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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7876001" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 249, Part ThreeMoving on the CapitalIn the woods behind the mayoral mansion, they found Lieutenant Dale, hiding out and watching the only trail. They saw him before he saw them, and Uru snuck up and surprised him. Once he had recovered from the shock, he was his usual upbeat self, overjoyed to see them, and keen to lead them to Isaac. “When we heard you were coming, Isaac wouldn’t believe it, but I knew it was true. You always turn up at the last minute and save us!”He took them to a hidden entrance in the side of the hill, covered by a camouflaged tarp. Once it was pulled aside, they saw aelectrical light from within. A short passageway gave onto a cluttered lab, with two pallets at the far end; another curtain hung over the entrance to a smaller chamber.Isaac responded to their arrival without pleasantries, he simply shuffled about the lab, gathering equipment, while describing the nature of the ritual he intended to perform. They asked if there was anything he needed.  “Not really,” he said. “I’ve got everything here.  The whole thing should take half-an-hour to an hour, tops.”  Uru asked him how his wife was.  Lin pulled back the curtain in the far doorway and clicked her pedipalps in a thri-kreen greeting.Wondermaker’s avatar reanimated and said that they would need to gather witchoil for his duplicant technology, which his assistants were already bringing to the hill. Lieutenant Dale said he would get it, and set off to do so straight away.They asked Isaac if he had any news from the city – any ideas about how they could best reclaim it. Isaac shrugged. “Not my department. You’d better ask Thames. He said he’d keep an eye on things if he could. When last we had words, I told him to go to Pine Island. The positioning of the gas lamps mean that the dampening effect of the brown light is weakest there. But I don’t know exactly where he is, or how to contact him.” “Don’t worry,” said Uru. “If he’s in Flint, I’ll find him.”They asked Isaac what he knew about other key figures, and this is what he told them:Harkover ruled over Risur from the Governor’s Island.  Isaac advised against approaching it until the sending barrier was complete. “Harkover would surely notice your approach. The island is heavily warded, with spectral hounds that can sniff invisible creatures, widespread wards that illuminate anyone disguised or polymorphed, bound nature spirits that warn of anyone magically travelling through the earth or water, and teleportation beacons that redirect intruders to the Pine Island barracks.”Delft was now the Chief of the Secret Police, based in the old RHC headquarters. It might be a good idea to free him if they could, such was his influence over the security forces.Gale had been dominated too and operated from the Cloudwood.   Not the deep jungle, but an area that had been rapidly cleared and linked to the Central District with a new rail line. Gale was employed to summon clouds over the city every day, to raise morale, oddly. (Apparently, still people feared the sunless sky.) She did so every morning at around this time.That was an opportunity they didn’t want to miss. They would move quickly and attempt to intercept Gale, removing her from the hivemind if possible. Xambria reminded them that key personnel might be possessed by ghost councillors, in which case radiant damage would be necessary to free them.Leon and Uru would revert to their original plan and approach Pine Island from the bayou, to make contact with Thames.Before they left, Wondermaker asked Quratulain if there were any upgrades she would like. “Perhaps some improvements to my rocket boots? I don’t feel as manoeuvrable as the others.” Wondermaker said he had just the thing.  “That’s good,” said Quratulain. “I need to be able to move quickly around the battlefield. After all, I’m killing for two now.”The main group moved from Nettles into the Cloudwood itself, to avoid heavily populated areas. Clouds were already beginning to form with unnatural speed, so they needed to get through the jungle quickly. Conquo offered Quratulain a piggyback as he brachiated through the trees; Korrigan flew; Gupta went in tiger form.Leon and Uru arrived in the Thinker’s Cave.  To Leon’s surprise, he found that the five planar idols had returned, and now stood on their pedestals: the Jade Leviathan; the Bloodstone Ape; the Granite Crocodile; the Amethyst Ouroboros and the Crystal Tesseract. He had saved most of them from the clutches of Jenny Greenteeth’s coven, but the Thinker had spirited them away when he vanished.  They were connected to the original planes that had governed Lanjyr before the Ancients first performed the Axis Seal Ritual.  Leon tried to contact the Thinker now, but to no avail.   How the idols came to be here he could not say.  Although using it was fraught with risk, he took the jade leviathan, knowing how useful it could be; Uru took the bloodstone ape. Leon put the rest in the absurdist web.  Then they rode on phantom steeds to Pine Island.The others had reached the southern edge of the Cloudwood, where a deep scar had been carved into the jungle and logging proceeded apace. They saw Gale, about half a mile away, hovering about three-hundred feet up, arms raised, focused on her weather magic. Quratulain drew a careful bead on her.Korrigan flew even higher, above the forming clouds.  Then he used his clairvoyant eye to blast through the clouds in the form of a lightning bolt, and appear right in front of Gale. He blasted her with radiant energy from his holy sword; Quratulain hit her with a ghost-touched bullet.  Hit twice in rapid succession, the ghost councillors quailed. Korrigan ordered Gale to snap out of it.Gale’s expression changed from one of vacant shock to a broad smile of pure pleasure. “Your majesty!” she cried.  “Welcome home!”By now, Leon and Uru had reached Pine Island. Here, the streets were swept and only faintly lit by the brown gas lantern to the North. Most of the houses and buildings were in good order, and police were doing early morning rounds, visiting each house to ask if anyone needed assistance. But no one spoke except when necessary to coordinate action. No one seemed to be daydreaming, or preoccupied, or bored. Everyone functioned like a cog in a machine. Leon could see thousands of invisible, spider-thread filaments rising up from throughout the city, where they joined up with countless tiny, knobbly thoughtforms, all linked together in a mesh.Uru knew exactly where Thames Grimsley was.  The spirits of the city told him.  He and two dozen other dockers were hidden in a public library.  No one came here to get books anymore; no one needed or wanted to read.  Thames’ response to their arrival was… as… melo… dramatic… as usual, emphasising the force of will they had employed to remain free: They had done so by reminding each other daily of the wonderful individuality they were able to express before the Obscurati came to power. They accepted a harsh life as long as they could speak their minds, so the Ob’s promise of security held little sway over them.  Thames couldn’t resist a sideways jibe at Gale: “Wouldn’t it have been better if I had been Governor?  The Ob wouldn’t have found me so… easy… to control.”Getting down to business, they asked him what he could tell them about the city. The dockers knew a great deal about the changes that had been wrought over the last few months: There were seven lantern towers.  One to the very north of Pine Island; another on the east bank of Stray River; a third in the Ayres, where industrial fishing had overtaken the luxury houses of the rich; the North Shore Lantern Tower stood atop the lower of the two peaks of the Great Horned Mountain – the higher peak had been cored and levelled so that immense anti-aircraft batteries could be installed; in Bosum Strand, the lantern stood in Dawn Square, where it bathed the re-education camps; the Central District lamp was on the roof of RHC HQ; another stood on an artificial island in the middle of Parity Lake; the last was in the newly cleared section of the Cloudwood.Leon said they wanted to reach as many people as possible with the news that the unit had returned. Word came from Korrigan that Gale was free, and the plan was to have her use her weather powers to enable him to address the entire city, but the dockers had a plan to spread the word in a more direct fashion: they would hijack an incoming train bound for Dawn Square, release the prisoners into the city to tell as many people as would listen that salvation was at hand; then they would ride the train to the square and bring the news to the brave folks in the re-education camp. “We’ll make plenty of noise, but for added impact, it would help if the king was there in person.”Leon nodded.  But when could they take an incoming train? “The advantage of organising a train heist in a fascist dictatorship,” said Jered Lawman, “is the trains always run on time. There should be one approaching from the south in about two hours."  That was too long to wait.  "We could hit an earlier one, but that’s passing through in just five minutes!”“Consider it done!” said Leon.</blockquote>

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