The road to Getsemiel

[Drannin]

(OOC: Ugh. Edited my post. Sorry about that.)

[Alberich]

(OOC: Okay. Edited mine.)

[Graybeard]

A pained look crossed Sister Rose's face, as she recognized a subject that was going to be ... difficult. (Especially if things with Argus, well, developed.)

"Tim's right," she said slowly, "but there's a bit more to it than that." Luminosita's Nethers, who do I offend here -- Argus, or Tim, or both? "There are two key points. One is that there are -- forgive me, Tim -- what one might term 'factions' in the Church. They don't exactly line up with what Tsuiraku would call 'conservative' versus 'liberal,' but that's the closest analogy I can think of. The current Patriarch, a man named Jeramel, is part of the more 'liberal' faction, and he's been there long enough to surround himself with Cardinals from his own faction. The Cardinal Inquisitor, by contrast, is one of the conservatives -- very conservative. So he surrounds himself with his own acolytes, who of course are also conservative, and will just happen to fill the next batch of slots for Cardinals if the conservatives ever regain power, which would probably lead to Cosimo -- that's the Cardinal Inquisitor -- becoming the next Patriarch." She visibly shuddered at that possibility. "Of course, these factions see things very differently as to what threatens souls ... and if I do say so myself, their views on that particular topic are sometimes shaped not just by spiritual concerns, but by -- I will say practical ones."

[Drannin]

Argus grimaced slightly. This was going to be awkward, and Rose was clearly having a hard time of it.

"In other words, what might be best for the Church, or Veracia as a whole," he said charitably. Politics, was the word that went unsaid. And possibly personal grudges, personal gain. He could only imagine what went on in the heart of the church.

[Alberich]

As Rose spoke, Brother Timothy shrugged. What did he know about high politics in the Church? Next to nothing, that was what. Even when he'd gone to school in the capital, not even a full course in the seminary, no one was interested in involving the students in that. Their task had been to learn and prepare for service.

Here, the trick was to avoid the trap of setting himself up as the Voice of Orthodoxy, as if he knew as much as a Cardinal himself, so that the gaps in his knowledge would be seen as flaws of Orthodoxy, or his own weaknesses would be seen as the Church's.

To Argus' remark, Tim nodded and responded with cheer. "Exactly!" Heathen he may be, but the old Tsuirakuan seemed to be grasping the essentials. (And Tim, in his innocence, could not read the scorn in the wizard's mind.) "I don't know anything about the Cardinals myself." [OOC: And Graybeard said, Heretic!!!] "But a lot of what we do is practical, and it has to be. I mean, part of our task is to administer Lord Luminosita's kingdom on earth, and the Church has to be for people as they are."

Maybe that was why they kept the Unorthodox sects small - because their doctrines were suitable for some people to live their lives upright, but not for the ruling class. In the present company, that was a thought best kept to himself.

Brad was a little puzzled, "How do you mean?"

Tim responded, "Well, I mean, take the business of how we decorate our temples. There's nothing about it in the scriptures. And I've heard that some of our other brethren question that, and ask why the gold, and the icons, and the murals, and some of the longer rituals, and like that. They say you can worship Luminosita out in the open field, the way the prophets did, and he'll accept it.

"That's true, but I think there's a value to the way we do it - that a lot of people, when they go into the sanctuary, and see the furnishings and smell the incense, and do the responsory, and have the whole experience - well, it helps them feel that extra sense of reverence, and puts them in the right frame of mind. Just like when we kneel to pray. The Good Father would hear us standing up, but it reminds us of how we approach him.

"That's my opinion anyway - I mean, like you, I take the essential points from above, and from tradition."

[Graybeard]

[OOC:

"I don't know anything about the Cardinals myself." [OOC: And Graybeard said, Heretic!!!]

LOL ... That was wonderful, and thanks ... The following little interruption, btw, isn't intended to bring this discussion to a close. It does reflect geography -- there's indeed a mountain range on the way to the coast, according to our rather rough map of Veracia, Gervasiel being somewhere near the "T" in the word "TRAVEL" -- and it would be consistent with the way the party has been traveling. We can resume the theological stuff once we get in motion again -- although there is one brief thing Rose needs to transact with Tim first. /OOC:]

Sister Rose listened with growing interest to Brother Timothy's explanation of the role of ritual in Orthodox worship -- interest tinged with a bit of cynicism. The young priest was delightfully earnest and idealistic, which was refreshing after some of the hard cases and burnouts they'd met at other Orthodox temples on the road, and downright inspiring when you considered the possibility that men like this might one day replace the unabashed power mongers now ensconced in Emerylon. [OOC: Any chance his surname might be "Navero"? /OOC:] Rose was hopeful that that personality would survive contact with some of the realities of the Veracian Church ... hopeful, but not optimistic. His view of the rituals would change once he saw how the Church used them to set up the credulous to be overawed by the light show in the skies above Emerylon -- a light show that Rose had started to find rather silly even before she moved to the Reformed church and was able to more or less ignore it. Besides, there were simply too many bad influences on the way to the higher reaches of the church. Speaking of which ...

Brad, who'd been driving the wagon (with half of his mind, anyway, the other half being devoted to Lillith, with brief interruptions by the theological discussions), reined the horses to a stop and turned to his cousin. "Rose, I think we need a break," he said. "The horses are starting to labor." It was true; almost unnoticed because of the conversations going on, the road had started to rise into the mountain range separating the west coast of Veracia from the interior farmland. It would have to get considerably higher to thread the pass among the mountains, but the horses were already working hard. "When we get on the road again, could you drive?" he added. "You're better at this than I am, and this is getting steep."

Rose nodded. "Let's all take a few minutes to stretch our legs." She hopped out of the wagon (I really do need to stretch ... getting old, she thought) as Brad and Lillith started to minister to the horses. Then she made a quick decision ...

"Tim, there's something you need to know about Father Blaise," she said, taking the young man by the arm and gently steering him off to the side of the clearing where they could have a bit of privacy.

[OOC: So Alberich, do you want to transact this conversation off line, or do it here? I'm good either way, but Rose definitely wouldn't want the half elves to hear what she's about to say; other than Lillith, it would be news to them, and the poor things have already had plenty of scary shocks since joining this motley crew. ]

[Alberich]

Tim went along with alacrity. He felt a small sense of triumph. He'd thought her reasoning about Blaise starting the fire to "cover his tracks" was specious, and that she might be using it to cover knowledge she had by other means. Well, let's hear what she has to say before patting ourselves on the back. At the very least, this meant she was treating him like a full member of the expedition, and not as excess baggage. He was all ears.

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Following a discussion with Alberich, we're doing this exchange here, but it's spoilered in case others either find it repetitive or would prefer to stay in character and not hear it. Feel free to browse, though. EDIT, much later: no longer spoilered, as the truth has come out and the spoiler software isn't working right. /OOC:]

Where do I start? Sister Rose wondered, then decided simply to tell what she knew; this young man appeared to have sufficient strength of character to handle it. "Tim, you need to know that we've been learning other things about Father Blaise on this trip, and some of the things we've been learning are ... disturbing." She took a few more steps away from the main group before continuing.

"Blaise is older than he looks, quite a bit older," she said. "Twenty years ago, he was part of a missionary team that went to the Southern Continent to make converts for Luminosita, and one of his converts was a good friend of mine named Brother Miguel, who was a small, wild boy at the time. According to someone we met who was also part of that mission, while they were there, Blaise and another priest had an encounter while they were there that they wouldn't talk about, something involving a 'death god' ... and then the other priest just died. Just dropped dead, our contact says he, quote, 'just stopped'. Blaise came back from the mission and got put out to pasture by the people in Emerylon, and apparently he sat there for a long time -- until recently. Our contact -- thought there was something peculiar about that."

Is the rest of this going to make sense? Well, I'm committed now... "Now as it happens, we've been running into way too many situations recently where people have 'just stopped,' people who've died when they have no obvious reasons for it. Our original mission was to find my supervisor, a man named Father Egbert, who'd disappeared from our mission in Kiyoka just about the time another man 'just stopped' while he was examining some of Egbert's belongings. Same description, and it happened again while -- a different man was looking at the same artifacts later." (This didn't seem the time to tell Tim that that second examiner was a Tsuirakuan.) "It develops that Egbert was recruited into the church many years ago by this selfsame Father Blaise. And we know Egbert's brother-in-law also had the ability to make people 'just stop'; we saw him do that before he himself died. I had an experience with the man that was ... scary." She shuddered violently, remembering what had happened at the pass.

"So fast forward to Umbertiel," she continued. "When we got to town, Lillith, whose religion seems to allow her to contact the 'spirits' of the earth, as she puts it, detected something wrong with the 'spirits' of the dead in town." She smiled weakly. "We've had more experience with the spirits of the dead, and the not-quite-dead, recently than I would have thought possible; I'll fill you in on that some other time. Anyway, whatever she was detecting was centered on Blaise's chambers. And then, I don't know how, but another person 'just stopped' while snooping around magically in the vicinity of those chambers. That was Sister Bree." She didn't say how she knew that was what was on Bree's mind; it wasn't time to reveal the last entry in that diary yet. "And to top it all off, there was that 'Uncle Shemmy' at the stables. Did he just stop? I don't know, but you have to wonder."

She took a deep breath, then summed up. "This must all sound completely off the wall to you. Maybe it is. Maybe we're seeing ghosts where there aren't any ghosts, maybe there's an explanation for all these people who 'just stopped' that doesn't involve a man who had an encounter with a death god down on the Southern Continent. But I have to tell you, Tim: this man scares the shit out of me ... if you'll pardon my decidedly un-churchly language."

[OOC: And with that, your preview of what may be the Big Bad Evil Guy in Errant Road comes to an end ...]

[Alberich]

[Then I'll keep it the same way.]

Spoiler: show

Well, thought Tim. If she wants to keep that "contact" nameless, then there's no way I'm getting details out of her.

"I'm getting the general outline," he said. "I'm having a little trouble putting it together without names and faces. But if I get you, Blaise didn't do anything visible for twenty years after getting back from the southern continent. The one person who was with him when he had the mystery encounter died down there.

"And now, all-a-sudden, people who know about Blaise or his doings down south don't live too long, and people who mess around with these 'artifacts' that Blaise may've given his friends, they don't live too long either. People who snoop around Blaise don't live too long. People who shoot at Blaise don't live too long. Blaise's recruit's brother-in-law, who is dead, seemed to have the same evil power, which means it may've come from an 'artifact' or some knowledge that Blaise shared out. Like some kind of death spell. Like maybe it just stops a beating heart. Come to that Bishop Cyrus almost died of a heart attack right around the fire, but maybe that was natural. Desiree and I got it going again for sure.

"Anyway, you've been running into evidence of all this. Blaise pulled strings to get the mission of questioning you. He questioned you and your companions about what happened on your latest mission, and then he left Umbartiel without reporting his findings. Possibly on a missing horse according to 'forensic evidence.' He didn't stay around and kill you all. In fact, he ran in a big hurry in a way that was sure to draw comment.

"So if he's really the malevolent force you're saying, then whatever you know isn't enough to threaten him. Or he isn't that powerful after all. Or in fact he isn't really the cause of all this death, and maybe he's running away from whatever it is. Anyway, he's been spotted by a novice in Getsemiel, who isn't dead, or who wasn't a little while ago anyway.

"And I mean, he might be frightening, but I'm also thinking this. Your higher-ups, this Colonel Bernie and the people he complains about, they know what you've been finding out, right? And if they're special ops, I assume they have as much intel as anyone." And do they tell you more of what they know than you tell me of what you know? "And yet, they seem to think a group our size, augmented by me of all people, is enough to get the job done.

"Well, I can tell you, I'm nothing that special. Militia lieutenant, very junior priest, I can heal and carve wood, but I can't shake the walls with my prayers. If I'm even supposed to have an effect on this mission, then it can't be that frightful." She had age and rank on him, but he said it winningly, hoping to cheer her up.

He paused. "Outside of us, do you know any likely targets for this 'sudden stoppage'? I mean, like someone who knows about Blaise or his mission and is still alive? And did his questions to you and Maduin give you any clues about what he really wanted to know or what he's after, or why he got out in such a hurry?"

The speed of his departure, especially, didn't gel in Timothy's mind. If Blaise was well-placed enough to get the assignment of questioning Rose and Maduin, it should've been the simplest thing in the world to make his report, omit whatever details he wanted to omit, then go back into semi-retirement and carry on with his schemes at leisure. If he was running, he was running to something or from something, and there was no clue of what made it so urgent.

'course, if there was something time-sensitive about whatever was happening with Blaise, maybe their group wasn't so much "adequate to the task" as "available for the task." He didn't share that thought with Rose.

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose's expression was as troubled as her mind. "You're asking me a lot of questions that I don't have answers for," she said. "Why did he go to ground for twenty years, and what was he doing during that time? I don't know, and I wish I knew. Is there anybody else he might be, I guess I'd say, interested in? Same answer. What clues did the interviews give us? Same answer, although there's one little curiosity: when we were told to go to Umbertiel to meet him and Bree, we were told that the only people they'd be interviewing were Argus and myself. Speaking of whom, here he comes." Argus was indeed heading in their direction, and her wave beckoned him onward as she resumed. "Same answer as to why the rules changed and they wanted to interview Bryce and Maduin, too. Why Maduin of all people? He clearly had next to nothing to do with the dead people, he barely dealt with Indianel and Rebekah at all while we were at the dig. I can understand why they wanted to talk to Bryce, contrary to our expectations; he worked at the dig, after all, and apparently he and Bree had had some run-ins in the past. But why Maduin? It just makes no sense."

She turned to meet Argus, then turned back to Tim. "More questions than answers -- lots more questions. But I thought you'd better know some of the background to this mission. Now we'd better get on the road, if we're going to get over that pass before the mountain thunderstorms hit. In fact, it might be too late for that already," she said, noting that the peaks to the west were growing the cumulus clouds that would turn to storm clouds in a few hours. "Anyway, we're here to serve Luminosita, and that means following orders -- although I wouldn't blame you if you just turned tail and went home, after that little bit of background," she concluded, with a wan smile ... and just possibly the wish that she could do the same thing.