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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 2398419" data-attributes="member: 2">Nothing that exotic. Annel is in her late 40's, and has been in Ioun's service since she was a little girl. Her mother had been, too.  And her grandmother. And her great-grandmother. In the quote you mentioned, Ioun is referring to the (rather foolish and incompetent, compared to the other wizard-kings) deals he made long before Annel was alive, and Annel is wryly referring to the much more polished deals that the later Ioun negotiated, and which the "new" Ioun has no memory of. They know each other well enough that this sort of in-joke happens all the time between them. Go figure.Annel is a 19th or 20th level Marshal, as per the Miniatures Handbook. Neat core class.Spatz brings up some fascinating political questions. The brief answer is that while Ioun is in no mood to be expansionist, he wants to hedge his bets and arrange for some stability for the empire should anything happen to him that can't be fixed. Combining the might of Corsai alone into his Empire (which I need a good name for - any ideas?) is going to be enough to discourage most outside aggression. It also allows me to let him name a PC as heir, should I ever feel the need to complicate my players' lives even more.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I fully expect things to get interesting if/when the PCs find out the truth. That's part of the fun. Ioun is exceptionally competent, but all the sorcerer kings were ruthless and self-centered SOBs. The old Ioun was pretty good compared to most of them, because at heart he's an intellectual and insular librarian who's not much interested in politics but who really liked feeling secure. The new Ioun is a little more adventurous, and that might play out in game. It provides a subtle hint that the PCs may or may not pick up on.I'm not planning on screwing over the group, though. If they make a deal with Ioun, I'll make sure that his font of knowledge (limited as it currently is, with +30-something knowledge checks) proves to be essential.</blockquote>

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