Games, all sorts

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Boyce and I convinced Grey that if we had two avenues of information to pursue, that we may as well seek out the closest one first: the main temple of Aya up in the mountains. I sincerely hoped this wouldn't be a waste of our time, but Masayume was far enough away that it was worth checking this out first.

Two days ride from Alestia City via horseback, we arrived at the main temple of Aya. At this temple was a priest of about 30 years age whom we spoke with about Aya's days before she was a goddess. He told us that they didn't know a whole lot of the details of her pre-goddess history, and that the names of Aya's comrades didn't really ring a bell. But, this guy seemed at least somewhat sensible thank goodness, and without knowing what else to do, I asked him if they could pray to Aya on our behalf to see if she would give them any enlightenment about the name of the individual from Aya's past for whom we were searching.

I donated 100gp to the temple out of my own pocket as a donation for their efforts, and we headed out to the pilgrim camp outside of the temple for the night. The next day when we met with the priest, he told us that Aya apparently found our request amusing but that she wouldn't make it that easy for us to obtain the info we needed. Well that's just dandy. However, he continued, it appeared that Aya took an interest in our task dealing with her friend stuck in that gem and that, as the priest put it, Aya would keep an eye on us, which basically translated to us having her favor. For what that was worth.

Determined to not make this trip a total waste, I requested if the priests could ask Aya if she would be willing to get us to Masayume (magically, the implication was), as it was quite a long and/or expensive journey, depending on how one endeavored to make it. The priest told us that they would pray to Aya and request this of her on our behalf, and so again, this day, we returned to the pilgrim camp to spend the night.

When we awoke, though, we were in completely different surroundings. Well, it appeared Aya may have come through for us after all in some way or other. A little more prematurely than we had all expected (if at all, honestly), but well, we had asked. Not really our place to be picky about it, I guess. Now, to determine where exactly we were.

Initial tests by Boyce indicated we were about 12,000 miles from Alestia. That seemed about right for Masayume. Next up was to find some locals to interrogate. And fortunately, we could see a small town down the way, so we simply headed in that direction to hopefully dig up some information on our more specific whereabouts.

After apparently making a big show riding through this dinky mining town, we eventually sat down with the town elder in order to get down to business. He informed us that we were in fact in Masayume, currently in a town called Ume no Hana. He drew up a map for us of where we needed to go from here and said we could wait here for a few days for a caravan heading in that direction if we wanted to travel with others. In the meantime we helped them out with some little tasks about town as thanks for their assistance, and then left with a tinkering caravan a couple days later.

The caravan didn't travel too fast, so it took us about a week to get from Ume No Hana to our goal, the home of the main compound of the Crane Clan, a fairly large city called Mikake.

We headed into town, got some rooms at a ryoukan, and then decided what we would do from here. After some discussion, it was decided that we would basically go knock on the front door of the compound and request an audience. Grey seemed to think it was okay to reveal pretty much all of the info we knew about our mysterious friend in the gem.

For some reason that bothered me a little, giving up that much information willingly, but I didn't protest it too much. I just needed to keep in mind that our goals were to find out his name and some of his history so that he could remember the rest on his own. After that… he wasn't really our concern anymore unless our not-so-friendly devilish pals of Duchess Veris got their hands back on his gem and began wrecking havoc with it again. Well, crap, I suppose we had to babysit this guy's gem indefinitely unless his descendants would take over duties, or he was otherwise released from his prison. I'm not sure how comfortable I felt with the latter solution, but…. oh well, not a decision I had to make now, if ever.

Anyway, we headed up to the front door of the compound and banged on it. Moments later we were speaking with the active-duty door guard named Yoshi, who went off to get a more important guy named Torao, who spoke Thalian and we were to discover later was apparently the Chamberlain of the compound. We explained to him in vague terms what we where there to relay to the clan elder, and he in turn asked us our names. Grey and I only gave him our first names, and Boyce gave him his full name, although he had trouble pronouncing it. He seemed really insistent about getting our family names, but Grey and my stubbornness won out in the end.

The seemed hesitant to set up a meeting with the clan elder. But we remained very insistent about relaying the information personally, so finally a meeting was set up for 5pm that evening. We were not to be late.

After heading back to town for a few hours to piddle around on our own, time for our date at the compound approached. We arrived on time, and were briefed by the the Chamberlain, Torao, on how to conduct ourselves during the meeting. This really reminded me of some of the things I found to be distasteful about my father's culture that I learned from interacting with Arashikage-sensei and speaking with Akira. So much protocol and procedure for everything. People getting offended or annoyed about lack of knowledge of how they expected you to behave that just seemed silly and unnecessary.

Either way, as we sat there before Lady Kato Miyuki explaining fully our interaction with their ancestor, I found myself surprisingly uncomfortable here, beyond just the BS protocol and procedure. Something about this place, these people, the way we were being forced to interact with this Miyuki person… I don't know, it just bothered me on a very base level. I didn't like it. I felt very much like I wanted to leave. But I kept my mouth shut and let Grey do most of the talking.

At the end of our tale/discussion, conducted through a translator, Miyuki granted us leave to search the libraries to find the whatever texts would reveal the name of this ancestor. We were only allowed to assist the Chamberlain in finding out who this was, we weren't allowed to know who it was until the Chamberlain informed Miyuki, and she discussed it with the other clan elders.

Well, after a few hours of searching the main compound's library, the Chamberlain determined that we couldn't find the information we needed here, so we would have to travel to a remote storage facility that contained the old stuff that needed to be kept but wasn't needed often enough to warrant being in the main library. The Chamberlain told us to come by the next morning at dawn and we'd head over there during the day time (night was apparently a bad time since this location was surrounded by scary monsters which were more active at night).

And with this we headed back into town to do whatever we wanted until the next morning. On the way to meet the Chamberlain the following morning, we noticed a magical symbol above the doorway of some Inn. We discussed it for a few minutes but I pointed out that it would still be here when we got back and that we had a place where we needed to be right now, so we continued on to the Crane Clan compound. The Chamberlain was there waiting for us and he led us inside forthwith and then through some permanent gates to some place called the Island of Shadow. We headed quickly from the exit gate and into the storage building.

I offered the Chamberlain the ability to locate the necessary things magically, and we found the text we needed pretty quickly. After he flipped through the book for a few minutes, he indicated it was the one he needed, and then told us to entertain ourselves for about an hour while he got in touch with the main house to get clearance to bring the text back with us.

I made myself busy trying to find some information on my father, if he was related to these folks, in the area with the more recent books. I had no idea if he was part of the Crane Clan or any clan of Masayume really. But I figured I wouldn't be allowed in this particular library again, so it was probably my only chance to check. And so I did.

-+-

When the Chamberlain gathered us back together, he indicated that we could return to Mikake with the book. Grey pointed out he'd seen some kind of dire cat with 6 legs outside a little bit ago, so we exited the building with weapons drawn and buffs up.

And it was a good thing, because the cat beast pounced Grey, who was right behind me, as we exited the building. It didn't take us long to dispatch the creature, although he did get a few hits in on Grey. We headed back through the Gate and I patched Grey up on the other side.

We left the name of our ryoukan with the Chamberlain and headed back into town to check out the symbol we'd noticed on the way to the compound this morning, while we awaited the decision of the clan elders.

The bar bearing the symbol seemed normal enough. People were walking in and out of it. I stopped a manifest on the road and asked him what he knew about the symbol. He said he thought it was an advertisement. I scrutinized it with all my flavors of magesight, and only got the indication of a slight Matter component to it, but nothing particular interesting beyond that. Boyce took the chance of walking inside and… nothing happened. So we shrugged and headed in to talk to the proprietor. Grey spoke with the man while Boyce and I played some weird Masayuman game called Sugoroku and drank some Masayuman booze of some sort.

The owner, when speaking with Grey, made it sound like some weird cultish group had put the symbol up, and the man gave Grey some twine and sticks to build something out of. Grey was taking this all very seriously, and I snickered into my beer and proceeded to beat the ever-loving crap out of Boyce at that weird Masayuman strategy game. As it so happened, my interest in the magical symbol waned after it became pretty clear that it was some sort of cult-recruiting thing or other.

Anyways, apparently Grey passed the guy's entrance exam, and got parchment with an address on it, somewhere in Irindwa, Elendia. We'd look into that later. I guess. Meh.

Anyway, we departed after that, and each headed out to go do whatever we each felt like for a while.

Later that evening we were summoned back to the Crane Clan compound to meet with Miyuki again. She told us that some of the historical texts indicated that this individual we were so concerned with had committed bad acts for the greater good, and that some may see honor in being the one to take the fall for a bad deed that must be done, whereas others may just think he's a dishonorable monster. She indicated that her belief was that the truth was somewhere in the middle.

Furthermore she wanted us to agree to get his sword and armor back to the compound if we were able to get it from him (if he would and/or if even could give it up), and also keep her up-to-date on any information about him that we glean about him and his past, as well as changes in his situation. They had no interest in babysitting the gem, and that since they were not the ones who imprisoned him, it was not their place to free him.

Continuing on, she indicated that her advisers and the other elders did not think it wise to reveal this individual's name to us, which she recognized was the whole reason we had come all this way in the first place. But, as she had the final say in the matter, she had decided instead that she would tell us his name, as she had an interest in seeing what came of this.

Fujikawa Kazuya

And from there, well, our business in Masayume was done. We left the compound and then left the city and country, and returned to Alestia. After our brief stop there, we headed to the cave in which our buddy Kazuya resided, within his gem-prison. Grey spoke his name and then suddenly we were all back in the gem.

Anyway, we all sat and had a long discussion with Kazuya “call me Kaz”, and told him all we were able to discover about him, including his name, what people thought of who he had been, the names of his comrades. Things did seem to start coming back to him. He inquired about any changes in the goings-on of the cult who had been worshiping him, and we mentioned the devastation of what had happened to Seldermoor recently. Kaz looked thoughtful for a moment and then indicated that it was a familiar event, and that we should look into it and see if anything similar had ever happened before.

After chatting with Kaz and gleaning as much information about his memories that he could remember now, we headed back to Alestia City and the boys headed off to the library while I went house hunting again.

-+-

When I returned to the Occluded Rainbow Inn after my day of house hunting, I sat in my old room in the stables with a beer, a set of playing cards, and Doak across the table for company, and what do I find bursting in my door but the boys, in a state of… quite significant damage. Apparently they'd been attacked by quite a few possessed cityfolk. Who what? Grey indicated that the dude he KO'd woke up without memories of what had happened, while it seemed Boyce's more lethal force revealed a black oil-ish substance filling the individuals instead of blood.

Was this the work of those Gatekeepers of Enma guys who were looking for us? I'm guessing “probably”.

Well, it was clear that the level of danger was now being kicked up a notch and that we should probably just go with the big house I found, get it fixed up and transformed into a fortress, and worry about potentially finding our own individual places later. I will be sure to mention these assassin guys to Kaz the next time we visit him to see if he's ever heard of them, now that he's starting to remember things. That, and whether or not he's still receiving prayer requests from his cult (and if so, if he's still granting those requests).

-+-

Where to go from here?

Evening the playing field for Melfir:

- At Dimmersdel

1. Plague rats
2. Messing with water/food supply
3. sink holes
4. sink holes with electrocution
5. spread rumors
6. make clothes/armor/etc more susceptible to fire, to make the dragon units more effective
7. reshape the landface to put veris in a valley and melfir on a hill

- Elsewhere

1. Pernicdel, researching kazgem + antics designed to draw veris's forces away from Dimmersdel
2. Tusbel, researching kazgem/3 devils/etc + antics designed to draw veris's forces away from Dimmersdel
3. Sturmgaard, trying to get Hathandar and his peeps involved, to draw veris's forces away from Dimmersdel