Tidings Sweet and Bitter
Twenty Seventh Day of the First Month 294 AC
After sending word to the Azure Court in a carefully worded letter for the Emperor's eyes only, accompanied by a sealed chest containing crystalline mind magic foci to hopefully help the Yi Tish root out the influence of the Deep Ones or the spiders of Leng, you spend several hours going over Flesh Forge protections. It is certainly not the most thorough job you can do, but there are other tasks requiring the attention of those equipped to strengthen the defenses further. Hopefully it will be enough.
Lost 10 Crystal Masks of Detect Psionics and 5 Spectacles of Detect Aberration
Lost 20,000 IM (Added to next month's Enchanting budget)
The remainder of the evening is given over to interrogating Saenena Caleris, bound within the Snare with Tyene and Malarys adding their own skills to the task so that you might not miss the least inconsistency or hint of subtle corruption. To both your relief and hers, you find nothing. Either the notes she shared with Urak had not contained the seeds of his fall, or she had resisted it unknowingly.
***
As midnight tolls beyond your study window, you receive more news over the whispering sands. Zherys and the Volantine mages have almost complected their study of Valyrian steel, though not without one near-fatal accident from the dangers of studying blood magic and infernal secrets.
"The Lady Sandviper might be able to derive a useful poison from the residue, and one of my would-be apprentices learned an important lesson about always having a proper healer at hand when working with half-understood magics," the message ends. You can practically hear the mage lord's dry tones in the transcribed note.
You eye the small jar of hardened glass with interest and a touch of wariness. From preliminary observations it seems to attack either the soul or the aspect of the mind concerned with the shaping of magic.
Gained Hungering Ash (Potential poison ingredient)
Secrets by Devils' Blood Wrought Progress 11/12
Last though certainly not least in your thoughts, you receive word from Benerro. He and Velen had managed to discover a means by which the wards of the Marid could be made to work in harmony with the rest of the defenses of the fortresses, in preparation for the sacrifice of Brass Seals and the inevitable Efreeti onslaught. From the tone of the correspondence, it is clear the priest and phoenix work quite well together, perhaps having even found in one other kindred spirits.
A far cry from the bindings the priesthood of R'hllor once lay upon Velen. Thankfully, he is not one to carry grudges past their due.
Waves of the Sea, on Depths and Fire Turned Complete 15/15
You are about to finally seek your bed for the night when news arrives from Sallosh, making a grim and unexpected hearing:
To the King in the Stepstones, Overlord of Lys, Myr, Tyrosh, Braavos and Pentos, Triarch of the Three Daughters, Liege of Volantis... you skim the titles impatiently, doing your best to ignore the budding headache that is your body's way of saying you really should seek some rest, sustaining magic or no.
Sallosh the ascendant though your Grace and the work of its people, has suffered in the past moon-turn many and unnatural setbacks which seem now the work of unseen foes or else dark spirits and foul curses. Much of the city's grain has been spoiled by a plague of weevils and worms that seems to have arisen overnight, a newly dedicated temple of the Weeper has collapsed over priest and worshipers both to much death and ruin, and now several men of means and good breeding have seemingly chosen to take their own lives unexpectedly. Rumors have begun to circulate that the city is cursed and we with it.
To end my people's suffering, I beg a royal investigation into these strange and horrific happenings.
Vargo Alexi, Governor of Sallosh.
You lay down the paper with a sigh. This would need more than an ordinary inquisition investigation if it had already gotten so bad as to cause unrest in the streets.
What evil had befallen the city, you wonder.
Their own dead kin jealous of the living, or something more sinister?
What reply do you send in return?
[] Pledge a full investigation (to be decided in next turn's actions)
[] Pledge some flesh-forged guardians for the city
-[] Write in
[] Send in experienced Scholarum mages
-[] Write in
OOC: Since Sallosh does not have actions with progress, I have been rolling their own event table. They got unlucky this month. Not yet edited.