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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 6197046" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 90e - Enter VaralForgive the plethora of updates.  We got through a lot last session (to try to get the exposition dealt with in a single session and at a pace that avoided any risk of drag).  So I thought I'd provide detailed write-ups for the players in order that they don't forget the details, but I have to post each one as and when I finish it in case events (ie. child birth) catch up with me!Anyway, here's my first medium-sized departure from the adventure as written:Enter VaralLeon sat in the lounge of Lilly’s brothel, where he had sat so many times before.  Only now, instead of music and laughter, and the heady scent of leaf of Nicodemus, there was silence, and the smell of death.  The bodies were a few days old. Clientele would have found them first, but which of them would go to the police?Other than the bodies and the blood, all was in order.  Nothing was broken, except a wine bottle the waitress must have been holding when she fell.   She had been killed first, that much was clear: a thrown knife from the doorway.  Two punters had had their throats cut and now sagged, aghast, on the blood-soaked settee, flies crawling in and out of their mouths.Whether Adele had been out on the porch and dragged inside, or had entered during the massacre, Leon could not tell.  A blade was lodged between her shoulder blades.  At least her death had been swift.  Leon could only hope the little girl had not been made to witness what had befallen Lilly.He realised at that moment that he was holding her hairpin. Must have fallen out when she was manhandled onto the bar top.  That was where they cut her, again and again and again – in a cruel mockery of her self-inflicted scars (“one a day,” she had often said) – until she bled out and was still.That he had never really loved Lilly only made this worse, as if he had somehow betrayed her – all mixed up with the guilt of not being here when it happened.A movement in the doorway was too steady and regular to be a threat. Leon looked up to see an imposing figure blocking out the light:Asrabey Varal.  Leon did not even trouble to ponder the unlikelihood.Varal helped him clean the place up, cover the bodies.  Leon sent a local bayou kid to fetch the police, but he and Varal headed into the swamp before they arrived.  They came to a pavilion that may not have been in the Dreaming.  Varal entered, sat down around a low table of food and drink and offered Leon to do likewise.  Then he said:“I have come on an urgent mission for the Unseen Court.  The Old Stag spoke of you as a loyal servant of the crown and a trusted agent of the Vekeshi and as such I request your aid.  One of our ilk has come to this city to act without our blessing.  His name is Ekossigan, herald of the four seasons, he who defends stags from arrows, widdershins prophet and liege of changelings. Upon leaving the Court he penned this poem:“When spring returns to winter, / The cauldron births a spark.The steel betrays the vintner, / The silver spurns the arc.The fire-bride’s dissension: / Dismissed by green-adorned.The wheel-woven dead man / Shall wake the cauldron-born.“Ekossigan was sympathetic to the Duchess Ethelyn of Shale and despises the stench and clank of coal and metal.  He bears no love for the people of Danor, least of all those such as yourself.  We believe he has come to Flint to disrupt the Peace Conference.“I seek your help to search the city for this rebel, for we do not wish him to break our ancient treaties.  We offer one war unfought for one season slain. The fey shall not retaliate if you kill that which the Unseen Court’s greatest warrior cannot harm.”</blockquote>

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