JWTS3

When last we left Tarla Sha, menagerie-owner and traveling kicker of ass, she was recovering from the attack that nearly claimed the life of her uncle, Penorn, who now lies in serious but stable condition in a Lookshy hospital…

First things first, Tarla leaves the Rising Gull and heads back to Worldly Wagon’s tradehouse, hoping to glean some information about the attack. Once there she’s thwarted, however, by a Lookshy soldier guarding the crime scene. She and the soldier (played by Rimmer from Red Dwarf) have an unenlightening conversation, and finally she decides the thing to do is send word to Zumi Narikan, the detective.

At this point a stick runs up to her. Recognizing it as a fabulous best from lands unknown, she attempts to entice it with a cracker, but it reads her thinly-concealed desire to capture it and instead stops just out of reach. The stick (well, log. Nine inches of wood, three inches in diameter, with little tiny wood arms and scampering wood legs and really, looks like Woodsy the Log here to tell you about Fire Safety) introduces itself with the grandiose name Rolling Thunder, and explains that it had been sent by Hezriel the Lord of Thunder, with a message.

What is the message? Tarla asked, reasonably. Rolling Thunder is pleased, because it knows it can answer that question, but has to think about that, and while it’s thinking, explains that it is a wood spirit, that it is sent to assist her, and that it is able to travel to and from Lord Hezriel’s palace, but not more than once a day. And that’s the message, it remembers, that it can help her.

Great, says Tarla, come on, we’re going to a bar. Okay! Responds Rolling Thunder enthusiastically, it can do that. It can go to a bar! So Tarla and her stick venture forth to the bar. Which bar? The bar Sto Paglio named, the bar across from the statue. Statue bar.

Rolling Thunder does not like the statue. It has, it says, a snide expression on its face.

But it’s a horse, Tarla protests, to no avail. Now listen, little stick, she tells it. I want you to do something. Do you know my ship?

Yes. No. No, no it doesn’t. Rising Gull is the only ship in the harbor, Tarla tells it. All the others were destroyed. Can you find it?

Yes. Yes, yes. It can do that. It can do that well.

Great, Tarla tells it. Now, stick close to me, and if I lose consciousness while I’m in the bar, I want you to run to my ship and tell the crew that I lost consciousness her at the bar by the statue, the statue bar. Got it?

Got it! I think. Probably, yes.

Regardless, as they approach the bar’s door (it looks closed, but that’s nothing new) it opens and a blue man in a leather apron greets Tarla by name and ushers her in.

(At first Emily was reticent, as the last blue bald people she’d seen were Wyld-twisted members of the Lintha family. Sto, though, is an outcaste Dragon-Blooded or maybe a Sidereal posing as an outcaste Dragon-Blooded, haven’t decided yet. Once sure that Sto Paglio lacked the gills and pointy teeth…)

Tarla heads into the bar, where most of her favorite meal is laid out on a table. Couldn’t get the corn-on-the-cob, Sto apologizes. But let’s sit down and get to the brass tacks.

So Tarla and Sto sit down and Sto starts in on the hard sell. Tarla has enemies, he observes. People trying to kill her, and people planning on trying to kill her, or worse, her family. He demonstrates how well-informed he is about her recent past. He continues, observing that Tarla has accepted a seemingly impossible goal, preventing violence between the Prismatic Court of Rainbow Scales and Lookshy. He lines out the two possible solutions Tarla is considering, and observes the difficulties she would have with each: on the one hand, constructing a series of Manses capable of shifting power from the one Dragon Line to the other, impoverished one… that would be a task comparable to building the Pyramids overnight, something only the mightiest Solars of the lost age could have managed. On the other hand, eradicating the massive drain that the Prince of Shadows has caused… that is unprecedented.

Tarla tries to play it cool, denying being a Solar and so forth, but Sto don’t play that. He tells Tarla she needs help, help only the Illuminated can provide. Sto tells her the Illuminated is a massive organization, dedicated to ending the strife and excesses of the modern age (ie, the Realm) and building a new, Solar-led order out of its ashes. The Sidereal Exalted have returned alongside the Solars, he says, and a new power is coming. Tarla could join with that power.

Tarla is assured that she would be free to leave the organization at any time, and that she wouldn’t be asked to do anything against her conscience. As a show of good faith, Sto warns her that early that morning a fleet of Wyld Hunters left the Imperial City, and will come to Lookshy for her in a few days. Tarla says she’ll need time to think it over, but that she does need help dealing with the Dragon Line situation. Sto assures her that he will pass this information along to the leadership, and they will be in touch.

“I think that went well,” Rolling Thunder says as it follows Tarla out.

As it was still just before sunset, Tarla headed back to the hospital to check back in on her uncle-in-law. She learned that he had been operated on and given a drug to keep him insensate, but that the drug would wear off, probably in the small hours of the night.

Armed with this knowledge, she goes back to the Rising Gull and finds that a courier has dropped off a message for her: the Director-General and the Lookshy General Staff require her presence at a breakfast meeting in the morning. She makes a note of it, writes that note to Zumi Narikan and gives it to Rolling Thunder to deliver. After a brief conversation with Polkh, the animal trainer, she tells her albatross to wake her up at midnight or so and goes to bed.

Four hours later (midnight, ish) she is woken by the albatross, and heads to the hospital to sit next to Penorn’s bed, relieved that Rolling Thunder didn’t wake up (she snatches Zumi’s reply from its little wooden hands but doesn’t bother to read it). (I think it was around this point at which she observed she must be wearing a rut in the Lookshy sidewalks, and that it's a good thing Eclipse castes are so good at travelling.) She tells the night staff she’s there, they usher her in, and she sits next to his bed, for a good hour and a half before she falls asleep.

No television in the Age of Sorrows, and Tarla hasn’t yet learned any of those sleep-is-for-mortals charms. She wakes up at the same time as Penorn, though, because he starts making noise as soon as he’s waking up. There’s a scene wherein he asks what happened and she commiserates and tells him and so on, and then (to my surprise) Tarla tells Penorn all about the Illuminati and the warning about the Wyld Hunt. He tells her that if the Wyld Hunt is coming, she needs to run and hide. Since he’s old and wounded, leave him behind if necessary, and so on… and then he falls asleep.

Nonsense, says Tarla, and goes to ask the night staff when Penorn will be able to be moved. The night stuff is just a couple of guys, and they say they don’t really know, but probably at least five or six days. Tarla vows to return later in the day, after dawn, and talk to an actual doctor. She leaves Penorn and heads up to the Lookshy Manse, the massive fortress in the middle of the fortress city.

High up on the Manse, on the northeast side, is a wide balcony. It is on this balcony that the meeting takes place, in a shameless ripoff of the breakfast in The Man Who Was Thursday. Tarla is seated at the end of the table, with a bunch of men and women in Lookshy military uniforms and the Director-General himself (all right, technically “the Officer in Charge of Base Relations” but really the boss of the whole shebang), a big Leo McKern type.

After the breakfast, which is excellent, the Director-General quizzes his staff and learns that the Lore Minister has not progressed on the eradicating-the-Oobleck issue and doesn’t expect to; it seems Hezriel the Lord of Thunders is pumping Essence into the curse, keeping it active. The Defense Minister has powered down the Manse defense systems in agreement with the accord. The diplomatic attaché that Tarla dealt with before, Aro, reminds the staff what the details of the accord are. The Director-General then turns to Tarla and asks what she suggests, given that the accord was her idea. How can they end the dispute?

Tarla reiterates her plan to raise a massive series of Manses, and her other plan to eradicate the Shadowlands. The Lore Minister weighs in, saying that it would be impossible to raise the Manses necessary in the time given, and (when prompted) admits that he doesn’t have a clue how the Shadowlands could be eradicated. One thing she doesn’t mention is the coming Wyld Hunt.

The Director-General considers, then turns to the Warstrider Minister, who confirms that it could be done. Fine, then, says the Director-General. Time is of the essence. The Director-General summons the Prince of Shadows’ ambassador, Guarded Bamboo.

Guarded Bamboo, a nemissary, appears. The Director-General tells Guarded Bamboo that by sundown, the Prince of Shadows’ holdings will no longer exist. Guarded Bamboo protests, but then vacates the corpse he was occupying and moves off.

Warstriders mobilize to attack the Prince of Shadows. Tarla, who doesn’t really know what warstriders are, quietly leaves and heads first to the hospital, where she learns that her uncle really can’t be safely moved for a couple of weeks, and then back down to Sto Paglio’s bar. He greets her, and tells her that the Illuminated are going to send someone to help her deal with the Shadowlands. She tells him about Lookshy’s decision to invade the Prince of Shadows’ domain with heavy weapons, and about her uncle.

Sto Paglio pulls out some sweet cordial and explains that it’s a drug that will put Penorn into a healing trance, flush out all toxins, and speed the healing process enough that he’ll be safe to move. It’s also hideously expensive. Sto points out that the Illuminated have so far acted in good faith – warning of the coming Hunt, sending aid for the Shadowland situation, and so on – and says that the time has come for her to help the Illuminated.

Tarla asks what they want, and Sto tells her: for millennia the City of Tombs, Sijan, has remained neutral on all conflicts, accepting the dead and providing rites for both sides in every war and dispute. But a civil war is coming to the Realm, and it is important that forces be marshaled to ensure that the war goes the way the Illuminated want it to, the way Creation needs it to. Tarla must travel to Sijan and meet with the elders of the Order of Morticians, and convince them to refuse service to the Threshold allies of House Seus.

Tarla agrees, if the Illuminated can protect her and her family from the Hunt. Sto Paglio tells her there’s a safehouse in Nexus, where the Hunt cannot operate. She can take the Rising Gull up the Yellow River as far as Nexus; it’s wide and deep enough. She can leave as soon as tomorrow, if she accepts the sweet cordial.

Tarla agrees, again, and takes the cordial. She heads back to the hospital, gives it to her uncle, who recognizes it, and then pays a visit to Zumi Narikan, to ask about the attack.

Narikan tells her that the four men she captured have been very unhelpful, so far, and further, makes some thinly-veiled statements to the effect of “I can’t help you until you tell me what’s going on.” He observes that she had breakfast with the Lookshy General Staff, and that no one tells him anything. (“Give me a name, or an address… anything…”)

Tarla resists the urge to tell him everything about her Exaltation, and instead tells him pretty much nothing. He plays his remaining trump card, and asks where she got the sweet cordial she gave Penorn – Penorn is under observation by Narikan’s men. Sweet cordial isn’t illegal in Lookshy, but it is a controlled substance – subject to heavy taxes. Tarla says she got it from a friend, and Narikan asks if that friend is a liscensed importer of sweet cordial, and Tarla admits he probably isn’t. Tarla, in fact, names Sto Paglio (surprising me again), triggering Narikan to recite from memory a brief history of Sto Paglio’s career in Lookshy. Tarla learns that Sto came down from the North a decade ago, bought the bar with a pile of money, and has (in Narikan's estimation) steadily lost money on it. He vows to investigate further.

She goes back to the ship and decides to spend the rest of the day either teaching herself Spirit-Detecting Glance or training her albatross, while the crew prepares to pull up stakes and sail to Nexus before the Wyld Hunt arrives.

I think it went quite well. Emily’s sole concern was that she didn’t have Tarla’s personality as fleshed out as she would have liked. My favorite NPC has become Narikan (played by Chazz Palminteri), whose habit of showing up and pointing out all the holes in people's stories is endearing. And he's just a heroic mortal, with Intelligence 5 and Investigation 5 (Lookshy +3). Pity Tarla's fleeing Lookshy. So.

Tarla fled Lookshy three days ahead of the Wyld Hunt, after collecting her uncle from the hospital. Upon reflection she decided it would be best to meet with Sto Pagio and decide whether telling Narikan about him was a good idea. She found, however, that the statue bar burned down overnight. There was a cleanup team working the site -- seems it was simple, controlled burn, either a lightning strike or "Guild lightning."

Tarla tracked down Pagio's home address and found its door ajar. She looked inside and spotted a letter to her sitting in the surprisingly clean and unused-looking front room.

"Tarla. Current events have led me to temporarily leaving Lookshy. Do not worry, this was expected. I look forward to meeting you in the future. Sto." "P.S. Do not look in the basement."

So she didn't look in the basement and instead went back to the Rising Gull, where Rolling Thunder was waiting for her.

Rolling Thunder had met with its lord and master, Hezirel the Lord of Thunders, and he had agreed to end the Oobleck Curse on Lookshy, assuming that the Ninefold Lord of Weather didn't object. Hezriel also extended her an invitation to visit his palace, a location he assured her was safe from the Wyld Hunt.