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Alternate ending to Abramo Aiello's final appearance
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Then Lann can explain the incredibly indirect means by which he proposes to Save The Children! 

1. Obtain sword.

2. Use sword on chief - er, that is, use sword as prop-aganda to convince chief to have tribe migrate.

3. Save the children!

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Well, if he knows the way out of here that would be helpful. Abramo doesn't mind having a look around for ancient Crusader relics, they frequently have resale value.

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Abramo put all those points into Perception, and then additionally he has strong Main Character Energy. It takes him roughly half a minute to find the sword.

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...a dream within the dream? No... nobody has ever made a profit by refusing to accept the evidence of their senses for long periods; Abramo will call it what it is: A vision. And one with a choice attached, apparently.

Abramo has called out traitors with some success, in the past; he's a skilled rhetorician, and civil wars tend to create opportunities for that. But he does not know the rights and wrongs of this memory. And anyway that's what you do when it's necessary to win a war; it's not how you build. It's much harder to go wrong by building productive assets. Abramo will choose to heal the woman; if that's a mistake, it's an easily correctable one.

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Oh, mind-control, is it? Abramo knows all about mind control, thanks. He doesn't have any oil-of-moly to hand; but whatever is doing this, it's pathetically unsubtle compared to the Jackal, which has been known to hide corps-scale armoured engagements under its veil of illusion.

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The locust-thing again; Abramo is beginning to dislike it almost as much as the Jackal. Well, he will make the same choice as before: Protection, not punishment. That's what armed force is for: To protect the peaceful trader and craftsman. 

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"What did you do with it? Where did it go?"

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"I think... I saw the memories of Lariel (*), the angel who died here."

Abramo has fully suspended his disbelief; a sufficiently powerful vision will do that. He's still skeptical of information presented to him; after all, any three-thousand-year old entity from Beyond The Known Stars can claim to be an angel, without thereby indicating that they have a human's best interests at heart. But he is no longer skeptical of the basic reality of what he's experiencing; no longer thinks of hallucinations or dreams.

(*) The name is not 'Lariel' in the original Taldane, that's a convention of the localisation into English, and hence Abramo is not led to think about the origin of that -iel suffix. 

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"Heaven has truly blessed you, Abramo Aiello!"

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Perhaps. Abramo's judgement is also suspended, along with his disbelief. And this word that he hears as "Heaven" - it seems rather unlikely that it refers to the Name. Abramo is not a particularly pious Jew, but still, there is a Covenant for his people, and the Aiello have kept faith with it for seven hundred years. He's not about to betray it for a light show and a claim of righteousness. 

Nonetheless he will follow Lann to their village; Lann has not made any supernatural claims to Abramo's allegiance, Lann knows the way to the surface... and Lann is attempting, however indirectly, to help the children of his tribe. Children are both an investment in the future, and the reason that investing is important; and his own are long grown, but he remembers when they would run towards every sort of trouble they could possibly find. Abramo will help.

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...yes yes obviously giant flies go with giant spiders, or vice-versa, sigh. Can we do the timeskip again?

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Sure, timeskip to the village.

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Non-combat events start up again with Wenduag asking Abramo not to advance the plot show the sword to Sull.

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Ok, why should I not advance the plot follow Lann's immensely complex plan to save the children?

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The Shield Maze killed Wenduag's friends, she doesn't want it to get her whole tribe.

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It's a point, but has she considered Lanchester's laws? Combat power goes as the square of the number of units.

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Not in this universe it doesn't! (At least, not without additional assumptions which Abramo is unaware of making).

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Being unaware of his assumptions he will continue to make them!

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Once they reach the chief, Lann will burst out into full enthusiastic muster-the-clans mode. Send the fiery cross to all the tribes! Whittle the war-arrows! Light the beacons! The Chosen One is here to aid us!

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"I'm the chief, I don't work on faith. Show the Light."

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That's an extremely valid request. Abramo doesn't work on faith either.

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Right, so is he going to furnish Sull with the proof that will sacrifice half the tribe to Lann's vision, or not?

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To withhold true information that the asker will predictably consider important is a hostile act; and the mongrels have given Abramo no reason to think they're dealing in bad faith. And what's more, "finders-keepers" is only the law in children's games and geopolitics; Abramo has no rightful property in the sword. It was the mongrels who preserved it for seventy years, who maintained it even in their evident poverty as a tribute to their ancestors; it is their sword, if it is anyone's. It may be that Sull will make bad decisions upon seeing the sword; but even if Abramo knew that for sure, he'd have no right to hold his silence. They are Sull's decisions to make.

"I did find a sword. Whether it is the Sword of Heaven, whether it is a sign, whether Lann's interpretation of the omen is right - I cannot say. But the sword is real, and so is its light."

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"So it'sh true..."

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"People will die over this!"

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