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Runtime	Break start
3h 52m	2h 19m

Episode 20: The Vanishing

We return to the city of Dol-Makjar where our Schemers Table (we're off to a hot start gang, boy howdy!). People are getting tracked to their homes, there's some secret people, people have Very different apartments from each other, and that's fun to me. How often do you get to see a D&D character's apartment? Not enough. That's what I say. That's how I feel.
Last we left off (after the events of Thjazi Fang's execution and his wake) those left behind (as Soldiers and Seekers left the city to seek and soldier elsewhere) were our four most employed heroes.
Team Employment
After your first conspiratorial get-together at the Seven Stars Tavern, after realizing that (the Lady Cormoray was interested in teh Pariah Blades, and the Lord Einfasen had dismissed half the Revolutionary Guard or more, and Tachonis had come in on top of the Penteveral, installing Dean Kora Keplenvaisreck, and the body of Thjazi Fang) had resulted in all of this attention and fanfare in the week of some-odd preceding the arrival of Murzat (the play that Hall will unveil with the beginnings of the Hallowed Round, a brand new theater here in this space).
You began your conversation in the aviary of the Seven Stars (an old tavern within the Rookery) where indeed, you actually overheard the arrival of some gentry who had been to the gala at the Palazzo Davinos (a place that all of you had entered in the dead dark of night to find a melted black-and-silver candle after a massacre had occurred and been cleaned up as though it had never happened at all). It seemed that people had arrived to discover an illusory gala and that the Sundered House of Royce had returned to Faerie. That's cool. Except for the weeping family members of staff and servants wondering where their family members had gone. Had they been absconded to Faerie without a word's notice?
Very peculiar.
You spoke to Horace Blade, who was a party-goer there, that you knew as a merchant (someone you had met through circles of Hero's mother, Elodie). You knew Horace as a merchant, a hardworking Dol-Makjar merchant who helped you figure out the mystery of your spell glyphs. And the fact that Thjazi's escape glyph (even though it had been a fake and would've doomed him to death) he had never actually seemed to break. Why didn't he?
Horace led you through a deep analysis based on a lot of insight he has into ceramics and magic crafting that (basically the one that Thimble had had was janky and made by criminals and had a little Faerie edge to it, but in being janky was true blue; that was a Real Misty Step glyph (which by the way, means that you guys do have a Misty Step glyph). The really nice looking one that was extremely expensive, that was the dud. That was the one made to seem like a Misty Step glyph (such that it could bypass Azune's detection and rest without the ability to actually do so) in Thjazi's coat.
Questions abound, but Horace also lets you know that a bunch of these blank glyph tablets had gone missing. Orus Blade's family business, The Hand and Wheel (which is the name of his ceramics company) he let you know that they had had a bunch of blanks go missing. That basically were finely made enough (the right materials and with the right arcane components) to receive a spell; but on their way to being made, they got knocked over and a bunch of the blanks were taken. This is the equivalent of stealing Sudafed, right?
You also realized realized that you had seen that symbol of Hand and Wheel before on the amphora of paints delivered by Bolaire to the Hallowed Round, currently being used to paint the theater that had been mentioned as one of the last mental statements of Thjazi to Hal in his dying moments.
You took off from the Seven Stars after talking about all the things you needed to do. You talked about Biteen Tachonis. You talked about Romina Roundtree (a maid of the Einfasen who's a siste3r of one of your company members). You talked about getting the Guard together. We have to act. We have to act! You talked about going and making nice with Dean Kora.
Arriving back at Hal's, you met Lord Filoneus Halovar as Azune (invited to stay with Hal) decided to stand guard and successfully turned what was an extremely dangerous encounter into one of the Lords Halovar (after wishing you a soon-to-be-happy Candle Feast) believes you to be a man of faith. You spent the night in Hal's home. A tearful moment of processing that Thjazi is truly gone, and of course, all of the terror that now befalls you. You spent the night there.
The following morning, you headed out. You began your morning by finding Varen Kadorn at the Falcon's Rest (at the memorial to those that died in the Falconer's Rebellion) and he said,
"I've been guarding for one of the vassal houses of House Royce. We're getting crazy notice, there might have been some arrests, something's going on. Am I in trouble?"
You answered, "We all need to get together. Something's afoot, you should quit, and we should all get together and start working against this."
Murray went and had a heart-to-heart with Dean Kora. Got in her good graces, amazingly. Wherein she agreed with a letter that Bolaire had written talking about an internship program and that students of the Penteveral should come work. Kora (knowing the Cormoray's special interest in the Archanade) thought that was a brilliant idea and gave you a big stack of applicants and said,
"Get it sorted by the end of the day!"
And told you to hire some [Teaching Assistants] with a small stipend, but not to hire Demodus Blix, (who missed his class this morning). How odd. Demodus being a well-known wizard of the Penteveral who's beloved by all (a kid with a lot of school spirit who had to finance his own way at the school, and did so with a lot of performing in the Ogrimok Marketplace before that was made illegal).
Bolaire had a tense exchange with Makmaz Gelfidar who essentially talked about the Selodyne Wing and the switching of the wings (or the idea that the Selodyne and Lloy wing would have a big uprooting of all their artifacts) and talked about,
"The wind is blowing one way. Are we going to do the right thing and be brave?"
Makmaz says, "I refuse to be brave, but I will talk to you and tell you what's happening."
Azune was called to the Palazzo Davinos to investigate this strange Royce absconding to Faerie.
Hal had a morning full of errands (disguised as an older orc) carting his dead brother's body in a wheelbarrow. First stop, you dropped him off with Olgud saying,
"Hang tight, my man. Can you go bury my brother real quick?"
Olgud was taking him up to the cemetery near where your father is buried. You then talked to your fight choreographer, Inez Rountree, saying,
"I think we should talk to your sister tonight."
(who works for the Einfasen starting to pull threads)
Then you headed to the Grey Library in Marud, where Byrindra Moss (an elder bullfolk librarian) helped you try to find anything about magic masks and what the history of that might be (which directed you to a book in the library "Visages of Creation"). A book that no longer is on the shelves.
Fun.
You stepped out to see the arrival of a massive entourage bearing the three red hounds on a white field (the flag of Timmony) announcing the arrival of King Augustus Valian who's nowhere to be found. They don't know where he is. Announced by a faithful hound who could speak in Kahadi.
We return to the Archanade, the massive museum here in the heart of Dol-Makjar, wherein Bolaire is hard at work after his meeting with Makmaz and where our friend Murray Mag'Nesson has just arrived with a big stack of papers. Where would Murray find Bolaire here?