Mithril is Forever

A series of offical ruses is perpetrated on our heroes in the name of security. First they are sent to "check the human security situation in the northern border forts" with sealed orders to open in the city of Korang. There they are told to divert to a critical archaeological dig, excavating what might be the burial mound of the "Dragon Khan" - a famous steppes raider believed to have been buried with a huge stash of various magical artifacts raided from the Empire and other places during his lifetime (during the decadence of the Empire period, circa 1200 years ago).

Once they have left civilization totally, they open yet another sealed order packet, which tells them that the dig is just a cover for magical research of the sort that is too dangerous to perform in a city, sponsored by the Imperial court itself. They are to audit its security as before, and are given an impressive set of papers to prove that they are... whoever they say they are, and have access to all corners of the project. They decide to pretend to be auditors from several Imperial ministries all come together with competing agendas, just to throw the locals into confusion.

Gaius is leading "team uncooperative", sent by the Minister of Natural Resources to presumably sink things, since he's opposed to the Minister of Magic who officially sponsors the project. Lucia is "team neutral", sent by the Audit Ministry to, well audit. And Sasha is "team friendly" sent by the Ministry of War. Baba is attached to Sasha as entourage, and Ivar is clearly security for this crew.

At the dig, they are interrogated by the guards and have to show their plentiful papers, then respectfully greeted by the chief of security. Over the day they meet most of the people, set down here all at once for convenience:

The Magical Researchers:

• Research Director Sol Solpani Panjabi - a serious man with a nose for getting funding, he learned of the idea for the project from Ulius and got the project set up. So far he seems security minded and cooperative.
• Senior Researcher Ulius Jin Karaji - a not-so-serious man first encountered lying on a table in the research building. Ulius is insulting to anyone not as smart as he is (that's everyone), irreverent, and a bit erratic. He's also a genius. Lucia managed to get a tiny bit of respect from him by admitting her ignorance but being able to put in a little relevant questioning anyway.
• Senior Researcher Kwayla Marcus - a quiet, mousy, methodical woman who works well with Ulius. She's also a genius, but of the type that is much, much less annoying. Baba talked to her a good deal and got the impression that her work is pretty much her center.
• Junior Research Staff - "JubJub", Justicus, Yevgeny (of Gravlan ancestry) and Min. So far JubJub has talked with people the most, seeming to be eager to prove that he knows something. They also interacted with Min, who is a helpful young woman but perhaps more self-confident than JubJub. Maybe it's her better nickname.

Security:

• Security Chief Brutus Chapandri - described in their briefing packet as unimaginative, Brutus was assigned here because he is believed to be too stolid to be compromised. Unfortunately this means he also is unlikely to ferret out bizzare threats, hence the need for Section Unicorn. Brutus is so far respectful to the auditors and as exciting as advertised.
• Security Staff - a bunch of highly trained men from the Imperial Eye - Skip, Chubby, Dork, Chuckles, Baldie, Jenner, Lefty, and Chaos.
• Security Ringer - Brutus tells the auditors that he has another agent on site as part of the support staff - Dana the cook.

Support Staff - as yet mostly unpoked by our heroes:

• Master Boxana Jaeus - a woman who oversees all the support operations, "Boxy" has not yet been interviewed by the group.
• Cooks Jana and Dana
• Helpers Ion, Jannicus, Ivar, Mira, and Katya Kate.

Archaeologists - since this isn't really a dig, they have to live separately on the other side of the dig mound:

• Archaeologist Director Jai Hephasus - not much is known about him yet, except that Brutus thinks he drinks a fair amount and is a bit frustrated by the bait and switch. He must have indirectly pissed someone off to get this assignment.
• Assistants Manjani, Torven, and Jale

Section Unicorn also gets an explanation about the purpose of the project and a demonstration, mostly because Gaius demands it. The goal of the project is to pull down a star - after all, they sometimes fall on their own - preferably eventually being able to pull down a star on, say, an enemy city. Stars are believed to be disks of white-hot star metal (basically magical iron from what has fallen down) about half a mile in diameter. Although Kwayla thinks they may actually be rings rather than disks.

The demonstration uses range-enhancement arcanological orbs in order to extend the range of an affinity spell cast using star metal. It is able to jerk a sample out of Gaius's hand at a half-mile range and pull it back to the test setup. Obviously the problem is in extending that half-mile range to the thousands of miles necessary to get an actual star. Lucia's later discussion with Ulius reveals that the problem lies mostly in getting a large amount of arcanological enhancers to work together on the same attractive spell. It's a bit of a pronoun problem - the first enhancer can work on the spell, but later enhancers down the chain have lost track of what the reference they have actually means. Or something like that, Ulius can be hard to understand.