Dawn of Heroes

[X] The Ritual. You will use the ritual to keep out of harm's way. You risk both the ritual not being successful and missing out on details, but it would be safer and you lessen the risk of running afoul of whoever took out the Night.

You initially consider personally visiting each place in person, feeling that you could take on any threats you encounter. But then you remember just what you are investigating. The Night was a veteran and competent hero who was good enough that he left a lasting shadow across the city even after he vanished. You may be Tamara Lyn, daughter of the mortal knight Tam Lin and the Queen of the Fairies, but that is no grounds to dismiss a threat that proved to be the end of the Night.

Whoever or whatever took down the Night could take you down if you are not careful. Keeping that in mind, you decide to use a ritual to remotely view the locations from afar. You have magic, something that no one else has access as far as you can tell, and you will leverage that to your advantage.

You switch your activities from searching for information on the streets and pubs each night to coming up with a ritual design that will allow you to view locations from afar.

It is easier said than done. You are a competent in the study of magic, but your talents have always been centred around the theoretical over the practical. With limited access to magical materials and knowledge, you are forced to rely upon what you can remember and improvise with what materials you can get your hands on.

You devote most of your free time to coming up with a workable design and you soon find yourself appreciating your reduced need for sleep. While the limitations of their human bodies force Lydia and Ellen to sleep, you are able to spend half of that time awake and at work.

Even then, it takes you the better part of a week to come up with a workable ritual design and a whole week to get one that will actually be useful. Your first attempt seemed to go well at first, but after spending a couple of days on it, you soon realised that it wouldn't work. It should have shown you a picture of the location, but the picture wouldn't display properly and what should be a clear image would be blurry and devoid of any detail.

Thankfully, you were skilled enough that you caught the problem before actually attempting the ritual as that would have only been a waste of time and effort. You spend another few of days working on a second design, making sure to avoid the issue that rendered the first one unusable.

By the start of the following week, you had a ritual that would let to remotely see a location within a mile of the ritual. You would be limited to what could be seen with your eyes as sound and smell would not be picked by the ritual. From what you had seen of London's maps, if you placed yourself in the right position, you use the ritual to investigate all of the locations from a single spot.

The next stage is setting up a proper site for the ritual, another multiday process that takes up most of your time. The first attempt goes poorly as you find a good sight, but some of the materials prove to not be up to the task. If you had attempted to perform the ritual with them, the magic wouldn't have properly flowed through them as the items lacked the durability to withstand such magical currents moving through them.

Finding proper ritual ingredients that will hold up well enough for the ritual to work is harder than you expected outside of the Kingdom of the Fairies. There are no easily accessible magical ingredients or any magical ingredients for that matter. Instead you are forced to make do with whatever nonmagical substitutes you can get your hands on.

Ultimately you get the ritual set up after a second week of working on this ritual. Having spent two weeks getting this ritual set up and ready, you make sure to remember that rituals are things that take a lot of time. You could afford to spend weeks on this ritual thanks to a lack of pressing concerns, but if you are working under a deadline or another pressure of time, a ritual may not be a viable option for you.

The first two locations are in Westminster while the last two are in Mayfair. Deciding to try the Westminster locations first, you begin to perform the ritual. It isn't a short affair as the process to activate the ritual takes a good two and a half hours.

Once again, you are grateful for your free time and reduced need for sleep. You shudder at the thought of having to maintain a human job and need for sleep like Ellen and Lydia have to. That would have stretched out performing this ritual to a month at the very minimum.

The first location is a bust. It appears to be some sort of vantage point and you believe that the Night used this location to spy on somewhere. The only problem is that you no idea what the Night would be spying on.

The second location is like the first with it being both another vantage point and not being able to provide you with any useful information. It is located by what you presume are several important buildings, but you don't know what. Judging from who you can see coming and going, it might be a point in favour of the Night investigating the government, but even that is uncertain.

The third location is interesting. A large and furnished home, you judge it blocked to either a noble or a rich merchant or someone else with the wealth to afford such a place. Looking about the building, it proves to be more useful than the two first two location. Thanks to your knightly training, you are able to pick some old signs of battle. Some are hidden away while others have covered up and some have just faded with time, but you are certain that the Night fought here, perhaps his last though you are far from confident on that.

To your relief, the fourth location proves to be fruitful and avoids rendering the weeks you put into the ritual being a waste. Another home belonging to the wealthy, no battles have been fought at this place. Not quite abandoned, the building has fallen into disuse or at least you can't see the signs of regular use.

At a glance, there is nothing out of the ordinary, but something catches your idea. Using your limited experience to investigate further, you spot the signs of something being hidden away. Not perfectly hidden away and you are confident that whoever did it, did so in a rush. Whatever it is, it is something that you will need to investigate in person and not view from afar if you are to make any further progress.

With all four locations investigated, you end the ritual and to your bird form. Flying through the city, you quickly made it to your destination. Without any open windows, you switch to a spider form to get inside before turning into a cat once you have entered the building.

You may your way to the hiding spot, where you retake a human form. You push the bookshelf out of the way so you can reach the hole in the wall behind it. Reaching inside, you retrieve whatever contents are hidden inside.

What you find is several sheets of paper, all of them covered in information. Actually, there is a good deal more than several and you just hope what you have found here is related to the Night.


"Now what are you working on?" asks Lydia as she watches you work at the desk you have requisitioned.

"Looking through the notes of the Night," you answer, "Please keep this secret. From what I know, if knowledge that I had this spread, it could bring down dangerous attention on our head."

"How dangerous?" asks Lydia warily.

"The Night was killed over this information," you inform her.

"Oh," says Lydia, "So this is what you been looking for."

"Yes," you confirm, "It took some weeks, but I have founded what the Night was after when he vanished."

"So what was he-wait, would it be dangerous to me to know that?" asks Lydia as she eyes the papers warily.

"Possibly," you admit, "Do you know who Barnaby May-Porter is?"

"Oh him," replies Lydia, "He is some bigshot politician. I think he wants to be Prime Minister or something like that. Ellen has mentioned him a few times and she doesn't like him. Actually, I'm pretty sure that Tracey has brought him up a couple of times and doesn't like him either. Wait, what does he have to do with the Night?

"I believe it is because he has ties to the Consortium," you tell her, "He provides them with coin and is either part of their leadership or both willingly and knowingly associates with them."

"That is," says Lydia before hesitating, "That is pretty big. Do not tell Ellen about this. I know by now that I can't make you do anything, but Ellen is impulse and will do things without thinking them through first. I don't have much room to criticise her over that, but if you tell her about Barnaby being in cahoots with the Consortium, she is going to do something stupid like tell all of her feminist friends."

"And I take it that those feminist friends would tell other people," you inquire and Lydia confirms what you said with a nod, "Then yes, I agree that she shouldn't be told about this. It would be too dangerous for you and her. I can take care of myself, but you two are vulnerable."

"Thanks," says Lydia, relief clear in her voice, "So who are you going to tell about this? Other than me that is."

Who does Fairy Knight tell about Barnaby May-Porter and his Consortium connections?
[] No One. This information is both important and dangerous and it has already gotten the Night killed from what you can tell. Keep this information to yourself until you can act on it.
[] The Golden Knight. The Golden Knight and his followers are already engaged against the Consortium and you have tentatively positive contracts with them. They may be criminals, but you can point them in the direction of the Consortium's leadership and the Night's killers.



So the ritual took literal weeks to complete and you almost failed to get any useful information. Each site had a different clue regarding the Night and his downfall and you were able to find only one of them. Before you get ideas of going back to look for the rest, they are gone now for all intents and purposes and this will be the end of the 'The Night' arc.

The current vote is a sort of filler one. It is a vote that is meant to give you something to vote on while this arc ends and the next one begins, but it will be important as you will either keep this knowledge to yourself or you give it to a criminal organisation and point them towards a government figure who is in league with the leadership of their rivals.

Please point out any spelling or grammar mistakes that you spot. Please quote them in the thread and explain what you think is wrong so I know what you are referring to. Feel to ask
questions for more details and information.