Friday, November 25, 2022

All hands meeting

• After the fight against the Thallain, we head back to the freehold and rest overnight to recoup and heal
• A group text goes out about a meeting at 2:00 at court, so after waking up and having a late breakfast/early lunch
• Things to potentially ask about:
  • Seeing if we can turn up any leads on who the two people we've yet to identify from our vision are (the owl pookah ninja with a bow and the female troll with a giant battle axe)
  • Canvasing to find out if anyone has heard word of Cathesig since he was purportedly eaten by a phoenix 20 years ago
    • Related to the above, seeing if there is any direction we might be able to find in how to go about seeing if he's still in the umbra
  • Are there any thoughts about the thallain ritual, specifically the fact that the ones we encountered seemed to be particularly diverse.  As in, do we think these were local thallain or ones that were brought together from across the world to do this?
  • Have there been reports from anywhere else, including other kingdoms, of rituals/thallain attacks?
• The king speaks
  • About the ritual and recognizes our freehold, the members of Storm of Souls, and bringing a means to get the garou there (represented by Dreamcatcher), and the members of Willow's Shadow
    • He comments that at this time his "rewards are only recognition"
    • He says that without these efforts, or if we had been but a few minutes later, there may have been a phoenix let loose on the city
  • He has invited Duchess Magnolia from further south to take over the Gunrange freehold after Berin and the others were killed there
  • The thallain were likely brought in through the Dreaming
  • He urges everyone to keep a wary eye out, and to keep watch of our dreamers; things will get worse before they get better
• One of Sabrina's people asks about promotions since the king has brought in a duchess from outside of the city, but the king says he only feels comfortable promoting people within his own house, but encourages people to contact their own houses
• Aoife asks my questions about whether there has been word of rituals in other places, or if anyone has any knowledge of Cathesig's whereabouts
  • The king calls on Asad, Stonetooth, and Augustus to see if they know anything
    • Asad says he hasn't heard from him
    • Stonetooth and Augustus, who were similarly marked by the phoenix, reply that they both thought he was dead
  • The king asks Dreamcatcher if there is a means of contacting the umbral phoenix, and she says that she can try and take some changelings to speak with them
  • The king also mentions that someone could go and speak to the phoenix in the Dreaming
    • Aoife works things to get Sam Springfoot to volunteer to go to the Dreaming to speak to the phoenix there
• The king has had no word about any other rituals similar to the one we foiled
  • No other city has an evil phoenix imprisoned in it like we do
  • He also mentions that Atlanta seems to be focused on more than others (though he doesn't acknowledge that he knows why)
  • He speaks about some of the other cities that have had strange problems with similar issues of snakes and statues
    • He mentions the places we've been to, as well as Riyadh and Mexico City
• Duchess Magnolia speaks about being glad to bring her motley (which are all veterans) to the city to step in and help

Mingling

• The king then dismisses folks and says there is food
• Agnes goes to get her library card from Sam
  • She meets an enchanted mortal named Willie Mae Jones, who is old as dirt to the point where she probably can't leave and risk losing her enchantment and having age catch up with her, who Sam gets to give her the card
• Blaze goes darting off to check food
• I get Dreamcatcher to sign a copy of her book that I brought so I can add it to my horde
• I ask the assembled pookah and trolls about the respective individuals of their kiths from the vision, but none of them recognize the descriptions as specific individuals
  • It's safe to assume they are not local at least
• Aoife speaks to the Tailor about altering the silvernight duster
  • He agrees he can and tells her to drop it off at some point
  • He also introduces her to some of the most recently chrysalised individuals
• Various of us spend time talking with various people around the court
• Moira notices Sabrina's spymaster, Mira, going about talking to basically everyone
  • She's essentially doing the rounds reminding people that Sabrina has dirt on everyone to shore up her place now that Barin is gone and Duchess Magnolia has been brought in
• We all go and speak with Duchess Magnolia
  • Roderick (troll) and Savannah (eshu) are with her
  • Magnolia is house Liam and one of the Autumn sidhe, and has been in this incarnation since the Civil War
  • She mentions that no one else seems to have put together that we have information that the king is aware of that they aren't, but doesn't seem to be upset that we don't want to talk about it
    • Agnes insightfully discerns that she's probably on the up and up asking about it, though the king hasn't revealed anything to her since he probably doesn't know her well
    • Roderick seems like he's willing to compromise with whoever he needs to in order to get things done, so sharing secrets with him might be a gamble
    • Savannah reads as someone who grew up poor and is never going to be poor again, and so when Magnolia goes she'll leap to be under whoever else she can to retain that (which would most likely be Sabrina now)
• I ask her, since she's from middle Georgia, if she knew a gryphon, which she did

  • She knows the location of our freehold, the Lauren Estate, firsthand

    • She knew the family that built it, and recalls that it was built by a troll who came over from Europe
    • It was a bit of a big deal that they made a new freehold, as it was much harder to make one back then

  • I ask if she'd be interested in coming over to our home for tea to reacquaint herself with Griff

    • She says if we can find a way to get her there via the Dreaming she would (and understands that this would be a time for us to speak to her privately)
    • I talk to Sir Sam, and he agrees that if we can get a way from here to our place via the Dreaming, he can arrange to have Magnolia transported there

Door checks

• When back at the freehold and plan what to do next, we speedrun checking the doors we haven't looked through yet
  • Stable door: smells of horses and hay, north Asian (maybe Mongolia?)
  • Lab: Middle Eastern, likely underground
  • Tomb door (we've checked it before): Mexico city
  • Morgue: dusty old house, modernish (last 100-200 years), European feeling
  • Varnished wooden door in bedroom: opens onto a tropical, equatorial location, time differences of at least 6 hours (it's the middle of the night when we check during the early evening)
  • Vaulted doors in a bedroom: European, more English feeling, and we see an owl man drinking tea who looks up and says "My word, what are you doing in my kitchen?"
  • Creepy door in the cemetery