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Cailin has returned to the practice room in the Assassins' Guild.
The Ilk at primal Amber adds a mouth to his ballista bolt-shaped body and asks Jean to relay information to the other Ilks. Information is passed.
The Norton on grand tour sees some small white mice, and can tell that they used to be shaped as hyper-intelligent shades of blue. Norton grabs a mouse and swallows it. Ilk in Norton's head yells at Norton to not put mice in his cousin. Norton hog ties the Ilk and talks with the mouse. The mouse claims that it wants to be blue again, but this place doesn't want it to be blue. Norton starts changing the place to make the mouse blue again. Ilk can tell that the shadow is falling apart, and yells at Norton to stop doing that. Norton mutters for a bit, then decides that the shadow is worth not destroying and stops shifting it. He decides to bring the mice with him to another place where they can be blue, and grows another head that starts blowing bubbles of mice-attracting pheremone. Thousands of mice start chasing after bubbles that nobody else can see. Ilk in Norton's head persuades Norton to untie him by offering him popcorn. Ilk starts conjuring popcorn.
Neville and company are at breakfast in Amber. Neville makes an appointment to see Malachai about finding Celeste. Someone pulls out three large tomes, one labeled, "Oberon", the next "Clarissa", the third, "Paulette". He then pulls out a thin notebook labeled, "Malachai", opens it to a clean first page, then writes Neville's name on the top of the sheet. After a bit more discussion, the person hands Neville the writ.
[Hey GM - who was that? Prospero?]
Neville goes to Flora, and asks how he can contact Celeste. She recommends that he try the trump attached to the writ. Neville trumps Celeste, who analyzes the connection and accepts it. He asks her when she will be able to assist him on his quest. She replies that she is busy, and they disconnect. Celeste starts working on a trump sketch of Neville. Ilk contemplates approaching House Xartys in order to convince them to change sides.
Celeste notices that she is having problems working on the sketch, and concentrates harder. Once she manages to encompass a certain mental image, the work starts progressing quickly. She puts the effort into doing a good job.
Cailin cuts himself with a knife and tries to shift the wound away, with minimal success.
Jean overhears Cassandra talking about wanting to find her father, and mentions that he saw Corwin show up in Amber a short while ago, talk with Flora, and then leave again. Cassandra tries to trump Corwin and hits a trump block. She declines Celeste's offer of help. Jean in Amber asks Flora where Corwin went. Flora tells Jean that Corwin said he was going somewhere to rest. Jean relays this to Cassandra, who asks Atalanta if she has seen Corwin. "Who's Corwin?" "My father. Trialla's rider." Atalanta claims that she can only talk to Sha'um, and that she can talk to Cassandra because she is one of the kittens.
Ilk tries to convince a group to head to Xartys, with minimal success. Norton tries to contact Celeste by resonating the parts of her that he fixed.
Celeste has a disconcerting feeling in the back of her skull that Norton is looking for her. She trumps Norton, who is delighted that his attempt worked. Norton asks Celeste if she has a problem with mice, and they discuss the matter briefly. Norton passes a mouse through to Celeste. Celeste notices a deep and wise thought touching the edge of her shields. She opens her shields, and lets it in. It is an ancient, wise being that has obviously studied complex mathematical forms. Celeste looks around through Norton's eyes and sees how many mice there are.
Celeste opens a magical gate to Dragaera and stands in the middle of the gateway. Norton detaches his bubble-blowing head and hands it to her. Celeste can see mice pouring towards her on the other side of the trump contact and thoughts pouring out of the other side of the magical gate. Neither Ilk nor Cassandra can see anything. Cassandra steps away from the head-wielding Celeste.
Celeste feels another touch on her shields as the last of the mice passes through the gate. She takes the contact. "Excuse me. The one who moves and shapes this place where you have sent us is missing." Celeste agrees to look into the matter, and gives them interim permission to stay.
Celeste offers Norton his head back, and he tells her to keep it. Celeste then asks Norton for a couple of spare Celestes. Norton tells Celeste that he will need to get a good mental impression of her first. Celeste mentions that Clarissa is missing. Norton looks for Clarissa. He receives a very weak signal, somewhere out in shadow, and tells Celeste. Celeste asks Norton to meet her in Amber when Grand Tour is over. Celeste hands Norton his head back. Norton eats it. Ilk in Norton glares, and Norton reassures him that he will keep the head separate from Vlad. The Ilk near Celeste sends a few tendrils to Home, and Home tells him that Clarissa is resting there. Ilk has Home relay the information about the blue thoughts in Darkover to Clarissa, but isn't sure if she has received the message.
Celeste checks the god channel. Verra's not there. Clarissa's not there. Celeste yells, "Domna!" Celeste gets an echo back in Faythe's voice. "Domna? It's dark." "Faythe?" "Mom?" "Where are you?" "It's dark." Celeste talks with her daughter. The last thing that Faythe remembers is trying to fix dad, and she seems to be disembodied now. Celeste thinks of Norton.
Celeste trumps Norton. He has a problem - the head that he just ate is trying to respond to the trump call. He pulls it out and places it on his shoulders, then takes the call. "Celeste - it's been so long!" "Minutes." "You should write." "What would you like me to write?" "I don't know, no one ever asked me that before." Celeste introduces Norton to Faythe over the god channel and asks him to put Faythe back in her body. Norton asks Faythe to come closer. Norton winks out, and Celeste can feel him being sucked through the trump contact onto the god channel.
Celeste tells Ilk what just happened, and tries to contact Norton and Faythe over the god channels. She's blocked.
Norton tries to analyze his situation and pull himself together. The Ilk in Norton's head doesn't feel an identity. Norton cannot feel himself, his environment, Ilk, or Vlad's body - he seems to be a non-corporeal form in a non-corporeal place.
Jean in Amber tells his mother that Faythe's body wandered off, and Faythe's spirit appears to be somewhere else, and asks Flora for help finding Faythe's body.
Norton is trying to broadcast or move his thoughts. He notices signal and noise around him, but doesn't seem to have the right equipment to resolve it. He tries to make the non-corporeal version of the right receiving equipment.
Celeste is getting pressure over the god channel, and examines the pressure more closely. It's Verra, knocking at her shields. Verra asks Celeste if she could tell Ilkandacian that someone inappropriate has apparently gotten ahold of the item that she lent to him, and she would like him to contact her at his earliest convenience. Celeste tells Ilk.
Ilk tries to contact Verra with the pearl. The signal to noise ratio is almost entirely prohibitory. Ilk tells Celeste that his method of contact is not working properly. Celeste tells Verra, and Verra asks Celeste to tell Ilk to visit her at his earliest convenience.
Verra mentions that she ran into Celeste's daughter - she seemed to be caught in a feedback loop. Celeste asks how one rescues someone from a feedback loop. Verra recommends sacrificing a city.
Many Jeans find Faythe's body in a low-brow joint in Amber city. She's entertaining the occupants. "Ewww! That's icky! You guys stop that!" Jean only has to break one or two of them to make them stop, and warns the barkeep them to send her back to the castle if she wanders by again. The Jeans carry her back towards the castle - she's a little bruised, but not broken.
Norton tries to work on spin and direction. He is baffled.
Jean decides not to tell Celeste that he found Faythe's body, as he never told her that he lost it in the first place. Flora has Faythe cleaned up.
Ilk asks Celeste if Clarissa could be useful in finding Norton and Faythe, and mentions that she is resting. Celeste tells Ilk that if Clarissa is resting, she shouldn't be disturbed. Celeste contemplates tossing a Jean onto the god channel to go find Norton and Faythe.
Cailin has stopped bleeding, mostly through normal healing processes. He reluctantly decides to accept Tate as his teacher, and prepares to notify the Guild. Cailin hears a voice in the shadows behind him, turns, and sees Zorro. Zorro asks Cailin if he will go with him to go right wrongs, join the cause of the Savior of Chaos, and learn the sword, the cape, and the hat. Cailin asks to learn how to use the hat first. Zorro gestures, and out of the shadows coalesce two horses. They mount, and prepare to go ride off. Zorro insists that they should disguise themselves first, lifts his hat, pulls a thin strip of cloth out of it. He tosses the mask to Cailin, and it lands neatly on Cailin's head. Cailin straightens the mask, and they head off.
Ilk and Zack notice two horses clatter to a stop on the roof of House Cara. Norton in Zack thinks that he recognizes Zorro from a television show. Ilk notices that they seemed to arrive through a ways that opened immediately before they arrived and then closed behind them.
Zorro offers his services and those of his side-kick to the Savior of Chaos with a flourish. "Zack" tells Ilk that he had better get up here. Ilk levitates himself above the wall and then gently floats to the roof. Neither Zack nor Ilk can recognize Cailin beneath the mask.
Ilk tells the group that he is about to go to House Xartys in order to determine if they need aid in freeing themselves from the enemy, who is believed to have conquered them.
Ilk leaves "Zack" in charge of House Cara until he returns, and prepares to take a few demon Jeans, a few mage Jeans, Zorro, and his side-kick with him to Xartys. The two horses rear dramatically and gallop off, becoming insubstantial as they go. Ilk grabs the others, tendri's out, and heads towards Xartys.
Ilk and company arrive at Xartys at the same time that Zorro and his side-kick come through another ways and destroy it behind them.
There are troops on the roof of Xartys, wearing a uniform that is not commonly recognized. They fail to attack. Zorro rears his horse and begins a long speech about freedom and oppression. People turn and look at him, then write him off as an idiot and resume their normal patrols.
Zorro turns to Cailin and exclaims, "Now - we must sneak in through the back window." Jean says, "There's one open over there," gesturing towards the other side of the House.
Ilk moves to extreme vocal range and delivers the standard speech used as an invitation to parley.
Zorro swirls his cloak and then is sitting next to Cailin, although his cloak is still upright on the horse. Zorro does it a few more times, and Cailin notices that Zorro is draping the cloak around an image of himself that he mentally left on his horse. Cailin follows suit, successfully. Nobody present notices that Zorro and his side-kick are no longer on their horses. The two sneak off. Jean is occasionally certain that he just got jostled, but he then forgets it. Jean tries to figure it out, and finally notices that those two just went into the window, as well as being sitting on their horses. This fails to strike Jean as unusual.
Cailin notices Zorro scribbling on a notebook. "What are you doing?" "Making a map, so we can find our way out." "Okay."
Jean starts shifting a bunch of demons into saucers in case of a possible invasion, and connects them into a giant mecha-Jean with their tractor fields. Jean has one small problem - it's boring being the feet, so the feet keep swirling up to become more heads. He trades position quickly enough to keep energy up and approaches hyper-sonic velocity. The tractor fields keep the saucers under control.
The only lasers that Jean can find fire backwards, as a form of propulsion, and generally anything behind Jean doesn't need to be damaged any more.
[Cailin's side-kick name - Don Serioli]
Zorro's plan: Zorro will go off to make trouble, and Don Serioli will assassinate the enemy leader. Don Serioli objects. Zorro's new plan: Don Serioli will go off to make trouble, and Zorro will assassinate the enemy leader.
Don Serioli works on a distraction - a giant wrecking-ball. He tells the first guard that his shoelaces are untied, then splatters him with the wrecking ball. A small voice at Cailin's elbow mutters, "Why did you do it that way? Wouldn't it have been more efficient to just knife him?" "No." Cailin looks down and sees Dworkin. He chats with Dworkin about the blue men from whom Dworkin is hiding. Dworkin tip-toes off, rips one of the guards open, and climbs inside. The corpse topples over. Cailin blasts a hole in the back of the house with his wrecking ball.
Dworkin rips his way back out of the corpse, and says, "Sloppy." "What would you recommend?" "Try a knife." Dworkin hands Cailin a knife. Cailin looks at it and puts it in his pocket. Dworkin says, "That won't do you any good there!" and pulls out another knife, grabs a guard by the nuts, pulls him to his knees, stabs him a few times, then pushes him back to his full height. The guard collapses, bleeds, and dies.
Cailin modifies his spell to use knives instead of a medicine ball and casts it again. The knives go flying out of the same hole in the wall with guards stuck on their tips, even though Cailin didn't cast the spell in that direction. Cailin can now feel a concerted force of mages searching for him. Dworkin rips open another guard and climbs inside.
Ilk has reached the meeting area on the roof of the House. There is a table set up on the roof in a fashion similar to Ilk's table on the roof of House Cara. High ranking members of the House greet him appropriately, and then the head of House approaches. Ilk tries to determine if Xartys has been conquered, with little or no success.
Cailin flips over the corpse in which Dworkin is hiding. Dworkin yells that Cailin is going to give him away to the little blue men and pulls Cailin inside the corpse. Cailin sees a table, some chairs, and a tea setting on the table. There is a bloody line on one wall. Cailin encourages Dworkin to make the back wall transparent, and asks him to keep an eye out for Zorro.
They have tea in the corpse.
"Tell me - what's an Old Lord like you doing in a corpse like this?" "I ran into me earlier, over there." Dworkin claims that he only started seeing the little blue men after he met the other him. Cailin suggests that perhaps the blue men were after the other him. Dworkin cries out, "I'm free! I just have to explain to them that they're after the wrong me!", rips the corpse back open, and runs off. Cailin decides that he will be less conspicuous if he stays in the corpse, and has some more tea.
[Placed in the logs by request of the GM: Don't let Jet run movie night]
Ilk sees, vaguely out of the corner of his tendrils, a being that isn't there sneaking up on the table. He tries to push it away, but it avoids his tendrils. Ilk maneuvers his tendrils to delay it while he chats with the head of House Xartys.
Xartys finally states that no, his House does not need assistance against the enemy and is not involved in an alliance against them.
Ilk loudly states that he is glad that House Xartys is not their enemy. Zorro appears with a flourish behind Xartys, and gives a long melodramatic speech. Ilk and Xartys ignore him.
"Come, Don Serioli, we leave!" Cailin leaves the porch and joins the group on the roof, carrying the teapot. Zorro sits down at the table in Xartys's seat and tries to start a tea party. Ilk stands up.
Zorro flourishes, and leaps off the roof. His horse maneuvers as he falls, and Zorro lands neatly on his horse. Cailin levitates down to his horse, and they gallop off.
Ilk looks over at Xartys and complains about the unwanted help. Xartys is sarcastic in Ilk's general direction.
Jean asks Ilk when they are going to attack Xartys so he can use his new mecha-Jean, and is very disappointed when Ilk tells him that it isn't polite to attack one's allies.
Zorro and Don Serioli arrive near the Faerie gate at House Cara and have a chat with Celeste and Cassandra. Zorro acts condescending towards the ladies. Don Serioli and Celeste try to persuade Zorro to back-pedal. Zorro apologizes extravagantly, and tosses Cassandra a red rose. Cassandra spears the rose on the end of Darhyse, and notices that the rose was thrown to land precisely where the tip of her sword would be once she drew.
Some of the Jeans tell Ilk that he'd better show up fast before Zorro gets into a fight with Cassandra and Celeste. Ilk grabs the Jeans on House Xartys and pulls off to the Faerie gate.
Zorro and Cassandra continue to fence verbally. Everyone backs up. Cassandra glances at her bodyguards. They shake their heads at her.
One of Cassandra's bodyguards approaches Zorro. "My good lord 'Zorro', is it currently? You may notice that her rankings indicate that she took your place."
More interchanges happen, then Zorro finally rides off towards House Swayville.
Cailin tries to ride off after him, and ends up wading through Jeans. He gets disgusted and trumps Tate. Tate pulls him through. A discussion of Zorro happens on the roof of House Cara, and then Tate opens a trump gate to the Assassins' Guild for Cailin. Cailin arrives in Princess Chandra's reception room and chats with his grandmother, who tells him that "Zorro" is one of her failed apprentices. She also comments on how a fixation on justice makes an assassin's life more complicated.
"I guess justice is rather frightening to most decent, right-thinking people."
Cailin reluctantly agrees that Cassandra is the best choice of teachers, and goes off to change out of his costume and ditch the horse before she arrives.
There is a tap on Cassandra's shoulder. It's one of her bodyguards. He mentions that Princess Chandra would like to see her. Cassandra excuses herself from Celeste and goes to the Assassins' Guild. Princess Chandra greets Cassandra and asks her if she could teach her beloved grandson arms. Cassandra is reluctant, but agrees.
Princess Chandra asks if Cassandra thinks it will be hard. Cassandra says that it will not be hard for her, but will be for Cailin. Princess Chandra is regretful, and mentions that if it were hard she would grant Cassandra a dispensation to kill people if they were threatening Cailin. Various waffling and negotiations happen, and they end up with Princess Chandra declaring that she will look leniently upon Cassandra should she need to kill someone in order to save Cailin.
"And by the way, dear, if you'd like to pick up a spare arm on the way out..." Cassandra declines the offer of a mechanical arm.
Cassandra trumps Celeste. Celeste has just finished her trump, when she receives the trump call. They discuss heading to Amber. Cassandra passes Cailin and three of her bodyguards through, then comes through with the last one. Ilk Logrus-grabs the group, tendri's out, and heads to Amber. He hits a Logrus-block around Amber and burns through it, holding the part of him containing Darhyse in front to help. He feels a Logrus mage holding the block die, but can only get a general vicinity.
Cassandra thanks Ilk and heads out on her own. Cailin trails Cassandra by about three meters. A servant approaches Cassandra and hands her a note. She reads it. "Gone home to rest. See you. Dad."
"Zack" starts trying to track down friendly armies, and asks Jean to help. Jean claims that he can see hostile armies encamped around Helgram, Trantor, and Swayville, but that all of the friendly armies went through gates into Black and Grey Zone kingdoms. Jean sends flying saucers through the gates to look for the armies. He doesn't find armies, but finds old battlefields. The armies may have taken other ways out, but Jean cannot detect ways. He looks in on the Sidhe armies, which are spying on Helgram. Helgram's defenses are very well built and the defenses are highly defended. Zack sends one of Ilk's shifters out looking for his flying shag carpet and a pizza. Zack sends a Sidhe warrior through the Faerie gate to find his rule book so he can find a loophole that would make Auricle's presence in Faerie and his sending her there legitimate.
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