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Getting There

17th day of Resplendent Wood, RY 769
Dense Effulgence Root	22 Sep 2005

The morning the circle planned to leave, a message showed up in a bottle claimed from one of the dragon-blooded:

Dearest cousin -

I know you said not to use the bottles until you contacted me, but I have news that bears directly on the matter at hand, regarding the one with whom you have struck a deal. I inadvertently (really!) overheard a discussion between our mothers. They seem to believe they've uncovered a connection between Last Envy and the Cult of the Illuminated. If that's true, I can't help but wonder if the cargo you will deliver to him will be handed over to those heretics, though I have no idea to what use they might put it. Surely they are not sophisticated enough to actually forge it.

I beg you again to avoid this business altogether. At the very least, postpone it until I can dig more into this matter. Breaking an edict is one thing, but consorting with heretics is another. They'd never let you back here if that happened. Tread lightly, cousin. I couldn't bear it if anything were to happen to you.

Yours,

A.

The group realized that they'd killed Last Envy, but had only a vague idea of what the Cult of the Illuminated is. After some discussion, Varden found enough writing samples of the intended recipient of the message to forge a response (five successes):

Your words have persuaded me. I will try to delay as long as possible, but time is of the essence. Find out quickly.

After some last minute preparation, including Gutts taking crude pictograph notes from Kardak on his techniques of "wooing" women, the group piled into the Cloudwalking Ingot and took off. A quick flyby of Watch Valley revealed the shield had been deactivated, and dragon-blooded seemed to be in charge. The group flew towards Chiaroscuro at low altitude, mostly over the water. They circled around to approach the city from the south, landing well outside the wall to the old city. Concealing the vehicle (five successes), the used the water from the Forgotten Manse to contact Jorias. He indicates his just arrived in the city, and will be looking for a hotel on the north side. After agreeing to use the water again in two hours, they headed on foot into the city.

After a long walk, they reached the main slave market in the old city. Gutts buys two 20-year old slaves, both of attractive northern stock. Emily, the female, is a skilled tailor and cook. Morton, the male, is built more for manual labor, so Gutts buys a palanquin, ording Morton to pull he and Emily northward, leaving the rest of the circle to walk. He eventually hits a commercial district and stops at Fig Leaf Fashion to but clothes for himself, the circle and his new slaves.

Meanwhile, the group eventually hires a coach and heads north as well. While many foreigners mill about the city, an ornate carriage with a jade seal of House Mnemon on the doors catches their eyes, largely because a half-dozen humanoid creatures with no eyes or other facial features stand guard around it. The circle ignores the blank looks of the nearly jet-black beings, continuing north. By then, Jorias has secured a suite in the Marble Crane, an up scale hotel on the north coast. Checking in under the name of Grey Rose, the group eventually rendezvous there.

Upon arrival, Gutts comes across as noble of some kind, and the concierge assumes Guen is his seneschal, negotiating everything with him. A smaller suite of rooms is reserved for the new slaves. Jorias, fully shaved and in much better physical shape than Gutts and Guen remember, waits in the main suite and the group catches up.

Guen tells the circle about Tamuz, the lunar who installed the Tri-Kahn of the city into power and Tamaz, a First Age lunar with a suspiciously similar name who is thought to lair near by. He suggests that these two might be one and the same and, even if they aren't, it might be useful to talk to someone who lived during the First Age at some point.

For his part, Jorias informs them that Adrios wants a message delivered in secret to the mother of Golden Hand of the Tri-Kahn's wives. The mother's is apparently referred to only as Unfettered. Adrios didn't specify the contents of the message, and Jorias didn't look. The rest of the circle doesn't even consider reading it, or wonder much about who the woman is what Adrios wants with her. Gutts remembers that Adrios mentioned working for the Tri-Khan at some point in the past.

He has also has been told, via whisper in his ear from a spell, that Sundial wants them to meet Pollen Song at a place called the Vermillion Ribbon about an hour before noon the next day.

Emily knocks on the door, indicating she has prepared a feast, so the circle eats, bathes and sleeps.

Dancing Girls, Scavengers and Books

18th day of Resplendent Wood, RY 769
Chiaroscuro	28 Sep 2005

At first light, Guen becomes a bird, grabs the silver tube containing Varden's message and flies into the palace of the Tri-Kahn to locate Unfettered. His efforts are hampered by not knowing what she looks like, and by the fact that he does not speak the language that the people in the house speak. He uncovers a couple of candidates for Unfettered and Golden Hand, but is interrupted when a northern looking man notices something odd about the bird carrying the metal tube and starts asking it questions. Guen eventually returns back to the hotel with the message undelivered.

Stag goes to Vermillion Ribbon ahead of time, a couple hours before noon. Noticing a very long line and sign saying "Dancing today only: Blossom", he bribes his way into the club through neighboring apartment. Having talked to some people outside who described Blossom as the most amazing and beautiful dancer ever, lauding her performances as the Tattered Rainbow, Stag develops an irrational need to get past her guards to get backstage, but does not succeed. Guen comes later, shapeshifting in. Gutts, who was looking at houses and buying another elephant, comes with slaves, presenting a massive bribe to get in, really irritating the patrons on line. Varden's gem of desire allows he and Jorias to get past the doorman with no problem.

After introductions, Pollen Song indicates that he has seen a sapphire containing five glowing lights, mounted in a necklace in possession of unexalted member of imperial family. He gave it to a dancer at the Vermillion Ribbon named Volaria. Volaria supposed to be there, but isn't. While this is happening, two dragon-blooded enter with eyeless servants and start questioning a waitress named Rila. Just as the circle moves to investigate, Blossom starts dancing, transfixing everyone in the room. With eye contact, she plants suggestions into most people's heads:

• Gutts: "You should impress me by putting a large tip in my donation bowl." Gutts didn't even try resisting, and put something like a talent of jade into the bowl.
• Guen: "You should order two bottles of Marin Etos for your table, then tip the waitress really well. She�ll take good care of you." Guen doesn't resist, and orders the wine.
• Stag: "You should remove your mask. You'd be more comfortable." Stag resists this compulsion
• Varden: "You should find out what the names of the two Imperials hassling Rila are, then write them down and slip the paper into my donation bowl." Varden does as he is asked.

After the dance, the dragon-blooded take waitress by the arm outside. At various intervals, Gutts, Guen and Jorias follow, while Stag tries to get back stage again, this time succeeding. When he gets close to Blossom, he is entangled by her suddenly animated clothes. They flirt a bit and she kisses, then releases him. Stag leaves via the stage, barely hearing Blossom chew out her guards and start smashing stuff.

Meanwhile, outside, Guen finally manages to eavesdrop a bit on the dragon-blooded. They are clearly using truth detecting magic, asking Rila about whereabouts of someone named Emerald Singer. They asked her where "the book" is, but she does not know. Eventually, they toss her out of the wagon, and the circle befriends her. She eventually tells them that Emerald Singer is an scholar and treasure hunter with whom she had been intimate. He was driven out of town by another scholar, named Tower Horse. She calls them both "crazy old men" and "occultists" who were members of a group called Order of the Silent Dawn.

The circle wandered back into the now empty club and bribed the manager to reveal the location of Volaria's home. Gutts insists on taking his elephant and entourage, so they arrive at a run down apartment building with more fanfare than most members of the circle (i.e. everyone but Gutts) would have liked.

18th day of Resplendent Wood, RY 769
Chiaroscuro	10 Oct 2005

The entire circle walks into the apartment building, and manages to track down Volaria's door, which they pick. The place is lived in and cluttered, but unoccupied. A bit of opium is discovered. Using his nose, Guen estimates no one has been in the room for 36 hours or so. Volaria's scent is mingled with faint traces of someone else, but is strong enough to track. The follow the scent all the way back to the Vermillion Ribbon, where Guen picks up a more recent scent trail leaving the club. Following this scent leads the circle to an abandoned building.

The building is being used as an opium den, with addicts strung about. There is, however, a basement, and concealed among the clutter is the dead body of Volaria, evidently strangled to death. Guen picks up another scent, a male, in the basement, which he is pretty sure is Volaria's killer. The necklace is not on Volaria's body, but looks like it might have been ripped from her neck. On the assumption it was taken by the killer, the circle buries Volaria's body and leaves to track her killer.

This scent is tracked across town to a set of low-rise First Age buildings completely surrounded by rubble: the Plaza. The heart and soul of the Plaza is a powerful spirit named Grandmother Bright, who has a reputation as an information broker. In spite of Gutt's wearing full armor, she offers them tea and cookies, expresses condolences about Volaria's death. The circle describes the necklace and asks if she has seen it. She indicates that someone visited her and exchanged the necklace to information. While Grandmother Bright refused to identify the person or discuss for what it was trader, she offers the circle the necklace if they will find on object for her. According to rumors, a mortal scavenger savant named Emerald Singer brought a book bound in white feathers back from an archeological site he'd evidently uncovered in the southern deserts. This book is apparently quite a find, but Grandmother Bright has not been able to find out much about it. She has determined that it is causing trouble in the city, with a man named Tower Horse having driven Emerald Singer out of town. If the circle brings her the book, she will give them the gemstone. The circle agrees and leaves peacefully.

On their way out, Grandmother Bright tells Gutts that she recognizes his armor, warning him that "its creator will want it back if he ever sees it". Gutts asked who it was, but she said that he wears a different form now, and she is not sure she would recognize him any more. By then, it was dark and the ghosts were out in full, so Grandmother Bright provided a lamp that would keep the ghosts away for a time. The circle ran full speed, some of them being carried by others and made it across a salt-lined road just as the lamp went out.

Stopping by a bar, they manage to discover that Tower Horse is fairly well known in the city, and lives near the harbor.

Once they made it back to the hotel, they got cleaned up. In a bath, Stag sang songs making fun of Gutts. Gutts threw his sword into the bathroom door, shattering it. After being taunted by Stag for his poor accuracy, Gutts storms into the bath and picked up the tub. Stag possessed and animated the bathtub, wiggling out of Gutt's hands and making it walk across the room. Gutts, naturally, shot it with a firewand, torching a good portion of the room. A bellman came to investigate the ruckus and smoke, but Varden made an oblique comment about fondue and he went away. After returning the bathtub to its normal place, Jorias lit a pipe with some of the smoldering wreckage and went out on the balcony to smoke. Gutts showers in the room of his slaves.

19th day of Resplendent Wood, RY 769
Chiaroscuro	20 Oct 2005

After being warned by Gutts to avoid the tub, Emily and Morton make breakfast. Guen flies to the harbor and starts asking after Tower Horse by pretending to be an antiquities buyer. Eventually, Guen meets a merchant who directs him to Tower Horse's shop, providing an origami token which will supposedly allow Guen to get into the "back room" where the real antiquities are.

As Guen approached the house, he saw the Mnemon carriage from before, with several of the dragon-blooded leaving the house, looking irritated. Transforming into a bird, Guen flew to the penthouse to find Tower Horse dead with a broken neck, laying in the open doorway to a concealed room. Both the room and the bedroom to which it connects are in disarray.

Guen informed the circle via the earrings, and Jorias jumped on a conjured horse, speeding to the scene but arriving too late to save Tower Horse. The rest of the group catches up, storming into the house to find all the servants killed. They find a number of trinkets, a ledger for a candle shop that Tower Horse evidently owned and ran across the alley in back of the house, and a journal. The journal contains mostly details of the various trinkets in the vault, but the last few entries contain references to Tower Horse stealing a book from Emerald Singer. Details in the journal are hazy, but Tower somehow forced Emerald to flee town, then Tower sent men to forcibly search his collections, specifically for the book. The second to last entry, over two weeks old reads "I've started to translate and read it. It's the most remarkable find of my career." The last entry is a page and a half of gibberish.

The circle decides to check out the candle shop mentioned in the ledger. Guen manages to detect a faint smell in one of the drawers, a mix of human and bear. This baffles the circle, but Guen suspects there may be a shapeshifter involved.

Chiaroscuro

25 Oct 2005

Neither Jorias nor the rest of the circle was particularly stealthy when they entered the building, and unbeknownst to them, the dragon-blooded were still watching. Figuring the circle might succeed in finding the book where they failed, the dragon blooded sent one of their number, an master of Air Dragon martial arts named Mnemon Caras Para to eavesdrop, floating invisibly outside Tower Horse's bedroom window. When the circle moved into the candle factory, the dragon blooded decided to try to ambush the circle as they came out of the factory, hopefully capturing some of them alive.

Guen hears people moving down the alley toward the candle factory. This turns out to be the eyeless ones. With no consultation to the others, Stag runs out the door to confront them. He sees two dragon-blooded at both ends of the alley and becomes entranced with a magical contradiction floating in the air above one of them. Unresisting, two of the eyeless ones bind his hands behind his back. Gutts runs out to defend him, but is also transfixed by the magic. He is disarmed and led down the alley. As the rest of the circle starts making ranged attacks at the eyeless ones from within the factory, Stag manages to solve the contradiction and shake off the effects, spin-kicking the eyeless one leading him down the alley into unconsciousness and running back into the factory. Just before diving through the door, he sends one last kick, this one magically ranged, towards Gutts, which snaps him out of his fascination. Gutts breaks his bonds, calls his sword to him, and moves back into the factory.

Gutts starts cutting through walls, leading the group through a restaurant. Guen follows, in beastman form, causes quite a stir. The mortal patrons of the restaurant stream out, screaming. Some of them make the mistake of looking up as they pass the alley, and get transfixed by the magical contradiction.

Stag jumps onto the roof, running afoul of the still floating Mnemon Caras Para. Meanwhile, Gutts runs back into the factory, cutting holes in the other wall, into a warehouse.

Chiaroscuro

22 Nov 2005

Gutts and Varden finally move through the warehouse, exiting into the alley, attempting to outflank their attackers. Instead, they run into Mnemon Kena, a master of Earth Dragon martial arts. Her large white jade tetsubo disarms both Gutts and Varden, mangling their orichalcum weapons in the process. From the roof, Stag manages to inflict a ton of bashing damage on Para, who drops down the meet the bow wielding Mnemon Lapel, a Wood Dragon master who heals Para, taking his wounds onto himself.

Both Jorias and Guen fall prey to the magical contradiction, but manage to shake it off quickly. Guen goes to help Gutts and Varden, but gets distracted by Lapel and the two keep each other occupied. Stag suddenly finds himself encased in vines that grow out of the rooftop, a spell cast by Mnemon Marbado from a third floor window overlooking the alley. Stag escapes by possessing the wall around Marbado. As stag prepares to make the wall attack him, he unknots a cord he carries, and a spiraling whirl of razor wire cuts down Jorias, incapacitating him.

Chiaroscuro

29 Nov 2005

Stag animates the wall, tossing Marbado to the street, but even this isn't enough break his concentration on his next spell. Guen connects with Lapel, killing him. Kena, meanwhile, continues to put the hurt on Gutts, Varden and Guen, eventually unleashing an effect that traps them all to the ground. In response, Stag possesses him canceling the hold on his circle makes before Kena pushes him out of her body.

Having nearly run out of essence, the dragon-blooded are in trouble. After sustaining a number of hits from the circle, Marbado turns into a flock of black birds and flies up out of the alley. Para isn't far behind, running up the air and over the buildings, managing to barely dodge incoming attacks. Kena, left to her own devices, makes a break for the carriage that comes down the cross alley for her. She manages to grab on, only to be knocked unconscious by the circle (and later killed). Stag manages to commandeer the carriage, killing the eyeless ones within.

Chiaroscuro

6 Dec 2005

Picking up the unconscious Jorias, all pile into the carriage, including the bodies of the two dragon-blooded. As they circle hears sounds of large numbers of approaching infantry. A slightly glowing Stag steers the carriage up the waterfront. Varden, the only one in the circle not glowing or unconscious, hires a boat. With some heavy bribes, the captain arranges a distraction in the streets, which by now is crawling with Chiaroscuro troops. During the furor, the rest of the group is brought on board, with the crew paid not to look.

While the boat makes its way out to sea, the two dragon-blooded bodies are searched. Many artifacts are found, but the group elects to use most of them to weight down the bodies to make them sink. All that is kept is:

• A warding charm against demons
• a silk veil with jade thread
• a jade armband

To distract the crew, Varden and Guen (as Frank and Bob) stage a fight in the bow of the boat. Meanwhile, Stag (Stan) and Gutts (Eduardo) dump the dead bodies over the back. Once completed, Guts breaks up the fake fight.

Eventually, the circle talks to the captain, who mentions some unusual ghost activity in the city.

Bring Out Your Dead

Chiaroscuro

4 Jan 2006

Meet ghosts. Demon attack. Most of crew killed. Red Haze. External recon of Velvet Savor Vineyard spots spine chains patrolling the grounds.

20th day of Resplendent Wood, RY 769
Chiaroscuro	17 Jan 2006

Gutts buys boat. Return to hotel, where Onyx Blossom, Flaxen Catacomb, Masked Ox and Hammer in the Woods interrogate circle and reveal themselves as solars, and the true power behind the throne in Chiaroscuro. They know Adrios. Lots of talking about the ghost activity and zombie activity. The groups decide to team up to fight it. Gutts requests some help repairing his sword. They reveal Last Envy was working for them, and that they were waiting on the arrival of his orichalcum (now in possession of the circle). The groups move to a First Age building/ruin known as Tears of Heaven. The bottom is flooded, but just above the flooded level is a First Age forge. Stag and Varden combine talents to repair the weapon.

21st day of Resplendent Wood, RY 769
Chiaroscuro	25 Jan 2006

Guen makes more detailed recon of the vineyard. Discovers more zombies, ghosts, shadowy demons, man-beasts and lots of slaughter. The house is owned by House Cynis and is a wood-aspected manse. There is also a large soulsteel and green jade urn in a magically significant position near the hearth room. Guen gets seen by a shadow-demon and flees.

The team spends a lot of time plotting. Plan is to split into two teams, one stealthy, one loud. Flax can arrange for a pair of catapults, with crew. The idea is to attack at dawn, using the catapults to get as much sunlight into the house as possible. One team will attempt to get into the room that Guen got chased out of, the other will go into the wine cellar, to find out what's in a secret room that Guen couldn't get into without revealing himself. Guen will attempt to find the bear-like person who is assumed to be a lunar and make sure he doesn't escape.

Chiaroscuro

30 Jan 2006

The attack begins. The catapults made a bunch of noise and spine chains were lying in wait for them. The group dispatched them without much trouble. Gutts (on the loud team) stormed the east side of the house, going through the large hole created by the catapult. The others followed more quietly, arriving a bit behind him. Cutting down the wall into the map room (where Guen had been spotted during his first recon), Gutts found five shirikai (shadow demons), a number of war ghosts and the man-animals Guen saw earlier.

Chiaroscuro

15 Feb 2006

Blossom charms ghosts. Guen infected with shadow disease. Fire bomb zombie room.

Chiaroscuro

28 Feb 2006

Lunar is killed, demon escapes. Demon tells Stag "I doubt the book will bring you much happiness, Flowing Pen."

Chiaroscuro

8 Mar 2006

Place looted. Book found (entrusted to Stag). Hammer tells of training camp.

Chiaroscuro

14 Mar 2006

Split loot. Posess book. Go to G'ma bright.

She reacts strangely to book, but gives them gem. They ask about retrieving memories from the gems. She suggests she might be able to arrange it, in exchange for what the secrets are. Find insignificant hotel.

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