JWTS5
When last we left poor Tarla, she'd fled the Scavenger Lands and visited the grand undersea palace of Hezriel Lord An-Da-Sha of the Thunders, Celestial Censor and Dragon of the Water and the Air. Hezriel greeted her warmly and requested that she, as a favor to him, run through a modified version of "Spirit Exiles of the Western Ocean" from Time of Tumult, which she agreed to.
To sum up, Hezriel's human mistress was kidnaped by a trio of
disgruntled pearl hags, who demanded he indict their superior, a storm mother: Miasma-of-Lilies, the Queen of Frogs.
Hezriel presented Tarla with several gifts and lended her a few other things: an orichalcum tunic (6L/6B), directions to the Queen of Frogs's lair, a manual on Endurance written by a celebrated Earth-Aspected Dragon-Blooded during the Shogunate, and a luxury yacht (with a hull carved from a single huge Eastern hardwood tree, gilded, and silk rigging, enchanted to sail itself).
And she loads the yacht up with her horse Virtuous Raccoon and her albatross which doesn't have a name, aims it at Miasma-of-Lilies's lair, reads her book for a few hours, then goes to sleep on a still, smooth ocean.
In the small hours of the morning, she's woken by her albatross pecking at her head. Wake up, the pecking seems to indicate. The ship isn't moving, because there's a hole in the sail.
What? When did this happen? Tarla asked.
About twenty, twenty-five seconds ago. Thought you'd like to know.
Groggily Tarla stumbles up the three steps to the deck, and she sees that it's very dark, but that the ship is pitching and rolling about upon a storm-tossed, wine-dark sea. Sheets of rain all over the place, and worst of all, a big chunk of ice on the deck, where it landed after it was propelled at speed through the sails.
Tarla activates Spirit-Detecting Glance and observes the half-dozen spirits of her clothing crawling about on her, the tattered sail-spirit, the water elementals and air elementals frolicking about in the water below and the air above, and so on. One particular air elemental catches her eye -- it's larger, and therefore probably in charge. She signals to it, burning with a bit of holy fire, and it obligingly floats down, looking wispy and cloudlike, while fashioning a gigantic iceball for itself.
Tarla attempts at length to communicate with the elemental, but it's only a little more intelligent than a monkey, and ends up throwing some ballast overboard and raining all over the deck, nearly drowing the deck-spirit. Tarla gets the elemental to leave, and the other elementals follow after, and she works the bilges for a bit, but the damage is done -- big hole in the sail, blown who-knows-how-far off-course.
This (the ocean) is, however, Tarla's element. Through the power of her massive Wits+Sail pool, she quickly takes some silk sheets and fashions a patch for the sail, then uses the stars and so forth to determine which way is West, and continues on her way to Miasma-of-Lillies's home without further incident.
As she approaches the spot of ocean under which the Queen of Frogs makes her lair, Tarla's ship is intercepted by a trio of nine foot tall old bald men in armor (whom she mistakenly decides are not materialized shark-spirits). They greet her as a servant of Hezriel the Censor, recognizing the yacht, and ask what her business is. Tarla decides to play it cool and pretends to be a mere courier with a message to Miasma-of-Lillies that is for her ears alone. The spirits inform Tarla that without an appointment, it would be impossible for them to meet sooner than ten days' time. Tarla greases the wheels with massive Bureaucracy die pools, and talks them down to the next morning.
The next morning, Tarla is escorted down through the water, ingesting first some more of her stock of Maruera gum to enable her to breathe. She is led through the Court of the Queen of Frogs, and sees its many wonders: A massive geodesic dome, EPCOT style, of some wondrous First Age material --
(Fiberglass, I told Emily, but she later objected on the grounds that fiberglass canoes are cheap pieces of shit, and talked me up to Kevlar instead.)
-- with its bottom missing. Beneath the dome, and around it, a great many trenches dug into the sandy seafloor, and in the trenches a great many spirits. Gods of pearl and sand and jellyfish, water elementals, et cetera. All of them looking unhappy, all of them disfigured in some way: thumbless, missing eyes, branded, and so on. Above them are a small army of lobster-men and crab-gods, and other spirits of creatures with exoskeletons, looking smartly polished and deadly. All this Tarla sees.
She is led into the dome, a massive space half-filled by Miasma-of-Lilies, materialized in the form of a frog of ponderous bulk, easily forty feet tall. The Queen's praises are sung by a huge clutch of smaller frog spirits all about her -- ribbit, ribbit. The space is lit by a number of miserable-looking fire elementals in cages suspended from the high ceiling.
Miasma-of-Lilies inquires, brusquely, why Hezriel sent this unknown servant in his fastest boat to her, with no warning or proof of task. She does not belive Hezriel is so incompetent as to allow a mere human to steal her yacht. Speak now, she commands Tarla, lest you be punished.
Tarla starts with the talking, schmoozing using her still-steadily-growing Socialize dice pools, burning personal Essence only, and starts to fill the Queen in on the problem. Miasma-of-Lilies interrupts early on, though, and sends out all her frog attendants from the dome, leaving just her and Tarla and a dozen fire elementals in cages (whose ears, Tarla realizes, have been removed).
So Tarla explains that three pearl hags, chafing under Her Radiance the Queen's rule, have abducted Hezriel's mistress in an attempt to coerce him into indicting her for gross cruelty and negligence, something he wants to avoid if possible, given that it would seriously destabilze the political situation out in the Vast Western Ocean. Tarla, instead, has been sent to recover Amaerel by any means necessary.
The Queen listens to all this, and then demands to know why Hezriel has sent such a puny unknown forth to accomplish such a dramatic task -- why not one of his many capable agents? Why just a miserable human wretch?
Tarla rolls her eyes and starts burning with holy atomic fire as she explains that she has been Exalted by the Unconquered Sun, an Eclipse caste.
Shit, says the Queen. Sorry. Sorry. Didn't mean to insult you all those times I insulted you. And I was kidding when I told my servants to have you killed.
"You what?"
Sorry. Nothing. Never mind. I extend to you every possible assistance, of course.
"Good."
For after all, not only is your task one that, should it be completed successfully, I would benefit, but far more importantly, you are one of the Harmonious Voices of Heaven, Exalted by the Sun whom both we serve.
"Right."
Has the Solar Deliberative been restored, then? I knew the Empress was missing, but we get so little news here...
"No. No, not yet."
What do you require, O beneficient eye of heaven?
For starters, Tarla had the Queen summon all the pearl hags within her court. Something like forty stumble in, eyes downcast, all wretched and missing a limb or organ or something. The Queen explains that pearl hags are a dime a dozen, and that she can hardly be expected to keep track of all of them.
Tarla addresses the assembly of spirits, and asks them if any of them know of three pearl hags who have fled the court... (pause while Emily does some math in her head) about a month ago.
Anyone who conceals information will have her spine removed, the Queen offers, by way of inducement.
One of the pearl hags shudders at this, Tarla notices, and moves over to her, intuiting that she knows something and is afraid to lose her spine.
The hag, Dancing Emptiness, volunteers that she knew the three hags, bitter, petty awful things who had somehow grown to resent Her Radiance the Queen's fitting and proper rule over them. Dancing Emptiness rattles off their names (which I can't remember, but they're in Time of Tumult) and their disfigurements -- one is missing her hands, one her eyes, and one is covered in tattoos. They left Her Radiance the Queen's court four weeks ago, and then she saw them again a few days later, with an unconscious human. They were taking her to the Archipelago of Exiles Beyond the Western Horizon, to the least likely place.
Why did you not come to your Queen with this information? Miasma-of-Lilies demands.
Dancing Emptiness wails and begs for mercy, and admits that she was bribed to silence with seventy large, round pink pearls. The threat of spine removal, however, was too much for her. Please, Your Radiance, mercy!
Very well, Miasma-of-Lilies retorts. You want your spine so badly, you may retain it. Instead your lungs shall be removed as punishment.
As the lobster-spirits with the sharp claws drag Dancing Emptiness away, Tarla suggests that perhaps ritual disfigurment is too harsh a way to deal with subordinates. More flies with honey, after all. The Queen is not amused, and assures Tarla that it is the best and only way to punish impertinent servants.
As she's got all the information she's likely to there, and as she finds the Queen incredibly repellent, Tarla returns to the yacht, reassures Victorious Raccoon, and sails West, towards the horizon.
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