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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Dallman" data-source="post: 9691030" data-attributes="member: 6999616">We have assembled our collection of priests and sacred beasts. We took them to nightside, along with the Empress' captain who had orders to escort us to the capital, and his troops. He had not been aware of how many sacred beasts we'd got, and wanted to send a messenger on dayside, but we demurred, since with travel-boosting magic, the whole body could arrive as quickly as his messenger.The journey went smoothly. The nearest thing to a problem was feeding the griffins, who were eyeing the large number of horses in the party, not to mention the centaurs and unicorns, but Create Food spells fed them adequately.Arriving near the capital, it was becoming obvious that a way to tell what was happening dayside from nightside would be very helpful. Detect Invisibility didn't do it, so Rama, our wizard, went to dayside and committed her arrival point to memory. She found that she could see that from nightside with her crystal ball, so that was a problem solved.Her appearance startled mundane residents of dayside who started panicking about a magus being around. A group of the Empress' guards showed up, were briefed on the situation, and sent for a senior officer. She had been aware that we were coming, but had not expected us so soon, and was impressed that we had come so far on nightside with no casualties. Overall, keeping the Empire slightly off-balance seems to be working.An area on a parade ground outside the city walls was cleared for the whole party to appear: about 60 humans including the 5 PCs,  all with horses, and about 70 sacred beasts of many types. This produced a lot of civilians from the city, to see all these wonderous creatures, plus food vendors and all the usual supporting cast. This is fine: we want to be seen as extraordinary, but friendly. We set up camp.There had been advance arrangements for accommodation within the city for the priests, but not for the sacred creatures. Re-arrangements began to be made so that the creatures could be accommodated with the appropriate religion's priests complicated by the presence of some creatures sacred to gods who don't have priests present. We stayed in our camp on the parade ground overnight.The next morning, one of the chamberlains who was working on the accommodation problem come to us with a different subject. The Empress will come out to see us about 10am to address us on the issues she wishes the conclave of priests to address. We were briefed on the ceremonial procedure, and asked about giving an address in reply. He asks what it would be about, and after consultation with the legal centaurs, we gave him a written summary. He headed back into the city, observed by Rama via the crystal ball.He arrived at a meeting room which was evidently the HQ where our appearance is being managed. By their clothes and manners (the crystal ball does Clairaudience) there were two nobles, two military officers, a senior civil servant and a priest of Zeus. The priest was outraged that we should wish to respond, the nobles were happy about it, and the officers and civil servant were not worried. The priest's objections were ignored and the civil servant went to brief Her Majesty. Rama attempted to follow him with the crystal ball, but couldn't quite manage it.We have the strong impression that the PCs are very powerful and magically sophisticated by local standards. We were summoned to the capital to sort out the matter of unauthorised entry into the Empire, but nobody has mentioned that subject since we arrived: they clearly have bigger issues on their minds.We genuinely don't want to take over the Empire, although we probably could. We're all quite keen on the mission of preventing the wars that someone within the Empire is trying to start. Artemis gave that mission to Aster, which is helping a lot, but we'd have tried to do it anyway.Said wars would be with the two smaller Greek-speaking human states to the west. The objective would be to add them to the Empire to strengthen it against the forthcoming invasions from minotaur and drow states to the east. We think that would waste a lot of lives and military resources, and an alliance is a better idea. The main force pushing for those wars seems to be the Temple of Zeus. We're suspicious they've been infiltrated by agents of the drow and/or minotaurs, as the church most receptive to such ideas that does leadership. We have caught two agents of the Temple of Zeus infiltrating other churches, and suspect there are more.</blockquote>

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