[Notes for the run of May 24, 2000.] Paris says, "I'd like to do this. I'd like to have some help. My only proviso is that Anton stays in the boat with the Princess." We agree that Anton should take off if there's trouble, or if the storm arrives before we return. He asks Jarvon where the nearest air current is. Jarvon impatiently reminds him it's called an astral current, and adds that the nearest one is in the direction of the storm. So that's not a feasible means of accelerating our escape. Rhori asks if the boat is faster than the storm. Anton asks Jarvon, who says storms are generally slower than the boat, but winter storms can be much faster, up to 60 miles per hour. Jarvon doesn't know what time of year it is, but Anton tells him it is indeed winter. We worry that the storm will include ice, which could be deadly to us and/or to the boat. Calais finds a water pitcher in the room and uses it to restock, albeit minimally, our supplies on the boat. Paris outlines a plan. Anton can cast Silence and Calais can pick the lock, after which she or another fighter will take out the first guard. After that, though, Rhori points out that we need to leave not just Anton at the boat, but also enough other people to provide protection, and someone with the contacts to get them to safety. Princess Carline says she believes Baron Nice would agree to see her if it came to that. She adds that there is some writing paper in the room, and Calais fetches it so she can write a letter of introduction if necessary. Rhori asks about using Pyotr's new blessing. We can't retrace our steps without turning it off, so we can use it in one direction only, but it could be either direction. Anton says the fighter he'd want in the boat is Alessandro, since if he has to take off Alessandro knows the area. But the others don't think Alessandro provides enough protection against flying reptiles and such if the rest of us don't come back. Indeed, to ensure one good fighter stays with the Princess, Rhori says he won't go unless Paris stays. Rhori also wants to leave Hobbes at the boat, but Hobbes realises his intent and says he won't leave without Rhori. We decide to take out the first guard before proceeding, so if something goes wrong at that step we can just take of. Calais worries that Anton's spell would silence the guard prematurely, and asks if the spell's effect will extend past the closed door. Anton isn't sure, but asks Jarvon. Jarvon is annoyed that Anton's teacher didn't tell him (perhaps a hint that Anton should use this resource sparingly? then again, Jarvon is _always_ annoyed), and explains that, unless the door is made of earth, the spell will likely go through. So Calais checks the lock and concludes that he can open it silently. He picks the lock, then Anton casts the spell as Calais opens the door and Rhori rushes the guard. The guard's back is turned, and Rhori smacks him. He hands the unconscious guard to Calais, who binds and gags him. Pyotr indicates that Calais should close the door to cover the sound as he casts Cora's blessing. Calais then opens the door and Pyotr starts down the stairs. Alessandro and Calais accompany him, and Paris and Rhori continue to debate which of them will stay with the boat. Eventually, Paris reluctantly agrees to stay behind, and Rhori and Hobbes head down. Pyotr is walking slowly, so Rhori and Hobbes have no trouble catching up (down?). The stairs are too narrow to pass each other, but we use the landings to adjust our order. Eventually we end up with Alessandro in the lead, since he looks most like a native to start with. He's followed by Rhori, Pyotr, Hobbes, and Calais. Up at the boat, Anton asks the ladies to be seated and tells Jarvon the boat might need to move on quick notice. Paris puts the bound guard on one of the beds, where she can keep an eye on him through the hatch while waiting on the roof. Cordelia and Carline get on the far side of the boat, so when the rest of us return we'll balance the boat. Cordelia "happens" to end up seated closer to Anton, and they exchange some chit-chat. Cordelia does look meaningfully at the Princess, so Anton manages not to say anything improper. After a bit, Carline asks, "Mage Anton, why are we moving?" Anton notices that the boat is indeed drifting north. Apparently the wind is picking up a bit. He has Jarvon hold the boat steady. The Princess asks for some rope, and ties a slip-knot to hold the boat. She apparently has some experience in matters nautical. The wind continues to pick up. After a while, Anton hears a horn, then a second horn, that sounds like an alarm. He looks over to Paris for advice, but they continue to wait. Meanwhile, back on the stairs, we're getting near the guard room. Rhori is carrying the first guard's shield to lend artistic verisimilitude to our "disguise". Calais suggests we spread out a bit so we go through one at a time; maybe the guards won't think it as odd seeing one person multiple times. Alessandro enters first. The three guards look up. "Whatta you doin' leavin' you post? You shift not over!" Alessandro replies, "I gotta go to the kitchen." "The captain, he'sa gonna kill you!" Alessandro brazens it out: "The captain he's asleep. He'sa drunk." Alessandro continues on without further challenge. One of the guards calls after him, "Hey! Fetcha me a salami!" Rhori enters next. This time guards look confused. "How you getta up there? Who are you?" Rhori tries, "Oh, you know me." The guard's eyes widen and he reaches for his sword as he calls for more guards. Hearing this, Alessandro heads back. Rhori hits the guard in the chest, taking him down. Rhori then runs to another guard and whacks him in the arm hard enough to stun him. Alessandro hits the other, who only barely fails to block. But he's not stunned, and Calais and Hobbes can't get past Pyotr on the stairs, so the guard gets off a shout before Pyotr moves up and makes room for Hobbes to shred the guard. Calais and Pyotr continue through the room and down the next flight, toward the sound of pots and pans. From a different direction, Rhori and Aless hear a door slam. Alessandro hides the bodies under some furniture, but there's a lot of blood. Rhori tries to obscure the tracks. Calais passes through the kithcen, where the staff ignores what they perceive as guards walking through. To help maintain the illusion, he picks up a salami and carves a bit off. He pockets the rest, partly to act like a guard and partly from force of habit. In the guard room, Rhori and Alessandro hear people approaching. Calais enters the darkened dining room. He sees the sword, crossing a bloodstained tabard with a gold badge. It is mounted to one side of the wall, off center, as though leaving room for another similar display. Pyotr starts a slow circuit of the kitchen, hoping Calais will be back before he has to repeat a spot. Calais takes down the tabard and sword and bundles them up. His ring tells him the sword is magical. The badge, being a focus, is not magical. Upstairs, Rhori and Alessandro extinguish some of the torches to dim the light, prop up the two unconscious guards to look like they're sleeping, and discuss what to say to the next batch of guards. A group of four guards shows up. "We thoughta we heard something." Alessandro says, "The other guy, he-a say he sick. One-a you guys stay here to take his place." "Where he go?" "He went to the kitchen." "Oh, he's-a visitin' Cecilia again." "He said he was-a sick." "Yeah yeah, I been-a sick like that, too." The guards argue a bit about which of them will stay. Downstairs, Calais is starting to leave when he hears a voice with the tone of authority. "What the hell are you doing?" Calais turns to look, and sees a woman with olive skin and glittering black eyes, wearing sea-green warm clothing. With her are eight of the meanest-looking guards he's ever seen, and an older man in a priest's cassock. The woman turns to the priest. "Uncle, you were right. That's Paris. The whore came to get her master's sword." Calais, unlike Paris, feels no urge to stick around and debate their terminology. He pours everything he's got into running back through the kitchen, and calls out, "Time to go!" He steps on the invisible Hobbes, vaults off again without breaking stride, and continues up the stairs. In the distance, a bell starts to toll. Up in the guard room, one of the four new guards asks, "Is that the harbor alarm?" Rhori hears Calais's voice and asks Hobbes what's happening. Hobbes says Calais just stepped on him. Alessandro addresses the nearest guard. "Hey, is that any way to dress on duty?" The guard looks down. Whack! Down goes that guard. Rhori takes out another as he asks Hobbes where Pyotr is. "Running and about to step on me." Rhori tells Hobbes to come up to the first landing, wait there to scare the first couple people coming after Pyotr, then run for the boat. Rhori draws his axe and scares the remaining guards into immobility. Calais zooms through the guard room and heads up the stairs. Pyotr must've already been partway through his circuit of the kitchen when Calais gave the word, because Cora's spell didn't immediately go down as Pyotr made a bee-line for the stairs. But as he passes Hobbes and enters the stairway, the spell goes down, and Rhori's sudden change in appearance further impresses the guards. Hobbes reports one guy at the base of the stairs, but he's not coming up. Rhori tells Hobbes to come up. "I can take him." "No, come up." He eyes the two remaining guards, who take a step back. One of them drops his sword. The other soils himself. We continue to exfiltrate. Calais bursts into the top room, totally out of breath. Paris reaches down and hauls him up. She asks if the others are coming, but he's too exhausted to speak. Anton tells the Princess to prepare to release the rope, and starts casting Bar Portal. Pyotr and Hobbes are next. Hobbes turns visible so Paris knows to move out the way as he leaps up. Alessandro is next, and is hauled up. Finally, Rhori stumps into the room, and comes up. We all pile into the boat. As we cast off, Anton bars the hatch. In the harbor, it appears that two of the ships are trying to make way, and the third is on fire. Rhori spots a ship further out, running without lights, with several warm spots on it. Catapults on the ship launch, and more warm spots head this direction. At first they look like they're headed for us, but then they arc down and hit the castle's defenses. Back on the roof of the palace, near the base of the tower (about one floor above the guardroom), a man in a cassock is gesturing at the boat. Paris risks drawing her sword so she can use it to cancel his spell, but the light he launches toward us is the same type of magic as hers, and the sword has no effect, other than to diminish our speed by interfering with the boat's magic. A moment later that becomes moot. We're enveloped in light, and hear a raspy voice saying "Morte terREEble" (French for "terrible death"). The boat starts to free-fall toward the ocean. (Given the distance, we of course cannot hear the accompanying soliloquy: "No one could survive that fall." Fortunately, he's a priest, not a physicist.) Rhori grabs Carline, and Paris grabs Cordelia, each trying to take the brunt of the fall. Anton stuffs Jarvon in his belt and tries to levitate, but there isn't time. We hit the water, taking 36 stun and 11 body (normal damage); the Princess and Cordelia take half that, and Paris and Rhori take a bit more. Many of us pass out briefly. The rest grab bits of the boat, which shattered as it hit, and tread water as they get the unconscious ones right-side-up. Rhori gets Carline to grab Hobbes's mane and points Hobbes in the direction of one of the darkened ships. Paris lets go of Cordelia as her armor drags her down, but she then manages to haul herself back to the surface and grab some wood. We hear the ship approaching. Paris draws her sword to make a light, and they throw down a rope ladder. Pausing onl to make sure Calais still has the booty, we climb up (ladies first). One crewman watching as we climb up cries out, "Hey! What happened to the beast?" Rhori hauls himself up, with water streaming from an invisible Hobbes. As we get onto the boat, some men there take away any obvious weapons. Paris allows them to take hers, but tells them, "Kindly take good care of that sword." Prince William's sword, bundled securely in the tabard, goes unnoticed. Jarvon's stick is also untouched. The pirate captain orders the boat under way. He asks if they've got everyone out. Paris says yes. One of the crew calls out, "Women, captain!" The captain focusses on Carline and says, "You look like someone who played at being a pirate when she was a little girl. So who have we here?" She makes sure all the crew can hear her as she calls back, "I am the Princess Carline. Shall we discuss the fare for delivering me to the coast?" The crew quiets. The captain replies, "We'll discuss your ransom, no, your fare, if you and your lady in waiting will join me in the wardroom for discussion." Indicating the rest of us, he adds, "Put them in the hold and get them some blankets." Paris hesitates. "Your Highness?" Carline assures her, "I'll be all right. They don't dare harm me. He can't trust _all_ his men; one of them will talk if we disappear." "Yes, your Highness." Rhori is less easily persuaded, but Paris finally manages to get him to let the Princess and Cordelia go with the captain. We overhear the pirates discussing the raid, saying it was a complete success. They destroyed a merchant ship and captured two warships. Rhori manages to ask the captain if he knows Lucas Tanner. It appears he does; this is the Pirate Silver. Someone asks if he's a friend of Cora Stran. He offers some choice words about her "blessing", saying that she blessed their journey and they've been driven by this storm ever since. (Yup, that does seem to be how her blessings work.) Down in the hold, we tell the crew we're going to do some healing. They don't object, so we heal our wounds. Calais notices that the sword no longer appears magical, but then realises that the ring is not detecting itself as magical either. Anton checks and finds that the sword and Jarvon are magical, but nothing else is. Calais also finds that the fragile telescope did not survive the fall; he salvages whatever parts he can for rebuilding it. Paris asks for the gold badge, in case the sword is taken later. Calais extracts it without letting her see the bloodstained tabard. Some asks who it was who knocked us out of the sky. Calais describes the priest he saw in the hall, and the woman. He doesn't repeat their exact words, but says that they seemed to be expecting Paris to come for the sword, and that the woman called the man "uncle". The woman is clearly Louis's wife Katherine, and Alessandro recalls that one of Katherine's uncles indeed went into the priesthood, and is now a Cardinal, the Hierophant's right-hand man. Katherine has another uncle who's a big man in the navy, and a third who has a lot of land and throws great parties. Eventually the hatch opens and the Princess and Cordelia come in. Carline says she's negotiated our ransom, but they asked for a surety. She asks us for the sword and badge. Paris objects, but Carline says she believes the pirate will return them after he gets his gold. He is also getting a Letter of Marque as part of the deal, so if Martin wins the war, Silver's deeds will all be retroactively legal. We're granted rooms, except for "the beast". Rhori insists on staying in the hold with Hobbes. He's peeved that the stuff we stayed for -- and that caused us to get caught -- is being taken away from us. But he doesn't mention this aloud in front of the Princess. Rhori does exchange some words with Carline, but I didn't catch it; she assures him that he has done well. The storm breaks after two days, and we set sail for Nice Place. We have a week on shipboard, which we can use for training in anything but weapons. Anton decides to learn some pirate tales. He ends up knowing 28 verses of Barnacle Bill the Sailor, four of which can be sung in polite company. Six make his ears blush. Calais tries to learn Navigation from the pirates, but finds that only the officers know that, so he settles for training with the rest of the party and starting to rebuild his telescope. The Princess asks Paris, seeing her and Calais together, if we feel it when the other gets hurt. Paris says we do. I didn't follow if there was more to the query than that. Paris asks Carline how she came to be there. She tells of how the Council of Lords was going. Louis and the Church had a majority, but it was a weak federation. More of the Hierophant's guards arrived, and apparently Louis decided to jump the gun. (What's a gun?) He tried to arrest the other brothers, and they escaped. Carline stayed and continued for two weeks, ostensibly promoting a peaceful solution. "Eventually Louis decided I was of more use shoring up a weaker flank of his, and I did not have time to get away. So he moved me to this island, where he thought it most likely there were no spies. Apparently those in the Church can ask questions of foreseeing, but they do not show things clearly. From some things that I heard said, I gather they asked if this were an island where there were no people who would try to rescue me." Carline is also interested in whatever we can tell her of what's happened in the past month or so. We fill her in as best we can. Calais remarks that the Church's "foreseeing" probably also accounts for why Katherine and her uncle the Cardinal were expecting Paris to come for the sword. Particularly given Katherine's remark ("Uncle, you were right."), it's clear the priest had foreseen the event. This does raise two further questions, though. One is why they weren't more prepared to stop us. (Perhaps they had only recently had that vision? Or perhaps there _was_ someone watching the sword, but he saw Calais as "someone who belonged there" due to Cora's spell and thus he didn't raise an alarm, though he did send word to Katherine? Or maybe it's just the standard "evil overlord" mistakes? :-) The other question is how Katherine "recognised" Paris, as the latter believes they've never met. [Sheryl raised this question with Pat, but I haven't heard what explanation he may have offered.] Paris talks to Carline about whether she can accompany her to Martin without violating the order she remain neutral. Carline says it should not be a problem, as she has not declared for either brother. Indeed, she will write to both of her brothers to ask them to share the price of her ransom. We get let off in a quiet little cove a bit north of Nice Place. We are given back our weapons; Calais has Anton confirm that his sword is also no longer magical. The only magic that seems to have survived the priests's spell is Jarvon and the two Holy Swords (one of which, of course, we no longer have). Saying he knows of a place where we can hole up and signal for assistance, Rhori leads us up some valleys, noting some landmarks along the way, and takes us to an abandoned building. He hangs up a sign. After three days, one of Martin's lieutenants shows up. He greets the Princess and asks if she's ready to travel. Off we go. About three hours into the hills, we come to a tunnel. It looks familiar; it's just like the tunnel to England. Rhori asks if there are bears in it. No. We learn that Pierre built it. We find a beehive of activity, people apparently preparing for a surprise attack on Louis. They have horses for us, and we ride on into the tunnel. After considerable travel, we come to a large cavern with a large glowing red rock: the lavatrack vehicle. Alessandro has never seen it before, so we fill him in about it. Pierre and Claire are there, of course. We give them belated congratulations on their wedding. Pierre says he was headed back to Westmore, but he should be able to wait while we talk to Martin, whose camp is nearby. Martin actually comes to us, since they prefer not to have too many people traipsing in and out of the tunnel. We also talk to Pierre about Umber's Hulk. He's pleased we survived, but it bothers him in some way, which we don't understand because we haven't heard the story. We ask him about the body parts we scavenged. Pierre is afraid that if people know what to do with those things, they will go hunting them, and many people will die. He would rather see them destroyed. Martin and Carline have a long talk, much longer than anyone expected. Eventually they come back, and Martin asks Rhori, "Miller, how much do you know about the orc forces between Fort Carcassone and the southern coast?" Alas, not much. He asks if we can make another flying boat. Anton says yes, he could even make a bigger one, but it would be better if we could get the wood from someplace high up. Martin says we lack shipwrights, but he can get people to bring wood from the mountains to build a boat like the one we had before. Given that, it doesn't seem right to have Cordelia travel by land from Fort Carcassone to meet her father. Alternatively, he might risk a small boat with a message going down the river and pretending to be part of Louis's force, but he wouldn't risk Cordelia that way. He asks Rhori, "Do you think _you_ could get through there?" Rhori doesn't seem quite sure what's being asked of him, but answers, "Sure, what do you want me to do?" ("Us, boss," goes Hobbes.) Rhori also asks how soon, since we have our quest to proceed with. Martin says he knows we've suffered much, and asks what he can do to help. Calais mentions we've lost our magic items. Martin has nothing here that hasn't been issued out, but offers to write a letter to the Emerald Baron to ask him to supply us what he can. We thank him for that. Carline and Cordelia stay with Martin and we ride with Pierre (I think?) back to Westmore. The Duke is quite pleased, and even makes a speech about our deeds. There are quite a few cards. Not only does he find five cards for each of us in his special box, but he also pulls out some of his own and gives one to each of us. (Pyotr returns two cards to Paris; Rhori returns six.)