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Az disappeared almost immediately and the rest of the group turned to interrogate the folks left. Isha bungled at intimidating the guy despite her scary appearance, perhaps her desire not to kill anyone further was too obvious. After trying again, though, she got a name out of the guy: Chamberlain Rathric.

Off to the king.

Minutes later the group was speaking with the king and he was conveying his sympathies and offendedness that such a thing might happen to his guests on his premises. It was hard to tell if he was being sincere or not. He seemed to be, but the facts just weren't quite comprehensive enough to rule out his involvement. When the three's conversation began going nowhere fast, Az stepped in to beligerize the situation.

He basically accused the king of being behind it all based on, as the rest of the group knew, insufficient evidence.

Finally, someone mentioned Rathric. The king harumphfed and explained the situation of how Rathric was of a competing house to his for the throne and how he'd been appointed out of goodwill and all that. Either way, he ordered sealing of the city and at the prompting of us a reward placed on his head to discourage bribery.

Isha was sure they'd never catch him, though.

Az kept agitating the situation and eventually left in a huff. The rest finished up with the king stating that they'd get to looking for clues about his missing daughter the next day.

They met up with Az, who was ranting about replacing the whole lot of the satrap rulership with others appointed by the family, but the others eventually calmed him down with the idea that they'd go to their meeting the next day with Opheria, see what she has to add to the mix, and then come up with a new strategy.

Just before noon the group arrived at the Dancing Scirocco and was ushered into a back room by the Innkeeper. Opheria was there and introduced herself. A moment later, Marianne appeared and the meeting go under way.

Opheria was one of the leaders of some kind of Revolution thing against the Empress who was systematically removing the noble house autonomy. The Righteous Orphan Rebellion. Opheria explained that the house legions had been outlawed, and the Empress was confiscating from the houses all first age artifacts, such as warstriders and the like, and placing them under her own control.

Marianne then stepped in and made clear what was going on outside of the Blessed Isle.

The Empress had magically dispatched human emissaries to the rulers of all the satraps to deliver an important message. Once the message was delivered, the noble house ambassadors for each satrap died in mysterious circumstances and the satrap began building up troops.

All but this one.

Here, in Achmenia, the Nellens Ambassador's daughter, Song, exalted a couple days before the Emissaries were dispatched. When this happened, he took his daughter and headed for the nearest port, Galba, so he was not present when the Emissary arrived. Furthermore, the daughter of the king, Princess Tria, received the message in her father's place because he was out riding when the Emissary arrived. At least, so Marianne believed. At which point Tria disappeared, same day as the message was supposedly delivered.

Then came the plague, also an anomaly. Marianne said it was a disease called Green Sun Wasting and was not of this world. It was magical in nature, brought about by Anathema. She believed it was created to finish off the missing Ambassador to Achmenia who had escaped whatever fate was intended for him.

Isha seemed to think that was somewhat overkill just to kill one person. Very inefficient and a lot of unrelated people would die as a consequence. Still, what did an Anathema have to do with the Empresses orders? Maybe she wasn't really the Empress after all?

As questions and comments flew back and forth, Isha asked what happened to Song, what did she become?

Marianne said she became a type of Anathema, and that her Terrestrial nature was probably destroyed.

Hmm. They would probably run into her again, then. Not good.

In the end, Marianne tasked everyone with, again, finding Princess Tria. She was the only one who knew what was in the note from the Emissary and she needed to be found. Marianne said that she wasn't dead, that her “thread” disappeared in the great weave, and that meant she was hidden by magic or perhaps no longer in creation. E.g., the Underworld, the Wyld or the like.

Well this was going to be tough.

With many questions answered and a little more direction, the meeting broke up and everyone went their respective ways. Isha and her group returned to the palace to search Tria's room. After quite a bit of rummaging, Rathimund came up with a diary entry that said, “Received message today while father was out riding. Song is in danger; I can't let him see it.”

Further, everything in her room was meticulously placed. In other words, Tria was a very ordered individual and had she up and left she would've come by her room first and packed for a trip; she wouldn't've just left everything including provisions here. Extremely suspicious.

The group then went to talk to the king again, and he re-indicated the guard that thought he saw someone fitting Tria's description leave that fateful night. They weren't really enthused to talk to him, but they decided it couldn't hurt.

He was summoned and Isha and her comrades questioned him. All the while re-giving the story the king had told them before, that a girl fitting her description headed through around 2am wearing a plain traveler's cloak and on a horse, he started appearing nervous. Isha asked him, “did she bribe you to let her go?” to which he replied, “she didn't.”

“_She_ didn't.”

So someone had.

“Who bribed you then?” asked Rathimund.

“The king.”

The king. The whole story was fake. He hadn't seen her, no one had. He'd been paid to parrot a fabricated to anyone who asked to throw them off… what, exactly?

Unfortunately, while this looked extremely suspicious, it wasn't 100% damning. Isha assured the poor guard that they wouldn't find out he'd spilled the beans. In her mind, assuming the implication was sound, the king would be dead before he'd find out just how they'd discovered his treachery.

Current running theory was that her father knew she'd read some note. She refused to tell him the contents. He spirited her away to a location where the information could be pried out of her without killing her as she was the heir.

Once the day came to a close and the moon was high in the sky, the group returned to the castle and headed down to the dungeons. The goons that were supposed to be interrogated were of course gone. The guard on duty said they'd been escorted to interrogation at 8:30am that morning and that they hadn't survived the questioning.

The group asked to see the interrogation room, which, as it turned out, was nothing but a closet. After searching the room thoroughly, Az found a secret door. Isha returned to the guard to get a lantern, and headed back with them. They all slipped into the secret passage way and headed down into the mustiness of the near-river.

After a while, they came upon a gate. Rathimund and Az took turns picking it open, and the group stepped through and continued on. Eventually they ended up at a ladder going up to a wooden floor. Isha climbed the latter but the door at the top wasn't budging. She told everyone to stand clear and brought her daiklave up and smashed it in. After a moment it groaned, broke, and a huge, heavy box fell through along with the pieces of the trap door. Pottery and sundries smashed all over the floor below, and Isha continued up through the hole.

She peered around and signaled all clear. Everyone came up and through, and found themselves standing in a warehouse down on the river. A shipping company. The group headed to the manager's office and began rummaging through files. On the date of Tria's disappearance, a note was made that “package collected by merchant from (representing) Opal Pavilion via horse cart.”

Opal Pavilion.

The group returned to their rooms at the Dancing Scirocco and the next day headed down to the docks to question several merchants about this Opal Pavilion and came up with nada.

Where to go from here?