[Notes for the run of August 30, 2000.]

Pyotr asks the Star if she is "hope".

"That's a good way to describe it.  Yes, a hope for the future.  I make sure
the stars continue to shine.  I answer prayers."  "Is that how break rules?
Are supposed to learn that."  "Each of us does something the others can't
do.  I suppose if you saw things in terms of rules, you could call it that."

"You answer _all_ prayers?"  "I do.  I answer the prayers like I've been
doing.  There have been very few who've called upon me recently."  How does
one pray to you?  "Think of me as you pray, make a wish.  I hear all those
prayers."  She influences things; her husband influences people.  He gives
her strength, and with that she helps keep the stars lit, helps how the
planets and comets move.  "Of course, until now I've been able only to
affect Tarot."

Calais asks about the stalagmites on the path between the Star and Moon.
We're told they are ordered by power; so the ones we passed first are the
most powerful people in the world today.  Paris asks about William's pillar,
but is told it doesn't mean he's alive, just that he still has influence on
the world after his death.

We ask about the pillars Rhori broke.  No, that doesn't kill the people; the
freed figures are like reflections, which is why they were evil and tried to
kill Rhori.  (But he's not afraid of a bunch of red-eyed two-year-olds.)

"What do you think of the manipulation that has happened beween the white
god and the black god?"  She doesn't know of that.  Rhori explains, "He's
been saddled with a bunch of things he doesn't want."  She listens politely
but it doesn't seem to fall within her sphere.  "Within my sphere I take
action.  I listen to the prayers for different things, and try to do the
best thing from what I hear.  But I can't _see_; look," she says, pointing
at the bright blue pinpoint beyond the horizon, "It's so far away."

"If one were to pray to you to change Nature or Death back to the way it
was, would that be something you could do?"  "That sounds like The Choice.
It's something _you_ can do."

Up until now she's only gotten prayers from Tarot, for affecting Tarot.  Now
she can hope to start hearing prayers from Torat.  To decide how to respond,
she listens to how many are praying, how fervently, how much pain they are
in, and so forth.

Mia prays that her baby will be born healthy.  "That is part of the blessing
I gave it."  It will be healthy, well-formed, and with a laugh.

We ask what prayers she has gotten about Tarot.  She says she's been making
Tarot more comfortable for us by building the fences and barriers to
separate the sections.  "Why does that make it more comfortable?"  "That is
the prayer I was getting."  "How are those prayers phrased?"  "Something
about being safely guided through the valley of death..."  We recognise part
of one of the White Church's most frequent prayers.  In other words, the
people who set up the White Church rituals arranged to include prayers to
get the Star to block off parts of Tarot.

"Why do the stars affect things?"  "They are the future."  Things like
comets and whatnot are side effects of her influence.  (In game terms,
they're her 'special effects'.)  Mia asks if she can help feed those whose
fields and farmhands have been lost to the war.  The Star says she can
influence weather and such to help crops.  Mia prays for her to do so.

"Can you lie to us?" asks Rhori.  "No."  (Whether it's true or not, who can
say?)

We ask how her influence over outcomes of events differs from Murphy's.
What she does is a pressure pushing a certain way, to try to make certain
things happen.  Murphy is an on or off, instantaneous happening or not
happening dpending on which way he's having his effect.  She could influence
the wind to aid or handicap an entire group of archers; he could give one
archer a lucky shot to kill an enemy commander.

Anton asks if we can pray to have men prevail over Fell and Dark, or is that
too general, too broad?  "I can attempt to answer such a prayer, but it will
be just an advantage, not an illumination."  Anton offers such a prayer.  We
observe that defeating them in battle is fine, as long as it's not followed
up by an order to seal off access to where they came from, as was issued to
Sir Juda.

Rhori blushes a bit, though the rest of us don't notice, as Hobbes asks him
to pray for the Star to help Hobbes find another female lion.

She can't tell us Death's name.  Pyotr asks, "Know, and cannot tell?  Or, do
not know and cannot tell?"  "I don't know how to answer that."  Pyotr
mutters to no one in particular, "Is like Paris.  Ask yes/no question,
answers 'duck'."

Can she tell us how Death breaks the rules?  "Death has the memories of all
that has been, and keeps those memories.  And once he has gathered all unto
himself, he can reuse those memories as he needs to."  "Return to someone
living?"  "Not exactly.  It's their memories acting again."  Paris points to
the example of Queen Branwen's memories animating her statue, and the dead
she called upon to fight again at Pelier.

The gods have always been gods; their portfolios have changed at times.  The
number of Majors has changed (e.g., the zodiac were Majors, but not gods).
But she believes we can make any Choice we want; there don't have to be
exactly nine.

"Were you involved in the founding of our Orders?  They seem to represent a
form of hope."  There might've been some prayers involved, but nothing
specific.

Does she know people's hopes, or do they have to pray?  What she _hears_ are
the prayers.  Often she can guess.

Has she had any contact with her husband, Binah, since the Mirror was
broken?  "I have not spoken with him, but I could feel that he was there."

Can we pray to her to have her favor Martin over Louis?  She says she's not
sure who they are, but if we pray while near them she can probably figure it
out.  Once we're back in Torat, she won't be able to tell us from anyone
else; all prayers sound alike.

We pray to her to aid us as best she can in getting past Maab Baal.

Does she know where we should look to get in touch with the red god?  He
works within the realm between living and dead, Torat and Tarot, etc., doing
his job, guiding the souls of the departed, judging them, and so on.  He
doesn't have "a" place; not all of the gods have one place.  We might ask
his elves, of course.

When we're finished, she smiles at us, blesses us, there's a flash of
lightning, and we're standing among some trees, and it's raining.  Rhori
recognises the woods near the Jatala elves, near Tauban.

As the rain clears, some of us notice a shooting star that seems to come
down somewhere nearby, but there's no sound of impact.  "Did you see that?"
"See what?"  We decide to see what Jatala-Binah has sent to us.

Anton, Rhori, Hobbes, and Calais go off to investigate.  We hear some noise
up ahead.  Hobbes goes up and reports back that it's elves.  They're just
standing around.  We walk up, Rhori in the lead, and find about half a dozen
elves in a clearing.  They greet us, and ask Rhori if his companions are
with him.  He says yes, though some are back a ways.  He asks them if they
saw the thing come down.  They say yes, and they've put some waybread in our
boat.  Boat?  Anton checks to see if it is indeed his boat.  "YOUR boat?"
Jarvon's voice fills his head.  "Listen Anchor, it's MY boat, it's MY spell
slot..."  This leads him to quiz Anton on whether he knows how many of his
own spell slots are being used.  Anton gets slightly muddled over the
distinction between slots and racks, but manages to stumble into the right
answer via compensating errors, and is spared a further lecture.

Anton finds the boat is still enchanted, and wonders how that is, since it
should have been out of spell range for a while.  Jarvon retorts, "Well we
DID just meet the goddess of magic; she might have SOME small power..."

We go back and have dinner, and discuss whether to take the time to see
Claire, who's investigating the dwarf city near Tauban.  It would add a day
or two to our travel time to Tarn, but it would let us pass along the
information we got about the shifting earth nodes, and we might find out
something useful about the dwarves.  Since Anton thinks it's a good idea,
and hears no strong objection (Rhori remarks that he doesn't think Anton is
capable of hearing a strong objection), we swing over.  Paris decides, as
long as we're going near Tauban, she wants to stop in there as well, to see
if she can get news of Westmore.  We land the boat outside of town and Paris
heads in.  At Rhori's suggestion, Calais accompanies her.

She goes and finds the Baron's house.  He and Cynthia are pleased to see
her, and say she must stay for dinner.  Paris verifies what day it is; we
did not lose any days while in Tarot.  They tell us some news of the war,
but it's the same news we'd heard elsewhere.  They also heard that Ewen's
father died, and they tell of the dragon attack at Westmore.  In short, all
old news.  She begs off from dinner.  Calais picks up some provisions to
augment the waybread.

We head off and arrive at the dwarf cave near nightfall.  The wall is
sealed, as we left it.  Rhori finds no recent tracks.  Anton knocks on the
door.  We spend the night, but get no sign of Claire.

Next day, we set out for Tarn.  It takes about 2 1/2 days to get there by
boat.  We see a human camp over by the library, but not near the elven
forest.  We sneak the boat into that gully and find the elves.

We tell them we're here to find Illiakin.  They look confused.  We rephrase
it: We want to find a path to the Sun.  This they understand, and they take
us to see their king.  He says they haven't been there in ages, but the path
is in a garden far to the east, the Garden of the Sun.  Where is that?  He
says it's on the ocean.  It's a beautiful garden; last he looked, people had
built a great place of learning there.

We struggle to think of what place might match this description.  Finally we
think to ask Jarvon about it.  "Of course.  It's at the great university of
Marseilles."  We figure this is what we call Marcy.  Jarvon says the
university is on a chalky outcropping called Le Cheval Blanc, the white
horse.  Indeed, the Sun's card depicts him atop a white horse.  Alas, Marcy
is where Louis's army is headquartered, so getting in will be tricky.

We fly back to Westmore so we can talk to some folks who've actually been to
Marcy (Jarvon hasn't been, since the university there wasn't doing anything
related to immortality) and learn what we can about it, and perhaps get some
letters of introduction to anybody there who might be trustworthy.

Calais tries asking his master, Irolo, about Marcy.  Irolo has been there,
and could tell Calais how to find some people there who will help us, but
Calais would have to spend three days getting inducted into their rather
secretive society.

Paris gains a private audience with Duke Evan.  "We believe our next step is
to go to Marcy."  "Hoo-boy!" says he.  Martin has Evan's good maps of the
area, but Evan shows her what he does have.  They show White Horse Point,
which doesn't look like a horse so he doesn't know why it's called that.
There's no university there, but there's a fabulous church, the Temple of
the Golden Dawn, that catches the light spectacularly at sunrise.

"Is there anyone in particular I can go to to learn about the city and that
temple?"  The Duke recommends Alexis's father.  She asks who she could turn
to there if she got into trouble.  From what he's heard, if you're there and
haven't sworn to Louis, you're persona non gratin (i.e., a cheeseless
person), or something like that.

He says he hears word occasionally of Carline.  She's travelling up and down
the valley, visiting old friends.  Uh-huh.

Alexis's father knows much of the marketplace and such.  He's been to the
church and can tell something of the layout.  It's a good-sized church,
almost makes fortifications on its own.

We talk to the Padre, but he hasn't been stationed there and knows nothing
of the setup there.  Father Maythias might know, but we're not keen on
trying to get information out of him.

Rhori, Paris, and Anton head off to the Kalli elves so they can go to see
the Empress and get some sunflower seeds, while Calais spends the three days
needed to get initiated into the Brotherhood of the Wheel (sometimes
referred to, among themselves, as the Gearheads.)  At advanced levels their
machines border on, or are, magical.  He's told they kick out thugs; they
want people who are clever.  But their ideas about property rights are, um,
a bit different.  Their rules do warn that they should never screw over
someone powerful or important; it hurts.

The away team gets the seeds from the Empress, and ask her how things are
going.  She says Judgment is refusing to come into the world.  They ask why.
(Rhori also asks if the Emperor has asked Judgment to return; he has not.)
She says it's apparently in order to protect things.  Protect from what?  He
didn't say.  Protect what?  Everything, from being destroyed.  Does Judgment
know if we have understanding?  Do we have to be ready to make the Choice
before he'll come into the world?  We're not sure.

On the way back, they ask the Kalli elves about the red god.  They say much
the same thing: he's not willing to enter the world because it's not ready.
He's the last stop.

Back in Westmore, Anton looks for an astral current to get to Marcy faster.
He finds one, but it eventually curves north, so we don't save much time.
It takes us six days to reach Marcy.  It's coming up on the new moon.

Using the telescope, we see that the church building itself has a shield on
it, but the area within the walls outside the church is accessible.  The
basic plan is for Calais to sneak in at night to plant the seeds, then we'll
use the orange spell to let us walk through the city to the church, arriving
just after dawn.  Maybe arrive at the docks looking like fishermen coming
in.  We also need to decide if Calais will try to use his new contacts in
the Brotherhood to get more information or aid; it could result in him being
called upon to aid them in return.  [Question for Pat: Did Irolo indeed give
Calais specific contact info for Marcy?]