Libuse fairy tale (0-4)
Ernst: “So.”
Seer: “Let’s talk.”
E: “Let’s.”
C: “First of all, call me Christian.” His accent is more German than the Emperor’s.
E: “And have we met before, Christian.”
C: “No we have not. But I have been keeping an eye on you.”
“Seen only good things I hope?”
“Freiherr, what have they done to you? An enlightened, Awakened man, with no aura.”
“I have always played the role of a loyal soldier, from the Emperor’s army to this cabal. And the reward is that. It’s still raw, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to act for me, Freiher. We knew they’d try to drop you in our midst. To spy on us. But I want to talk to you about your potential, and are you reaching it in the Pentacle? I see a man cast out and cast down, and that angers me. When will they give back your soul?”
“There’s a series of tests. Achievement is at the discretion of the cabal.”
“Of course. You know we do things different. I’m not going to lie to you and say our orders do not punish and discipline.”
“Let us cut through it then. What do you offer me? What is your proposal? What is the endgame here?”
“The endgame is what you know. We see a war. A war between Catholic and Protestants, a war between the crowns of Europe, a war that will produce wonderful things. Your people are trying to mitigate its destructiveness, and that could be bad. The Sleepers play at games, listen to rulers, scurry about, with no knowledge of what lies beyond them. They don’t know that the Exarchs exist, they don’t know we live in a fallen world. No one should have to live in this broken shell. We want everyone to rise.”
“And what is my role?”
“For now, we would like you to act as a conduit. Not a convert, not an agent, just someone who can speak to the Pentacle mages on our behalf. If you understand what we are trying to do, we feel you’ll come around eventually. But let us not play at espionage?”
“Clearly we are bad at it.”
“You don’t have the tools we have access to.”
“What is the next step?”
“The next step is to get your soul back, as soon as you possibly can. You don’t deserve this. What do you have to do, and how can we help? What is left on your list of Labors, Hercules?”
“If you’re able, there is a demon of torture that is…”
“I am familiar with this spirit.”
“I would appreciate help here.”
“They wanted you to dispatch it? How would you do that without Spirit magic?” Ernst shrugs. “I see. We don’t want them to know you’ve had my help… start where you found it. The Emperor’s jails. Even mortals can summon spirits, they just need the right elements and symbols.”
“Or, if you’re serious about bringng me along, there can be a quid pro quo. Show me evidence you’ve taken care of it, and we’ll talk.”
“Wouldn’t that be suspicious?”
“It just needs to be done.”
“I could take care of it right now, if you wanted. Are you sure?”
“Does it not benefit both of us for me to have my Awakened soul back?”
“Are you sure?”
“Do we have time for this?” Ernst says, pushing the Seer to anger. “Don’t we have a war to start?”
“Very well.” The Seer leaves. “We won’t come in this form again.”
“You know where I spend most of my time, there are plenty of vessels there that are purely innocuous.”
The Seer warns him that some of his number have Mage Sight up all the time.
“The opera. There are ideas there we can’t have it happen. You’re hot for this war to happen, aren’t you? You’ve been to war. So has Cavus, but… he has to realize this war is bound to happen. Why wouldn’t you want it to happen as soon as possible? I can tell you’ve been through this already. We often make comment on the stubbornness of a Pentacle mage. What is this vampire after? Why write this play? He is a damned creature who wants all of Europe enlightened. Does that make sense?”
“I’ve wanted to lop his head off for months now,” Ernst says.
“I want to know what his motives are. Could you find that out for us?”
“If you take care of the demon, that seems like a perfectly reasonable exchange.”
The Emperor-Seer leaves, and Ernst very quickly pens a letter.
---
Salih and Matthieu discuss how to follow up with the Consilium. Will they investigate the Church of Mary under Chain? Salih, Matthieu and Gans decide to investigate.
Matthieu uses his Legacy Sight to look at the two ritualistic substances. The dye is ink, and specifically manuscript ink, not printing press ink. An older, medieval recipe. The blood is human blood, and both acted as a medium for Mana. Matthieu feels the ritual’s symbolic resonance. Writing about violence, stories penned to get people to kill each other, myths written in blood and ink. They were specially chosen as part of the Seers’ attempt to raise an old, old spirit.
They observe the pyramidal steeples and Maltese crosses. Gans uses Postcognition to view the ritual that was being cast, with Salih’s aid.
Matthieu puts up Death Sight to get a feel for the location. The Death Resonance here is sluggish, oppressive… someone died here, last night. There was a blood sacrifice to make the spirit summoning more powerful.
In the Postcognition, they see there was no Warding. The blood sacrifice was a novice from another monastery. All three were invisible; Forces magic to make them invisible and inaudible. The blood falls in a pattern -- again, thanks to Forces -- which triggered the Spirit effect.
There is no Hallow here; it would take a lot of Mana to cast this effect to get a Rank 6 or 7 effect. So the ink, blood, and altars all acted to focus and channel the Mana. They weren’t much more powerful than the cabal; they couldn’t channel enormous amounts of Mana.
Matthieu summons the ghost of the blood sacrifice. A 20-year-old novice of the Hussites. They came here and sacrificed him in a Catholic church! Were they trying to start rumors? They slit his throat from ear to ear, a look of horror on his face, screaming silently.
Salih looks at the building with Destined Postcognition. It was built by the Seers. And flipping through this history, he knows that this place was designed to focus conflict. It was founded by the Maltese Knights who were founded on conflict.
The ghost looks at Matthieu with hostility. “Settle. I am looking for the ones who did this to you.”
“I want,” he says looking down, “either peace or revenge. I don’t care which. I must have one.”
“I want your help and I will aid you in whichever direction you prefer.”
“Two men took me from the Church of St. Giles.” Right near the clock. They brought him a long way. For what purpose?
“What do you remember?”
“I remember being asleep, waking up here, and then them slitting my throat.” Matthieu infers that they were using their own body.
Matthieu to Salih: “Can you see if this man is still tied to his murderers by Fate?”
After he tells Gans, Gans says, “Seems out of character for the Seers, to use their own bodies to do something like this.”
Salih sees they did not bother to scrub the threads of Fate. One of them is at the castle. And one of the men who did this is nowhere nearby. The one at the castle needs to be scried upon.
And Salih looks at the situation, and considers an alternate lifeline for himself. A lifeline is which he was not a sekban, but instead lived in Istanbul and was a top agent of the Sultan. One versed in geography, architecture, history, and investigation.
This aids his scrying. And he sees the Emperor walking away from Ernst’s office. The soul leaves his body, and Salih tries to scry again. It is a fleeting glimpse of the Seer in the body of Jan Mydlar, the Emperor’s executioner.
---
Gans and Lorant. Gans is telling him about the Rosicrucians being a Seer tool. “Invisibles, like in your texts!”
“Would you mind if I looked into your mind to see what you saw?”
“I had a feeling you’d ask that. Yes.”
We flash back to Salih and Gans and Matthieu. “What did you see?”
“One has left Prague. The other is moving between people in the castle.”
“His body is here?” Matthieu says.
“You saw his soul.”
Salih is drained, and Matthieu wants him to continue scrying.
Matthieu tells the ghost revenge is the key to resolving him. And in the telepathic vision, something strange happens to Gans. Matthieu continues to explain that the ghost is the key to finding the men who did this to him. He Quickens him for a day. The three go back to the castle.
---
Back in the “present,” Lorant can see something changed Gans’s mind. And as Gans and Lorant walk the streets in his minds, Lorant presses him on this.
“It came to me. It all made sense at that moment. I don’t trust the Rosicrucians anymore. They protest too much, they care about the Lie too much. They are meant to infiltrate the Pentacle!”
“What other things have happened that make you think this?”
“I’ve read your books! They mean to infiltrate all the institutions of the waking world, what does that sound like to you??”
What Gans is spouting is basically anti-Semitic memes under a different name.
“Think about how you sound. Because we put blood on the door, we’re killing Christian babies? It’s the same thing. It’s the same story.” Lorant stops walking to get through to Gans. And they are in the Jewish Quarter in his mind.
Lorant sees a sigil, an ideogram, leave his mind. A subtle Mind effect?
“Can I go deeper? To see if I can find when this happened to you?”
“You don’t have to. I know when it was. It was waiting in the courtyard.”
---
Salih goes to do his Oblations. Matthieu reads the letter Ernst prepared and goes to see him.
“What can I do for you?”
“I got your letter.”
“Yes, things are proceeding nicely.”
Matthieu gets a piece of paper to write his conversation:
M: “What exactly happened?”
E: “They have a basic idea of our plan. He literally said we don’t have to play the spy game.”
M: “How do they know? They must have Mind magic.”
E: “They know my soul was taken away, they know we don’t want the war started and I’m less on that side, they know lots I didn’t think they could know.”
M: “They are still trying to recruit you, even knowing this and having it out in the open.”
E: “Yes.
M: “Is there a risk of that happening?”
E: “No.”
M: “I have to ask. Of course that’s what a spy would say.”
E: “They appear to see me as a key cog in their machine.”
M: “Did they give you an impression of what that means?”
E: “No.”
M: “We know more, but I think I’ll wait to tell you until we have Salih and we can put up wards. And bring in Lorant.”
E: “We’ll circle back.” And then he says instead of writing, “I think it’s time for you to go now.”
---
Lorant says to Gans, “So you now don’t believe the Rosicrucians are a tool of the Seers?”
G: “It made sense to me! It didn’t feel like an alien idea.”
L: “This is what they do. They sow discord. This is what they tried to do with my opera last night.”
G: “It makes sense that they would want to target the Rosicrucians. Because of their obsession of the Lie.”
L: “And that they are weak, and new, and distrusted.”
Lorant sees Ernst, Salih and Matthieu enter Neska’s. Infodump over telepathy, after Salih takes some damage from Paradox due to the domino effect. Salih is not happy with the strength of the ward.
L is angry. “How do they know that? From now on, we need wards because even this channel isn’t safe.”
We talk about the Seers infecting Gans with the idea about the Rosicrucians.
E: “He seemed entirely too comfortable with the idea of pretending at espionage. He knows I have no powers but not why I lost them. We have set up an exchange of information. They’re very interested in your opera. I would get the information if they killed the torture demon.”
S: “That’s a very creative way to work around of your limitations. I’m impressed.”
E: “They know the ideas Lorant put out are dangerous. But they don’t understand your motivations.”
S: “They are confident enough that you fit their paradigm that they are laying their cards on the table when they didn’t have to reach out to you right away.”
E: “They are playing up that, and the fact I am crucial to their plans to bringing about the war.”
L: “He’s the perfect bait.” Salih and Lorant concede, his position is perfect.
E: “I told them there are others in the city they could manipulate and they weren’t interested.
S: “Many of the things you have said they have also proposed.
L: “Or they could be parroting what you said.”
Salih states he knows what the Seers are doing. “This is not the first time. They have done this over and over and over again. They are not doing something new. They are not spitting your rhetoric back at you. What they want is extremely similar to the things you have proposed.”
E: “If this was not already in play, this was a very convincing sales pitch.”
S: “This is what it comes down to: right now, considering the situation, I am not concerned with your loyalty to us, but I am concerned you might find their ideas tempting, so that you might end up helping them while working to undermine them.”
E: “How far do we want to go with this?”
M: “When someone comes up to you and says, ‘We know you’re a spy, but we want to work with you anyway, what do you even do. Lorant?”
L: “The cards are all on the table at this point.”
E: “I made it a point to play up the disgruntled aspect. Lorant, I told them I wanted to lop your head off more than once. I do fear a point of no return if we go too far, considering how hard a play we made.”
S: “I’m concerned you may get to a point where you don’t know who you’re working for anymore.”
M: “When you speak with as much confidnece as they did, I wouldn’t say that to somebody unless I was pretty sure of myself.”
L: “They’ve dipsensed with all subterfuge and subteltry. It’s refreshing. Ernst and I are the wildcards here. They don’t know my motivations. We should have a sit-down with them.”
E: “And they’ll kill you.”
Salih and Lorant dispute this, but Ernst is afraid he’s leading Lorant into a trap.
“Fine, but I want to be in the room with them.”
E: “Theoretically, how do I do that?”
L: “They said they want to know my motivation. Tell them they can do it directly. And to sweeten the pot, you can say my Covenant is interested in working with them. Now that we know what the Pentacle have to offer… we want to see what the Seers have to offer. It’s time we came to a detente.”
E: “I almost feel like it’s too obvious.”
L: “But they are being obvious.”
E: “They are. I’m not. They would be expecting me to use the same tactics.”
L: “But again, we are the wildcards. This is a new avenue for us to come at them. See what we can learn. Half of it will probably be lies, but I’ll feed them my own lies. The Ordo has said nothing to me about the Seers, but I can spin a good yarn.”
S: “They know too much to make me think they won’t be suspicious. A single conversation would not make them change that.”
E: “I was not wholly cooperative with them. I didn’t come across as wholly on their side.”
S: “He still found you sticking his craw, despite their overwhelming confidence.”
M: “I barely even know how safe it is to speak. Under ward, in someone’s mind, and I can’t feel safe. We could speak on the other side of the Death Gate. It would require more scrying and Death magic.”
E: “What if I took your research notes from the opera. As an Imperial censor, or steal them myself.”
Lorant nods, knowing the backstory, and knowing this increasing tension would be useful.
E: “Also, if they’re listening, we can find out 100% if they are or not depending on how they react to these notes. I will be approached by Christian sooner rather than later. He will return with news of the torture demon which will allow me to reclaim my soul. Do we proceed as normal from here?
M: “There are things I am working on that I do not want you to know about.”
E: “So you’d like me to continue on as I have, keeping the cold war up.”
M: “You know your Oath to the cabal and to the Emperor. As long as you abide by those, proceed as you see fit.”
E: “Thank you. Very well.”
Salih suggests that we restore Ernst’s soul and then hide it. We could also lay down false discoveries, Salih says. Matthieu is in favor of this. Salih says we could put a fake aura back behind a slain aura, to confuse the Seers.
Matthieu thinks we go one step further; we plant fake secrets on and in Ernst for the Seers to act upon. Using Veles as the red herring?
Matthieu: how do we combat the Seers? They can spread ideas, we can’t. Salih says we can with Fate. Matthieu wants to lock Seers in unwelcome bodies, using Fate. Salih says a better trap would be the Profane Urim or the Llull-Bruno Machine. They might not even know if we have it.
Ernst has a plan, he just wants to know how we’re going to handle his aura.
Gans asks if he should tell the Arbor Vitae about the Rosicrucian ploy. Lorant says yes. Gans says they may want to take action. Matthieu says they should come to the Consilium meeting. Nothing until it’s been discussed. Lorant wants to go with Gans to talk to them.
Salih wants to put an effect, a geas with Fate and Time, on Ernst that will let Salih know if he’s turned to the Seers.
Lorant plants an Opus devotion in his pleading letter to the imperial censors. Ernst takes that to his office and continues the search for Veles.
---
Gans and Lorant arrive at the Arbor Vitae sanctum. They greet Lorant warmly. Holoch asks, “What has been going on in your world?”
L: “There has been much going on that we need to discuss.” Lorant defers to Gans.
Gans: “News may not have filtered out yet, but the Seers have made another foray against the Pentacle mages of Prague.”
Rydel and Holoch are alarmed, Habermel looks up, but does not look as concerned.
Gans explains what has happened, concluding with the Rosicrucians. Rydel laughs and says, “They’re afraid of us?” Holoch, more sober, “Not sure if afraid is correct, but they looked at us as the right kind of scapegoat.”
Lorant says, “They are indeed trying to use us,” he pointedly says “us,” “to throw the Pentacle into confusion.”
Holoch says he’d be willing to abolish the Consilium, to institute majority rule and a universal council.
Gans says, “We don’t know how we will proceed, but in two nights’ time, we’ll want the entire cabal there.”
Holoch asks what they should do in the meantime, looking to Lorant not Gans.
L: “We should speak further, since they are looking to suborn our writings. Let’s look at my opera and see how they sought to use it to their own ends.”
Holoch asks, “Do you think they’ll subvert our writings, the ones we haven’t released to the public yet?”
Gans, “I did believe they would, when I was under their influence. The symbolism… perhaps it would be good to go over it.”
Holoch says, “Why not do it now?”
L: “I would like to have Maier in as well.”
---
Maier, Lorant, Holoch and Rydel all gather with their circulating manuscripts, as well as stuff by the Tubingen crowd from the 1580s/1590s. The imagery and symbolism goes back to mid-16th century alchemical texts. Lorant analyzes the full oeuvre of the Rosicrucians and finds that the texts are laden with backdoors for the Seers. Which in turn infected his opera. The Rosicrucians were begun as a cult to serve the Seers in infiltrating the Pentacle!
If these ideas are published and spread, they’ll spread their discord through the memetics. Lorant considers using the Shadow Cult as a way to counteract the Rosicrucians eventually.
---
Salih and Matthieu go through the Death Gate. Salih then puts up a time bubble. They discuss a geas to cast on Ernst. Perhaps to deny use of the Profane Urim?
Then return the powers to Ernst and hide them.
Then trap the Profane Urim.
Salih wants to set up an effect to sense if anyone who’s drunk at his coffeehouse is possessed by the Seers (Sensing the Threads). And he wants to use Shifting the Odds to move people in that network into the right place to be possessed.
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