Mizugami/SessionNine

7th Day of Resplendent Air, RY 769

First Greater Deliberative session of the year was this morning. Judas and Ragara Fallows nominated themselves for the position of Speaker and Kazuki nominated J’hana. Judas’ speech was more or less the same one he gave last year. J’hana’s stated position was effectively the same one I pursued as Speaker. Fallows has a lamentably traditional view of Dragon-Blooded/mortal relations. J’hana won the vote 5 to 4 to 4 with 3 abstentions.

It’s been interesting watching J’hana try new things. So far, I think she’s only doing it to look good to House Cathak and to Rector Danic. I hope in time, she’ll seek out new responsibilities out of a desire to perform them and not out of simple expediency. I pulled her aside after the session ended to offer assistance should she need it and to explain that I’d be making sure she fulfilled her duties.

Before I left her, she made a power sharing offer. In her words, since I’m ‘not so good’ at combat tactics, if I’d back her leadership in that realm, she’d defer to me in social situations. I can’t say I’ve seen much in the way of tactical thinking out of her to date, but I didn’t want to start a fight so I agreed. She didn’t have an answer when I asked how she was going to convince Judas to go along with it, though. However much he might frustrate me, he is undeniably educated in a broad spectrum of combat tactics.

9th Day of Resplendent Air, RY 769

My plan to meet The Wind bore fruit tonight. It also brought an assassin into the open. I’m just glad we didn’t end up disrupting the theater.

It was reckless of me, but some risk seemed in order. The Wind seems to be doing good in this city and he’s making life troublesome for the Guild, too. I wanted to meet him and determine just how good his intentions were. Thankfully, I believe he’s someone I can support.

In a perverse way, I’m sort of proud that whoever is using the Red Fist Hayoo name wants to inconvenience me. I won’t say ‘kill’ because if he/she wanted that, they wouldn’t have sent a lone mortal, even such a skilled one. Thankfully she was willing to talk.

She was from the School of the Golden Hand, on a contract from Red Fist Hayoo. They’ve also got one for Kazuki, which doesn’t surprise me. The School has 3 masters:

- Tanika the Golden Master, who teaches them how to fight - Glorious Light of the Sun, who teaches them how to survive - The Silver Fist, who teaches them how to go home

And then she disappeared. The Wind and I agreed to investigate this school further, but I’m not really sure where I’d start. I’m left to wonder if Hayoo or the School think this will scare me or if they really thought she could kill me. It seems inevitable that we’re going to have to deal with the new Glorious Serpent and whatever abomination is backing it to make any permanent progress here.

10th Day of Resplendent Air, RY 769

Elin and I have begun having regular meetings to share information. I think we’ve both concluded that we have the Realm’s best interests in mind and we can be useful allies.

What she had to say is unsettling. The Syndics are already negotiating with her over what she can and can’t have in the city and what she will and won’t be able to do. They’ve agreed to her request to have Realm troops stationed with her, an item that she only included to make her other requests seem more reasonable. The Syndics have never allowed Realm troops in the city before, heck, Elin will be the first official Realm representative they’ve had. If they were worried about the Bull, I wouldn’t expect them to provoke him further by allowing Realm troops. So our concern is that they’ve got a problem with the Fair Folk or Marama’s Fell. In any event, she’s getting a Wing of troops.

I shared with her my desire to eventually get more troops in Cherak under Dragonlord Avaku’s command. She says that House Cynis likely doesn’t have any other troops they could or would transfer up here. I still hope to get him his own Legion here eventually.

11th Day of Resplendent Air, RY 769

Moro is getting a god-blooded little sister. She’s invited me and I think every other Exalted student to the ceremony and reception. That House certainly collects unique individuals. I’ll need to purchase a gift for Aoora.

Kira shared some interesting information with me today. Crow told her that Lookshy and Gem are now trading directly with each other. There’s an emissary from Lookshy in Gem and they’ve cut the Guild completely out of the trade between them. I wonder if Judas’ uncle has something to do with that or Judas and Ranka are closer than I thought? Stranger still, Gem sent a partial tribute to the Realm for the first time in many years.

12th Day of Resplendent Air, RY 769

Ranka has been given a project by Virtuous Cloud and asked us to come along. Moro, Reflections, Esley, Mier, and Soosilus are invited, too. It seems a wind elemental has become upset and it’s causing trouble several days north of here, blanketing the area with a bad dust storm. With any luck we’ll only be gone for about a week. I need to go collect lessons for myself, Kazuki, and the Idiots before we leave in the morning.

I hope I never become a teacher. The students who are interested in learning I’m sure would be a great joy but I don’t believe I could easily cope with the ones disinterested in learning.

20th Day of Resplendent Air, RY 769

One week. I think I’m getting competent at estimating how long these little adventures will take.

The wind elemental, T’cholie, was powerful, spawning a dust storm of 5 or 6 square miles. Ranka’s contact ritual took several hours, but was successful. The spirit was upset for a Dragon Blooded friend some distance away. This friend, Rutanjali, makes her home in a small forest some 250 miles away and was upset that the local village was harvesting elemental wood from it.

After a brief conversation with the elemental, Unconquered Flame and the Idiots took our horses back to the closest village to wait for us and we accepted T’cholie’s offer to transport us to this forest. Traveling by cloud at high speed is an amazing experience. I don’t even think Terrestrials with the ability to fly can do so at that speed.

Upon landing, I sought out the foreman of the logging operation. He turned out to be one Kazekan, a Dragon Blood, with a valid contract to harvest elemental wood from this forest for the next 6 months. The short duration is why he went with slash and burn, to maximize his return. He was a reasonable sort and was open to us negotiating some sort of agreement with Rutanjali.

Ranka started the negotiations with Rutanjali by offering all sorts of things she had no standing to offer. Her unwillingness to play by the rules of the Realm is going to cause me some real trouble one day. Things were going nowhere until I swore to the Wood Aspect that I and my companions would safeguard her direct negotiations with Kazekan. With her acceptance of this, we marched out of the deep woods so they could talk.

In the end, Rutanjali agreed to provide less elemental wood than Kazekan could get if he used the entire duration of his contract, but the trees just marched out to be harvested, saving him quite a bit of expense and ending the burning. She also agreed to provide a moderate quantity of elemental wood annually in perpetuity. I promised Kazekan I would do my best to get this annual contract registered in his name, but in the end it would be up to the satrap whether to honor the deal.

With all sides placated, T’cholie returned us to where we started and dropped the dust storm. On our return to Cherak I was able to get the annual agreement signed off on for Kazekan.

I’m left to ponder Rutanjali. How does a Terrestrial so completely become one’s Aspect? She didn’t seem particularly old, so she must be quite powerful. The needs and concerns of society mean nothing to her. That forest and the spirits within it were all she cared for. I wonder if she’s been that way all her life?

21st Day of Resplendent Air, RY 769

Well, my distrust of Ragara Fallows seems well-founded. The adoption of Moro’s new sister happened today and, as seems more and more usual, we found ourselves at the center dangerous and unsettling events.

During the reception after the ceremony an attempt was made to kidnap Aoora. One of the house servants was dominated and used to lure Margard Pinchard upstairs. I overheard this summons and when the same servant returned and tried to retrieve Aoora, I noticed inconsistencies in what he told Pinchard and what he told Aoora. As I stopped him from leaving, the front of the house blew up.

Kazuki’s mother organized the combat-worthy Dragon-Bloods into a defense while everyone else evacuated. I handed Aoora off to Moro and J’hana and went after Judas. He’d noticed the servant draw Pinchard out and had gone off to investigate.

I found him upstairs facing off against a ghost, a little boy, and a middle-aged man. As I arrived, the ghost disappeared into the floor and did not show her face again. While Judas rescued Pinchard and his wife, leaping out the window with them, I tried to delay the man and boy. In retrospect it was probably a foolish idea. The man-- Preceptor Simo the boy called him, ordered the kid to immobilize me. Somehow I fought through it, though I was only barely able to move. Then Preceptor Simo said to watch my heart and for a moment, I could feel it seizing in my chest.

Moments later Judas returned and wrapped the boy up in a blanket. Simo, at least I guess he did it, summoned… something out of a shadow in the corner of the room. It was all shifty and hard to look at and out of phase, like I imagine something of the Wyld would look. That was when we both leaped out the window. The only thing that accomplished was pointing out that Preceptor Simo thinks the boy is valuable, because he came after us. He tried the heart squeeze on Judas again and nearly put him down. I convinced Judas to release the boy and he and Simo quickly lost themselves in the crowd.

I’m not sure how much time passed before the folks at the front of the house came around and found us, but it couldn’t have been long. They’d killed a 2nd Circle fire demon and what might have been a large Wyld creature or just the illusion of one.

Trevail remained at the estate to coordinate things while Soosilus argued with the fire engulfing the front of the house. Judas and Mier returned to campus together. At that point neither one would have been much use in another confrontation, so they went to look for healing.

I grabbed Kira and Kazuki and we tracked down Moro’s parents, then Moro, J’hana, and Aoora. Pinchard was adamant about going directly to Margard Merta’s estate but I convinced him to instead come with us to the Guard House. I was concerned that with only 5 relatively inexperienced Dragon-Bloods, some wounded, if another attempt was made on Aoora we wouldn’t be able to stop it. So escorting them across a large chunk of the city seemed a foolish idea. I offered to take a sealed note from Pinchard to Margard Merta, however. On the way to the Guard, I described Preceptor Simo to Pinchard and he pegged him as Ferem Arrain. It seemed clear that this had to be a ruse of some sort.

J’hana came with me and shared the information that solidified my distrust of Fallows. A few days ago he approached her in her quarters with an invitation to join a hunt. He and some associates are hunting the god-blooded offspring of a god of swordsmanship and given J’hana’s past in blood sports he thought she’d be interested. While a vile and distasteful ‘sport’, that alone wouldn’t cause me to distrust him. But J’hana said that towards the end of their conversation, he said something like “If you’re ever interested, you only have to say yes,” and then she found herself saying “Yes.” She didn’t want to say it, didn’t consciously say it, and had no idea why she was saying it. He then left her, saying “Next time just say it on your own.”

We delivered Pinchard’s note to Merta and reported what we knew of what had happened. I left Ferem Arrain’s name out of it, hoping to avoid any unnecessary bad blood between the 2 Houses. Merta dispatched 5 Margard Dragon-Bloods to get Pinchard and his family, including Saiki.

By the time we returned to the Guard House, Judas had recovered and come back. Moro and Kazuki joined the Margard escort and J’hana and Kira returned to campus.

Judas and I split up to further investigate. Between us, we got independent confirmation that Ferem Arrain died of a heart attack early this morning.

I wonder what’s so special about this little god-blooded girl. This was an expensive and risky attack, almost guaranteed to reveal that a conspiracy of some sort is ongoing. Simo’s valuation of that boy is interesting, too. It could mean he actually cares about him in some way. More likely, it means the boy is a valuable asset and he’d be expensive to replace. That could mean that either his skills are relatively unique or this conspiracy has limited manpower or resources in some way.

22nd Day of Resplendent Air, RY 769

Well that’s not very surprising. Crow is allowing Aoora to move in with Moro at the Palace. She’ll be tutored by Kasif but not actually be a student of the school.

We’ve also found out that Aoora is a daughter of the god whose offspring Fallows and his associates are hunting. This god, Kitiara, apparently agreed to have a number of children that would be hunted. For some reason, she decided to have Aoora adopted out. I think we need to find Kitiara and have a chat.

28th Day of Resplendent Air, RY 769

At Aoora’s reception, before everything exploded, Ferem Esley said he wanted to talk to me about business. His family are cattle barons with contracts on the Blessed Isle. He’d heard about the shipping company I’m involved with and especially after the incident at the reception, he wanted to do business with me.

We took a trip out to see his family’s ranch. It’s not far outside of Cherak. Man, that guy knows the cattle business. He drives a hard but fair bargain, too; we negotiated a contract before returning to the city.

It pleases me that my good reputation makes a difference. Esley’s family didn’t need additional cargo space; he shifted business to me away from someone else. Things like that are encouraging.