Nautkia, and the South

[Sareth]

Lillith's eyes widened slightly. Was Sister Rose actually suggesting... She inhaled sharply. But then she let the air out, nice and slow, and her eyes looked into those of Sister Rose. She gave a slight nod.

"Sister Rose, would it be amiss if I were to quietly meditate for a time here? I know my faith is not shared here, and I wouldn't want to intrude on what would be holy ground." She gave a slightly odd lilt to the words 'holy ground,' though for once it was likely it was not because of any issues she might have with the Veracian Church, but with specific supposed practitioners of it. Seeing the odd way in which a faith Sister Rose and Brother Miguel clearly held to, and held to a high standard, was being treated by this particular branch made her feel a bit sympathetic for the two. She may not have liked the Veracian Religion, but Sister Rose and Brother Miguel seemed decent enough people who believed it honestly and wholeheartedly.

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose snorted. "If there's one Luminositan Church in all of Veracia that has no right to complain about heterodox visitors, this must be it. You certainly won't offend me, and as for the rest of them ..." She didn't bother to finish the sentence. "Be discreet about it, though. I'm not sure why yet, but something is definitely telling me here that we should assume that we're being watched." As Lillith sank into a position of meditation, Rose tried to give her some concealment, her own senses on full alert.

Meanwhile, Brother Miguel was hearing a knock on his own door, not from anyone in the party but from a decidedly nervous-looking Brother Kelso. "Father," the younger man began without preamble, "I'm worried. Your nun asked me about a -- Father Egbert on the way here. I have never met the man myself, but I've heard the name, and from everything I have heard, he is a man to be feared."

Miguel stood silently in the doorway for a moment, taking in the man's discomfiture. I'm hardly a Father of the Church -- probably less than five years older than this guy -- and if Rose ever heard herself described as "my" nun, she'd die laughing. And Egbert may have some magical skills that are unusual for a Veracian, but he's hardly fearsome. What's going on here? "Please come in and let's talk," he said, as Argus poked his head out of his own chambers.

[Drannin]

As the two men walked into Miguel's quarters, Miguel glanced Argus with a raised eyebrow before closing the door. Argus nodded to himself. Right. Miguel was getting a general idea of what Argus was capable of.

Closing his own door, Argus walked to the wall that separated his room from Brother Miguel's. Harker, incidentally, was snoring not-too-gently on the enormous bed in the room. Placing a hand on the wall, Argus concentrated... and became attuned to the vibrations bouncing off of it. Carefully setting up some filters, Argus was able to hear what happened next door with perfect clarity.

"So what's on your mind?" he heard Miguel ask.

[Graybeard]

"So what's on your mind?" Brother Miguel asked, motioning the younger man to sit, and wishing he'd had time to put on his Truth spell. Well, he'd have to make do.

"I -- I'm not sure," Brother Kelso said, accepting the seat and pouring himself a glass of the wine that had thoughtfully been provided in the room. Miguel noticed that Kelso's hands were shaking slightly as he continued, "All I know is that that name has been mentioned a few times in -- town. When it comes up, it is in hushed tones, as if he is a fearsome figure. I'm pretty sure that he has been seen around here. I even remember a picture very much like the one your nun showed me."

Interesting. "Please give Sister Rose her due and use her name," Miguel commented. "She's actually more senior in our hierarchy than I am." The military hierarchy, that is, and he can draw whatever conclusion he wants to about the hierarchy of the Reformed Church. "In any event, your news is something of a surprise. I've known Father Egbert for years, and 'fearsome' is not a term I would usually use to describe him. Quite the contrary, he's rather mild, although he might have a few magical skills unusual for our church -- you can never tell about those Millenarians, after all." He watched Kelso out of the corner of his eye as he made this last comment, hoping to gain some insight into what was going on at Provatiel, but the man didn't even blink; evidently the Millenarian branch didn't evoke the same strong passions in him as it did in the other churchmen of the region. That might warrant some investigation later, but first things first. "Do you know something about him that I don't?"

"I -- might," Kelso nodded, looking even more nervous than he had when he'd entered the chambers. "I'd like to talk to you somewhere else, after Matins tomorrow morning. You might recall that there was a little farmhouse just past the lane that leads to this temple. We get eggs from the farmer there, I won't attract any attention, and if you come with me, you should be safe too. I don't want to say anything more here. The walls have ears."

Indeed they do, Argus thought from the outside ... and then he became aware that he wasn't the only person engaged in magical eavesdropping here.

[Sareth]

Sitting in her lotus, Lillith stilled herself. She couldn't do a proper ceremony. Not just then. She was sure that properly opening a circle, consecrating it, and doing the full rights would attract attention. For now she'd just have to get a feel for things. Later, when things had grown quiet, perhaps she could do things right.

Stillness fell upon her in a trained, comfortable way. The old routines were easy to reach, and for all the glitter and glamor, the place was far less difficult to reach than she had experienced at other times and places within Veracia. The spirits were less oppressed here.

That told her something in and of itself.

Quietly she reached out. She would ask no questions, and touch nothing if she could. She would simply feel, see what she could know just from passive observing. That should be safe enough. So long as she didn't bother any spirits, then there should be no response of anger.

Nature spirits. They were abundant. She could feel the gentle presence of flower spirits, and the spirit of the breeze here. No large spirits moved close by. Not until the river, where a sleeping, gentle god of the stream relaxed, placidly. The hedge was a gentle community quietly whispering to one another, except for...

"There's a gap in the hedge. Hidden... over there."

[Graybeard]

"There's a gap in the hedge. Hidden... over there."

Sister Rose wasn't quite sure how she knew, from Lillith's voice and body language, what she meant by "over there." However, she did know, somehow. She could see it now, a well-concealed cutout where the formal garden, hedge and vineyard intersected. Looking around to be sure that nobody could see either the gap or Lillith in her position of meditation, she moved quietly to check it out.

It would be a tight fit even for someone of her own lithe build, and the nun's robes would make it all the more difficult to proceed. Well, I know how to deal with that. Do I have enough mana left to shape-change twice, and have a bit of reserve? I think so. Rose summoned a memory of the functional jumpsuits that had been worn by the women working in the garden, willed herself to make it so. A moment, and a flash of green eyes, later, a petite, even more slender woman wearing one of those jumpsuits stepped through the gap ... and immediately knew just what the hedge was protecting from curious eyes.

Only a few feet beyond the far side of the hedge loomed a tremendous sea cliff. The top must have been fully five hundred feet above the river, flowing placidly toward the sea. That placid current itself spoke volumes: there was no way a river moving that slowly could have carved cliffs this steep and inaccessible. (Something had, obviously, and Rose made a mental note to check on what, when she got back to Kiyoka and its amazing "Tsuipedia" reference system -- but all in good time.) The cliff appeared completely unscalable. There didn't look to be any way to get from temple to river, or vice versa ...

... Except for the narrow path that led from the hedge to a precarious catwalk-trail that had been cut into the side of the cliff, angling its way down toward the water. It was no place for someone who was even mildly scared of heights, as she herself was, to try to reach the river -- but it could be done.

And far below, she could see that in fact, someone was doing it. A party of three or four people was moving gingerly up the trail, no more than fifty feet above the water. That was enough for her; between her acrophobia and the fear of discovery, this was no place she wanted to be ... but it was going to be investigated anyway, somehow, on the morrow. She slipped back through the hedge, resumed her usual nun's form, and padded silently back to where Lillith was still meditating, to get ready for a dinner that was looking more intriguing by the minute -- and more perilous.

[Viking-Sensei]

She had already cleaned up and changed from her "road" clothes into one of her least damaged or dirty outfits - she made a mental note to get her clothes cleaned the next time she was in a town proper. She was almost entirely sure she was being watched by someone, but given the fact that she was neither a cleric nor an obvious mage like Argus, Sasha felt like she'd had managed to more-or-less slip through the dense nets of people ushering other people to and fro.

One of the things that had always fascinated her was the Veracians and their various 'technology' used in the service of Luminosita - while they were not nearly as obvious about it as the Tsuirakans were, their churches were normally still augmented with a number of different devices to enhance certain effects - darkening spells to lower the lights in the church, even the ones coming through the windows, during more somber candle-lit sequences (as well as whenever the tech guys wanted to emphasise something about Luminosita watching over them), self-lighting candles, sound enchantments to make booming voices boom that much more... all that was standard fare at even a middle-range church.

This place, however, was decked out to an extreme she'd never seen before. On her way in, she noticed scanning arrays in several of the doorways, magical devices usually used in banks and higher security locations where they wanted an exact record of who is coming in and going out as well as what they might have on them. As she walked past the main hall, something caught her eye that really stopped her... the pews, which were incredibly ostentanious in and of themselves, were also wired with something. There were a large number of ostentatious crystals lining the back of each of the pews, imbedded in what appeared (but hopefully wasn't) solid gold, however Sasha's trained eye realized that at least some of those were not actually decorative crystals, but far-more-likely fulfilled some sinister purpose.

Since the doors were open and people were going in and out, Sasha joined the ebb and flow, taking a seat near the back so she could get an un-obstructed view of the pew in front of her. She had a small knife on her, and carefully pulled free one of the small crystal emitters carefully camoflaged as ornate decorations. A wave of fear washed over her, like she had just been doomed to an afterlife of eternal torture and suffering. Then, as suddenly as it came, it cleared again, and was replaced by joy and rapturous ecstacy.

She rotated through three-or-four more of the emotional shifts before she realized what was going on - these crystals weren't recording, they were transmitting. They were designed to create emotivive resonance, probably tuned in to the sermon when one was going on, otherwise designed to automatically react with the emotions of the person they were interfacing with - first her guilt for meddling had been transformed into soul-bleaching terror, then as she had started to understand her good feelings had been inflated to ones of extreme triumph.

"Ok, I've got to tell someone about this - this is dirty pool, even for Veracians." As she stood up, that feeling of being watched hit her again, especially since there were now several well-dressed but obviously very large-and-threatening religious looking folks trying to casually close in on her position.

[Graybeard]

"Let's take a walk," Brother Miguel suggested to Argus after Brother Kelso had left his quarters, still looking distressed.

Apparently some manner of worship service had started while they were getting unpacked from the trip. At least there seemed to be townsfolk entering the main temple; there were a few carriages out front, and they could see others receding down the lane, as though a chauffeur had dropped off a party. That was interesting. Now it wasn't just the temple and the abbot that reeked of much more money than a typical Reformed church had; the congregation seemed to have it too. Miguel noticed Sasha following some of the worshipers in and waved, but the woman apparently didn't see him.

"This traffic is useful," he mused to Argus as they walked down the lane. "I'd like to take a quick look at this farm where Kelso wants to meet me tomorrow. Needless to say, I'm not going alone. However, I'm not sure I should go at all. Something just doesn't feel right here." Argus nodded...

Maybe things didn't "feel" right, but the farm, which was only a three or four minutes' walk from the temple, looked normal enough. The property looked well tended, with a house, a barn (a carriage was parked in front), a chicken coop, and a few other outbuildings. Of course, there was no way to tell what was inside any of those buildings from a quick external view, but nothing seemed out of place. There were no ferocious guard dogs, no sullen armed men patrolling the fences, no moats or deadfalls or other traps that they could see. Miguel decided to risk a spell for detecting magic. None was obvious within range, although his proficiency with this particular spell wasn't first-rate and that might not mean anything.

"We'd better head back. Dinner is in fifteen minutes and I don't think we should be late. So what do you think?" Miguel asked Argus, as another carriage-load of worshippers passed them on the lane.

[Viking-Sensei]

"What did you do to this... jewel... exactly?" The small man in the immaculately preened church uniform said while standing between two of the larger, rougher, much more enforcerly-looking fellows that had accompanied he and Sasha out of the church. He held the stone up to the light and squinted at it, then shook it a couple of times like he expected it to do something... which, as far as Sasha could tell by looking at his expression, it wasn't.

Sasha smiled nervously. "I... was trying to put it back." she said in her most convincing voice. It occured to her that this man might also have truth-based spells like Miguel had, so she didn't lie - specifically, anyway - and kept to the better sounding facts. "It looked odd with it missing from it's socket, so I was trying to use my knife to jimmy it back into place. I didn't damage it, did I?"

The man looked down his thin, sharp nose and over the rims of his wire glasses, sneering. "The stone appears to be undamaged, yeeeees." The tone of his 'yes', where he set his nose into the eeees and let it go, made the hair on the back of her neck stand up on end.

"Oh, good. I mean, I didn't think it's a real gemstone - it looks like it's costume jewelery. Either that," Sasha was taking a big gamble here, but why not? "...or it's some sort of magical stone, and I can't think of any reason a church would be using something like that as part of their decorations... can you?" Ok, so that last bit was a lie, but it didn't matter.

"No, of course not." The man hissed, his sneer bordering on evolving into a full-blown scowl. "I would thank you, in the future, to report any damage you might... ahem... find to the appropriate church parties so it can be addressed internally. Have a good day... miss."

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose did a quick mental calculation as Lillith was emerging from her meditative state. Dinner was in about twenty minutes, if the strange magical timekeeping doohickey she'd picked up in Kiyoka was still accurate here. The party coming up the dizzying path from the river had maybe 400 vertical feet to ascend. Would they make it to the top before she and Lillith had to go to dinner? She thought so, but it'd be close. "Come on," she said to Lillith. "Let's go sit in the gazebo and enjoy the evening until it's time to eat." There, that should buy another few minutes of observing; she really wanted to know where those hikers were going.

They'd about used up their available time in the gazebo (it really was a pleasant evening shaping up, and there appeared to be some magical gadget there that kept the bugs at bay) when there were voices in the distance, toward the hedge. They were too far away to be understood, but what was interesting was that they drew closer -- and then just stopped, to be replaced by what sounded like a door closing. Only the sounds of nature, and of the worshipers leaving the temple a hundred yards away, remained in its wake. Nobody had passed through the gap in the hedge; nobody visible, anyway.

A secret passage, Rose guessed. And one suspiciously close to the temple complex, if it's being used by smugglers. The two women stood and strolled toward the abbot's residence, lost in thought, to be met by a similarly pensive Argus and Brother Miguel, and a distinctly embarrassed-looking Sasha.

But where was Cit?

[OOC: Drannin, suggest we go ahead and conduct the dialog that Miguel and Argus would be having on the way back from the farm, as though it was happening in parallel to this segment, rather than in series. It'd be nice to know what Argus thinks is going on, and what he might do about it, if anything...]