Centoriel

[Graybeard]

"The Malletarian Heresy," Sister Rose said tightly. "I am not, under any circumstances, going down that shaft."

"Nor I," Brother Miguel said. He was startled by the vehemence of Rose's reaction to seeing the Luminosita's Skull insignia on the wall, but he had to agree: the Malletarians were not to be messed with. Even the relatively tolerant Reformed branch considered them unacceptably, indeed dangerously, heterodox, and if anyone from the Orthodox Church saw this, a pre-emptive fire-bombing wouldn't be out of the question.

Rose was calming down somewhat, but she gently but firmly closed the trap door. "I don't understand what they're doing here." Seeing puzzlement on Argus' and Lillith's faces, she explained. "The Malletarians were one of the branches that split off from the Orthodox Veracian Church about two hundred years ago. Their ... beliefs ... made them so unpopular that maybe 100 years back, the Church threw them out of Veracia altogether. They survived as a very secretive, very unfriendly enclave somewhere in the mountains of Farrel, I forget exactly where but somewhere in or near a range called the 'Mountains of Madness.' To my knowledge, there haven't been any Malletarians in Veracia itself in a very long time -- but that emblem looked fresh to me."

"Indeed it does," Miguel confirmed. "And now you've got me worried. When Sasha was showing us that Tsuirakuan document earlier, I just assumed that the redacted reference to a church denomination beginning with 'M' meant either the Millenarians or the Mechanists. The Millenarians are really pretty mainstream, and even the Mechanists aren't that strange, so I didn't worry about it. But if it was the Malletarians ..." He let his voice trail off.

Rose got the implication. "Suddenly, the question of where Sasha has wandered off to starts to look rather interesting, doesn't it?..."

[Sareth]

"I don't think I understand," Lillith responded. "What did you see inside that shaft? And what is so bad about these Malletarians?" She shook her head. "I thought this was a regular Veracian ba..." She caught herself. "Religious site. Are you saying that... thing belonged to some splinter group of your religion, and that Sasha was involved somehow?"

[Graybeard]

"We don't know what this place is," Sister Rose corrected Lillith. "That's one reason why we want to find Sasha. She has a Tsuirakuan document that at least gives some informed speculation, something to do with the Mage-Priest Wars. She showed it to us before she wandered off."

"Right," Brother Miguel confirmed. "If I remember it correctly, the Tsuirakuans think there used to be a good-sized town here. Presumably that's what all those ruins to the south are. The town was entirely normal, not a 'religious site' as you euphemistically put it, just a place where people lived. But there was also some kind of military research center underground. That's where that golem came from, we're pretty sure of that. The spider-thing is a different story. We don't know where that came from, but it didn't look Veracian. Excuse me for a minute."

Rose picked up the narrative while Miguel stepped outside. "As for the Malletarians, they're a schismatic sect, as I said. Miguel is more of an expert on weird religious cults than I am, but it's hard to get him to talk much about them; I gather he had some kind of childhood experience with cultists that left some deep scars, so he's studied cults for years but doesn't open up much on what he knows." Not to mention that a lot of it is classified Luminosita's Secret, she thought but didn't say. "I don't know as much about them, but I know that they have a peculiar fascination with death. Did you notice that emblem?"

Argus and Lillith gave her blank looks, so she popped open the trapdoor, easy enough now that Argus had worked out the mechanism, and pointed to the emblem across from the ladder. "Here. See the shape of the skull? It's unmistakably the same shape as Luminosita's Visage. The Malletarians see Luminosita not as the bestower of salvation and grace and goodness on the world, as we do, but as a death god -- one to be appeased through human sacrifice." She shuddered visibly before shutting the trapdoor.

Argus looked like he was about to say something, but Miguel appeared in the doorway, a nervous-looking parrot perched on his shoulder. He said, "Rose, could you step outside for a moment? We need to talk." Rose excused herself and followed her colleague.

[Drannin]

Argus watched the priests recede, troubled. Once again, he wondered just what sort of conspiracy he was caught up in. Kureji was still off in her own little world, ranting something about giant moths and tiny fairies. It sounded somewhat vile to Argus. He wondered if Kureji even knew what she was talking about, or had just gone off on a total tangent. Even Harker was back in the room, watching her with horrified fascination.

Argus looked back down the trapdoor. Schismatic Veracians. Fascinating. I'm curious despite myself. "This is the first I've ever heard of a Veracian death-cult," he admitted to Lillith. "How about you?"

[Sareth]

"No, I don't think I have either." Lillith shook her head. "To me growing up, the Veracians have always just been the Veracians. I've never really had to deal with any divisions or breaks in their church." She sat back, sighing. "So, what did it look like?"

Argus tossed her a questioning look, clearly not knowing what she meant.

"The mark," she clarified, pointing to the trap door to be sure. "I couldn't see it. I know Rose said something about a skull."

[Drannin]

Argus glanced over at the doorway. The resident priests were still in discussion outside. Argus could almost cut the tension emanating from them. "Well, let's have a look." He pulled up the trapdoor and peered down. "The light's dim, but... it just looks like a stylized skull to me. Nothing to get worked up about. Although I'm not an expert in Veracian sects."

There came the sound of heated arguing from outside. "But something has got Rose worried," Argus added unnecessarily.

[Sareth]

"I worry that they're not going to tell us, either. And when we find out what it is, it'll be the hard way." Lillith sighed. She leaned forward, peering down the shaft. "Do you have a light? I can't see the mark."

[Drannin]

Argus shook his head. "Light magic isn't my strong point. I don't-" Argus was interrupted when Harker suddenly stuck his arm out, a metallic cylinder held in his paw/hand.

"Magical flashlamp," the familiar said proudly. "Ya just hadta ask, Boss!"

With a raised eyebrow, Argus took the proferred object. Sometimes he wondered where Harker got all his junk. A quick inspection revealed a simple activator switch on the side. A quick press, and the object began projecting light from one end. Simple Tsuirakuan thaumotechnology. Leave it to Harker...

Argus trained the light down the shaft. He paused. "There. I don't know... doesn't look too sinister to me... what do you think, Lillith?"

[Sareth]

Squinting, Lillith stared at the image framed in the beam of light. "I don't know. I don't think it's anything special. But those two seemed to think it was." After a bit she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. "I could try asking about this place, but things are a bit unsettled right now. And I guess they," she nodded towards the door, "wouldn't like it much anyway."

[Graybeard]

It was really quite remarkable how little time it was taking the people back at the base to turn the parrots around, Sister Rose thought; they couldn't have launched their own message northward much more than an hour earlier. Might the Advanced Thaumotechnology people who synthesized the birds have somehow managed to mix in a little peregrine falcon blood or some such? Code words exchanged and the preliminaries out of the way, the parrot began to recite as she and Brother Miguel listened intently.

(UNCLASSIFIED) Message received regarding the loss of our last parrot. Much of what it had to say is obsolete now anyway, and the rest is covered below.

{LUMINOSITA'S SECRET) The spider-golem, if a golem it was, is completely unfamiliar to us here. (Congratulations on surviving it; that encounter sounded hairy.) Certainly the capability that it represents exceeds anything that was available to Veracia at the time of the Mage-Priest Wars.

(LUMINOSITA'S SECRET) It also appears unlikely that the spider was of Tsuirakuan manufacture. A classified number of Tsuirakuan war golems, with capabilities that cannot be related via this medium, were captured during the Mage-Priest Wars and evaluated at the Centoriel test facility. However, nothing approximating the spider-golem is described in the surviving records, which are not quite complete but are believed to at least catalogue and summarize all of the captured Tsuirakuan weapons. Furthermore, essentially all of the captured golems were "tested to failure," as the euphemism goes. Nothing but pieces and fragments should remain.

(LUMINOSITA'S SECRET) So if the spider-golem wasn't Veracian, and wasn't Tsuirakuan, whose is it? We don't know, and we would very much like to find out. We "request" -- can't give you a direct order at this time, but that can be arranged if necessary -- that you attempt to recover some of the wreckage and send it back to us for analysis. A courier bird of greater capacity will be dispatched to you later today; please load it up with as many pieces as it can carry and return. It flies considerably slower than the parrots and will not reach you until close to sundown. It does have a night-flight capability, so please take advantage and get a shipment on the way tonight.

(UNCLASSIFIED/FOUO) No new news from Kiyoka since our last bird, other than what we got off the diplomatic network. The Cardinal Inquisitor's preliminary report found no heresy but had extremely negative things to say about the Kiyokan reception committee -- surprise, surprise. Privately, I'm surprised the old tightass even condescended, or if you prefer, dared, to make landfall in such an "exotic" place. They aren't done looking yet, I'm sure.

(CONFIDENTIAL) However, there has been an interesting development regarding CPT(ret) Wilbur Hamael. He has been missing ever since you saw him briefly while talking to his wife about her brother, LTC Kankaniel. Mildred Hamael is approaching hysteria and is demanding that we institute a search, which we are not yet authorized to undertake. An enlisted man who was on home leave in Zantel, and is now back on duty here, claims to have seen someone resembling Wilbur Hamael on the road, but is not certain of the identification. Anyway, he may be somewhere close to you. Take care; he is now considered a "person of interest" in Egbert Kankaniel's disappearance.

(UNCLASSIFIED) Good luck, and please keep us posted. Some blank birds will follow later today.

Bernie

"Well," Miguel said as the parrot plummeted to the ground, "sounds like we have some things to talk about..." His voice trailed off as he noticed anger building in Rose's face.

[OOC: Consider this long recitation to have occurred about the time of Argus' mention of the "Veracian death-cult" a few entries ago. I'll fill in details on the argument that Rose and Miguel are about to have shortly, which will get us back in synch again.]