Leareth has very little idea what Vanyel actually did during his year of investigation, but these recent reports are not reassuring! 

He is still reluctant to intervene in Haven - he knows that he's missing so much context, and where things stand with Vanyel is potentially promising but also messy and it's a particularly bad time to interrupt - and so he invests in sending additional spies, and obtaining quicker-turnaround reports despite the cost and risk, but other than that he watches and waits. 

(The Heralds are apparently very distracted. Leareth's spying activities go entirely unnoticed.) 

...It's now a full month after the deadline for the end of Vanyel's grace year, and the dream still hasn't reappeared. 

(Reports of Vanyel in Haven claim that he looks...happy? And well? And is still often seen in the presence of the inhumanly beautiful man/woman/gender-indeterminate-stranger who has been attracting so much attention and rumor.) 

(Leareth does not find this especially reassuring.) 

Previously: 

"There's something you haven't thought about," murmured the Evil Sorceress throatily once she recovered the ability to speak. Her hair fell exquisitely against her silk pillows, even when tangled and sweaty as it now was. She was very distracting to look at.

There probably was something I hadn’t thought about. There's no stat for evil genius, and I'm not one. I just make evil geniuses fall at my feet. 

"Oh?" I said, running my hands through that miraculously untangled hair, slightly annoyed with her for feeling the need to do a plot beat now rather than in the morning once we'd both slept and showered.

"If you're assembling a harem of supervillains, what do you think that makes you?"

Ah hah, one I actually had an answer to. "It makes me,” dramatic pause, “the Erogamer."

She scowled in confusion.  

People usually do. 

I have to get our relationship level quite high before I'm able to tell them and they're able to hear it. I felt bad about that at the beginning, but, well, I just actually as a matter of fact don't want all my hot sex to feature people freaking out about the existential implications of me. If that's what you're into, I guess you're off having your own Erogame somewhere with massive walls of text about multiverse theory and ethics and simulation hypothesizing, and more power to you.

Me? I want to seduce your guards and steal the keys off them while they're lost in orgasm and shimmy my way up to your tower and let you apparently catch me and take me and corrupt me to evil...and use my sex powers to bend all your magic against you and then give you an experience that melts your cold cold supervillain heart and mends your ways. 

With, you know, some variation, so I don't get bored, it's okay if every once in a while things go way off track and we end up in exile on a tropical island while crossdressing as your nephews. But it doesn't have to get deep, you know what I mean? In my heart of hearts I just want to fuck a lot of supervillains and assemble the multiverse's coolest harem, and the Erogame knows what's in your heart of hearts, so it doesn't let my latest additions get sidetracked by knowledge of the Erogame. And it doesn’t let me use my powers to end global hunger or whatever, because I don’t actually want to sexily end global hunger, I just feel shitty when I think about how I don’t.

....fuck, shit, now I was dwelling on this, and I'd been at this long enough to know what dwelling meant. 

"What did it sound to you like I said,” I said resignedly into the silk pillows.

The Evil Sorceress raised an eyebrow at me. Her makeup had gotten all smudged but the eyebrows were as perfect as ever so I guess they’re just naturally like that.  "You said, 'it makes me the, pause, satisfying rejoinder that ends the conversation'."

"- what, in those words?"

She frowned. Bit her lip. She had stunningly sexy lips. "Wouldn't swear to it. Or I would, but only because I like betraying my oaths and stabbing people in the back."

"No more of that," I said firmly. "I don't tolerate that in my harem."

"You can't make people do what you want by fucking them, sweetheart." And when I opened my mouth to indignantly object - "Or, you can, but it makes you a supervillain. Which is what I was saying."

"- okay, you know what," I said, "I acknowledge that the next plot beat is me grappling with the power I have, blah blah blah, I've admittedly been putting it off for months at this point, if I'm being completely honest with myself I figured I was inviting it when I took the 'assemble a harem of supervillains' quest in the first place, but in the fucking morning. After I've had a hot shower, and an incredible brunch, and also it'd better be the most goddamned self-indulgent stupidly romantic plot you've ever put on. It should feature princesses. And cute boys who are very sad and also horrifically injured and have to be slowly nursed back to health. And that perk I passed up when I took down the Terrible Lord, the one where I can copy magic off everyone I fuck, and...twelve different kinds of magic, minimum. And horses. Magic horses."

"Are you talking to me," said the Evil Sorceress.

"Nah, trying to get a quest," I said. The quest dialogue hadn't showed up. 

"I don't know what the fuck that is," she says, "but if you want to go to Velgarth I'll get you a portal in the morning."

"Velgarth?"

"Princesses, sad boys, twelve kinds of magic, horses? You want Velgarth."

Aaaaaand there's the quest text. 

>> Go to Velgarth

>> Fuck the supervillain

>> ?????????

>> No more moral dilemmas

"Fuck yes, no more moral dilemmas!" I said. "I got a quest to not have to deal with moral dilemmas anymore. Hell yes. It's going to be a bitch of a quest, but I would have sex with a thousand tentacled things from beyond time if it means I can stop having any moral dilemmas at the end of it - you know this place? Planet? Fantasy kingdom? Do they have good brunches there?" 

"Nope. It's medieval. No one does high tech and magic horses."

"I can compromise on the horses."

"If you just want brunch I know of a magic picnic basket that refills at the will of the true owner. This asshole necromancer across the Stormy Sea has it."

>> Get a picnic basket of infinite brunch for your journey to Velgarth

>> Add harem member: Gil, Master of Death

"- okay, great, stop giving me quests until morning." I said. 

"As you wish, noble heroine."

>> truly earn the title 'noble heroine'

"AAAAAAAARRRRGH!"

He plans the kidnapping very carefully, with input from Nayoki and various other specialists on his staff. He doesn't want to cause any unnecessary conflict between Vanyel and the other Heralds, but something very strange is happening and Vanyel is (deliberately, or so it seems) continuing to block their only avenue of communication. 

The attractive stranger is apparently trying to seduce the senior Mindhealer in Haven. Or something. He's been observed in public in her presence, and the servants in the Healers' wing report seeing him walking her back to her suite. 

And so, 42 days after Vanyel's return to Haven, the usual chambermaid for the Healers' quarters is replaced by one of Leareth's people, and she's new at her job and still awkward and so she knocks and asks to come in when Melody is still sitting and drinking tea with the exotic visitor - 

Melody is having a pleasant albeit confusing evening, and she's only a little bit annoyed about the chambermaid, and then - 

- what? 

There is a Gate up in under a second (anchored on the "chambermaid"'s magical talisman worn on a necklace under her Palace uniform) and then one of Leareth's Fetchers is poking her head through and in another half-second the beautiful stranger sitting across from the stocky middle-aged red-haired Mindhealer is on the other side of the Gate and then the Gate is down. 

- and even as this is happening, Leareth short-range Gates himself out of the sealed and thoroughly shielded underground Work Room, because he isn't stupid, and he reaches for his scrying-focus to watch what happens next. 

Quest Log:

So, it's been two days since the Vanyel quest wrapped up with convincing Vanyel to accept the affections of his reincarnated lifebonded, Stef, and then solving some of their incipient relationship issues with a couple of threesomes, and now I'm - kind of looking for main-quest plot hooks? Like, not that the Vanyel stuff wasn't a delightful diversion, it was great, I should look for more gay tragic heroes with horrible injuries, but -

- the supervillains aren't usually this hard to find, you know? Eastern Empire is the obvious candidate but this is a no-fast-travel-anywhere-you-haven't-already-been world and also someone should really have had a name and dark anecdote about the Emperor/Empress by now. You shouldn't really introduce a character this central this late.

The obvious alternative is that I have already been introduced to them, but pickings seem thin. Randi is slowly dying, which could be a Grima Wormtongue kind of situation with Savil presumably the party at fault, but I've hung around for a while and gotten no openings to fuck either of them. Not Katha or Tran either, and Kilchas and Sandra wanted setting up with each other but it barely took a nudge. 

None of the horses will fuck me either, and I'm pretty sure you can't have magic horses like that and then have them totally tangential to the plot.

Eventually, in desperation, I told Vanyel I was looking for a supervillain. Vanyel, who is a terrible actor, got a faraway look in his eyes and then abruptly changed the subject. Promising!!! But when I asked around about whether his whole family was killed by some evil emperor the answer was that they were all still alive, and he was estranged from them probably about the homophobia thing, which -

- okay, okay, period-typical sexism and homophobia, kind of what you sign up for when you go for a fantasy kingdom, except they're not Christian they're Vague Polytheists and I think homophobia comes from Christianity. In, you know, the real world, the one that's not an erogame backdrop, the one I left because I wasn't actually enjoying watching it turn into one. 

....anyway. I have one other lead. I fucked a curly haired kinda pompous dude I met at the bar the other day, mostly as a reward for not sexually harassing me for twenty entire minutes (not that I judge people for that, but you know, you gotta reward going above and beyond) and that got me 'subquest: welcome to the neighborhood'. Tried to find him again the next night but no luck. 

I am starting to get bored.

Quest Log part 2: 

- abruptly I am not bored!!!!!!!!!

The incredibly pretty young woman scrambles to her feet and pumps her fists in the air in triumph. "There we go!" she says with some satisfaction. "Come out, come out, wherever you aaaa-re, I don't bite. Unless you're into that."

......Leareth is not sure what he was expecting here but it definitely wasn't that! 

She's in a stone-walled windowless room that somehow feels very deep underground, over and above all the visible indicators of undergroundness.

There are also half a dozen very serious-looking people arranged in fight-ready stances around her. 

...Leareth's Fetcher is so confused he was pretty sure this person was a very attractive man but now they - she - are definitely not?? How is someone even that hot. This is unreasonably distracting. 

Leareth is not that distracted but it maybe helps that he's half a mile away and also very tense and stressed. 

:Ask - her? - where she is from and what she was doing in Valdemar: 

"...I...umm...where are you from and what were you doing in Valdemar?" 

" - oh, are we doing an interrogation, huh? You're going to need more men. Possibly an entire army."

Aaaaaaaaaaaah what is he supposed to say or do about that. 

That's also not a response Leareth was particularly expecting, but again he's not sure what he was expecting, and it's not as though he actually needs her cooperation in order to get some answers (though it would be convenient.) 

:Nayoki: he sends. :Please arrange to be within minimum range while still outside the room, and read her thoughts for me: 

And to the staffperson in the room, :- Tell her that we are not intending to harm her: 

Nayoki Gates herself to the hallway just outside the Work Room. She's keyed to the shields on it and she's a strong Thoughtsenser; she turns that Gift as well as her Mindhealing onto the strange visitor. 

"We're, um, not intending to harm you," the Fetcher says, trying very hard not to fidget visibly. 

"What, not even a little bit? What if I'm very badly behaved?"

Her thoughts are - ranking the six men by who she thinks will be the first to point out they have a helpless captive and have sex with her, apparently. She is not distressed by this and is in fact thinking maybe she wants to once she's identified him flirt with him particularly because witty quipping isn't her forte when it's not foreplay, heh heh, that's some wordplay in her native language.

Nayoki relays this to Leareth. 

Leareth is not really less confused! 

He does still need to decide what to do about his confusion, though. 

:Ask her about Vanyel: he sends to the Fetcher in the room, less because he's expecting an honest out-loud answer and more because it might, maybe, steer her thoughts in a more informative direction. 

"We just want to know what your interest was with Herald Vanyel," the Fetcher says, staring at the floor. "You were - seen with him quite a lot." Albeit while, apparently, being a BOY instead of an absurdly attractive GIRL.