- Malcolm attempted to decant his comrades from their liquid coffins, but was forcibly restrained by a nameless faceless Ifrit. - At the tower in Darkover that formerly housed the tea party, the door to the room is opened. There are various corpses in the room (all male) in various states of death and dismemberment. The corpses are clustered near the entryway, although there is some limb-scattering. There is some significant amount of blood. There does not seem to be any sign of the women here that were formerly having tea. Glasses were knocked over, but anything that spilled has dried. Most of the blood has dried, but some is still steaming. Cagliostro examines the steaming blood - it is the subject of a spell, which is still ongoing. The spell was obviously taken from a spellbook - it has the feeling of being cast by rote, so there is little information about the caster. - Cagliostro attempts to contact Absalom via Trump, and keeps failing. He contacts Janus, who points out that Absalom is walking and Cagliostro is moving much faster than Absalom. - Calla, Tara, and Mistress Janice decide to track the dog/cat/thing, and find a guard torn from limb from limb in the hallway. Unlike the room's torn corpses (which looked deliberately torn by someone with a knowledge of anatomy), this torn corpse seems to have been created by an animal. There is a large paw-print in dried blood, that looks more canine than feline. If it is dog-proportionate, the animal would be six or seven feet tall at the shoulder. There are drag-marks heading toward the tea, as if the corpse was dragged but not especially far. - Mistress Janice asks Cagliostro about the guard post - it doesn't seem like the guard fought the dog. Cagliostro finds a logbook, and the last entry was written over a month ago. The last entry mentions that there is tea going on, and that nothing ever happens here. Earlier log entries are more formal and careful. The log goes back about nine months, and the handwriting suggests like the more conscientious guards did not stay at this post long. This doesn't seem to be the outermost guard post; the visitor logs only track visitors who come past this post. About three months back, there is a record of three (male) visitors who checked in and did not check out. - The group moves along the hallway to the symmetrical guard post on the other side of the tower, and finds a guard corpse with a needle in its neck. This logbook ends at the same date. Neither book mentions the guards' employer. There is no mention of visitors entering or leaving at this point. There is, however, no door next to this guard post. The hallway ends in a wall, which seems to be about a month old and not structural. Some of the mortar still seems to be wet, so the wall could be as little as a week old. The quality of mortar and construction is not as high on the new wall. - The women ask Cagliostro if he can see on the other side - he opens up a one-way sight and sound gate. It's dark, but there are noises of torment on the other side. It's held to be probably irrelevant to the search at hand, but worth dealing with. Cagliostro modulates the gate such that infrared light is visible. They can see ten heat signatures - eight chandroid scale on the wall, two much shorter (2.5') moving around. Planning happens. Tara suggests a "scream and leap" plan. Cagliostro is assigned to medical support. Mistress Janice creates two "light grenades". Tara and Mistress Janice will go in, with Calla as backup in case something goes awry. After a two-way gate is conjured, they charge in and there is much mayhem. The two smaller forms are thrown back - half bird, half women. Cagliostro recognizes them as harpies. Cagliostro mind-reams them - their minds are cesspools. They have many fond memories of smearing feces on humans, ripping limbs from limbs, eating organs, etc. Cagliostro wipes his own memories of their memories, leaving only edited summaries. - Their memories only go back about three weeks - the eggs are nowhere near hatching. Their memories of their catching and dumping in the room seem to implicate drytowners. They were told that the beings in the room were to be used for breeding (which involves ripping living cells and stuffing eggs in warm bodily cavities, to eventually hatch and eat their way out). - Mistress Janice asks for a consult - the chains seem to be tied to the captives' life force (or at least a blue thread that ties the locals to blue gems). - The chains seem to include an organic component, because they beat in time with the captive's heartbeats. Tara suggests limb amputation, and doesn't seem to be bothered by the smell or the waste in the room. There is a considerable amount of both in the sealed chamber. Magic sight indicates that the chains are tied somehow into the captive's blue threads which are tied into the blue gems they are wearing. The spell is designed to be an uncomfortable as possible - the creator wanted them to be alive and suffering. - Cagliostro tries to mind-ream the captives without getting any of the recent memories from the harpy hall. They are members of a local tower, decent hard-working folk. They welcomed a visitor, who started a working and then they were on the wall in large amounts of pain. There doesn't seem to be a way to convince the chains to let go of the wall, either. However, the chains seems to be stuck in the wall in a purely mundane fashion. - The chain is cut out of the wall and the prisoners are brought through and hosed in a decontamination chamber. Although the decontamination chamber is appreciated, the tower members wonder whether Cagliostro needs to be killed for having seen them naked. Mistress Janice talks them out of it by pointing out that the decontamination chamber is new and may not have an exit yet. - Princess Chandra pokes a sleeping Kintani and wakes him up (not suddenly, just completely). Princess Chandra suggests that Kintani find Cagliostro, and bring Inara so that she can have some time alone. Inara doesn't want to leave, but Kintani insists. (*swallow*) After they leave, Princess Chandra slaps Malcolm and pointedly tells him to leave the work of Cagliostro, her Royal Cousin, alone. - Kintani hunts Cagliostro, and arrives at a tower in Darkover. The entrance has been expertly bricked up. Kintani starts to delicately tear his way through the entrance using Logrus claws. - Upon request, the decontaminated women are clothed. The tower members are given homespun robes, and Mistress Janice gets her usual armored clothes. Cagliostro uses the cards to contact Mistress Janice, and convinces her to go ahead with the de-egging. He contacts Jodo to set up the surrogate harpy breeding program, using cows as temporary incubators. - Calla ponders, and produces a few weapons. She throws a sword in Cagliostro's direction, and he catches it and holds it in the most awkward manner possible without hurting himself. Calla gives him a -look-, and points out that Cagliostro will blend in better if he's wearing a weapon, because the locals will assume he's a warrior and not a mage. "Oh! Good point", Cagliostro responds, and sheathes the sword with a flourish. - Tara comes through the gate to the sealed chamber, holding three blue gems - the tower members confirm that there were thirteen of them originally. Tara is not particularly interested in decontamination, since mucking out the whales was worse than this. She is willing to clean if it distresses Cagliostro, and the Count acknowledges that he would appreciate this. Tara enters the decontamination chamber. - While ripping holes in the front door, Kintani realizes the upper level of the tower is mostly windows with a few supports. Kintani climbs the tower. From the inside, there is a *thump*. On the outside, there are blue shards in the room that usually has the blue stone. There are not enough shards to make up the volume of one of the stones. Kintani spits out a Jean. "Can you tell Faythe that one of her towers is broken?" "OK!" There is some discussion as to which tower there is - Jean is of the opinion that if "The tower with the broken stone" is not a unique signifier, there's a larger problem. - Tara finishes decontamination and runs out for a fight, stark-naked. Everyone sighs, and follows. Tara runs to the door, flings it open and disappears. The group follows, and finds that it's a door to the ex-stairwell, now rather more well than stair. - Tara is climbing the walls as if she has suckers for fingertips and feet - and she just might. She doesn't seem to be looking for fingerholds and toeholds. She reaches the top of the tower first, and asks Kintani if he's seen a dog-like creature. He demurs. She climbs down. Kintani enters the tower (which he can do, because Cagliostro is here). Inara is spit out, and recovers somewhat. The group discusses plans, Cagliostro suggests having Kintani hunt either the dog or the tea party. Mistress Janice wonders if people can sense being hunted - Kintani says that some can. Mistress Janice decides on the dog, then. Kintani heads outside to wait for the party. Mistress Janice opens a gate to outside, next to Kintani, throwing in a lot of unnecessary mumbo jumbo. - Cagliostro gets a message in Arabic on the radio - he responds, confusing the sender, and get a "this channel is compromised" message. Cagliostro checks the technology and records, and realizes that he's just responded to a single-channel message in the clear. Oops. Must be the Bedouin. Cagliostro compares notes with Jodo about this. - Kintani volunteers to hunt the dog, and Cagliostro suggests that the still-naked Tara ride with him. Cagliostro offers her a Trump of Calla, but Tara produces her own Trump deck from a fleshy pouch. She volunteers, Kintani warns her not to use Trump while in contact with him, and then swallows her and heads out. - Eagleton realizes that he's in a Klein bottle. He pokes the cork, and is pulled through a dimension and is hovering outside the bottle, next to a small child staring at a bottle. Eagleton and the plane seem to be scale-appropriate. Eagleton flies somewhat upward, and gets the radio traffic that was being blocked by mountains. The transmissions seem to be about earth-home level, and are somewhat paranoid and mention the possibility of aliens. - Eagleton scans for aliens, and only finds terrestrial satellites, several of which are targeting him. Eagleton avoids being shot, absorbs the power, and prepares to jump out. There is a speed-of-light tight-beam communication: "Is that you, Mr. Eagleton?" The communication requests and requires assistance. Eagleton checks - there are none of his satellites in orbit. Or hippos. He goes looking for hippos, and only finds them in zoos. Eagleton tracks the transmission down to an island in the Mediterranean. There is no island there in Eagleton's world, but people have looked there for Atlantis. There is no airport on the island, no shipping traffic heading there, and one city - a crystalline city. There doesn't seem to be anything alive on the island. - Eagleton talks to Brian about the great wrongness that is a soy-based diet, and the difficulty that the local gods have had recently. Brian is bothered that there are pamphlets that are endorsing Amen as part of a pantheon, but that doesn't mention Gaia or Luna. Eagleton recognizes Verra. - Brian pulls Eagleton with him to Amen, who is in the reset White Wolf universe. It's low-tech, high-magic, with no aliens. Brian explains that the pamphleteering is killing the gods that lived in the city with him. He's of the opinion that messing with indigenous people are wrong.