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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shadow" data-source="post: 8962383" data-attributes="member: 16760">"Found brother... He's Schroedinger's cat!"So while Marco worked on finishing the crystal, Ludovico, Jurgen, and their associate Professor Bergdokken (the quasi-vampire) used Asim's ring in a divination ritual to try to track him down.  (Giovanni was along for the ride.)  Turned out he was on a small island a week's sail from Marduca (ie, 'Rome') where Asim had last been seen.  We did quite well on the ritual, so we got some extra information...  that Asim isn't exactly alive and isn't exactly dead!  (A similar reading to what Ludovico had previously gotten on his master.)We sailed to the island.  On the way, Ludovico had a heart-to-heart with Giovanni, saying that he hadn't intended to change his looks.  The kid shrugged and said, "I never knew my father or my mother, I have no connection to any family.  What's it matter?  Now I look like you!"  (How can you not love this kid?!  Ludovico's heart melted.)He also offered Bergdokken a permanent place in our little band, but he politely declined.The islanders proved to have a strong strain of Stygian blood.  When they found we wanted to go up the island's peak, they warned us of bad luck, of sudden deaths, of angry spirits.  They begged us piteously not to take a small child (Giovanni) up there.  Naturally, we didn't listen.The divination had temporarily enchanted the ring to lead us to Asim.  It led us up the mountain to a particular boulder, which on closer inspection proved to not be a boulder at all, but a cunningly crafted stone cover for a tunnel.  To make a long story short, we found a glowing human figure laid out on a slab in the chamber below.More divinations followed, to try to figure out what the heck was going on.  It developed that Asim was in stasis.  Someone had tried to drain him of sorcery and had failed, because he wasn't actually the heir to the bloodline (Ludovico is).  In the process they had sucked most of the life out of him - if we broke the stasis ward, there was a strong chance he'd die.A ward that complicated won't last long under ordinary circumstances.  Either someone had to renew it periodically, or there was something special about the site itself.  We determined the latter was the case... and this time we rolled well enough that Ludovico had a breakthrough:He had a vision of this site, and other Stygian ritual sites, forming a connected network that spanned continents.  And he knew that (in Stygian form) he could activate the network to teleport himself and potentially others to any of the sites!This is HUGE!  Teleportation is otherwise unknown in Fortia save for the Imperial bloodline of Avarice.  And those guys, while really good at teleporting themselves and objects, have a real problem with groups of people.  This capability is revolutionary!  The only catch is that it only works between the ritual sites - essentially teleport pads.Well, there's one other catch... While Ludovico could see the ritual sites - dozens of them at least! - shining like a constellation in his mind, he had no sense of scale or direction.  He did have the distinct impression that there were sites on both sides of the ocean between Fortia and Stygia, but that's about it.  (And that's weird, because there aren't really any records of ancient Stygians coming north.)(EDIT:  We've since learned that there are exactly 32 sites... on this network.  But one of the sites connects to another network!  No clue yet how many networks there actually are.)We'd left a message for Marco in Marduca, so he eventually joined us.  (We tested the crystal, it works great!)  We had a big debate whether we should try to crack the teleportation network or sail as per the original plan.  Reluctantly, we decided to do the latter - too many unknowns and risks with the former.Things are heating up!  Presumably the next game will land us in Stygia.</blockquote>

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