Saus

As we play, occasionally we'll close a thread and open a new one to keep the size of threads (and relative complexity) down to a dull roar. Here's where we store the closed posts from the history of Errant Road.
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Graybeard
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Saus

Post by Graybeard »

The main hall at the warp gate in Saus was almost empty as Argus, Brother Miguel, Captain Kitaura, and their fellow travelers entered. Part of the reason was the lateness of the hour; after all, Saus was quite a considerable distance east of Kiyoka, and although they'd left in the early evening, the night was well along here. (Explain that, all you primitives at home, Miguel thought but did not say; his homeland on the southern continent still harbored people who honestly believed the world was flat.) More of it, however, was the suspension of service while the Tsuirakuans tried to figure out what had gone wrong with the gate. A small party of portal mages met the Kiyokan technicians and immediately spirited them away, not even exchanging pleasantries before the technobabble started.

The Kiyokan homeland-security people had a greeter, too, a tall, slender young man in battlemage robes who had the longest eyelashes Argus had ever seen on a male. The two lower-level Kiyokans fell in with him immediately, while Kitaura paused to speak to Argus over his shoulder. "Good hunting, Dr. Cleiviein; remember both my offer and my warning." Without waiting for a reply, he went to where the young mage was standing ... and smiled as the boy batted his long lashes. The awed look on the other Kiyokans' faces spoke volumes...

That left Argus, Miguel, a few tired-looking sentries -- the hour was late, after all -- and a hatchet-faced woman in nun's robes. "Welcome to Saus, Brother Miguel, Dr. Cleiviein," the woman said, in a clipped, somewhat grating tone of voice. "My name is Sister Hortense. Father Reynard sends his greetings and regrets that he is unable to meet you tonight because of the lateness of the hour. I am to conduct you to our temple, where you will no doubt want to get a good night's sleep before you start your investigations."
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Drannin
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Re: Saus

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Argus gave the woman a formal bow. "Thank you for greeting us, Sister Hortense. It has indeed been a long day, and we would indeed be appreciative of a place to rest." The woman simply gave a sharp nod and gestured for the two to follow her. Despite her sharp manner, Argus was actually put at ease by the woman's manner. It was honest, at least, and made it clear that the local Veracians regarded him as an employee... which meant that they would be forthright with him, if not necessarily chummy. He could live with that.

As their group left the warp gate, Argus noticed that Captain Kitaura was getting rather chummy himself with the young battlemage. He pondered about this a moment, remembered Sister Rose's analysis of Kitaura's sexuality, and abruptly decided the less he knew the better.

Some things did not bear thinking about.
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Re: Saus

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Sister Hortense led Argus and Brother Miguel to a wagon waiting outside the gate building, with a tired-looking man holding the reins of a pair of similarly tired-looking horses. "This may be overkill," she said as she got them settled in. "We didn't know how much baggage you might be bringing. Anyway, make yourselves comfortable."

Twenty minutes later, the travelers found themselves in front of a church compound on the outskirts of Saus. It was surprisingly small; the church itself looked like it might have room for perhaps a hundred "worshippers," such as they were, and the cloisters occupied a building not too much larger than the church. "Not exactly what I was expecting," Miguel mused as they alighted and secured their limited traveling bags. "I was expecting something a bit more ... grand, if you don't mind my saying so. Truthfully, however, I'm perfectly happy not to be surrounded by all that pomp that they have at the main temple. This is much better, more consistent with our mission in Kiyoka. I like it."

Sister Hortense nodded; her severe demeanor suggested that she agreed with Miguel's assessment. Seeing Argus' puzzled expression, she turned to him and said, "Dr. Cleiviein, this compound represents the 'Reformed' branch of the Veracian Church. I'll spare you the doctrinal nuances separating the Reformed and Orthodox churches, and simply note that only about five percent of the faithful here in Saus attend this church or the other Reformed congregations in the city. However, we thought it might be best to introduce you to our city by way of a more, shall we say, comfortable environment than you might get at the main temple. That, and the fact that the Cardinal Inquisitor is spending the night there, which might be ... inconvenient."

She led the two men to small rooms at the back of the cloister and gave them keys. "Brother Miguel, I believe you may be excused from Matins tomorrow morning, in view of the lateness of the hour," she said. "Please make yourselves at home, get a good night's sleep, and we'll meet again in the morning." She walked off without waiting for a response.

[OOC: For a visual glimpse of the way I envision this place, check out the "Santuario de Guadalupe" photos on this page, or do a Google search on "Santuario de Guadalupe" and "Santa Fe". Calling this place "not grand" is definitely not the same as calling it ugly!]
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Re: Saus

Post by Drannin »

Morning came in Saus. Argus found that the room he was assigned was actually quite comfortable. It was nothing spectacular, mind you. Certainly no four-star hotel room. But it had a bed, and a dresser, and for some reason a chair, which Argus presumed was so that he could sit down and stare brainlessly at a wall. All in all, spartan as it was the room was still a damn sight better than he had been used to over most of the last couple of years.

Argus looked at himself in the mirror and declared it all right. Clothing: clean. Beard: groomed. Hair: still there, for which he was immensely proud. Staff:...

Leaning against the wall. Right.

Picking up his staff, Argus opened his door and went to find some breakfast. And hopefully hear word that the church inquisitor was somewhere far, far away.
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Re: Saus

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Breakfast was as simple and stark as everything else about the church: an egg, a bowl of grits, an apple-like fruit that Argus and Brother Miguel didn't recognize but found surprisingly tasty, and a cup of tea. They ate in silence, as did the few priests and nuns in the communal dining room with them. When they were done (and had washed their own tableware as the others did), Sister Hortense, who'd apparently been up for a while and was showing wear from her short night's sleep, joined them.

"My instructions are to see to your well-being here at the church," she said, "but I can't join you as you do whatever you're doing today. We're too short-staffed to go running around Saus looking for clues to something mysterious that doesn't affect us anyway. I will be happy to answer questions you have regarding Saus, the countryside, and all that, but that will have to be about the limit of my involvement in your investigations. Oh, I do have this for you from Sister Margaret that came in last night." She produced an envelope with a note inside, not saying exactly how she'd got it.

Dr. Cleiviein and Brother Miguel:

I trust that you are well and that Father Reynard and his staff are taking good care of you. Be kind to them; they don't have much from a material point of view, but they are good people who are trying to preach the Word of Luminosita without succumbing to the materialism that has claimed too much of our religion, I'm sorry to say.

We have learned a few things that may help you in your inquiries. The woman in those images in Father Egbert's quarters is his sister, as I had surmised. Her married name is Mildred Hamael, and she lives with her husband and two children (one is a newborn and didn't appear in the Father's album) in a small town called Heamish between Saus and Emerylon. Like most of Veracia outside Saus, their communications with the world outside Veracia are limited. We don't know whether Father Egbert has visited them in recent times, nor whether she knows anything about his disappearance, or is even aware that he is gone. If you approach her, use care; according to Father Egbert's correspondence, her husband is supposed to be an "unpleasant man," whatever he meant by that.

Portalmage Haziri and his staff are continuing to be cooperative; ironically, this mysterious occurrence is doing more to build bridges between our mission and Kiyoka officialdom than we had accomplished in the years since the mission was established. They are clearly concerned about Brother Egbert and don't want whatever happened to him to happen again. He says that Gordon Grumiel, with whom you spoke briefly via Crystal-net while here, is still in Saus and is more than willing to talk to you. There is also a report that one of the two sisters who were on that opening of the gate might have seen something out of the ordinary that might relate to Father Egbert. They are Hannah and Rebekah Codoin, both students at Emerylon University who were visiting relatives in Kiyoka. We understand that they are returning to Emerylon and are most likely on the road somewhere; it's about a three-day journey by foot, and being students, they probably don't have the money to take other forms of conveyance. (Apparently their mother paid for their trip to Kiyoka.) You might want to try to make contact with them, but I recommend you wait to do so until you have oriented yourself somewhat to the Veracian way of life; I regret to say that Emerylon is not the most "welcoming" of cities. Most of the other people on the gate were women from Saus, but in my experience they were not the most, shall I say, aware of people, and I doubt that you will get much help from them, although you're welcome to try; I'll get contact information for them if you wish.

Sister Rose and Brother Farley send their regards. Brother Farley reports that according to his girlfriend, nothing was found at Heer Thar Be Draagons that sheds much light on the mysterious Mr. Ravanel. They do know that he is apparently a legitimate travel agent and guide who has gone through the bureaucracy to get access to some relatively exotic locations -- including Saus itself, which is "exotic" by Kiyokan standards, and Delphiniel, the scene of one of the more embarrassing episodes in the history of Veracia, if I may say so. Efforts are under way to contact some of this Ravanel's previous clients, but I don't expect them to amount to anything. Brother Farley says that anger is building over the killing of Private Goto and that if his killer is found, he may be subject to what they euphemistically call "extrajudicial execution" -- we would just call it "lynching." His funeral is tomorrow; I have given Brother Farley leave to accompany Corporal Yugawa to it, if they believe it appropriate.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you, and we hope that Luminosita will guide you toward a speedy resolution of this mystery. Please write when you have time.

M
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Drannin
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Re: Saus

Post by Drannin »

Argus read the letter ans sighed. Emerylon. One of the places he least wanted to be in the world. Lovely. Still, it gave him something to go on.

The first thing to do was to talk to the portalmages on this end and see if they had detected any unusual disturbances during the gating procedure. Then a quick chat with Gordon Grumiel, to see if he had remembered anything else about Father Egbert. Argus intended to spend a little more time in Saus before heading out to Emerylon... and the purchase of some nondescript clothes was pretty high on his list. Something that said "old man that fanatical religious guards and bullyboys will just ignore." No point borrowing trouble, after all.

Regardless, he'd have to head overland to Emerylon at some point to question Egbert's sister and those twins... it promised to be an interesting trip, at least.

"Uh, Dr. Cleiviein?" Miguel's voice. Argus realized that he had been staring at the letter deep in thought for a good 5 minutes.

"Eh, sorry..." he said in embarrassment. "I was just thinking, we should start with the portalmages and then speak with Gordon Grumiel before checking around the town..."
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Re: Saus

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Master Portalmage Sazaki appeared to be cut from the same bolt as his colleague in Kiyoka, apart from thirty pounds' difference in weight. He carried it well, however; at least he was surprisingly light on his feet when he bounded out of his office at the gate to meet Argus and Brother Miguel. "Welcome, gentlemen; I've been expecting you," he said, then ushered them not into his office but rather into a small conference room, where a teapot and cups were already waiting.

Tea was poured, introductions and small talk were made, then Sazaki got down to business. "I fear that I may not be able to give you any more help than my friend Portalmage Haziri did. As he probably told you, we have been running diagnostics day and night, trying to find something, anything, that might have gone wrong with the gate. We have found nothing. We even brought in some specialists from Tsuiraku; I believe you may have seen them on the gate that brought you here -- with some trepidation, I might add; they, and you, were the first travelers in here since the ... event. Same outcome: nothing."

"Thank you for accommodating us with that special transportation," Miguel said. "Did I understand you correctly that no one else had gated in here before us, after Father Egbert vanished?"

"That is correct," Sazaki confirmed. Argus gave Miguel a sidelong glance and was somewhat surprised to see him sitting calmly, hands cupped around his teacup. Before entering the building, Miguel had powered up his truth-telling ability again, and had worked out a signaling scheme with Argus: if he rubbed his forehead, as though tired from the previous night's travels, it would indicate that he was detecting deception -- but there he sat. Apparently Sazaki was telling the truth, which meant among other things that no golems had gated in here. So why had they gated into Kiyoka?

Argus and Miguel were both digesting this interesting non-observation when Sazaki spoke. "And now, if you don't mind: would you gentlemen tell me what you think happened to your colleague?"
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Re: Saus

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Argus took a long sip of tea. "The way I see it, there are two options: the first, of course, is that Father Egbert was simply lost in transit. This seems unlikely, however. As you noted, there is apparently nothing wrong with the portal. ANd if there was an error with the transit, then... why only Father Egbert? It simply makes no sense."

Argus shook his head. "I have reason to believe that Father Egbert was carrying some sort of magical object with him. Which opens up the first option again: this magical object affected the transit field to some degree and the Father was... lost. But again, if there was a distortion in the field, why only Father Egbert? All this leaves me to believe that Father Egbert was either pulled out of transit by someone halfway through, or deliberately redirected himself en-route. This magical artifact could come into play in either case. The only issue here is that we're getting into thaumo-fiction."

The old mage paused for breath. It was a hell of a data dump, but he needed to give information to get it. "Hence, my bewilderment. There's obviously nothing wrong with the warp gate, and you can't just redirect somebody's signature. It's impossible!"

(OOC: Thaumo-fiction. The magical world equivalent of science-fiction. I'd read it.)
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Re: Saus

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The portalmage gazed off into space for a few seconds, thinking. "Interesting. We had considered both of those possibilities, but I must admit that we hadn't taken either one very seriously; perhaps we should have. The notion of someone else pulling him out of transit would have been imaginable fifty years ago, when there was a celebrated attempt at a life-pattern hijacking that didn't end well -- for the presumed hijacker, at least. Nobody has tried it since, and we've made some upgrades to the gates anyway that have the effect of encrypting the life pattern during transmission. We've run occasional tests of the system since then to see if the encryption could be cracked; none have ever succeeded. Much the same is true for magical items. The encrypted transmissions are robust against any item we've ever tried to attack them with. Of course, with magic, one can never be 100% sure..."

Brother Miguel still wasn't rubbing his forehead, although it was actually starting to get a bit itchy by now, for reasons having nothing to do with lies and deception; the people at the church had been as accommodating as he could reasonably hope for, but that didn't mean that his room didn't have bedbugs.

Sazaki, however, was rubbing his own brow as he continued, "You make me wonder, though, whether either of your hypothetical attacks might be used after the traveler arrives. An odd bit of third-hand information has made it back to us, via not-very-reliable channels, that we perhaps didn't follow up as carefully as we should have. I think you know that most of the travelers in the gate when your comrade disappeared were from a church group here, and there were also two teenage girls who are students at Emerylon University. We didn't interview any of them very carefully after we discovered that your Father Egbert was missing, because none seemed reliable. The women in the church group weren't very ... sophisticated ... travelers, and the two girls were obviously under the influence of some intoxicant, according to the portalmages in the gate. Incidentally, that's a very bad idea. Long-term dementia can result from gating with too much alcohol in one's system, although it's rare."

Actually, that would explain a lot of things, Miguel thought; no wonder politicians got so weird after they'd been running around the world a while. But back to the topic at hand...

"Anyway," Sazaki continued, "one of the church women said she'd been talking to a friend of hers who mentioned that she, in turn, had talked to one of the intoxicated college girls briefly. This is all third-hand now, but what came back was that the college girl claimed that she had seen something in the gate after they arrived -- something that, if the message didn't get too garbled as it was passed along, she called a 'ghost.' We just dismissed that as a drug induced hallucination, but..." His voice trailed off.

And Miguel still wasn't rubbing his forehead, even though it was itching something awful.
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Re: Saus

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Argus stared. "Wait... so, hypothetically speaking, of course... someone might have taken hold of Father Egbert's life pattern and redirected it before he materialized on this end?" Argus' head swam with the implications. And yet it made so much sense...
"For this to happen, someone would need a great deal of skill with portal magic, and overriding your safeties... not to mention a place to receive Father Egbert's pattern in the first place..."

There was silence in the room. A kidnapping? But why would someone go to all of this trouble just to kidnap Father Egbert? Now he really needed to talk to those girls in Emerylon. "You said this young lady saw a ghost... hypothetically speaking of course, would she have seen the... individual... responsible for the pattern jack?"
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