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<blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 7504666" data-attributes="member: 6816692"><p><strong>Chaos at the Station, or: Sleep's for Sissies</strong></p><p></p><p>We make haste to get to the Nettles and the Mayor's estate. On our way through the forest, we are joined by many different, colorfully clad spirits who head towards the same direction. There's also the occasional Vekeshi elder in person, like the Ursa or the Wolf. When we reach the estate, we are quite surprised to see the front door open and all its inhabitants, including Dame Jillian, in a strange trance. We get that the Fey and Old Stag put that kind of enchantment on the Green Knight and her fellows, so we can empower the seal without interruption. </p><p></p><p>We spend the rest of the night channeling our powers into the diminished seal of the late Mayor and manage to strengthen the barrier between the planes to a safe level. As dawn is about to break, we are all more than just exhausted and tired. One by one the Vekeshi leave and we, too, try to get at least some sleep before the Grand Opening of the Sharon Baker Station. As Carlyle needs only two hours of sleep to be fully rested, Auryn volunteers to go to the station right now so she may gather some information in advance while he can take a short nap. </p><p></p><p>On our way back, we suddenly get a hasty message from Delft that the Green Knight has been attacked and she doesn't know what happened on the estate so we may wish to help her out. We answer that we'll discuss this with the King via feather and promise that everything will turn out fine. Then we explain Aodhan what actually happened with Macbannin's seal and that Fey and Vekeshi were in need of an undisturbed ritual place, so “someone” must have put a spell on Dame Jillian and her fellows. Aodhan seems kind of amused that some fey actually managed to trick his Green Knight and thanks us all for our effort to keep Cauldron Hill safe. </p><p></p><p>At Sharon Baker, Auryn is quite happy to see that her dear colleague Margit has already arrived at the station. After telling her about our late night mission atop the Bezna and her severe lack of sleep, Margit casts a refreshing spell on Auryn which at least suppresses her acute exhaustion. The two women check all security measures at the station and try to find signs of a trap or something indicating an imminent attack. We find that everything seems just fine, so we decide to wait for Carlyle before we continue checking the surrounding tunnels for terrorists and explosives. </p><p></p><p>Once Carlyle joins us, we venture down into the tunnel system and head towards Pardwright first. We only find one (bearded) dwarf who's busy cleaning up the rubbish. He didn't see anything suspicious and we can sense no lie in his words, so we follow the tracks until we reach the campus and find a group of eladrin security who are patrolling the area and who haven't found anyone suspicious yet. </p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(yeah, they are part of the same company that got hired by Michael Carlyle to guard the Aurum. Seems like our friend upped the security levels after the dwarves' previous attack as Fordren Industries invested a lot of money in the new arcanoscience building. Thanks Carlyle!)</span></p><p></p><p>We continue our search and reach an area with maintenance tracks. There we find a maintenance engine and four bald dwarves who are busy trying to get the engine running. A quick look at their equipment (lots and lots of rifles) indicates that these might just be the terrorists we're looking for. So we use a sleep spell to send them to the realm of dreams, then tie them up and place them on a draisine so we can get them to the police. Unfortunately, they don't have any explosives besides their gunpowder, so the bomb is still out there somewhere.</p><p></p><p>We head back to the station and hand the dwarves to the police so they can arrest them while we continue our search for the blockbuster. As more and more guests and dignitaries arrive, we decide to check each of them in a quick talk for possible connections to Zubov, Komanov or Soknik. Unfortunately, they all appear to have a clean history regarding the radicals. </p><p></p><p>So we follow the tracks to the opposite direction, towards the Aurum. Just when we arrive at the next underground station (having found nothing but more dust), we hear the quiet echoes of fired shots coming from the Sharon Baker Station. Carlyle doesn't waste any time and performs a teleport spell that brings us closer to the station.<span style="color: #008000"> (which was risky considering the fact that he didn't have time to memorize the spot) </span>Then we turn invisible and try to get a full picture of the situation.</p><p></p><p>Back at the station, we find a terrifying situation: 10 dwarves managed to gain control over the whole bunch of people on the platform, including Lord Vantrys, Cecilia Fordren, the Carlyles and Governeur Stanfield. They are all pointing their guns at their hostages, so simply attacking them is not an option. As desperate times call for desperate measures, Auryn takes Carlyle aside and asks him to put all his mental resilience together so she may try to freeze almost the whole station in time. She then moves to the center of the platform and utters a single, sharp and perfect note that leaves everyone stunned. Well, everyone except Carlyle and one of the dwarves, the one who's threatening Lord Vantrys and his fiancee. </p><p></p><p>But Carlyle finishes off the dwarf before he can even know what hit him. As Auryn is unable to do anything else but keeping up her note, it is up to Carlyle to take care of the rest.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(Yeah, Frozen Note is a really powerful spell. But it affects everyone in the radius and the caster is unable to even move while keeping up concentration, so you need a partner with an insanely good will save to make full use of it. Fortunately, Carlyle is a master of resisting Auryn's spells. Fun fact: she's totally aware of it and knows Carlyle would be her worst and probably deadliest enemy should he ever switch sides)</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p>Just when Carlyle drops the last dwarf, we suddenly hear some desperate gunshots coming from outside the station. They soon die off and we hear the familiar roar of a lion's shield, indicating that Asrabey did remember that we wanted to discuss our further plans after the grand opening. One could almost feel sorry for the dwarves outside...</p><p></p><p>Next, we hear some heavy steps coming from the tunnel which leads to Pardwright campus. We assume that they might belong to those involved with the still missing bomb, so we decide to intercept them before they can even get close to the station. Our assumption turns out to be correct as we see six heavily armed dwarves carrying a massive object towards the station. We put them to sleep as well after scaring their leader (who turns out to be Zubov) so much that he accidentally shoots his own foot. </p><p></p><p>Carlyle then asks Auryn to tie up the dwarves while he tries to check up on the bomb. While he carefully removes the upper parts of the bomb, Auryn finds a letter, written by Zubov that says that he claims to be speaking for Grandis Komanov who, going by the letter's contents, seems to have some beef with Price-Hill after his campaign against the necromancers in the Anthras Mountains. Still we know that this letter and the whole taking hostages plan was simply a distraction for their true target, so Auryn takes it back to the station to explain the whole situation to Stanfield and the police.</p><p></p><p>However, there is still chaos at the station and the Governor is currently unconscious as he's been struck down by a dwarf after trying to stand up for his people (or so one witness said). Auryn takes this as a perfect excuse to take a closer look at Stanfield's rings to find out whether he might be carrying an OB ring. To her surprise, he doesn't! But he does carry one ring with the mayor's sigil on it, giving Auryn a quick laugh.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(Unfortunately, this joke doesn't really work in english: The ring reads “Oberbürgermeister Stanfield”, which just translates to “head mayor Stanfield”. But the really common abbreviation for Oberbürgermeister is OB. So yeah, an OB ring indeed.)</span></p><p></p><p>She then calms down the panicked guests and asks them to help her gather the injured so she may heal them all up with her soothing song. The people, especially those who know her better, thank her for all her help, but Auryn takes a sorrowful look at the tunnels and says that it is actually Carlyle who deserves this praise as he's the one who took out the dwarves and who's still busy with the dangers deeper down in the tunnels. </p><p></p><p>Just when she finished speaking, Carlyle emerges from the tunnels and says that everything is under control now. What he doesn't say is that he finished diffusing the bomb, brought the separated explosives to the RHC labs (store them SEPARATELY!!!) and then returned to the tunnels. Auryn is very much relieved to see him unharmed and together they take Stanfield aside to tell him the truth about this attack.</p><p></p><p>The Deva doesn't understand at first as he's sure one of the dwarves insisted to see Price-Hill and said dwarf claimed that their leader, Zubov, wanted give him their manifesto. We insist that the terrorists wanted to use this distraction to get their bombing team the time they needed to set up the bomb and blow up the Aurum. Considering the fact that this building is a no-teleport zone, it would have been a death trap for everyone in there, including the King and Lee. Stanfield is horrified at this revelation and then quickly mutters that someone should give us a medal of honor or so for saving everyone without causing a panic. We reply that we're just doing our job, so no need for special honors. </p><p></p><p>Then we meet up with Asrabey to thank him for taking care of the attackers outside. He says that this wasn't a big deal and he got pretty much caught by surprise, so this turned a bit messy. He's also glad that the “small flower” made it out of this hell unharmed. Auryn returns that she wasn't really in danger as Carlyle was the one fiddling with the bomb. And while we promised Asrabey that we'd go to the Bleak Gate as soon as possible, Auryn is still deprived of sleep and needs to regain her powers for this potentially dangerous trip. </p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(for her, this was the same “day” as their attack on the Scoundrel's Theater, the capture of Slylyx and Spinning Wheel, the Bezna incident and the Vekeshi gathering. So Auryn was basically out of everything, even if Margit countered the exhaustion with her <em>restoration</em>.)</span></p><p></p><p>Asrabey seems to understand that and he adds that going to the Bleak Gate unprepared would also pose a risk on his mission of rescuing Kasvarina. Just when it seems as if we all got one happy agreement, we receive a message from Delft via whispering wind. He explains the the Danorans suddenly changed the schedule of the peace conference and are about to arrive this very same afternoon. We also got a letter in advance from Lya Jierre and it seems as if she's asking for our presence at the welcome banquet in the Aurum. So, to put it in Delft's very own words, it it time for us to put on our best garments and get our sorry selves presentable.</p><p></p><p>This news mean nothing but a catastrophe for the still tired Auryn who now, sincerely upset, has to explain to Asrabey that he needs to wait even longer till we can go to the Bleak Gate.</p><p></p><p>“I'm... I'm so sorry. I honestly don't know what to do. I desperately need some sleep, the Danorans just shipwrecked our plans by enforcing their own schedule – though I honestly got no nerve for their stupid power play right now – and their Sovereign's niece personally asks for our attendance at her party. It is as if fate's threads are tightening around us every passing hour. So Asrabey... if you'd just wait a little longer and... maybe take care of Isobel for me? I promise, no, I swear that we'll go find Kasvarina as soon as the ceremony is over.”</p><p></p><p>Asrabey seems a bit disappointed at first, but seeing the desperation and sadness in his grand-grand-grandniece's eyes, he cannot resist her plea. So he takes her “oath” and promises to be her humble guest until the diplomatic business is finished. Carlyle then offers to attend to the welcome ceremony for the Lux Profectusque alone should Auryn need more time for herself.</p><p></p><p>“Just go home and take care of yourself. Dress up, take the time you need. I guess I can manage the arrival of that one danoran ship by myself. If not, then the Chief Inspector will surely help me out with his supreme charme.” </p><p></p><p>Carlyle puts on an almost roguish grin and calls for a carriage to bring them all back to Stray River. Auryn then goes to sleep while Isobel tries to warm up to Asrabey. Meanwhile, Carlyle puts on his best suit and gets himself ready for what might be the biggest diplomatic gathering he's ever attended to in his whole life. He then takes a long stroll to the harbor, musing about what may or may not happen this evening.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lylandra, post: 7504666, member: 6816692"] [b]Chaos at the Station, or: Sleep's for Sissies[/b] We make haste to get to the Nettles and the Mayor's estate. On our way through the forest, we are joined by many different, colorfully clad spirits who head towards the same direction. There's also the occasional Vekeshi elder in person, like the Ursa or the Wolf. When we reach the estate, we are quite surprised to see the front door open and all its inhabitants, including Dame Jillian, in a strange trance. We get that the Fey and Old Stag put that kind of enchantment on the Green Knight and her fellows, so we can empower the seal without interruption. We spend the rest of the night channeling our powers into the diminished seal of the late Mayor and manage to strengthen the barrier between the planes to a safe level. As dawn is about to break, we are all more than just exhausted and tired. One by one the Vekeshi leave and we, too, try to get at least some sleep before the Grand Opening of the Sharon Baker Station. As Carlyle needs only two hours of sleep to be fully rested, Auryn volunteers to go to the station right now so she may gather some information in advance while he can take a short nap. On our way back, we suddenly get a hasty message from Delft that the Green Knight has been attacked and she doesn't know what happened on the estate so we may wish to help her out. We answer that we'll discuss this with the King via feather and promise that everything will turn out fine. Then we explain Aodhan what actually happened with Macbannin's seal and that Fey and Vekeshi were in need of an undisturbed ritual place, so “someone” must have put a spell on Dame Jillian and her fellows. Aodhan seems kind of amused that some fey actually managed to trick his Green Knight and thanks us all for our effort to keep Cauldron Hill safe. At Sharon Baker, Auryn is quite happy to see that her dear colleague Margit has already arrived at the station. After telling her about our late night mission atop the Bezna and her severe lack of sleep, Margit casts a refreshing spell on Auryn which at least suppresses her acute exhaustion. The two women check all security measures at the station and try to find signs of a trap or something indicating an imminent attack. We find that everything seems just fine, so we decide to wait for Carlyle before we continue checking the surrounding tunnels for terrorists and explosives. Once Carlyle joins us, we venture down into the tunnel system and head towards Pardwright first. We only find one (bearded) dwarf who's busy cleaning up the rubbish. He didn't see anything suspicious and we can sense no lie in his words, so we follow the tracks until we reach the campus and find a group of eladrin security who are patrolling the area and who haven't found anyone suspicious yet. [COLOR="#008000"] (yeah, they are part of the same company that got hired by Michael Carlyle to guard the Aurum. Seems like our friend upped the security levels after the dwarves' previous attack as Fordren Industries invested a lot of money in the new arcanoscience building. Thanks Carlyle!)[/COLOR] We continue our search and reach an area with maintenance tracks. There we find a maintenance engine and four bald dwarves who are busy trying to get the engine running. A quick look at their equipment (lots and lots of rifles) indicates that these might just be the terrorists we're looking for. So we use a sleep spell to send them to the realm of dreams, then tie them up and place them on a draisine so we can get them to the police. Unfortunately, they don't have any explosives besides their gunpowder, so the bomb is still out there somewhere. We head back to the station and hand the dwarves to the police so they can arrest them while we continue our search for the blockbuster. As more and more guests and dignitaries arrive, we decide to check each of them in a quick talk for possible connections to Zubov, Komanov or Soknik. Unfortunately, they all appear to have a clean history regarding the radicals. So we follow the tracks to the opposite direction, towards the Aurum. Just when we arrive at the next underground station (having found nothing but more dust), we hear the quiet echoes of fired shots coming from the Sharon Baker Station. Carlyle doesn't waste any time and performs a teleport spell that brings us closer to the station.[COLOR="#008000"] (which was risky considering the fact that he didn't have time to memorize the spot) [/COLOR]Then we turn invisible and try to get a full picture of the situation. Back at the station, we find a terrifying situation: 10 dwarves managed to gain control over the whole bunch of people on the platform, including Lord Vantrys, Cecilia Fordren, the Carlyles and Governeur Stanfield. They are all pointing their guns at their hostages, so simply attacking them is not an option. As desperate times call for desperate measures, Auryn takes Carlyle aside and asks him to put all his mental resilience together so she may try to freeze almost the whole station in time. She then moves to the center of the platform and utters a single, sharp and perfect note that leaves everyone stunned. Well, everyone except Carlyle and one of the dwarves, the one who's threatening Lord Vantrys and his fiancee. But Carlyle finishes off the dwarf before he can even know what hit him. As Auryn is unable to do anything else but keeping up her note, it is up to Carlyle to take care of the rest. [COLOR="#008000"](Yeah, Frozen Note is a really powerful spell. But it affects everyone in the radius and the caster is unable to even move while keeping up concentration, so you need a partner with an insanely good will save to make full use of it. Fortunately, Carlyle is a master of resisting Auryn's spells. Fun fact: she's totally aware of it and knows Carlyle would be her worst and probably deadliest enemy should he ever switch sides) [/COLOR] Just when Carlyle drops the last dwarf, we suddenly hear some desperate gunshots coming from outside the station. They soon die off and we hear the familiar roar of a lion's shield, indicating that Asrabey did remember that we wanted to discuss our further plans after the grand opening. One could almost feel sorry for the dwarves outside... Next, we hear some heavy steps coming from the tunnel which leads to Pardwright campus. We assume that they might belong to those involved with the still missing bomb, so we decide to intercept them before they can even get close to the station. Our assumption turns out to be correct as we see six heavily armed dwarves carrying a massive object towards the station. We put them to sleep as well after scaring their leader (who turns out to be Zubov) so much that he accidentally shoots his own foot. Carlyle then asks Auryn to tie up the dwarves while he tries to check up on the bomb. While he carefully removes the upper parts of the bomb, Auryn finds a letter, written by Zubov that says that he claims to be speaking for Grandis Komanov who, going by the letter's contents, seems to have some beef with Price-Hill after his campaign against the necromancers in the Anthras Mountains. Still we know that this letter and the whole taking hostages plan was simply a distraction for their true target, so Auryn takes it back to the station to explain the whole situation to Stanfield and the police. However, there is still chaos at the station and the Governor is currently unconscious as he's been struck down by a dwarf after trying to stand up for his people (or so one witness said). Auryn takes this as a perfect excuse to take a closer look at Stanfield's rings to find out whether he might be carrying an OB ring. To her surprise, he doesn't! But he does carry one ring with the mayor's sigil on it, giving Auryn a quick laugh. [COLOR="#008000"](Unfortunately, this joke doesn't really work in english: The ring reads “Oberbürgermeister Stanfield”, which just translates to “head mayor Stanfield”. But the really common abbreviation for Oberbürgermeister is OB. So yeah, an OB ring indeed.)[/COLOR] She then calms down the panicked guests and asks them to help her gather the injured so she may heal them all up with her soothing song. The people, especially those who know her better, thank her for all her help, but Auryn takes a sorrowful look at the tunnels and says that it is actually Carlyle who deserves this praise as he's the one who took out the dwarves and who's still busy with the dangers deeper down in the tunnels. Just when she finished speaking, Carlyle emerges from the tunnels and says that everything is under control now. What he doesn't say is that he finished diffusing the bomb, brought the separated explosives to the RHC labs (store them SEPARATELY!!!) and then returned to the tunnels. Auryn is very much relieved to see him unharmed and together they take Stanfield aside to tell him the truth about this attack. The Deva doesn't understand at first as he's sure one of the dwarves insisted to see Price-Hill and said dwarf claimed that their leader, Zubov, wanted give him their manifesto. We insist that the terrorists wanted to use this distraction to get their bombing team the time they needed to set up the bomb and blow up the Aurum. Considering the fact that this building is a no-teleport zone, it would have been a death trap for everyone in there, including the King and Lee. Stanfield is horrified at this revelation and then quickly mutters that someone should give us a medal of honor or so for saving everyone without causing a panic. We reply that we're just doing our job, so no need for special honors. Then we meet up with Asrabey to thank him for taking care of the attackers outside. He says that this wasn't a big deal and he got pretty much caught by surprise, so this turned a bit messy. He's also glad that the “small flower” made it out of this hell unharmed. Auryn returns that she wasn't really in danger as Carlyle was the one fiddling with the bomb. And while we promised Asrabey that we'd go to the Bleak Gate as soon as possible, Auryn is still deprived of sleep and needs to regain her powers for this potentially dangerous trip. [COLOR="#008000"](for her, this was the same “day” as their attack on the Scoundrel's Theater, the capture of Slylyx and Spinning Wheel, the Bezna incident and the Vekeshi gathering. So Auryn was basically out of everything, even if Margit countered the exhaustion with her [I]restoration[/I].)[/COLOR] Asrabey seems to understand that and he adds that going to the Bleak Gate unprepared would also pose a risk on his mission of rescuing Kasvarina. Just when it seems as if we all got one happy agreement, we receive a message from Delft via whispering wind. He explains the the Danorans suddenly changed the schedule of the peace conference and are about to arrive this very same afternoon. We also got a letter in advance from Lya Jierre and it seems as if she's asking for our presence at the welcome banquet in the Aurum. So, to put it in Delft's very own words, it it time for us to put on our best garments and get our sorry selves presentable. This news mean nothing but a catastrophe for the still tired Auryn who now, sincerely upset, has to explain to Asrabey that he needs to wait even longer till we can go to the Bleak Gate. “I'm... I'm so sorry. I honestly don't know what to do. I desperately need some sleep, the Danorans just shipwrecked our plans by enforcing their own schedule – though I honestly got no nerve for their stupid power play right now – and their Sovereign's niece personally asks for our attendance at her party. It is as if fate's threads are tightening around us every passing hour. So Asrabey... if you'd just wait a little longer and... maybe take care of Isobel for me? I promise, no, I swear that we'll go find Kasvarina as soon as the ceremony is over.” Asrabey seems a bit disappointed at first, but seeing the desperation and sadness in his grand-grand-grandniece's eyes, he cannot resist her plea. So he takes her “oath” and promises to be her humble guest until the diplomatic business is finished. Carlyle then offers to attend to the welcome ceremony for the Lux Profectusque alone should Auryn need more time for herself. “Just go home and take care of yourself. Dress up, take the time you need. I guess I can manage the arrival of that one danoran ship by myself. If not, then the Chief Inspector will surely help me out with his supreme charme.” Carlyle puts on an almost roguish grin and calls for a carriage to bring them all back to Stray River. Auryn then goes to sleep while Isobel tries to warm up to Asrabey. Meanwhile, Carlyle puts on his best suit and gets himself ready for what might be the biggest diplomatic gathering he's ever attended to in his whole life. He then takes a long stroll to the harbor, musing about what may or may not happen this evening. [/QUOTE]
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