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blai in book 11 of asftv
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:That's right.: Did a Vanyel-looking person show up here while he was accounted for up north? Does this planet even have Alter Self? Or maybe he tried to report in about being AWOL and they're just really upset about him being AWOL and wondering if he got enchanted into it. When Blai's soldiers weren't where they were supposed to be it was usually because they were drunk or something so enchantment would not be his first guess but enchantment would certainly have been one way for it to happen. He has a little trouble picturing Vanyel carousing and getting up to intoxicated shenanigans - if he gets drunk he'd be the maudlin type, Blai thinks.

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All right, not very clarifying. Except that Blai isn't even considering the possibility that the Vanyel in the north with him wasn't Vanyel, so it must have been convincing. Also it's occurring to her now that one way to get a prophecy result that bizarre could be because it wasn't really Vanyel, and the vision actually showed the imposter acting out future orders, in which case that fact is very concerning and she should report it immediately. 

...As soon as she's caught up on the events Blai remembers happening, which may or may not be what really happened. She doesn't want to get distracted and miss something else of that magnitude. 

:Right. So we're up to a candlemark before dawn this morning. What happened next?: 

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:We had a meeting with Leareth after my spells were ready. Not in the pass. For gryphon reasons. I confirmed he's Lawful - there are ways to fool that reading with Golarion magic but I would not expect him to have been able to do so without previous exposure to the spellfamily, especially not without registering to Detect Magic, which I was also using before I had to drop concentration to cast the new spell. Vanyel cast a truth spell on him also. He swore some things to the effect that he had not lied to Vanyel in the past, did not arrange for the monster attack or the explosion at k'Treva, and wasn't planning on starting a war in the next year. He said he expected to, but did not commit to, call off the plan to reassess for another fifty years. I asked for his oath that he would not create an Evil god nor personally ascend while Evil. He pointed out that he didn't know what the criteria for Evil were, which I should plausibly have anticipated, it's probably not obvious from here at all that Pharasma can be relied on in that sort of assessment... He did say he swore he didn't intend to create an Evil god; and swore not to become a god he predicted would act in ways most Velgarth philosophies would construe as evil; and swore to use Golarion mechanisms for checking if one he meant to create would be, though he did not swear to abide by the result. I told him about the spell Commune - I can't cast it - which directly asks questions of gods. Leareth said he'd trust Vanyel to judge if the risk of creating an evil god was too high and that he thought he'd also trust Vanyel to delegate that responsibility but did not have a phrasing he was willing to swear to. We talked about why he wanted to create a god at all - I'm not unsympathetic to the idea if you can be sure it won't be Evil, after all, Iomedae is ascended and in life her patron was also an ascended god. I cast Minor Prophecy again with Leareth as the subject. It showed someone interfering with some sort of extraplanar apparatus related to his immortality in the form of a magical bird. This derailed our tentative attempts to establish communications and possibly emplace me as a - Golarion consultant and interplanetary travel passenger - though Leareth did leave some written instructions and some artifacts behind before Gating away.

Our party then returned to the kyree cave. I volunteered to go to Haven so as to make it harder to cut off communication,: and he wasn't creative enough, because apparently he's suspected of being terribly enchanted and they're not letting him get a drink or Guidance himself and he's been out for hours not communicating at all, hopefully they got all this from Enara already and he's being redundant. :and, the prophecy of the Final Strike weighing on us, it mattered also that I am not able to explode, and also because my holy book is here and if I were going to return north I'd want to bring at least one of the copies, I do have two. I helped Jisa with her ritual test with a lot of Guidance castings while Vanyel figured out the communication spell. More artifacts from Leareth were delivered, I seem to have been relieved of the ones I had, they were supposed to deliver almost a minute of spoken yet language-independent message once activated. Yfandes went to Waymeet on foot. Jisa gated Enara and myself to an outpost and we rode in, and that brings us to my - arrest?:

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Melody's head hurts. 

(In hindsight, trying to have this conversation with a lot of redirects in place that make the...subject matter...hard to think about, because she can't trust herself not to burst into tears without that, was - a dubious plan.) 

...She wishes she could feel more like it's not her job to figure out what this just means, just to get the facts and communicate them clearly to the Heralds. She - doesn't believe that, though. It's hard to imagine a worse situation for everyone to have to make high-stakes decisions in. 

It...makes...sense...that Leareth would want them to receive this report, if he wanted Valdemar to not go to war? It's just. Baffling that he might think it could work in any possible world. Did he think the Death Bell wouldn't ring if Vanyel died behind good enough shields, or something? 

A suspected Yfandes-imposter was seen in Waymeet, which is a very confusing level of dedication to realism. Did Leareth think he could fool the Web? It's - a pat story - to imagine Leareth was slightly too overconfident in being able to fool the upgraded Web - maybe he could successfully get things past it before Vanyel built the Heartstone - but Melody rotates it in her head and is not, actually, sure she can buy it. 

And there's the deeper level of confusion – why would Leareth dedicate so much effort to putting off a war once he had already decided to kill Vanyel? It can't hold forever, and you would think now, while Valdemar is still frantically scrambling with the logistics of getting their allies in place, would be a much better time for him to strike than a month from now.

 

She rubs her forehead, abruptly exhausted beyond reason. :We - have reason to think Leareth did something to your head, yes. I am sorry about blocking your magic. I think we can't afford not to but that doesn't make it any more pleasant. I need to report what you've told us, it could be important, but - do you need anything first? We can bring you food and water.: 

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:If you judge it is not dangerous to do so I would appreciate my holy book. Is Enara clear? Did you get corroboration from her?:

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Melody doesn't know how to answer that question, and right at this moment is too tired to figure out a graceful non-answer, so she's just - ungracefully going to ignore it, apparently. 

:We can get you your holy book.: She can't see how that's possibly a risk, it's from his world and was left behind in Savil's quarters before Blai had been involved with Leareth in any way, and - at least he'll have something to do alone in the room. :I'll have a trainee send it over.: 

 

She wants to apologize, even though she already apologized for the magic-blocking thing. She feels like they owe this man an apology for something a lot bigger than that, but she can't personally give an apology on behalf of, what, the whole world? And it's not like it would fix it. 

She goes. 

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Enara has been patiently checking every couple of minutes for a while whether Blai was awake yet, and - for the last half-candlemark - whether Melody was still in the room with him.  It's not like she's really doing anything illicit, by talking to him through shields she's keyed to, when she was sent here in the first place to be a translator for him. But it seemed better not to push it and Mindspeak him while someone was almost certainly actively reading his mind. And he probably didn't need the distraction. 

 

...And now he seems to be alone. 

:Blai? Are you all right?: 

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:Hello, Enara. They think I've been enchanted. If you're clear you should probably make your own calls without reference to mine.:

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:...No, if it's you then it's both of us. They're - I don't know what they think happened, no one will tell me, but they've shut me in a barn and Rolan must have ordered everyone not to talk to me. Rolan did get my report, but not - not like he believed me.: 

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:Oh. They've taken my communicative artifacts, so I don't have those. And my spellcasting's blocked. So I think it's probably pretty serious.:

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:It's not midnight yet. I'm still expecting Yfandes to be in range in the next candlemark. And they're still letting me talk to you, though - admittedly I'm not sure if that was deliberate or an oversight.: 

She's not going to mention her own contingencies, or the Heralds will know about it as soon as Melody goes back in to question Blai more. 

:I think something really bad happened here. Everyone is - panicking, but not just that, everyone is grieving - I passed a few of the Heralds when they were bringing me in. Something is really, really wrong. ...And Rolan was being strange when he questioned me. I'm not sure if he thinks Leareth has undetectable mind-control on both of us or if we've just been - tricked about something - and I wish I knew what he thinks we've been mind-controlled or tricked about.: 

Pause. 

:We didn't hear about anything awful happening in Haven, but - we might not have. If - if it's true that Leareth was tricking us somehow. He was the one who had scrying-coverage of Haven, Van were trusting him to report if something happened...: 

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:The woman who took my report wanted to know if Vanyel seemed like himself, I don't know quite what that was about. It sounded like Feniss reached her destination, at least.:

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:Rolan wanted a whole timeline of when we were with Van and Stef versus separated from them. And seemed to care a lot about exactly what was happening at sundown yesterday. I was guessing that whatever went wrong in Haven, it happened then, but it doesn’t explain what he thought it had to do with us, we weren’t even within Valdemar’s borders—:

She breaks off. :Someone coming.:

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It’s a trainee from Healers’, with a tray of food and water he leaves in the corner, and also both of Blai’s copies of the Acts of Iomedae, which he diffidently holds out. 

(He’s not a Mindspeaker and has no way to actually communicate.)

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Blai does try thinking thank you at him but if it doesn't work it doesn't work. He sits up to accept the books and tray. :I had the thought that maybe someone purporting to be Vanyel was here at the same time, but I have no idea if that's even a thing magic does here.:

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:White Winds has illusions that don’t show up to mage-sight and are indistinguishable from reality to all the senses, if an Adept is skilled enough. That’s what Jisa was so excited about. But you couldn’t hide it in Mindspeech contact from anyone who knew him well enough, I wouldn’t think. I suppose if a Vanyel impersonator showed up, carefully avoided any Mindspeakers, and...did some horrible atrocity, that would explain how everyone is reacting.: 

A pause. 

:...It feels like a godplot. I mean. It also feels like I'm losing my mind, but - we expected something to go wrong in Haven. And one explanation is that Leareth mind-controlled us after all and messed with our memories, but - the other explanation is that that Star-Eyed arranged this. Whatever 'this' is.: 

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:I mean, I can try praying, I think that's fine even under the assumption that we're enchanted, but I don't know if Iomedae has any ability to project power on this planet other than through me, at all.:

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Enara would have preferred some more...active...action to take, but this doesn't quite justify using any of her talismans. 

:I think we should be as cooperative as possible and share as much information as they're willing to hear. Hopefully someone can - put together the picture, one way or another. And praying can't hurt.:  

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Clumsy attempt at a mental nod. He puts away the food efficiently and gets to it. The whole report, just like he gave it to the redhead and then some. If Iomedae has no guidance he is ready to stay in this room until they've figured out how to make him safe to release. If it's worth a miracle he will try to make it go as far as possible. If it's worth a miracle that doesn't directly involve Blai, like if She just wants to send Leareth a lantern archon or something, he stands ready to be collateral damage should Valdemar decide they're hostile to Heaven.

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Enara mostly isn't trying to watch his thoughts - it feels private and also it's bloody hard work through the shields - but there's something beautiful in it that she hadn't expected. 

She paces in an unlit barn and waits. 

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It's almost midnight. Yfandes is behind where she was hoping to be, the weather is bad, but she just passed the fork in the road leading to Westmark. Halfway. Two hundred miles in a little over five candlemarks. 

She's almost certainly been within range to get Rolan's attention for the last couple of candlemarks. The problem is that after how everyone reacted in Waymeet, she - would rather Enara is the first one she contacts in Haven. She has a feeling that being locked out of the Web makes her seem very odd to other Companions. 

(It's an empty blind spot in the back of her head. It feels wrong.) 

She can still reach Vanyel, but effortfully for both of them; she's dropped to checking in once every ten minutes. It's late, and she's badly hoping she can get a report passed along soon so Van can get some sleep

 

There's a surprising amount of traffic, given the late hour and horrible not-quite-blizzard. Mostly it looks like merchant traffic - maybe grain prices are soaring in Waymeet, which suddenly has at least four times its usual population - but she just passed a family traveling together for some reason, an old woman and a child on a donkey, and a man and slightly older child on foot. Maybe they expected to make better time until the snowstorm hit? Yfandes is kind of worried about them, but - no time. 

She tries to reach for Enara again, and - almost - a feeling like mental fingertips catching a wisp of air displaced by an object not quiiiiite in reach - 

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And then an overladen dead tree branch breaks under the weight of snow and crashes to the ground just wrong, near the top of the steep half-denuded hillside on her right, and the ground shivers, and a boulder tilts and then rolls, and the hillside creaks and then a mass of snow and ice slowly starts to slide. 

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The thing is that it doesn't happen quickly, at first, and - Yfandes is used to the Web, a whisper in the back of her mind, nudging, warning. 

She doesn't hear it over the wind until several seconds in, and then the first thing she thinks of is the family - the child - she just passed them, they can't be more than a hundred yards behind her. 

She turns back and breaks into a full gallop and -

- is pretty sure even as she does that it's a mistake. 

 

If the gods kill children in an attempt to get at her, just to block their last-ditch attempt at peace...

:AVALANCHE: she screams to them in Mindspeech. :The children - I can -: 

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The young man is frozen in panic when she reaches them, but the old woman on the donkey is surprisingly calm. She has the eyes of someone who's seen - 

"Bert, you idiot, boost the lad up and run for your life. - Deller, hold your sister." 

And then Yfandes has a boy of maybe eight in her saddle, wide-eyed, clumsily trying to cling to a toddler in his lap. 

The woman doesn't thank her, or ask where her Herald is, just jerks her chin in a wordless questioning gesture. Which way should we run? 

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South. 

She runs. Not, quite, as fast as she could without the children. She doesn't have the Web to draw on for an extra boost. 

 

:Van: 

Nothing. She wasn't focusing enough on it or putting enough into the link and - she's not sure she can afford the distraction of trying again - 

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