stream of people seeking to hire her for assassination work."

"Which work she can cover with her sexual work."

"Of course. I'm sure that she would agree to accompany someone on a journey, for example, to be their companion and escort, and if somebody happens to end up dead along the way, well, who would think that it was her that was involved in that?"

Dame Brionna asks, "Also, are there any young people in positions of power in Enclaves who are not particularly excellent judges of character?"

"Also, unless they have bound her not to-- and given how this whole situation has developed it would surprise me if they had thought that far in advance-- unless they have bound her not to, surely she's encountering people who would be interested in retaining her services but can't afford to. She could then offer other sorts of deals, because, even if she had to make up the difference to the brothel's coffers out of her own pocket, surely she'd be willing to do that to gain access to somebody's soul or to get promises about things that they'll do when they have advanced into higher positions of authority. All the various blandishments that powerful devils use."

"At the same time, I keep thinking that if we announced that I was taking a lengthy stay at a convent, to pray, and to commune with Glordiadel, and so forth, I'm sure that the number of expected assassination attempts would significantly increase as a result."

"Also, the number of rumors that we had been carrying on would increase dramatically, but that's true."

"I thought we had squelched those!"

"I think we had, but that was before you started running off to a faraway convent for months at a time!"

Kit nods her head in agreement with Alistair's joke.

Dame Brionna sighs. "My point is that, in fact, what I was thinking is that people would assume that I had been sent there to collect some valuable artifacts or something like that."

"Oh, that's true. There are people who will assume that she's there to serve some other purpose of Lillith's, which she may, in fact, be."

"But there will also be people who will assume that even if she is serving another purpose, that it still provides an opportunity."

"Isn't there a tremendously powerful evil artifact under Enclaves? A good one, an evil one, and a neutral one?"

"No, it's an artifact of order and balance," says Kit.

"There was an artifact of order--or really, of balance-- that we removed."

"I thought that was the only one. Is there another?"

Dame Brionna shakes her head at Kit and Alistair. "There were in fact three major artifacts under the City of Enclaves. The artifact of balance, which we had taken, an artifact of chaos, and an artifact of law."

Kit nods, as she remembers. "So we're thinking, with these artifacts, could she be after the chaos one?"

"I wouldn't think she would want a chaos one," replies Alistair. "But an archdevil would surely be interested in acquiring an artifact of Law, because that would provide direct power within the Hells, and whatever it can be used to do as well. But if things are already starting to come apart at the seams, with the artifact of balance removed, if the artifact of law were removed, it's all but certain Enclaves would be in civil war within days. Maybe days is an exaggeration, but it would not take long. And I don't believe that we have convinced Balansar to move in yet, although we're making some progress in that direction."

"Who could we reach out to about that?"

"My first thought is to tell Princess Curinirim, or maybe the Zorplona-Moriquendarim as well, that they must not allow the artifact of law to be removed. Except that they're so arrogant that they might not recognize the risk. She will find it hard to believe that anything like that could threaten to really change Enclaves, and she'll assume she could maintain stability through sheer force of her personality."

"So who else in Enclaves would recognize the danger and be willing to take action? Some of the churches?"

"They might. Or Meredith the Dazzling?"

Dame Brionna and Kit both endorse that suggestion.

"I think we need to have a conversation with Meredith the Dazzling about this. I also think we need to have a conversation with the Paranswarmians about getting proper regulation of any deals that are going on there. I don't want to pick a fight with the Zorplona-Moriquendarim, which we would do if we, for example, tried to have her banished by the Church. But the Temple of Paranswarm could legitimately come in and say, any deals here that are not for purely cash have to go through us and have to follow standards, because that's the rules and otherwise you'll be engaged in unlicensed diabolism, and we can't have that. That should at least be able to put a check on the Marchioness getting up to terrible things on that axis. So I think we talk to Meredith the Dazzling, and then we follow up with our Archbishop and their Archbishop."

"And what message do we wish to convey to Lilith?" asks Dame Brionna.

"Yes, what do you wish me to say to the Queen of Hell?"

"What the f***?" suggests Dame Brionna, partially in jest.

"Do we really want that explained under the circumstances?" replies Alistair. "I think that what we want to say is that we think that she should know that the Seductress almost surely knows that her chief assassin is otherwise occupied in Enclaves, and may attempt to use this, either directly or indirectly through a diabolic cat's paw, to strike at her. I do wonder if we could ask her, in the interest of coordinating against the Eldritch and in exchange for the warning that we're giving her, if there are things that we ought to know about what the Marchioness is doing besides the obvious?"

"Offering it as a favor rather than as a bargain, or making a bargain?" asks Dame Brionna.

"I think that I have already made one bargain with Lilith, and that I don't want to make any additional ones. And thus I think we want to do this as we're providing this information to you, because we think it might be useful, and because we have some shared enemies. Is there any information that you'd like to provide to us in that same vein? And if there isn't, there isn't. We can't promise we won't try to frustrate her goals, because, depending on what they are, we may directly try to do so, but then we can at least make sure we wouldn't inadvertently do so."

"So we frame it as professional courtesy," says Kit.

"Exactly. And she's a loyal Paranswarmian archdevil, right? So we also frame it as being part of a spirit of cooperation in and through the Ecumenical Council."

"I shall do so," agrees Dame Agatha. "Expect me to report back later."

"And I can't imagine that matters are so pressing, given that this has been in place for at least weeks, that we can't wait to get your report back before we reach out to Meredith the Dazzling. So I think, why don't we plan on doing that?"

After Dame Agatha leaves, Kit apologizes. "Sorry. I thought that was going to be the quick one."

"I thought so, too," replies Dame Brionna, "until I understood that she is Lilith's chief bodyguard. Not that I'm especially interested in the Queen of Hell's safety, but I don't want that power vacuum at the moment."

"It does incidentally mean that if there was someone who we decided that we needed to have assassinated, who we thought was extremely difficult to reach, we might have a potential assassin to hire."

"For what price, my lord?"

"That's obviously the question, but..."

"I'm just saying, I'm sure Kit knows people who know people who don't deal in souls."

"We already tried some assassinations," Kit points out, "and it didn't go well. I would hate to dig ourselves deeper into bargains and prices that we were not really equipped to pay for more failed attempts."

"No doubt," agrees Alistair.

Dame Brionna then proffers the next report. "I received a report from the field army who we sent to try to cut off the slavers bringing people to the mine. The good news is that they were able to do that. The bad news is that the guards were chaos centaurs. Apparently, they're coming in from the Shadowlands."

"That doesn't make things better," observes Alistair.

"And they inflicted five to one casualties among our troops. It would have been even worse, if not for our mages and the priest who sent me this report. Also, we do have an issue with that. The commander of the field army refused to accept that they were not ordinary centaurs on the grounds that nobody's ever seen chaos centaurs outside the Shadowlands. So the chaplain thought to report directly to me. Among other things, I think the field army's banner is primarily a banner against evil--I think we should send one that is more focused on promoting Law against Chaos."

Alistair thinks. "Let's see... who do chaos centaurs serve in the Shadow? Presumably one of the Six... I'm pretty sure they serve the Worm Who Burrows Beneath. Urlodo. I can't recall anything more about that, though. They're basically his only shock troops. That strongly suggests to me that Urlodo is in alliance with the Eldritch."

"We know some of the other major demon lords that are, but we haven't identified them all," adds Dame Brionna. "I remember the last Commune. We ran out of questions."

"And the devil that took Dame Constance's soul said the same thing, that there were seven in total."

"We could do a targeted divination just to confirm that with Father Waters," suggests Dame Brionna.

"Yes, one of the things on our to-do list that we never quite got to was counting up which ones we knew for sure and trying to identify the others," agrees Kit. "But now we have a candidate for one of the ones that we didn't know."

"So, do we want to start by having a conversation with Father Waters about that?" asks Alistair. "And we could also call in the Doctor of Theology that we asked for but have never really consulted with. A Doctor of Theology from the Church, someone who has an expertise in in the deeper matters of theology than a regular priest-- this seems like something that might be worth involving them in as well."

"My other question is, who do we know who has served in the Shadowlands?" asks Dame Brionna.

"I know some of our nobles have, but I can't recall who offhand."

"Because they might have a good idea if there are reliable tactics that people in the Shadowlands have been using for years against these chaos centaurs."

"And also knowledge of what other creatures tend to go along with chaos centaurs, if those aren't the only servants of the worm who are being brought over," adds Kit.

"If they have any dhoyles outside of the Shadowlands we have a different set of problems," comments Alistair. "Those are the enormous chaos worms of the Shadowlands."

"I think if we had those we would have known already," says Kit.

"Yes, probably."

"What if they're in the mine?" asks Dame Brionna. "What if they're using them in the mine? Enormous worms? People love burrowing at high speeds."

"When you put it that way, the whole nature of the Great Mine, where they're trying to dig out horrible unholy stuff does rather seem Urlodo-esque."

"I think you're right. We haven't seen them, but that's because they're not using them to escort slaves. They don't need to."

"Urlodo is also notorious for conspiracies. 'That bores beneath' is also a metaphorical thing. A great deal of the demon cults that seek to bring down the Shadowline from the far side and that sort of stuff is Urlodo, more, I think, than any of the other of the Six."

"But it can be metaphorical, and also actual with giant chaos worms."

"I agree. I'm just saying that... you know, the fall of the Southlands was exactly the sort of thing that he does..."

"Disrupting people's true faith..."

"And causing people to be corrupted and then causing a total collapse. After all, the foundations have already been destroyed, and so when the demons erupted out, it was already too late, because the people who should have been fighting them were already in no position to... I've never heard anything that suggested that Urlodo was involved in that..."

"But Urlodo was not one of the beings that we were paying any attention to," comments Kit.

"But from our perspective, he's mostly just one of the Six, and we don't even spend that much time worrying about Borsh'tro."

"Let's do a little more investigating into that," says Kit. "With finding those nobles who have served on the Shadowline and getting more information about Urlodo specifically."

The Council checks on whether the Doctor of Theology is available, and a functionary informs them that a doctor of canon law and theology has been waiting on the Council's availability, since they requested him some months ago. Each day, he arrives, waits in an antechamber, and then departs at the end of the day.

"Oh no!" exclaims Kit. "What were we asking them about? I forget. Why did we call for them?"

"One of the things we were interested in was some of the cosmogony questions," replies Alistair. "Relationships among the gods and that sort of thing. It partly came up because of the whole question of where Glordiadel's children came from. And questions like what exactly that relationship is between worship on the prime and the presence or activity of a god, because we know there's some connection, but it's a little obscure to us."

"Oh, that's right," says Kit, as Dame Brionna nods along. "Stuff we wanted to know about, but not pressing on a day-to-day basis, which is why we haven't actually gotten around to doing it. Let's talk with Bishop Waters first, and then with the theologian?"

Father Waters gives them a cheery greeting as he enters. "Good morning. Time seems to have been passing so rapidly recently."

"Yes, it's been very pleasant that we've had some days when we can just deal with the routine and then relax a little bit."

"Indeed!"

Alistair launches directly into it: "We were curious what you know about Urlodo, the Worm That Burrows Beneath, and his chaos centaurs."

"Well, I'm not a specialist in demonology. I do know that he is the one of the Six that's been most effective, despite the fact that one would not think he would be, since he's something of a coward. He was responsible for the fall of that Paranswarmian kingdom that was up against up against the Shadow. He's also been responsible for, oh, a number of disastrous turns in the different lands of Glordiadel, generally through subterfuge. The chaos centaurs are among his shock troops. You have to step back a mile and take a good look to realize that some of his creatures do not fit his reputation as a coward. For example, the great dhoyles look to him, as well as the chaos centaurs. He does, of course, have the yellow eums, but he has so much more. I consider him probably to be the most dangerous of the Six. He doesn't pound his chest, but he gets things done."

"Do you think he might be purposely cultivating the image of a coward so that everybody else underestimates him?" asks Kit.

"I think he may well be. He's always been their most effective member. In fact, quite often it's the others that put the kibosh on his plans with their activity. Why do you ask? It's not like he's here."

"There are chaos centaurs active to the west of Canberry."

"There are?"

"Yes, around the Great Mine," continues Alistair. "I think we briefed you on that? The chaos centaurs are leading slave caravans in and out."

"Urlodo is never active in anything where there's not a gain for him, that I can tell you. If there are chaos centaurs around the Great Mine, he has some presence in the Great Mine."

"That's one of the things we were wondering," says Kit.

"And we think that that means that he must be aligned with the Eldritch, if it's primarily an Eldritch operation."

"He must have reached an agreement, and he might actually be clever enough to double cross them successfully."

"It does occur to me... we've been told that Borsh'tro is no longer actually a god, that he has fallen to being some form of demon prince. Is there a chance that Urlodo has, in fact, supplanted him?"

"You would need a specialist. I would not put it past Urlodo. He has a strong cadre of followers. He has cults outside the Shadowlands, which none of the others of the Six do."

"It sounds like even if he hasn't supplanted him, he would definitely take advantage of Borsh'tro's demotion," comments Kit.

"His discomfitting. Yes, oh, yes, they compete among themselves as much as they do with anyone else. It's one of their saving graces."

"Do we know if he had any involvement in the fall of the South Kingdoms? It seems like his sort of thing."

"We don't know, because so few hierarchs of the Temple of Berta survived. There were no hierarchs of Berta who survived who did not flee immediately, and therefore had no knowledge of what happened. It is, however, very much his type of operation, and he had reached an accommodation with Berta. That is known."

"Which means that he was part of the alliance with Arthranax, which is consistent with his involvement with the Eldritch, as well."

"Yes, I'm afraid that's true."

"We've also been told that there are seven demon lords that are aligned with the Eldritch, and we are trying to count them and figure out which ones we know and which ones we don't. We know the Ram is; we know that the Queen of Chaos is; and now we know that Urlodo is."

"That leave four others."

"They might be counting the Seductress, but they might not. We've heard some references to goats, but I'm not sure if that's just misidentifications of the Ram, or whether that's a separate demon lord."

"There are demon goats, though I'm not aware of a particular demon lord of goats. But as I said, it's not my speciality. "

"Do you know of any others that we should particularly suspect?"

"I would think Jubilex."

"Demon prince of slimes."

Dame Brionna says, "I feel like we've heard things reference Jubilex before..."

Alistair agrees. "Yes, there was a rain of slime somewhere around Holy Cortose--the Holy See of Sytry. We did confirm that was connected to Jubilex."

Dame Brionna comes back with a record. "Here we go--we have a record of asking the Archivist of Hell questions about the major demonic supporters of the Eldritch. The answer we got was: The Lord of Rams, the Abomination of Shurr, the Queen of Chaos, and Membriel, Lord of the 540th Plane, with power over water and believable lies."

"That's very specific," comments Kit.

"And notably is precisely what the Queen-Empress has been using, or rather the Usurper," adds Alistair.

"Yes, it's all very plausible! Sure, there could be a third child of Thyastis."

"Indeed, there was a third child. It's just the third child died at birth, essentially. So that gets us five, leaving us with two that we haven't counted."

"Also, there is mention of another army deep in the Underdark of the southeastern part of the continent."

"You were saying something about demon goats-- that they're a known thing, but they do not have their own lord?"

"I am unaware of them having a lord. However, there are specialists within the church who would know more than I do. There are so many planes of the abyss, and so many different demons, it's hard to keep track of them all."

"Yes, but now we're approaching knowing enough of them that picking out who might also belong in that group should be easier."

"Yes, but that at least requires knowing that they exist."

"Could you have an expert on such things attend on us?"

"I could, and I will."

"And we'll need to check that one carefully to make sure that they are not overly expert in such things."

"Of course."

"Set them up for tea with Aunt Cecilia, or have young Lord Brightspan show them in?" asks Kit.

"I would think young Lord Brightspan would be better for that."

"That's what I was thinking."

[Out of character, the players observe that Urlodo and the Chaos Centaurs would be an awesome name for a band, with albums like "Eldritch Operations" and "The Worm that Bores Beneath." Jubilex would be a rival band.]

They thank Father Waters, and call for the Doctor of Theology. Reverend Canon Raphael Mylan Gabriel de Libre enters. He is an elderly priest with a neatly trimmed small beard who looks like he was probably quite dashing when he was younger.

"Reverend Canon. Thank you for joining us."

"Your Imperial Majesty. It has been an honor waiting upon you."

"We're sorry about that, but..."

"Your staff makes a wonderful cup of tea, Your Majesty."

"They do, they do."

"I've had many of them. How may I help you?"

"We had a couple of questions, some more in the way of general curiosity, and some that deal with some specific threats that we've encountered, and we thought you could provide insight."

"I am delighted to offer what expertise I can, Your Majesty."

"The first thing was that we were curious about how Glordiadel relates to His family members--His Children, and for that matter, His Brother. It seems surprising to us that we have a God of Light who is the Father of three Children, and yet there's never any mention of a mother of them, or anything like that."

"They are of His essence, Your Majesty."

"So He is their only parent?" asks Kit.

"Early in time, after the Creation," and like all the priests of the younger gods, he dodges the Creation thing entirely, "When Glordiadel and His Brother arose from the essence of the universe and took form, the energy that formed their beings were sufficiently different in and of themselves that portions of them separated out to create different consciousnesses. In the case of Lord Glordiadel, who was overflowing with energy, there were the three Children, and, of course, in the case of His Brother there were two."

"Wait, what?" asks Alistair, who has never heard of a second child of Paranswarm before.

"In the case of his brother, that would be Paranswarm, of course, there were two."

"Who were the children of Paranswarm?"

"Of course, the Weeping Woman, who is well known."

"And who is the one who is not well known?" presses Kit.

"His son. He's not part of their hierarchy."

"Please tell us more about Paranswarm's family drama and his disinherited son."

"He disinherited himself, as it were. He chose to step aside from the Lord of Darkness, and enter into the service of Lord Morgrath. Where he retains a position of some honor, I understand, although Morgrathian theology is beyond my portfolio."

"What's his name?" asks Kit.

"Or title," adds Alistair.

"Oh, his title! His title is 'The Breeder.' He works with the uruk-blood and the olog-blood to breed new species for Lord Morgrath. It doesn't give him the power of one of Morgrath's lesser divinities, but certainly gives him the equivalent power of perhaps a very powerful archangel or archdevil."

"Was that always his specialty?" asks Kit. "That doesn't with with the conception that I've had, at least, of Paranswarm."

"No, it doesn't. As I said, he exiled himself. Lord Paranswarm was not friendly to his ideas for the utilization of his power, and took back his name, and he left."

"We had been told by the great elves that the Weeping Woman was not, in fact, a child of Paranswarm," comments Alistair.

"I would not dare to make a comment on that."

"I see, I think."

"Our three, I assure you, are of the essence of Lord Glordiadel."

"And I take it that you are confident that Paranswarm's son was of the essence of Paranswarm."

"Yes. And the Weeping Woman claims to be of his essence, and who would gainsay her if he did not? Who are we as priests of His Brother to disagree?"

"Who else could she be?" asks Kit.

"Oh, my goodness." He blinks so rapidly it looks like his eyes are going to fly out of his head. "Well, there are some, not me, but there are some who claim she might be a child of Eiru, who shall remain nameless."

<<He's rapidly wishing that we'd left him waiting for the rest of our lives,>> observes Alistair over the mindlink.

<<Welcome to the Council, Reverend Canon,>> thinks Kit back in amusement.

"Related to that, we've been told basically two different things about the origin of Glordiadel and His relationship to humanity," says Alistair, moving to the next topic.

"Oh, only two?"

"One is, more or less, that when the universe was created, there were essentially these shards of the power and essence of the elven deities and those coalesced into the human gods, and then the human gods created humanity. The other version that we've been told is that there was Aphonion--there was the world, the universe, whatever--and then humans came about somehow, because apparently things come about somehow on this planet, and then they started worshiping ideas, and those became the gods. And I suppose a third is that we were told that both of those stories were correct. Frankly, I don't understand that one at all."

"The first is doctrinaire. To be clear, is what you're seeking, actually, an understanding of the relationship between the worship of a deity's servants and their power?"

"That's part of what we're curious about. But I also do like understanding things for the sake of understanding."

The theologian gives a small sigh. "Well, there is a fourth theory. I suppose you'd like to hear it?"

"Yes."

"I thought perhaps that was true. There is a theory among some scholars-- not necessarily scholars among the clergy, but among some scholars--that there was Creation, and there were the first of the elves and two of the elves happened to be brothers, and being true First Comers, they were incredibly powerful and they became the two Gods. Now, obviously that is not doctrinaire, nor accepted by the Temple."

"May I ask, are any of these theories formally proscribed by the Temple?"

"No. Oh, there is a fifth theory that's proscribed, but it's just too ludicrous to be considered, anyway."

"Could you share that, just in case we need to suppress it?" asks Alistair.

<<Nice. Just asking for a friend,>> laughs Kit over the mindlink.

"There is a theory that is considered hereticus: That neither God actually exists, and that there's a pool of energy which can be called upon by the will of people, and that since most humans divide into a camp by following the Light or following Darkness, they have more or less formulated the Gods in their own image, and that those Gods have no objective existence at all. Only the energy."

"So that's really the same as the second theory, except that it maintains the energy is still inchoate and disorganized, instead of having taken on the identity from the worship of the Gods' followers."

"Correct, correct, and that, of course, is ludicrous, because both deities are deities of law, and it's nonsense that those would uphold a falsehood. I agree with the declaration of heresy on it that was brought."

"And people speak with them as entities, and get answers from them as entities, and I mean I haven't spoken with Glordiadel personally, but I've talked with both Time and the Utter Mother myself, and they were people. Well, not people, I suppose, but actual Gods, not just pools of energy."

"Yes, exactly right. Consciousnesses. So that is considered heretic, and it is believed by many of the chief church doctors that the attempt to spread that theory is an attempt to weaken the faith of believers, to pave the way for something unseemly. But other than that, all of the theories are acceptable, theologically."

"And, as you said, the first one is the standard teaching, but not to the exclusion of the other acceptable theories."

"Correct."

"And I take it that the Scriptures on this are obscure."

"Very. I've studied all seven verses that concern these things extensively, and, to be honest, Your Majesty, I've never come to a conclusion which one they support."

"I'm quite sure that I've heard those verses, and then been told that the words in them don't mean what the words normally mean, but they mean special meanings, and then that's about where I get lost."

"Yes, I understand. But that is the answer to those questions." He continues to blink rapidly and uncomfortably.

"So what, then, is the relationship between worshippers and the gods? I know obviously the gods provide power and blessings to the worshippers, and I've been told that if the worship of a god died out that they would not not fade away, but recede so that they no longer touched Aphonion."

"Diminish. Yes, with the exception being the two elven gods."

"Oh, I had been told that they were diminishing with their people."

"Deliberately. They have no interest in the rest."

"But for the human gods that diminishment is..."

"Involuntary. Yes. That's established. That is the danger."

"It's known that threats to their temples don't threaten them. They just threaten their connection."

"Yes, and of course this is the danger of heresy as well."

"That if it were to connect to something that wasn't them, that they would no longer have the connection to the true God."

"Exactly, and that something else could actually arise over time."

"As when Arthranax purports to be the Blue Star, so that people who seek to have a connection with the Blue Star actually maintain a connection with Arthranax."

"Correct."

"Regardless of whether the Blue Star had been consumed by Arthranax, it still could have done the same thing by just diverting the worship in the same way that some entities may be trying to grab the connection to what was Berta."

"Yes, exactly right, exactly right. And of course we have reason to believe that I believe you already know, that it's also managed to capture, at the very least, Anatar."

"Yes, and as you may or may not know, the princes-- the great lords-- of House Moriquendarim have departed this plane to seek to rescue Anatar."

"I didn't know, but I'm pleased to hear it. They may succeed."

"That is the assessment of everyone that we have spoken to about it, that they have a meaningful chance of success, but are far from assured of it. And that really, the longer that it goes without us hearing, the more likely it is that Arthranax is playing games with time, based on the fact that they are likely to succeed. So perhaps no news is good news, but..."

"We can but hope it is. That is all very, very bizarre, as I'm sure you know."

"Yes, it is. It is strange that we would wish Anatar well, but under the circumstances..."

"Yes, again, the enemies of our enemies..." comments Dame Brionna.

"I think I have one last question about this. I've heard some people talking about the Arch, and the idea of things that are beyond the Arch versus Aphonion and things that are not. What does that mean?"

"Things that are within time, and things that are outside of time."

"So like eternal versus everlasting," comments Dame Brionna.

"The Arch of Time. It's very vital for your world, for our world. And there are things that are outside of it, eternal and unchanging, or in some cases just eternal. It defines our reality."

"Are the other planes that are not part of this planar neighborhood, are those outside the Arch? Are they inside a different Arch?"

"They are not within this Arch."

"They are within an Arch, just their own Arch, while the eternal beings that are beyond it are simply outside all of that."

"Yes. That's not entirely clear with the Pariah Gods. That may be one of their limitations. But generally, you're correct."

"And then, I gather that when a god recedes, either involuntarily or voluntarily, that's understood as eventually leading to them being beyond the Arch, and that would mean that they are no longer able to affect this planar neighborhood in any way, and perhaps they've gone to some other planar neighborhood, or perhaps they are out in some eternal unknown, that's beyond the capacity of humans."

"Correct. I must admit, Your Majesty, I have never been questioned by a noble before who has shown such an understanding."

"It has just become vaguely necessary for us to understand some of these things."

"I am pleased that I can be of service to your understanding."

"Do you know anything of the plots and ambitions of demons and devils, and the like?"

"Something of it, although that is not my expertise. There is an expert at your local seminary. But what I can offer, I will. What do you need to know?"

"We believe that there are now seven major demon entities that serve the Eldritch. Or that are allied with the Eldritch, or some such. The Lord of Rams, the Abomination of Shurr, the Queen of Chaos, Membreal, Lord of Believable Lies, Urlodo, the Worm that Bores Beneath, and Jubilex. Perhaps the Seductress counts, but perhaps she does not, because her status is so unusual. We want to know whether that set suggests any particular sixth or seventh."

"That is six, not counting the Seductress. Given their priorities, and given Jubilex's involvement, there are logical ones and nonlogical ones. I would assume that the Lord of Worms would not be involved."

"Is that distinct from Urlodo?"

"Yes. The Lord of Worms is a demon lord deep in the Abyss, but has nothing to do with Urlodo. He is called the Lord of Worms because he's a worm demon. He also is sometimes called the Lord of Time, although he's not a lord of time. They are confusing down there, believe me."

"Very confusing," agrees Kit.

"If the Queen of Chaos is involved, that lets out the Lady of Shadow; she would never be involved in the same thing as the Queen of Chaos."

"And likewise we know that Malacat and the Horned Rat are not involved."

"I would certainly expect the Horned Rat to be uninvolved--they know where that leads. There is another demon lord, though I do not remember his name, only his title, that I would consider. They refer to him as He Who Gnaws. I believe he's in prison, though, so that makes it more difficult, but it may be worth investigating."

"Could he be going along with it in the hopes that it will get him out of prison?"

"Oh, that seems to be the Queen of Chaos's plan as well, so, perhaps, and she may have convinced him. I have no idea whether they can talk to one another there or not. But he has been in prison for some time because of his tendency to consume other demons."

"Which is very much in keeping with the Eldritch. Does he have a particular association with demon goats?"

"That was my thinking that you might wish to consider it. As for demon goats, I believe that would probably be Cyth-S'sug: Prince of the Blasted Heath, Lord of Goats and Fungus, Lord of the 567th Layer of the Abyss. I'm not completely sure of his level of the abyss, but I think that's right."

"That suggests at least two that are worth investigating directly," says Alistair.

"How do we investigate them further, though?" asks Dame Brionna.

"I think that's a question for the demonologist."

"We were also wondering whether there was any connection between Urlodo and the fall of the South Kingdoms, or whether Urlodo might be seeking to usurp Borsh'tro's position, since we know that Borsh'tro is no longer as divine as he once was. Do you have any thoughts on that?"

"Urlodo is the cleverest of the great demon lords. His plans run for centuries, and are concealed beneath multiple layers. He could be behind the entire manipulation, for all I know. And he is arrogant enough, in my opinion, despite his reputation, so that he might think he could get away with it all."

"And the idea that he would want to maintain the facade that Borsh'tro was leading the whole thing, while at the same time developing cults of his own, so that he had the tighter connection and use that to his own advantage is very in keeping with his style."

"Oh, absolutely! He would never want anyone to know, ever."

"And more a coward in terms of not wanting to draw attention than a coward in terms of actually being afraid."

"Yes, there's no question in my mind that his cowardice is greatly overstated. He uses his creatures to do his fighting for him. There's no question of that."

"But again, that's strategic."

"Exactly. He very rarely will personally send an avatar into combat. But on the other hand, his forces are more likely to win combats than most others. I'll give you a good example. If you think of the yellow eums--the smallest of the eums, the least physically powerful, and the least honorable--yet they're the most likely to successfully kill their victims. They use poison, they use garottes, they attack from beneath the ground in the shadowlands, which is largely sand, as Your Majesty may or may not be aware."

"Is there a reason he has stayed primarily in the Shadowlands until now?" asks Dame Brionna.

"Borsh'tro ordered him to be."

"So he was pretending that Borsh'tro is still in charge, and that he is obeying Borsh'tro," says Kit, "but in reality probably influencing things elsewhere."

"He always had a presence elsewhere. His cults have been rooted out by the Temple of Paranswarm's Inquisition in nearly every Paranswarmian country. We have no reason to not believe they exist in our countries as well, but we don't have an Inquisition, and for good reason. The Inquisition tends paint with a very broad brush and believe that eradication is the best method of curing a cult. We don't know for certain what their death numbers are, since the Inquisition was reinitiated by the Grand Duchess of Ergmoth, but we believe it to be in the range of 400,000 globally."

"And that right there is why we cannot use an Inquisition in our lands to find such a cult."

"The Church agrees with you, Your Reverence," he replies, addressing Alistair with the honorific as Protector of the Faith rather than as Emperor.

Alistair sends over the mindlink, <<Finding cults of Urlodo needs to be a priority of the Halo.>>

<<Yes, I'll get them on that,>> replies Kit.

"That's certainly been informative," Dame Brionna says.

"I'm pleased that I was able to offer some clarity, Majesty, and counsel."

"Thank you. Does that conclude our questions for the Reverend Canon?"

"Wait a moment," says Dame Brionna, who has been looking through her notes during this conversation. "Who's the god of masks?"

"The Lord of Masks, as in the demon lord of masks, or the Lord of Masks worshiped by the drow?"

"The one worshipped by the drow."

"He is a son of the Demon Queen of Spiders. He is a reveler and a thief, with heavy emphasis on the thief. Mostly worshiped by males, I believe."

"Just there's a connection with some of the cultists of Urlodo. Would he work with the Worm?"

"Oh, very possibly, but he will never do anything that isn't in his mother's interest."

"I don't think we have any reason to suspect Lolth of trafficking with the Eldritch."

The others agree that they haven't.

"I wouldn't mind checking with a divination, just in case," says Dame Brionna. "But I think we can just ignore him."

As the Reverend Canon prepares to depart, Alistair asks, "Just out of curiosity, how are candidates for sainthood evaluated? How does that process work?"

"Oh, name, area, and portfolio are forwarded to the Holy See; a commission is appointed, who studies the miracles associated with the Blessed; they are initially declared 'Blessed,' and after a period of years, if there's a consistent demonstration of holy power, they are then considered for elevation by the Council of Hierarchs. And if the evidence is sufficient, they are elevated. Very straightforward, Your Majesty."

"Fairly, but fairly time consuming, it seems. A saint can then be active for quite some time before they would be canonized by the Church."

"Yes, correct, but they can be considered 'Blessed' in the interim, and even can have chapels."

"And I gather some deceased followers of Glordiadel are locally venerated as Blessed even before they have been formally declared so."

"Oh, yes, yes."

"And that's permissible within Church doctrine."

"Oh, yes, by all means. And there's also been a couple of confusing cases where figures that were not originally Glordiadelian were locally worshiped as saints of the Light. That took a little more sorting out. But yes, it all worked out in the end."
[cont'd]

CPaladin · Mar 1, 2023

[Session 153, cont'd]
"Sorry to interrupt," says Dame Brionna, "but to clarify, is Urlodo also known as the Many-Tongued Worm?"

"Yes, he's known by that as well. He's got a dozen titles with the name 'Worm' in them."

"I ask because, looking back at some of our earlier things, there's a note that the Many-Tongued Worm has connections to at least three of the outer duchies of Canberry."

"Really?" asks Kit. "How did we find that out?"

"We found that out from the Grand Duchess of Ergmoth, who pointed out that their Inquisition had sacrificed 9,900 members of the cult of the Many-Tongued Worm to Paranswarm. She thought that our lack of an Inquisition was not letting us be aware of the fact that there were three separate factions of the cult with connections to the outer duchies. We were told that scribes would forward us to us the most relevant confessions and names."

"Oh, but that must have been when the courier service was still not delivering things," says Kit in frustration.

"We'll have to request new copies," says Alistair.

"She also believed the cult of the Many-Tongued Worm had a connection to the rise of the island of the Eastern Sea..."

"The Eldritch islands," comments Alistair. "We seem to have dropped that for a while, but now we've verified it."

"I had forgotten this!" Dame Brionna explains. "I had a note when we learned about that... I remembered a servant in my own household when I was a child, cursing the family in the name of the Many-Tongued Worm!"

"Oh, there's your answer about the Southlands," says Kit.

"My parents mentioned that his servants gathered at mountains of ebon and basalt, and his servants were not of the younger races."

"The island has been described as an island of ebon and basalt," notes Alistair.

"We were told of four centers for its followers. This is all useful information that we clearly didn't do as much with as we might have at the time. The eastern island, an island off the southern coast of Khamista, a mountain to the southeast of Drucien against the lands of the Skaven, and a center within the Arctic Circle."

"That's the area where there was the whole gate exploration!" responds Alistair in frustration at having missed this at the time. "Wait... this mountain near the Skaven lands... that hasn't been in our awareness at all..."

"That's not the same mountain as the island, right?"

"No, the Eldritch island we know of."

"The island off the south coast to Khamista. I feel like that's the one where we think what's his name fled to, right?"

"No, it's a different one. There's one that's near Mandrath, that is, an Eldritch island where some of the armies of Sytry fled to."

"Yes, that's what I was meaning."

"But it's different from the islands on which the anti-patriarch is. Incidentally, I had two additional thoughts about the anti-patriarch," rambles Alistair. "One is that if I got that brain infection thing when I was at Holy Cortose, then it's possible that the reason why the patriarch has been unwilling up to this point to formally excommunicate and cast out the anti-patriarch and his followers, thus allowing the schism to come into the public, is that the same magical-psionic effect may be impairing the ability of the Sytryites to do that. Also, while a set of islands near Purdun and Tarhanna is not a very strategic location in most regards, if the hope was to have one of those countries overthrown from Glordiadelian to Sytryite rule, at least in part, and then seize that as part of the new Sytryan Temple, and thus actually serving Arthranax, then it would make perfect sense to want to be in that area. If roughly a third of the population of Tarhanna is Sytryite, there are surely individual islands that are 50 or 60 or 70% Sytryan."

"All right," says Dame Brionna, "but what about this mountain? I'm worried if there's another base we don't know about."

"Yes, I don't disagree, but we don't know where that is specifically. We should ask the Skree if they know about that mountain."

"The other thing that's more relevant for Kit, is this information about what the Grand Duchess was uncovering. There were Many-Tongued Worm people [in the outer Duchies? Notes unclear.] Which means, I think we need some people following up on that."

"Yes, we do."

Alistair says, "I think I remember something else. One of the assassins that were sent that attacked at that voller's arrival, that tried to kill somebody as they were arriving, one of them invoked the Worm or something while they were falling to the ground, before they splattered messily because the ties between the land and the Archduke did not allow them to pass into the land..."

"Yes, this was all from before you got married."

"A long time ago," agrees Kit.

"Yes, at least a year or so," agrees Alistair. [This is something of a joke, because while about a year ago in game time, it was something like 15 years ago in real time.]

"There are also gray humans, who we fought at one point, and they invoked the 'Great Worm,' calling 'Lend me your strength.'"

"So what kind of person were they?" asks Kit. "They clearly weren't actually humans. Who were they?"

"More or less still in human form. They were dock workers. This is interesting. They cast a spell by invoking the Lord of Cleansing Flame Cartaluma. They then hit you with a massive flame strike."

"Cartaluma is another one of the Six," notes Alistair. "So that strongly suggests, then, that Urlodo has, in fact, become paramount among the Six, if there are followers of the others of the Six who nonetheless look to Urlodo as a higher authority."

"Or could Urlodo have taken over Cartaluma's portfolio?"

"No," says the Reverend Canon, "he could power himself to a point where they could use another's power in his service, but not to have actually subsumed another of the Six entirely."

Dame Brionna keeps reading out snippets of her notes. "The great Worm that Burrows... 'My library has more information, but when His Grace meets with the Glorious Light, he should ask.'"

"That would be when I was going to see the Patriarch."

"'It is without question that the Queen of Chaos was involved. She has never knelt to anyone. It will be playing with fire for Urlodo to be involved with her, even to release her from her prison.' The other, absolutely certain to be involved is an old rival of the Queen of the Succubi.' Which fits: that will be the Seductress, presumably."

Alistair says, "We definitely need to do our own searching in the Archduchy for people who are following this. We also need to ask the Skree if they know about the mountain."

"Yes, and maybe our dwarven allies as well."

"Indeed. And we also should ask both the Skree and our vassal Skaven if they know about Urlodo followers down there, warlord clans that are turning to follow Urlodo, and that sort of thing."

"The other thing that seems immediately relevant is that it seems like there might have been a good connection between people following the Cult of the Worm and Tusslefields, which is of course our large mining duchy and has an entrance to the Underdark."

"Where they may have also been diverting miners to the Great Mine," comments Alistair.

"So we also need to right reach out to Tusslefields," continues Dame Brionna, "and remember that over half the legions of Canberry contain Tusslefield soldiers."

"There's a difference between there being problems with a cult there, and everyone being a cultist."

"Yes," agrees Kit, "but Tusslefields being well known for supplying soldiers to the army makes it very, very easy for a cult to make sure that there are cultists well distributed among the legions."

"And the Tusslefields, we know, unusually married in from the Kingdom of Life."

"I think we need to call for Their Graces the Duke and Duchess of Tusslefields to come and visit us," says Alistair.

The Reverend Canon finally says, "May I be excused, Your Majesty?"

"Oh, certainly. Thank you again."

As he departs, young Lord Brightspan informs the Council that Sister Ginerva Colombo, an expert in demonology from the seminary, is in an antechamber. They ask that she be immediately sent in.

[One of the players commented ooc, "I bet she has just one more question about demons."]

Sister Ginerva is a fairly short nun, not round but not slender either, in a full habit with no skimping on her part.

"Your Majesty and Holy Protector. I was surprised and delighted to be called upon to come and visit you."

"Sister, thank you for attending on us."

"I'm only a humble specialist in demonology. I never expected to see the inside of the palace."

"I wish that this were a social call based on your long and loyal service to the Lord of Light, instead of practical questions about your expertise, that so few share."

"Oh, that's very kind."

Young Lord Brightspan says to Kit through the mindlink, <<She's the stuff. There's more going on in her mind than just about anyone else I've seen.>>

<<That's good to know. Anything else unusual?>>

<<No, not really. She pinched my cheek...>>

Kit relays that to the rest of the Council.

"The first thing is that we are piecing together who the collection of demons who are aligned with the Eldritch are."

"Very sane."

"And we believe that they are: the Lord of Rams; the Abomination of Shurr; the Queen of Chaos; Membriel, the Lord of Believable Lies; Urlodo; Jubilex, and then we're uncertain on the other one. Perhaps the Seductress. We know the Seductress is part of that, but we don't know whether she's being counted among the seven demon lords, and for that matter, the Abomination of Shurr is actually weak to be counted among that group of seven."

"It is. That was his hope, to become a greater demon lord, but he never succeeded."

"And so, if there are seven demon lords, then he should not actually be one of them."

"Correct."

"Would the Seductress count, do you think?"

"I don't think so. Her position is unique."

"Because of the whole Noldor-archdevil-demon princess progression."

"Yes, correct. I would be surprised if Jubilex is involved, if his fellow is not also involved, although to be fair, his fellow has been in prison for millennia."

"This is He Who Gnaws?"

"Yes, Master of the Hungry Moon."

"Which moon is that?" asks Dame Brionna.

"The Red."

"He no longer has a plane, though, so are they counting him? Well, they are counting the Queen. She no longer has a plane, either, but she does have tremendous influence throughout the Abyss, despite them trying to crush it out for centuries. He is also the Lord of Goats, and the Lord of Fungus. I've never understood that connection, but that's what all the books say."

"Wait. So he has the same title as Cyth-S'sug?" asks Alistair.

"Yes, Cyth-S'sug replaced him after he was imprisoned."

"Do they have an enmity, then?"

"Oh, they hate each other. If one is involved, the other is not."

"In the same way as the enmity between, say, Malacat, and on the one hand, the Seductress, and, on the other hand, the Queen of Chaos."

"Correct."

"So that does somewhat suggest He Who Gnaws may be involved, and that then Cyth-S'sug might be not involved, and, in fact, might even be someone that can be mobilized against this."

"That is true. Does that give you all of the seven?"

"I only count six."

"If you were to try to make a determination through the use of spells, I would certainly consider the possibility that Zura is part of this. Lord of Cannibals."

"The Lord of Cannibals?" asks Dame Brionna. "There are enough of them to have a god?"

"It's a demon lord, not a god," clarifies Alistair.

"Yes, a demon lord. I would never consider them a god," Sister Ginerva says severely. "And possibly Deskaru: Lady of the Locust Host, of Infestation and Starvation. Those are the two that I think are most likely to be aligned with the others."

"Yes, all right," says Alistair. "Both of those seem like they might tie into this."

"Relevant portfolios," notes Dame Brionna.

"How horribly unpleasant!" Alistair then frames the next question. "We have been wondering whether Urlodo may have, in fact, supplanted Borsh'tro as leader of the Six. We know that Borsh'tro is no longer considered a god, and it seems most likely that either that power was also seized by Arthranax, or that it has been taken by Urlodo. Do you know, or have any insight on that?"

"The Synod within the Church believes that Urlodo is in the process of elevating himself to Borsh'tro's position. We believe that, in fact, at the moment there is no god of Chaotic Evil. Borsh'tro has declined with part of his power being stolen, and frankly Urlodo is the only one of the Council of Six that is smart enough to steal from him. Urlodo, then, would be in the process of elevating himself and preparing to move into Borsh'tro's position, possibly without ever telling anyone officially."

"Is there anything that we could do to attempt to disrupt that? Because it seems that would actually be substantially more dangerous than Borsh'tro."

"That's the view of of the Synod. You are the Protector. Have you been made aware of the Synod?"

"No, this is the first I've heard it mentioned."

"The Synod is a group of sanctioned diabolists and demonologists. Not that we summon demons or devils, but that we study them across the temple, across the entire Church. Our duty it is to make ourselves fully aware of demonic and diabolic threats going forward, and to advise the patriarch on proper actions."

"Do you engage in active investigation and hunting of cults?"

"Hunting, no; investigation, yes. The example of the Temple of Paranswarm's Inquisition is not one to encourage us to take on the role of hunting cults."

"No. Our preferred approach, and I say this both as the Emperor of Southern Drucien and as the Protector, our preferred approach is for the Church to work with the secular authorities of Lord Glordiadel to identify such things and then for the secular authorities to deal with them through the regular courts and processes, and so forth. Certainly, a cultist can be hanged for following a proscribed religion, or can be put to death for murder or the like, but not in a 'this village is condemned because there was a cult within it' kind of way that the Inquisition would do."

"And does do, routinely."

"It must be the case that if we must allow cultists to escape so that we can avoid killing innocents, then that is our duty."

"I concur. With Your Majesty's permission, I will speak directly."

"Please."

"If Your Majesty wishes to root out cults within the greater Empire--I cannot speak for the Southern Kingdoms. I've not been there. The Church is newly established there. However, within the Archduchy, for the sake of the Light, start with Tusslefields."

"We have, in fact, just summoned the Duke and Duchess of Tusslefields, so that we may examine them and their household's connections."

"But tell us why you think that, though?" asks Dame Brionna.

"A friend of mine--a member of the Synod-- several years ago uncovered a cult in one of the mining cities in Tusslefield, and managed to send a report to the Archduchess, shortly before he took an unexpected 500 foot fall off the side of a mountain. The report was never acted on. Her Grace was not well by then, and I'm sure it's buried somewhere in your archive. But those things spread, Dame."

Alistair thinks about this. "If I received a report that I didn't have the energy and capabilities to act upon about a problem in one of my vassals lands, my instinct as a way of dealing with it would be to tell my vassal about it, and have them deal with it. Do you know whether the Archduchess sent that report on to Tusslefields."

"It's very odd. As the Archduchess declined--your pardon, Your Majesty."

"Of course."

"She gathered things to herself more and more strongly. Near the end, she was not sharing things even with her closest confidants, to say nothing about nobles that she may not have completely trusted."

"She likely realized that there was a traitor in her inner circle, but had not identified her privy secretary as that traitor."

"I believe you're correct."

"Are you sure that the report reached her?" asks Kit.

"The private secretary could also have prevented it," says Dame Brionna.

"That is also possible."

"Or it could have gone astray on the road with the couriers," adds Kit.

"No," says Alistair. "It made it to Canberry City, because Sister Ginerva got a copy."

"Yes, we know that it entered the City. I do not know if the privy secretary forwarded it to her."

"Likely not."

"But even if she had, I do not think that at that time, Her Grace was any longer capable of action."

"We found records that she wanted us to have of military units--actually abroad-- that she viewed as being disloyal or corrupted. I wonder if she left other documents somewhere that we could find?"

"I do not know."

"The archivist?" suggest Dame Brionna.

"It's almost more a matter of searching her personal chambers and the like. There was something in the throne. I wonder if there was anything in her chambers or bed or whathaveyou?"

"You don't use her chambers, right?" asks Dame Brionna.

"Of course not."

"Would you like me to get some of my people on that?" suggests Kit.

"Yes, I think that's absolutely necessary."

"I will choose the absolute, most discreet people I have."

"That would be good, because it is entirely plausible that there may be things of interest to the family that would best not be made public."

"You know, I've got a few who can't even read."

"Might not be a bad idea. I mean, we think we know everything that was going on with her privately at the time, and it was not at all scandalous, certainly by the standards of high nobility. We know she had a paramour after her last husband died, but nothing untoward there, but nonetheless."

"So I will delegate some very, very skilled, very discreet, illiterate people to go looking for these documents."

They also brief Sister Ginerva on the Great Mine and the chaos centaurs.

"Chaos centaurs? On this continent?"

"Yes, the chaos centaurs were what got us investigating Urlodo to begin with, because if there were chaos centaurs here, he's the only one who is associated with them," explains Kit. "And once we started looking for signs of him, we found them everywhere."

"Are we missing any people under mysterious circumstances?" asks Sister Ginerva.

"Would we expect to be?" asks Dame Brionna.

"No, but you can expect to be with Urlodo."

"Can you get more specific about the mysterious circumstances?" asks Kit. "We've had a lot."

"People simply disappearing."

"That sounds familiar..." says Dame Brionna.

"We have," agrees Kit. "But there's been so much going on that we just assumed that the disappearance was just a mystery that we hadn't solved yet."

"There was the dead end from the Treasurer, who was working for some cult and getting them... was it ruby chips, or something like that?" recalls Alistair. "And then got murdered with a very sophisticated set of murders to prevent him from being traceable. When they teleported, they torture the horse to death to create a psychic barrier to prevent tracing the teleport."

"One of the tribes of eums bears allegiance to Urlodo. They're not exactly demons, and they are on the prime, but normally only in the Shadowlands, in the same place the chaos centaurs are. They are consummate assassins."

"So that's why we were having trouble tracking them."

"I must admit, not that I knew much of them, but that I'd always thought of yellow eums as being like goblins, petty threats that that would attack occasionally, and that you could stick a sword in, and they die," comments Alistair.

"They are petty threats as long as they're seen. Their use of garroting, their usage of toxins, as well as poisons. I presume His Majesty knows the difference."

"Ingested versus injected?"

"Or sprayed. Their use of small animals to deliver poisons and toxins. Their ability to hide themselves in the ground and erupt onto their victims by total surprise in groups. They are not dangerous if you see them coming. They're very dangerous if you don't know they're there."

"That almost makes me wonder if some of the ones in the Shadowlands are deliberately used to make less well planned attacks, to make them appear less dangerous," muses Alistair.

Dame Brionna notes an old prophecy they were given some time ago [2015 in real time]: "“Shining counselors will come. You must be cautious. Do not be fooled by devotion to the light. It is from light the worm will rise to strike. Words came to me: Nowhere better can falsehood lie than within the heart of truth. It seems nonsensical, does it not? And yet, that’s what came to me."

"From the Light that the Worm will rise to strike..." repeats Kit.

"Now, it seems so obvious that that was warning us about the Sytryites," Alistair says.

"In terms of disappearance, weren't we at some point investigating an aboleth?"

"That was in the western duchy, where the malaise was. We sent Lord Davion to talk to that aboleth and to sort things out, and I think he succeeded in doing so. That malaise has been lifted, I believe," responds Alistair. "I could certainly see Urlodo being interested in subverting aboleths, but they are typically extremely lawful."

"Yes, they are indeed," agrees Sister Ginerva.

"Are there other major servitors of Urlodo besides the chaos centaurs, the yellow eums, and the dhoyles?"

"Trueborn. Not all of them, but a significant number of their tribes."

"What are trueborn?"

"Human servants of Chaos. In fact, they would assert that they are of purer human lineage than nearly any other humans alive on the plane."

"What would that even mean?"

"That they have kept their line genetically pure among the tribes from the inception of Chaos, with no mixing with the elves, or fae, or halflings, demons, dragons... So there are none of those bits of other blood that so many of us have, or they think we have."

"So a bunch of racist zealots, then."

"A bunch of racist human zealots, yes."

"Yeah, you know what they don't have then?" says Kit. "Any psionics."

"You're correct, and very little magic. What they have is clerical."

"Of course that, but nothing arcane, because they wouldn't want to have to deal with elves."

"Or dragons. Arcane power usually comes from either elves or dragons or both."

"But is that all the major servitors?"

"Yes, those are all of Urlodo's major servitors."

"How much do we need to worry about the idea of there being dhoyles on Drucien?" asks Alistair.

"I do not know how they could have transported one. But. They could have brought a small one if they've brought chaos centaurs here and be trying to raise it here."

"Like maybe in a mine filled with fresia."

"That would be a good place for it, yes."

"This just gets better and better. Is there any reason to think that they would be able to subvert a non-Morgrathian balrog?"

"If they're not Morgrathian, it would depend on what he could offer them. There have been a couple of the balrogs that did not follow Lord Morgrath who have been taken into Chaos worship."

"There's apparently a balrog that serves an imprisoned Vala. One of the Valar that did not follow either Morgrath or Eiru, and that was then bound and imprisoned in the ground, and possibly with elven seals placed on it as part of that process, or possibly afterwards elven seals were placed to prevent it from escaping. The elves were a little bit unclear about that. They seem to have forgotten the details of what happened."

"Which is a little surprising," notes Dame Brionna.

"Well, but it was during the First Age. Elves don't think about things like that as well as they could. And there are things that the Eldar and the Noldor and their descendants can't remember properly, because the Kinslaying broke their memory. I don't know how that works, but I know that to be true. That's part of why the Eldron have more powers, that they remember things more completely as well as simply having more essence to draw upon. At least that's my understanding, from what various Eldar and Noldor have told me."

"That seems reasonable. However, if they have brought a dhoyle here, and are raising it in a mine full of fresia, with a possibly converted balrog, I know what they could offer the balrog. So do you, if you think about it."

"To free its master," Alistair responds.

"Yes. That if they gain sufficient power, they will free its master. Balrogs are very single-minded. That would win its loyalty."

"They probably wouldn't even be lying, because they would want to free that Vala just to distract us, if nothing else."

"Yes," says Sister Ginerva.

"Heck of a distraction..." says Dame Brionna.

"I'm not sure how you would shut that down."

"We've talked to the Hastur about them providing a trainee to assist us when we make an assault on some of the things around here. If there were a dhoyle, we might ask them if they could send someone more seasoned than that. I don't know who else could face it. I suppose the great elves that are not of the Hastur could also face a dhoyle, but I don't know if anything else can."

"Dhoyles can be killed, particularly when they're young, but balrogs, on the other hand... Do we know how powerful it is? Is it one of the Thirty?"

"No, it's not one of the Thirty. We know that there were two of them that were released from that mine. One remained in the mine, and is presumed to still be a threat there, but was bound in for many years, when the mine was sealed. The other one of them fought a Noldor lord and was destroyed. I think a Noldor lord-- might have been an Eldar. Princess Curinirim, if you are aware of her, asserted that she was fairly confident that she could kill that balrog, but did not seem certain of it."

"And she's arrogant, so..." says Dame Brionna.

"And a First Comer," notes Sister Ginerva.

"Yes."

"Well, that doesn't bode well. I suppose if you could take the outer fortification, you could seal them back in, but I'm not sure how. I'm not a military person. But if you seal them in, if they have any intention within the mine, they will probably finish it."

"Which means that we would have to seal them in with something capable of selling in the Vala at a minimum."

"Correct."

"And that presumes they can't burrow through the fresia in a different direction, which, with simple miners would seem difficult, but with a dhoyle... that's what dhoyles do."

"Or reach the Underdark, yes. I am uncertain how good it would be for them to reach the Underdark."

"I wonder if we could convince Lord Goldurim that there's some compelling reason that he needs to deal with this himself," muses Alistair.

"Yes, but that would involve talking to Lord Goldurim," notes Kit.

"Yes, but if we manage to convince Lord Goldurim of this, then nothing bad could happen in the mine after he goes in."

"Then Lord Goldurim gets shut up in the mine as well!"

"Because either he wins or he loses, or ideally both."

"I'm not going to be doing that convincing," says Dame Brionna.

"Which brings us back to it means we have to talk to Lord Goldurim, and I don't think anybody really wants to do that," responds Kit.

"No, we have been specifically advised never to do that," agrees Alistair.

"Yeah, you should take that advice."

"But maybe we could send him a message. I don't know. I just always like having my enemies fight each other."

"No, that's great," says Kit. "Let's think of a different enemy that we can send down there."

"You have lots of enemies," Dame Brionna helpfully observes.

"Meanwhile, we also know that Lell, the Marchioness of Darkness, is hanging out in a brothel in Enclaves."

"There are more unusual places for her."

"As part of a deal with the Zorplona-Moriquendarim."

"But there may not be more unusual deals for her."

"We're concerned that she may try to seize the item of great lawful power underneath Enclaves."

"That would be a disaster," points out the demonologist.

"Does that seem like something that she might want to do?"

"Oh, very reasonable. The amount of power it would give her in the Hells is substantial, but it would unbalance the north."

"Just so you know, the primary object giving stability to Enclaves is no longer there."

"That's not good."

"Well, no, it is good, it was necessary, but there's now only the balance between the object of great Law and the object of great Chaos. The actual object of stability and actual Neutrality is no longer present."

"And now they are balancing each other?"

"Poorly."

"Of course, they could not maintain a particularly stable balance.

"But enough!" says Kit.

"So if she is trying to get that, and she succeeds, it could be catastrophic."

"I see that, yes. Well, hopefully, they wrote a very solid contract. Probably not, but hopefully."

"I was going to say, anyone want to take bets on that? Oh, and their payment for this was viable seed to create a devil-Noldor hybrid thing."

"Oh, yes, that obviously gives them power as well, but not as much as the item of Law, and not as quickly. Who can we warn up there meaningfully?"

"We were thinking Meredith the Dazzling."

"Sensible, I think."

"Maybe Princess Curinirim, but I'm not sure that we can make her understand the danger. She seems to think that she can hold things together in Enclaves by sheer force of personality. I think she underestimates how unnatural enclaves's configuration is."

"Probably, probably. In Krashmere, they push everyone around wherever they want them, so the idea that people will naturally kill one another may not occur to her."

"Lovely! Do we have anything else for Sister Ginerva at this time?"

With no additional questions, they thank Sister Ginerva for speaking with her and dismiss her.

Shortly thereafter, Kit receives the first document found secreted in the late Archduchess's chambers. [Attached]

She shows it to the rest of the Council. "The Archduchess left this message to her heir, warning him that there was a traitor highly placed in the court. She suggested that he could use the life offering as a first cut--anyone who participated in that couldn't be the traitor."

"The life offering being used is ruthless," says Dame Brionna. "She must have given up on trying to stop the life offering."

"Well, we'll have plenty of time to change the culture," says Kit. "And Dame Brionna and I will set a good example."

Alistair nods agreement. "I believe that message would have been much more useful if we had gotten it on time. And clearly addressed to my father."

"Yep, it was to your father, who never got there," comments Kit.

"Honestly, he probably would have made a hash of all of this," observes Alistair.

"He would have charged bravely," says Dame Brionna.

"Yes, he was very good at that part."
[End Session 153; with that, we're fully caught up to the present. As we play additional sessions, I'll resume posting, probably more or less on a MWF schedule. Because the current write-ups are quite long per session, I'll probably break them up into somewhat smaller chunks in the future--I just wanted to ring the bell of having caught up completely today.

Also, for people who are interested in such things, the Moriquendarim who dealt with Lilith to get the Marchioness in Enclaves are another group of PCs. Which means that much of this session was one group of PCs trying to do damage control for the dubious decisions of another group of PCs.

]

Aphonion Tales: The Archducal Council -- Unedited notes; later posts are edited transcripts (posts MWF, update 3/1/23)

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