Orhan 5 Day 35 TE 6064

Some time passes.

Oathar begins making arrangements for his Grand Cathedral of Neela.

Haeraan brings his recently received pendant of trap luring to Veriak to see what he comes up. It turns out that the pendant has another message embedded in it. This one is to Veriak, asking him to not help Haeraan figure anything out. He suggests Haeraan just go to the meet and see what happens.

Imre contemplates what the Loremasters would do with the superweapon. The answer seems to be put the keys in a deep dark room, never to be used. Ever. We decide not to tell them about it.

Oathar sends the draft for the plans up to Neela, and uses Haeraan's Dream I spell to get a reply. In his dream, he sees himself swimming in a pool. He looks out and sees himself as a goldfish swimming in a goldfish bowl. Then, a giant aquarium gets plopped down. It's got gravel, and chests, and divers, and all that usual aquarium stuff. Fish get dumped into the aquarium. They're swimming around, and Oathar's swimming around, and then Oathar gets scooped up and thrown into the aquarium. Now, there's a bunch of fish and theyve all claimed stuff. It's really big and nice, but there's other fish claiming everything.

Oathar goes to dinner with Diana, the flirty priestess of Neela. He shows her the plans for the Grand Cathedral, and she doesn't successfully seduce him:

1. Neela thinks about the Grand Cathedral in Kaitaine: There's a vast field of fishbowls. In them swim all these different fish. Then someone comes along and replaces a fishbowl with a big aquarium. Now there's a field of fishbowls and one aquarium. Yup, that's the way that is.
2. Neela thinks about Diana: He seens a mountain lioness. The mountain lioness has a little cub which leaps around and follows her around. Whatever the big mountain lion does, the cub imitates her. The big mountain lion looks down with approval as the little one tries to emulate it.
3. Neela dream: He's a salmon swimming upstream and the bank is covered with grizzly bears. Above are hawks. If you can make it to the streams, you can mate and then die. But there are lots of bears and hawks along the way.
4. Neela dream: Oathar is at home in the villa. There's a ring at the doorbell. Answering it, he finds a cow. It moos and then is swept away by the winds of the giant maelstrom!!!!

Meanwhile, Kyrik explores the coral roads. There are the ones we know that go across Jaiman. East to the coast of Malera. There's a second on the NW coast of Malera. On the other side there's one in Galt. Then it turns south and there's one on an island in the bay of the SW coast of Galt. Then west into southern Kelestia to the big bay. It heads back towards Emir. There's an entrance in the Bay of Izar. It continues west but is flooded. It still goes places, headed towards Terrania, but when flooded it doesn't go at magical speeds.

Kyrik investigates the battles between the Raven Queen of Galt and the alliance of humans. He decidees we should probably look into it later.

Orhan 5 Day 70 TE 6064

New Year's Eve! We plan a giant party at the villa. The churches of Neela, Cay, and Eissa do especially well this year.

Orhan 1 Day 1 TE 6065

New Year's Day. It's pretty quiet.

Orhan 1 Day 2 TE 6065

We head down to Haeraan's ambush. News in Kaitaine... Representatives of the Alliance are back talking to the high council of Kaitaine. They are walking into the square: There's an Alliance emmisary group. In the middle is a woman who looks elf-like, dressed in robes and has a jeweled armband (strangely compass-like) with a black doublet and lot's of black leather under the robes. She's got a metal tiara. Around her are a few servants. Out in front is a Jordai (blueskinned humanoids). He has an ornate wristband. There are four big burly guys. They're almost 7 feet tall, dark skinned, with emerald green eyes.

They head to the high council buildings to talk. We think about it for a while, and decide that they are an Alliance strike team here to smite the government. We hear that the government has been given an ultimatum, "Join the Alliance now." Rumor has it that they tend to leave everything intact and just take over.

We decide there's no time for dilly-dallying. It's getting near noon. We head to the central market.

We find that the loremaster for Kaitaine is Kedric Bolaris, but we're not clear we can find him before noon.

We get to the central market and notice that on the side of one of the buildings is a symbol of the eye. The other thing we notice is that a young man walks by and brushes against Kyrik before vanishing into the crowd. Kyrik finds a note in his pocket, "Come to the shop." We head to the shop of the eye. There's an old man who sees the four of us come on in. He points to the back door. We head to the back. In the back is a figure in hooded robes. Haeraan's ring beeps. A womans voice says, "Come with me." We go to a random residential home. Inside we head to the basement, which leads us to a secret door to a tunnel. Through the tunnel, we pass through the sewer system and tells us to head through a door. We head in the door. There are four seats empty, and three filled with figures in robes. Haeraan's ring beeps again.

They welcome us. They guess that we have guessed who they are. They however need more information about us. Our association with certain influential personages in SelKai leaves us worried. They're worried that we're in too tight with Coran Maas. They talk to each other. "Are you prepared to learn the truth?!" Haeraan says, "Yes."

We mind meld with them. They know the Alliance is planning to take out the Kaitaine ruling council, and need us to stop them.