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Marigold	EASTERN SACAE, NEAR THE COAST      En route to the town of Bayantset.      Dayan, the 'Silver Wolf' and humbled nominal-leader of the Kutolah tribe, had his difficult reunion with Sue not long ago. He and the maybe-dozen still-loyal horsemen he was able to rally from the fishing village fit right in with the caravan of Roy's army, demanding little.      Though they've never met him before, Merlinus the seneschal-merchant and Marcus the old knight naturally slot Dayan in as their peer. He's got some of the avuncular joviality of the former, when the malaise shakes off him, and some of the rugged stoicism of the latter.      But he and Sue still orbit each other uneasily, at a distance despite their fondness. They share opposite sides of a campfire, opposite sides of a wagon, rarely able to trade more than a few words or look each other in the eye. It's a distance marked by mutual shame.      Few Elites are likely to spend the whole journey with the caravan, again, but if Petra decides to stop by for a while then Fae is overjoyed to try to teach her the snippets of 'dragon language' that will fit within the range of human hearing (with Sophia there to help translate)- 'hi' is audible, and so is 'good', but 'bad' has some subtlety at the lower range she can't convey.      In the same way, Lugh is eager to brush up on his junior psychonautry with Flamel, and if Odette drops by, Lucius tries to get her started on the smallest practical application of light magic: scratching the back of his hand with a fingernail, giving her a staff, and seeing if she can coax out that little white spark. <J-IC-Scene> Dayan says, "... We can just about see Bayantset now. I'm afraid some of my people are scattered like leaves, but this is where most of them will have settled down." Begrudgingly: "... It is a nice little town, I suppose. Er, we'll find one of your portals to see you through." <J-IC-Scene> Dayan says, "As I said, I've... driven them too hard, to too many defeats, for them to listen to this old man's doom-and-gloom anymore." <J-IC-Scene> Dayan says, "I'd like them to see there's a point in doing something more than laying down to die. Anything you can do..." <J-IC-Scene> Neon Kurama says, "Whether they join us or not isn't as important to me as them seeing that point. That's why I'll do anything I can." <J-IC-Scene> Dayan says, "Ha! Haven't you got a kind spirit." <J-IC-Scene> Nobunaga says, "I agree. All that matters is showing that the fight is far from over." <J-IC-Scene> Dayan says, "... They'll need to know we can feed them, if they uproot their lives here. Many of them will have old wounds, of the body and the heart. They might have started to take apart their yurts for wooden homes, and I don't know the state of their horses..." <J-IC-Scene> Dayan says, "Hmph. What matters to *me* is defeating Bern and the Djute, I'll have you know. Not that I don't appreciate you helping lift my shame."      . . .
Marigold	Through the Warpgate, the grass is greener here, even though it's still brisk winter. The coast has vanished over the eastern horizon, but Mother Earth's youthful smoothness here is disrupted again; this time by a loose scattering of depression-lakes like great odd potholes, forty or fifty feet across and twice as far from each other, and then a long straight shallow-valley-like gouge that turns marshy as it hits the water table, nourishing hardy conifer trees.      Something glacial? It must be, but it feels almost odd to think about Sacae having a geological past at all.      Dayan and Sue greet the Elite arrivals, separately, and in their jovial-and-stoic respective ways; Merlinus and Roy have an emptied-out wagon to load up with any supplies you've brought. The rest of the caravan lags a bit further behind on the half-mile journey towards the humble walled town- really, halfway between 'town' and 'village'- on the horizon.      Approaching Bayantset, it's five times bigger than the fishing village, with maybe ten times more people. It has low white rough-textured walls, ten or twelve feet tall, with a simple opening rather than a gate one can see single-story wooden houses through.      Yurts are scattered outside the walls, in varying stages of damage and disrepair; with arrows sticking out of the hides and the ground, it seems clear that the residents have been harassed and pushed back inside the too-small walls. A sparse herd of horses graze waril some few hundred feet away. "So the Djute even tried to chase them here, eh..." Dayan murmurs bitterly, from moseying horseback. "Suppose that's what one gets for giving up." "It's still standing," Sue says mildly, from hers. "Mh. For now, for now. If I understand Roy right, there won't be much of anything standing when Zephiel's through." "You were just saying they can't be scolded, grandfather." "... Suppose I was."      At thirty paces' distance from the open gate, there's a scattering of half-buried broken arrows, of bits of metal, of saddle-leather, and of half-cleared horse bones. It's as if there was a battle here a month or two ago, only absent human bodies, and only in a semi-circle the debris hadn't been cleaned away.      Of course, there's a small commotion inside Bayantset when they see strange travelers approaching. A middle-aged man, in a blue tunic unlike the Kutolah's, emerges and stands expectantly by the entrance with both hands resting on the end of his sash-worn sword.      "Good day, and may the Sky smile upon you," he addresses you all, with a polite tone but a haggard look about him. "On behalf of the town, can I ask what your business is with us?" "My business? May it smile upon you too, I'm Dayan of the Kutolah and I've come to speak to my tribesmen," says the Silver Wolf as he brings his horse up short, baffled and a little insulted. "Are you hoping to break our peace, then?" "Your peace?? You've got arrows sticking from the dirt like grass!" "Hm." Dayan is, for whatever reason, making a very poor impression on the local swordsman. He straightens up a little further, eyes sweeping over the rest of you.
Flamel Parsons	For once, Flamel Parsons hasn't come along for the entire caravan ride. But he's also quick to get back to Lugh, after a short break. He's got ideas, lately, about how magecraft could be merged with telepathy, and how Lugh might independently begin some work on locally-derived psychonautry. Rather than just spend the whole time strumming his guitar, he does wind up spending many hours on an endeavor with Lugh to see what could be done there, approaching the idea of the role of fire and thunder magic in specialized transcranial blood-vessel dilation, neurological stimulation, and other ways to weave Eliberian magic together with Flamel's own psychic expertise.     He guides the junior psychonaut, as always, on his education. But this campaign will have to end in the near future. They have months left together, but only months. It's important that Flamel equip the boy with the knowledge he'll need to develop and do things on his own. Every psicadet must graduate. In time that will be him.     It helps regain some of the energy he lost, recently, in the week he went missing from the Eliberian front.     Flamel picks one of the arrows out of the ground carefully, like plucking a flower. He's not going to have much he can do to negotiate with the man at the entrance, but he pulses waves of psychometric analysis into it, and into the surroundings, trying to summon up some translucent psychic images of what happened here some time ago. What is all this about? What's been happening here?     "Hi! I'm Flamel Parsons, acolyte of a vague yet ominous secret order." He explains, as he does his work. "I'm here mostly for thwarting purposes. That is, Bern has various intentions to destroy everything -- I'm looking to limit how much it destroys! I mostly work in mentalism, any chance I could take a look at the wounded spirits in your walls? My psicadet and I have gotten *great* at hunting and beating Bernish traumas lately, and," He turns the arrow over in his hand. "I have a funny feeling it might help!"     He brightly smiles at the man, looking up from his psychometry. "But nothing beats help and attention from the people you know! I bet Dayan will be a wonderful sight for their sore eyes. It tends to be a huge morale boost!" Don't focus on what they want. Focus on what they have to offer. Everything else can be worked through once they're past the gate.
Nobunaga	As before, while Oda Nobunaga had excused herself from the army formation, she is still represented by her retainer Mori Nagayoshi. Also as before, despite his clear status as a general's retainer and bodyguard and his clear position as a warrior who should be up with all the other big names, he spends the entire march to Bayantset with the rank and file troops. He sings marching songs, he tells stories around the campfires, and he laughs uproariously at every joke. He shares his sake and comments on the flavor of Lycian wines and gives as good as he gets when it comes to cards.     When the town appears on the horizon and the call goes out, Nobunaga returns to Eliban soil in her full Imperial-era uniform, cape and cap and all. Mori raises a hand in greeting-- and she meets it by slapping her palm against his in passing. In the same gesture as her high-five, Nobunaga uses that raised hand to tug her cap down, securing it against the wind that whips up her black and crimson cape on her way to the front of the column.     This time, Nagayoshi stays with the troops. It's Nobunaga who will treaty with the local leader. > "Are you hoping to break our peace, then?"     "Your peace is broken, regardless," Nobunaga states bluntly. She steps up beside Dayan, sweeping her hand across the bones and wreckage and spent arrows, "You have clearly seen your share of violence in the past, and what of your future?"     The warlord tucks her arms behind her back, the lowland wind teasing through her cape, "If Bern's mad king isn't stopped, every man, woman, and child who dwells upon Mother Earth and beneath Father Sky will die."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine feels clearly at home in the roughly glacial terrain, having spent many a day or night chasing monsters in similar terrain on assorted Earths. She is however less at home when the signs of war show at the edge of Bayantset. She looks about ready to kick arrows out of the dirt just so she feels like she's done something here when the blue-clad elder walks out from the gate. Watching the exchange between Dayan and this town's headsman with a quizzical look on her face, Madeleine finally speaks up when Dayan's finished digging himself into a rhetorical hole.     "You two know each other?" She folds her arms. "These are stressing times but it's the Djute who put these arrows here, killed these horses. We're not here to start trouble, just move to end it."
Dysnomia	Dysnomia has been haunting the party more frequently than she'd like to pretend to the other elites. She's come to play with Fae, and fulfill her promise, and generally insinuate herself into business with Roy and Sofia. She spends some of that time watching Dayan and his men, taking stock of the 'mental attack' in play.     "Mh. For now, for now. If I understand Roy right, there won't be much of anything standing when Zephiel's through."     "This is encouraging." Dysnomia said, "It has not progressed to its final stages."     "When subjugating the lands of an indigenous group, there are a variety of methods of dealing them. Appeasement, recruitment and special favor, is one. As the Djute have learned."     "What they are utilizing on your people is an attempt to completely destroy your way of life. The goal would be making them fear to even practice normal, harmless traditions, pass down teachings, and live among their own people, for fear of death and ruination."     "Look." She points. "They still tend to their horses. They live together, even when they're continually harassed. They haven't abandoned one another." She looks to the Silver Wolf. "Not even these people are completely broken. Bern and Djute's strategy has not worked. Not completely."     "If Bern's mad king isn't stopped, every man, woman, and child who dwells upon Mother Earth and beneath Father Sky will die."     Dysnomia holds up a hand toward Nobunaga, as she steps forward. "Dysnomia. An otherworlder, from far away." She takes a moment to be seen to assess the state of the village. "While we are warriors, we are not here to hunt for soldiers today. The Kutolah have suffered a great deal."     "It's high time their efforts should be rewarded with something aside from more pain. We have healers, and supplies, and more hands to keep away the Djute."
Desire Stars	Neon and Ace arrive in their DGP activewear. Each of them has brought supplies--Neon has pickling and curing kits to help stretch out the shelf life of anything the army would care to use them on. Ace, meanwhile, has brought grains, a selection of spices and other dry goods. The supplies are packed into crates and pushed along on carefully- and well-loaded hand trucks. Accordingly, it's fairly easy to get them onto the wagon. On behalf of the town, can I ask what your business is with us?     "We have food and other supplies for you. You're welcome to them, and to what other support we can give you," Neon says. "In return, we'd like to speak with all of you. With whoever we can," she continues, her hands clasped together to keep from fidgeting anxiously.     "About getting *your* help. So... I guess that would start with you. I can tell that protecting them means a lot to you, and I... want to protect that instinct. But there's a difference between protecting someone and protecting their comfort, isn't there?"
Nobunaga	Dysnomia holds up a hand to silence her. In turn, Nobunaga does go quiet for a few moments. Her crimson eyes follow the space dragon for a time; eventually, closing, "I am not interested in recruiting soldiers either, but claiming to preserve something as ephemeral as peace in these times is completely absurd to me."
Petra Soroka	A few days ago, Petra experienced the kind of unimaginable suffering that they write about in the Sutta Pitaka. Enduring about four hundred years of cosmic isolation for the sake of being yelled at on the radios would be, even for Petra, a level of misery that would leave her reluctant to show her face in public for a while, but today she was provided so much emotional nourishment that she could recover from even this. From before she slept to the minutes before she arrived, Petra was inundated with attention and positive vibes from the people that she cares about most, and that's really all it takes to make her normal again.     So, fatigued or not, when Petra shows up today, she looks practically *healthy*. For the sake of diplomacy and presentation, she's carefully assembled her red and gold knight-ish outfit to wear, sword belted at her hip, clean, rested, and with a little bit of pep in her step. They don't even have to talk about massacred children today! Now that Dayan's on their side, they just need to go around convincing other people to do the same!     She's a bit crestfallen when Fae's not on the other side of the warpgate to give her the chance to prove that she's remembered how to say 'hi' to her. It'd be a much less impressive feat to Fae, for whom it's been, like, a week, than it feels to Petra for having injected memories of intervening centuries, but Fae would still be happy to see how her tutoring's stuck. Instead of a cute greeting, then, Petra greets Dayan with an immediate no-windup question.     "So these are going to be people who already fled from you after you lost enough? Do you have anything useful about what... type? Mindset? Of people they might be? Besides just wary and hurt." "Suppose that's what one gets for giving up."     "You or them?"     This time out in the environment is, in light of Petra's good mood, even more mentally healing for her. Glacially formed lakes are so pretty and clear! And the sky is so open and there's so much grass! Even with them being two of her favorite buildings that haven't been destroyed, she's spent all of today before this inside, and she's practically bouncing her way towards the village and wandering away from the group to release energy by hurrying back to catch up. The fact that there's evidence of a recent attack outside the walls is... well, maybe it's good! That's a reminder that they aren't really safe here at all, right? "On behalf of the town, can I ask what your business is with us?"     "Hi," Petra takes a brief stock of everyone else's answers in her mind and quickly realizes that there's a massive hole in the middle of all of them, for lack of explaining who the hell they are.     "We're from an army intent on forcing Bern to retreat from all of its occupied territories and we've succeeded at several already. The business we have is doing that here before you're all killed, either by Bern's army or by their end goal if they win."
Lilian Rook	Lilian has never reconciled with a parent in her life, nor can she ever imagine doing so. Dayan and Sue strike her as absolutely heartwarming in a vacuum of anything else to compare to, and she spends a bit more time than she wisely should hovering around either or both of them, asking questions and making statements that are certainly at least somewhat leaky. The terrain here is still strangely fascinating to her, provoking remarks about how she grew up surrounded by tall trees and then tall buildings, and rarely ever sees the sky so well from the ground. The winter is within her tolerances, with warm clothes, and she declares her intent to emphasize the season when retelling the story next year; for dramatic effect, of course.     'Supplies' are something that has occupied more of her mental bandwidth over time. With the Union Busan, she could move anything she wanted through the onboard Warpgate, and with Trídéag, she can buy most of it in the city. The caravan passes by Warpgates frequently, but irregularly, and without any way for her to know exactly when and where; not without extensive divinations that don't really help her with mobilizing anyone but herself and what she can carry. There aren't exactly a shortage of people who would help her if she asked, but there's a serious shortage of ones she can trust and who wouldn't cause issues by going. As it stands now, she's been able to show her face with another couple of crates of surplus, but already asked Merlinus and Marcus if she can have the time to describe the types of people they should look out for at Warpgates hereon.     If you're eavesdropping, she describes the G.D.F markings of decades ago. Her plan is to ask Nika's people. She's already moving things in and out of the Dragon's Garden anyways, and a lot of those folk are former soldiers, and used to hard mountain living.     'Suppose that's what one gets for giving up.'     "Now and always." is Lilian's thoughtless, automatic opinion. She doesn't like the sight of it either, but for a change, doesn't look as if she expected anything else. "Withdrawing from the world doesn't mean that the world lets you go. No matter what it is, nobody will ever let you retreat from anything if they can smell your blood."     'You were just saying they can't be scolded, grandfather.'     Lilian pauses, but not for long. "Though I suppose they know that well enough by now."     'Are you hoping to break our peace, then?'     'Your peace?? You've got arrows sticking from the dirt like grass!'     'Hm.'     That attitude in particular causes Lilian to sigh, push aside her cloak from her left shoulder, and approach the front on her own initiative.     "I'm 'hoping' to break the Djute's back. Your peace is incidental." Lilian says. She glances over the field of arrows as if it were also incidental; something to examine while waiting for an uninteresting formality to be over and done with. "There's salt, iron, food, and medicine to be had for saying you want the same, and more than that for those who do more than watch and listen." she says, tilting her head back towards the wagon, and brushing back her perfect hair with her armoured fingers. The two crates today were, in fact, not for Roy's people, but for this occasion only. She gestures for Petra to fetch one.
Lilian Rook	Though Lilian typically lets Roy handle this kind of thing, Dayan has to serve as the face of his own people, so her her aim is specific and carefully constructed. Wearing fine armour and carrying a finer sword, using a well-dressed blonde like a squire, casually flaunting wealth in appearance and reality, and acting as if actually trying convincing anyone is somewhat beneath her; the overall goal is to come off as exactly what she sort-of-kind-of-is: a powerful noble sponsoring the Lycian campaign, and by extension, sponsoring Dayan, after he talked a good game.     "I've been told that the people here can be trusted to want the same thing, and sorely need a taste of victory, but that they won't be quick to believe it can be theirs." She glances sideways at Dayan, re-investing the initiative in him. "As such, I've prepared something as a show of sincerity. I'm prepared to wait, if you have to ask your people if they'd like to send away food and herbs, but I'll admit that I'd feel a little insulted if you did." Finally, her gaze tracks down to the man's sword, and her eyes rest there for a while.     "Oh. I beg your pardon." she says, for unspoken reasons."Commander-- No, I suppose 'Lilian, the Winter Bloom' suits here." Her eyes flick back up, expectantly.
Marigold	When Petra scampers off to gallop and play, Roy looks piningly after her, like something's holding him back. Her energy does buoy him infectiously, though, and he wobbles his way into a smile.      "Do you have anything useful about what... type? Mindset? Of people they might be? Besides just wary and hurt."      Dayan has to think about that for a moment. It's not a mindset he enjoys empathizing with.      "When we parted... I suppose they feel like they failed their ancestors, or their ancestors failed them," he finally says to Petra. "A way of life coming to an end. Heaven seemed to side with their enemies, even though they'd lived in observance of it. The Djute and the Kutolah have had their give-and-take for centuries; were they really so wretched, to deserve this happening in their generation?"      He sighs. "'Pride', 'a future'... when you lose hope in those things, I suppose you can only hope for a warm bed."      "You or them?"      His face flinches in shame, and Sue looks over at him, probingly. "... Them," he says, without conviction.      After all, he hadn't yet thrown himself on a Bernish spear when you'd found him.      ""Not even these people are completely broken. Bern and Djute's strategy has not worked. Not completely."      "Hmph. 'Completely' is pulling a lot of weight, young madam," Dayan mutters, looking around the ruined yurts and loose herd of horses outside the walls. "We could be more under their thumb. I'll give you that. But there's more to living like a Kutolah than having a horse and a family."      Something nags at Roy after that. As the older men talk at the gate, he asks aside- to Mia, mostly, but really anyone- "I don't think Bern needs to assimilate anyone. It's enough to deplete the fighting forces of the continent, and then let the dragons kill everyone, isn't it?"      ". . . I don't know when he means to start." He looks aside, into the wagon with its pickling equipment. "If I were him, I think I would have already."      "You two know each other?"      "I've known men like him," says the swordsman.      "Never seen him a day in my life," Dayan harrumphs.      "Bern has various intentions to destroy everything..."      "... every man, woman, and child who dwells upon Mother Earth and beneath Father Sky will die."      The old swordsman settles his jaw and then shrugs, not shocked. Either he doesn't believe you; or he already knew; or he guessed approximately as much. It's hard to tell which.      "Not many of us lived in Bayantset at the start. I didn't. The war drove us here. Maybe it'll drive us elsewhere. The Otherworld, perhaps, if all of Elibe's destroyed." He looks behind himself, for only a moment; the people of the town, farmers and tanners and carpenters, stay a good twenty paces back.      "I'm not in charge of these people," he continues, after their tacit collective approval. "I'm only the one they send out when people like you come by."
Marigold	Flamel, through his psychometry, conjures up ghostly images all-around of some few dozen men on horseback encircling and needling at one robed swordsman; wheedling, negotiation, intimidation. They want something from him, or the people behind him, that he won't give. Talks break down. Weapons are drawn. With smooth unhurried graceful strokes that the 'vision' cannot fully capture, the swordsman parts most of the nomads from everything except their lives, broken steel and broken horses flowing like water. They flee, and those who still have bows try to pelt him from afar until their quivers run dry.      "What an interesting magic you have," the swordsman says to Flamel, politely. "It did go about like that. The Djute wanted their deserters back, too. As for you, half of you say you're not here to conscript, while the other half say you are. It doesn't lead me to trust."      Under Lilian's scrutinizing gaze, the older man's hands are callused for the sword, but the sword's handle isn't worn to his hands. The low cut of his tunic exposes a little muscle. His eyes are yellow like a dog's, and tired.      Her noble attitude tightens him by half a degree. Her conditional offer- and the softer implication of it, in Neon's words- tightens him by ten.      "In return, we'd like to speak with all of you..."      "There's salt, iron, food, and medicine to be had for saying you want the same..."      "So it's extortion," he says, still deliberate but no longer relaxed. A collective murmur goes up from the crowd behind him; none of them look on the verge of starvation, but few farmers will turn down food in winter, and surely they have some sick.      His eyes scan off to the side. He doesn't seem angry; only stiffly deflated and vaguely sad. "... What I say matters little. As I said, I'm in charge of no-one. If the people will have you, come in. Only, please... don't threaten, browbeat, or coerce; and leave the Djute here alone. That's all I ask."      "I promise it," Dayan says, only mildly resentfully. "If I couldn't inspire them with hope, what kind of chief would I be?"      "I suppose I wouldn't know." The older swordsman steps aside and leans against the town's low white wall uneasily.      Behind him, there's a hubbub brewing; some of the townsfolk want to press up throguh the gate to have a closer look at your supplies, a couple of local elders are shushing and placating them to stand back and give you room to at least bring your crates in to the main street; and children stare precociously from open-shuttered windows and around the corners of houses. "Salt? Did they say they had..." "And iron--" "Sevrei's still got a fever. Please, something for the yellow cough..." "And Yesant's baby--"      "I'm sure it's an honor to meet you, Winter Bloom, but I'm no-one a foreign noble should bother remembering," the old swordsman says to Lilian, before the group can pass him by. His posture is slackening again. "You have what you want from me, don't you?"      "there's a difference between protecting someone and protecting their comfort, isn't there?"      And to Neon, he presses his lips in an unhappy smile. "... Have you not been a soldier long? Bloodshed has nothing to do with comfort. If they fight with you, many of them will die. Everyone here is here because they chose not to die for a bit of dirt. I'm already too drenched in blood to ever dry; it's the least I can do to shelter them."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Only, please... don't threaten, browbeat, or coerce; and leave the Djute here alone.     Madeleine looks the swordsman up and down, arms still folded. A little "Hmph" of acknowledgement to his request, at least for her own part. "And yourself? You talk like you don't number among your charges. Madeleine, by the way," she says, directing a thumb at her chest. "A huntress." Her hands move to her hips, elbows out to either side, as the townsfolk gather behind the swordsman. Less standoffish, more casual.     Everyone here is here because they chose not to die for a bit of dirt.     "That's a choice you've made too?" She's needling him. "If you'll entertain a visitor's curiosity, what's the *most* you could do? These people," she says, tone softening as she gestures to the folk within the walls, "need protection. And they're right here. I've been in your shoes, before. It's often right to just do what we can for who's in front of us."     Her head tips sharply in Roy's direction. "Sometimes it's right to aim higher. Roy can tell you how we got here, if we might have your hospitality."
Nobunaga	> "I'm not in charge of these people. I'm only the one they send out when people like you come by."     "I see," Nobunaga appraises the man once more, her eye more critical of his stance and his bearing. Without turning her head, her eyes flit to Dayan, as if comparing the two. She doesn't need Flamel's psychometry to understand that there is no army that defends this place; it's this one man. The hamlet seems like it's not important enough to send much of a real force into, or perhaps Bern just leaves it alone so the deserting warriors can torment themselves further. > "As for you, half of you say you're not here to conscript, while the other half say you are. It doesn't lead me to trust."     The set of her brow shifts from appraisal to something more like a frustrated scowl. She manages to chill out when the swordsman speaks again. > "If the people will have you, come in. Only, please... don't threaten, browbeat, or coerce; and leave the Djute here alone. That's all I ask."     "I have no desire to rely on wolves who have fought so hard that they have broken their fangs," It's not the most delicate way she could have put it given Dayan's moniker as the Silver Wolf, but she clearly doesn't mean him. Dayan doesn't seem to have 'lost his fangs', after all.     Her cape settles down around her despite the wind, then flares out again. In the flurry of black and crimson cloth, a quartet of little Nobbu soldiers tumble out as if they were hiding in her pockets. Quickly getting their bearings, the little soldier-familiars hop-to and scuttle off to assist in carrying crates of goods from the caravan amidst various Nobu! cries.     "What we are doing *here* is sharing supplies and showing these tired wolves that someone has at last arrived to pick up where they were forced to finally cease. Where I am from, in bad times, we take comfort in the saying 'Even the longest night cannot last forever'. It can be difficult to hold on to hope, as you well know. But see this?"     At last, Nobunaga's arms unfold from behind her back just so that she can indicate the great sunburst crest upon her cap. The countless golden rays of the sun surrounding the chrysanthemum seal of Oda.     "Dawn is on the horizon, at long last."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel is still looking over a memory sliced in half, where material losses flow into a slurry of mental loss. The man cut their view of things and loss flowed from the wound. His eyebrows are arching up behind his sunglasses and he's whistling softly, impressed. He decides to focus some of his energy a little more precisely.     "You have what you want from me, don't you?"     "Not exactly." He says, rising to his feet with a beaming smile. "There's *one* thing I'd really like from you in particular!" This degree of combat experience, mirrored by this degree of... apathy? Self-depreciation? Overall... depression? "It looks like your mentality hasn't been affected much by the bernish forces or their allies -- but you've got a longer-term-- we call them psychohazards, a sort of injury sustained in the heart, but you look like you've had yours for quite a very long time!"     "Just had a few of my own dealt with recently, it's pretty normal stuff." He approaches and leans in, keeping things private. He has... an idea. "I'm helping train a child named Lugh in the way I do things. Whatever you've got is in a... stable state, it's not very recent, so it's perfect for me to help give him something to do to train without being in severe risk. These fresh traumas Bern's been laying onto people are *nasty* and prone to getting him hurt if I don't monitor the training exercise, so..." He puts his palms together in a plaintive request. "I know you've got a lot on your plate right now." He says. "But I was wondering, any chance you could come with us? We're moving towards some operations that should help keep these people safe, and having your mind in the caravan -- even just a little while! -- it would be a great boon to the counseling and training I'm doing for Lugh. If you like, I'll compensate you for the trouble too, one way or another, and make sure your current obligations are covered!"     In Flamel's analysis, this is a man who is used to being asked: 'Please! My baby! Protect my baby!' This is a man used to being asked: 'Please stay with us, we'll die otherwise!' This is a man used to being burdened with huge responsibilities very suddenly at the behest of people he's recently met. Rather than asking him to do things for himself or for ideals, the correct approach is simple: Ask him to do one small thing for a child, in order to wedge him into a situation where he slowly starts doing more and more. You want to protect children, right? An innocent little child? Oooooo you want to help Flamel Parsons protect the growing smile of a young boy soooooo bad. Please.
Marigold	BAYANTSET ITINERARY:      If you shift your attention to the town, several issues present themselves; some self-evident, some brought to you by townsfolk in varying shades of 'warily hopeful' to 'desperate' to 'probing'. Not all of them need to be resolved to rally the dispirited Kutolah, but the more collective effort is put towards the town's woes, the easier it will be.      - Damaged Yurts:      Even if the local Kutolah wanted to follow Dayan, their hide-and-wooden yurts have been left outside the town's walls, damaged first by arrows and then by the elements and disrepair. Local craftsmen could help, but at the very least need payment and ideally more tanned hides.      - Town's Defenses:      Many of the Kutolah here have gotten attached to Bayantset, and they're aware that if they leave, the town will lose most of its potential combatants and become drastically more vulnerable to Bernish or Djute depredations, swordsman-at-the-gate or no. Reassurance somehow that it won't be razed would encourage them, doubly needed if the swordsman is convinced to join you.      - Tribal Tensions:      A quarter of the town's population are Kutolah, and maybe half that many are voluntarily-disarmed Djute. They've tenuously buried their generational grievances under a shared fatigue, but rallying the Kutolah back to war against their just-now-peaceful neighbors' families will immediately reinflame tensions, leading to yelling or street scuffles if not calmed somehow.      - Dayan's Wounded Pride:      Dayan frames the issue as his people having lost faith in him, but though he's loath to admit it, it becomes clear that he's lost a degree of faith in himself too. Sue quietly confides in someone who will listen that he blames himself for sending her out with the clan's young and elderly without enough backup; something she can't agree with, because she still blames herself instead.      - Yellow Cough:      A recurrent seasonal respiratory illness affects about one-in-twenty of the villagers each winter, including many of the Kutolah you're hoping to recruit, from 'miserable productive coughing' to 'bedridden with vertigo and a fever'. Normally a mild flu-like endemic disease, it's exacerbated by the vitamin deficiencies of their lifestyle, lacking fresh greens or fruits during the winter.      - A Hopeful Plan:      Actually, Roy and Dayan have this one under control if they're freed up and filled with the proper persuasive confidence: coordinating with Cecilia, they've cooked up a scheme to use the Kutolah horsemen to attack Bern and the Djute from behind during their westward push into Etruria, using the natural chokepoint of Sacae's narrowing western mountains to cut off supply routes and create a bloody rout. ... Hopefully!
Dysnomia	"It's enough to deplete the fighting forces of the continent, and then let the dragons kill everyone, isn't it?"     "The point likely not assimilation, but instead disarmament. He divides the people of Elibe against each other. Those in a position of strength, are under his thumb. It's more important that the Dijute are not fighting him. And when the time comes, they will have expended much of their resources trying to rout their old enemies."     An uneasy frown comes over her face. "His instincts in making war are second-to-none."     "If I were him, I think I would have already."     "It's an excellent question, Lord Roy." She walked alongside him. "I can think of two potential reasons."     "His draconic forces may not be numerous enough, yet." It's a guess, and not based on anything, but... "If he felt confident he could set aside pretense and roll Elibe aside, he would do so. So he lacks the manpower to do so directly."     "It's also a large step, to begin with. Human forces and collaboration have been instrumental in his military acts. But, what about when his actions can't be seen as anything other than for the extinction of humanity?"     Dysnomia assesses the broken town, her thoughts far away, for now. "...Don't forget, once Zephiel reveals his true colors, he will be known as an existential threat to humanity. Move too soon, and a united Elibe could threaten his ambitions."     She listens to the warlord's stance, but her expression does not change at all from an unimpressed, flat line. "You're not listening past his words at all."     She makes a broad gesture, including the swordsman at the front and also the others within. "'You must fight. You should fight. You have no choice but to fight.' You're not paying attention; these people are wounded."     "They've watched the things that they chose to fight for fall away. A psychological wound. A social maiming. On the roots of their determination to fight. To protect their family? To save their land? To ensure the dignity of their people? How many of these people do you think fought? How many of those things did they lose anyway?"     "'But you must' has never been enough. They need more. Especially at times like this, where it becomes hard to see what they've bled for. This is basic morale management."
Lilian Rook	'So it's extortion'     "I think it's bribery, actually." Lilian responds, smoothly and without hesitation. She risks none by speaking from off the top of her head. "I'm offering you goods in exchange for your earn and your willingness. Extortion would be threatening you if you don't give both." Her eyes wander away, bored again.     '... What I say matters little. As I said, I'm in charge of no-one.'     And they snap back. "But you're in the way." she says. "Do you imagine I might be blind? I'm not asking you to give a speech; I'm asking you to stand down." What a ridiculous thing to say to a sad early-middle-aged man who's just standing there on his own.     'and leave the Djute here alone. That's all I ask.'     Lilian narrows her eyes, then releases an inscrutable sigh through her nose. "Your terms are agreeable." she says. She looks to Dayan for his confirmation, then continues when he concurs. "I don't need people I have to threaten, and obviously I'm not of Sacae; my concerns are political and military, not ethnic." Ordinarily, she'd laugh that off and tell someone to relax, but under the circumstances, she believes it's better not to seem too casual about something so grim.     Finally, her attention wanders to the people behind him. It isn't often she sees a sight like that; so she knows the look of it well. She has to remind herself to play it cool. Two crates is fine. It's enough for now. She knows how far that stretches in the military. It's not as if she never has to see them again.     'I'm sure it's an honor to meet you, Winter Bloom, but I'm no-one a foreign noble should bother remembering'     "Everyone from Sacae says that." Lilian sighs. "I swear it's like a national custom." she says, and wearily shakes her head. Something more than that bothers her.     "I've gotten 'Commander Lilian Rook' for being a foreign noble. If that's really what you prefer, you can use that instead." She idly taps her fingers on the hilt of Night Mist at her waist. "But 'Winter Bloom' is just an epithet. I know that you can intuit the rest."
Lilian Rook	Once inside the village, Lilian decides she has more work cut out for her than she assumed, even at her more pessimistic estimates. Her image of Sacaean warriors has been informed by far-flung outliers, and the reality is more in line with Ilia, though the desperation of the people is of a different stripe. She doesn't allow it to break her stride, now that she's chosen this approach, but Lilian wishes she could put her face in both hands and think with her eyes closed. Lacking that option, though, she has no choice to go with what she was planning to do under better circumstances anyways:     Behind the walls, Lilian makes a little show of walking around to find the biggest and most convenient clear space, then shanghais frankly whoever in the caravan is available and doesn't posess a noble title (sorry Roy) into unloading and organizing bags, boxes, bottles, jars, and rolls along a line of her choosing, demarcated by the leftover setup she'd kept from her market stall at Edessa. Brazenly declaring "One member of each family. Take whatever you need.", Lilian makes a show of finding a nearby seat, starting up a comfortable small fire with magic, and counting out 'a shock value' amount of gold and silver coin as she hears out the crowd for their needs.     Yurts as important housing are something she has only to remember that raid of the enemy camp to reframe at the center of her mind; as unhappy as it makes her, it's something she deems necessary to understand the impact they have on the people here. 'Hides' fall outside the purview of alchemy, and Lilian isn't much of an architect in the first place. She publicly asks Merlinus to take a survey of exactly what the damages are and 'bring her a quote', so she knows how many hands to hire and how many of what materials to purchase.     Bayantset's defense is something that she anticipated already. It's very much not within her authority to arbitrarily station troops here on a private whim. What she does have is a pair of 'loyal retainers' and their associated special forces unit with the Paladins whom she knows she can absolutely arm-twist into deploying here for the next several weeks, and an abundance of time and free space in which she can demonstrate the same set of stationary leyline-tapping defenses she uses whenever a 'forward operating base' has to be established. She phrases it all like she's generously lending them her finest (which she kind of is in a way). The implication is that expects an outcome where Djute (or even Bernish) counterattack will cease being an urgent possibility one month from now, and a realistic one given another.     True to her own line, she really has nothing at all for ethnic tensions. That's something she leaves firmly in Flamel's (and Lugh's!) wheelhouse. The best she can do is act like she doesn't really get it, but thinks it's perhaps a little bit tiresome, and irrelevant to breaking Bern. The last thing she wants is seeming like she particularly cares for one tribe over another.     Illness is the second thing she was very much prepared for. With ample healing supplies on her courtesy of Tamamo shoving them into her hands practically every week, the ability to look like she's vaguely responsible for Lucius being here, and crates of fresh food and all of the traditional remedies she can identify from grilling him, Sue, Rutger, Dayan, and Fir (even Clarine if she has to), it's simple enough for her to split the work with Lucius in terms of seeing to individual cases, and then draw up a contract for X amount of deliveries over Y period of time, from the nearby 'portal' (strengthening her claim of intending to defend the place properly, since it wouldn't do for her own people to be raided).     And lastly . . .
Flamel Parsons	After, between, or before getting a chance to bother the old swordsman, Flamel gets to work on the psychonautical clinic. A quick tent is all he can set up, but with Lugh well-trained in the work, it splits quite well. Tribal tensions are something he's ostensibly here for, but that's not quite the thing to focus on. Deep-seated resentments and fury are something he can certainly take the edge off of, but people prone to those don't tend to think, 'Man, I feel really angry, I'd better go get therapy!' So it mostly acts as a forward operating base for Flamel to dance between the minds proactively. And at least if he takes out the massive amount of fatigue and stress, it'll improve things overall.     It's also a specific setup he needs. In this case, he'll be having Lugh try to get Sue to come along to help Dayan's mental wellness through a quick paired Astral Projection. Meanwhile, he'll be asking Dayan to come help Sue feel a bit better about what happened, and inviting him on an astral projection into *her* mind. If he can get them both in the clinic and sincerely believing that they're there for their own purposes, he can get each one into the other's mind simultaneously in an unguarded state, and navigate, quickly, to reconcile a fundamental, key truth. Sue will surely try to neutralize Dayan's self-blame, while Dayan will surely work to neutralize Sue's own, and with them both in a vulnerable state and sincerely working their hardest to help each other, and with two (well, one and a half) trained Psychonauts, the Psychonautry involved ought to go off without a hitch.     It's important that Flamel carries a key psychic payload from his days in the Cold War, something often used to neutralize severe cases in the most effective ways. And that payload is this: Sometimes, terrible things happen, and no person can be blamed for them. After a certain number of deaths, blaming or crediting another person is worship or violence, and crediting or blaming yourself is delusion or ego. Bad things happen, people die in large numbers, and the number of factors involved is so high and their complexity is so vast that assigning personal responsibilities is a warped view of the world, and instead, only the vast strength that is 'institutions' can be credited or blamed.     Who knows if that tactic is one those two would leverage though.
Nobunaga	> "'But you must' has never been enough. It's basic morale management."     "'I have no desire to rely on wolves who have fought so hard that they have broken their fangs.'" Nobunaga repeats to Dysnomia, her tone flat. Lecturing a successful general on the merits of managing morale feels a bit like telling an Olympic sprinter ho to run. The dull expression on the warlord's face shifts to one of inward contemplation; would Dysnomia lecture a swordsman on their stance, as well?     "I'm not interested in asking these people to fight," she translates once she's done with her little thought exercise, waving a hand dismissively, "Perhaps you should take your own advice and listen to the words I'm saying?" -- THE TOWN;     With a handful of Nobbu already dedicated to assisting with the supplies, of which Lilian has already taken charge of, Nobunaga strides slowly about the town of Bayantset with her arms behind her shoulders, moving slowly with big swinging steps while she takes her time to assess the issues of the town itself and the people who dwell there. The most clear thing she can bring to the table-- a she already has demonstrated-- is manpower.     She considers the walls and the entrance; the total lack of a gate, and the number of yurt homes that had to be abandoned because they were outside the protection of the walls, and it is here at the entrance that she spends the most time on, her hand on her chin. After a long while, she shuffles to the side and crouches, examining one of the partially-cleared horse skeletons.     The warlord nods, rising back to her feet. She tucks two fingers between her lips and lets out a sharp whistle.     The result is immediate: Nobbu. Lots and *lots* of them. Some tumble out of her cape. Others pop out of the tall grass. A few push up from underneath rocks. One gets chased out of a burrow by an irate badger. Rapidly, the swarm of knee-high soldier familiars gathers around her, chattering amidst themselves. The noise stops when Nobunaga speaks.     "Alright! We're fortifying this town, give it the full package!" One hand on her hip, the other thrusts out in a sweeping gesture, "Get to work!"     The Nobbu silently glance between themselves, murmuring back and forth in that Nobu Nobu language of theirs. Once they reach an agreement, almost simultaneously, the entire swarm removes their military caps and replace them with little yellow hard hats; then promptly scatter.     With tiny shovels and through repurposing their little Nobu Tanks into tiny bulldozers, the knee-high work crew sets into the plains immediately around the town of Bayantset. It involves a *lot* of digging, but there are also a *lot* of Nobbu to do it.     Nobunaga herself oversees it from the main entrance through the wall, gesturing and shouting.     "One hundred meters from the wall on all sides!"     "I want a five meter gap in each cardinal direction!"     "Set the bigger rocks aside!"     "You, smash them! We'll use the most jagged pieces as a finishing touch!"
Petra Soroka	"A way of life coming to an end. Heaven seemed to side with their enemies, even though they'd lived in observance of it."     "Oh," Petra says, while thwacking some burrs off her pants that she collected while scampering around. "So, people who've already doomsday-prophesized themselves into defeatism, before even knowing about the doomsday prophecy. So that route's a dead end before we even start."     "I do kind of hate those kinds of people. If you give up on the future and your response is to retreat into, like, animal-level survivalism, then you're just admitting that you care more about the physical comforts of being alive than, like, philosophical virtue."     Noticing Roy looking at her in a certain way, Petra tilts her head confusedly at him like a dog. "Hm? Is there something?" "... Them,"     "Mmm," Petra hums noncomittally. At the very least, that's part of the truth. "Yeah." "If I were him, I think I would have already."     "If I were him, I'd have the whole world on its knees to serve to Iðunn on a silver platter and I'd do a whole ritual to welcome in the dawn of the new age of dragons about it." Petra, who has conquered a nation before and constructed a temple and throne in order to present it to Lilian for her entertainment, has her thoughts about this.     "It'd be trivial for a single dragon to traipse around the wreckage of Sacae and flatten every hideout that's left. But it's sort of unceremonious, isn't it? Dragons are the perfect, magical beings of a perfect, magical world, so maybe-- hell, maybe the effect Iðunn's having on the world is to build up to something specific, you know? A--" She snaps her fingers. "Like that." "The Djute wanted their deserters back, too. As for you, half of you say you're not here to conscript, while the other half say you are."     This is one of those war-scarred, world-weary men who Petra feels like she's obligated to respect, because of their final place in war ending up defending some small home they found and only fighting when necessary. Archetypally, this should be a guy whose narrative position she likes. He kind of makes her want to spit derisively on the ground instead.     "Okay. Well, the difference is that we're not gonna shoot you if no one volunteers to be conscripted, so, mark that one down as a difference." "I'm offering you goods in exchange for your earn and your willingness."     Petra hugs the crate full of supplies to her chest, shifting it until she can poke her face out from the side of it to be visible. She bobs it up and down to indicate it when she speaks. "This, isn't, like, contingent on anything. It's just supplies, because we have supplies, and we have more for the actual army and everything. Because we're not starving, and we're not running away, and we're not losing."
Petra Soroka	Petra is so eager to be Lilian's hands to enact her will, as always. Spreading out supplies, taking counts or assessments of yurts or defenses, ensuring families get their share, all of these and more are functions of a diligent and well-rested Petra.     Fundamentally, though, her problem is that she does not care about these people or believe that they can become people that she would care about. 'Numbers', when it comes to war and empathy, are often her weak point, and here the only function she can see these people serving is increasing the number of faceless bodies that can be expended against Bern. It's a bleak perspective, both in terms of her mindset for convincing them, and if the Kutolah were able to read her mind, for them too. Even Petra isn't happy to be thinking about anyone in this world like that.     So, in addition to being a good secretary for the distribution of Lilian's efforts, Petra also rambles a bit. Addressing the emotional conditions of the villagers directly would be disastrous, but she can just voice connections to what she does know out loud, talking to Lilian while handing out supplies, and since she doesn't lower her voice at all, people can simply overhear her. Whether this helps is questionable, but she wants to ramble anyways.     "You know, something I'm thinking about-- the books I've been reading about, like, pan-Africanism, sure do have a lot to say about the impact imperialism has on the tribal relationships of the preexisting societies. Like, Fanon had a whole section about how every way that a colonizing country can interact with a colonized people is a form of violence, and that a constant atmosphere of violence demands that the subjugated tribes redirect that violence somewhere else. And, um, that, when not uniting to throw out the occupiers, that often takes the form of doubling down on past tribal blood feuds, because it reestablishes a sense of connection with the past, to stave off the knowledge that the past before-occupation is drastically changed and permanently inaccessible now, and how colonizers use that knowledge to undermine the independence of the people and redirect any unified effort to depose them. Like, pan-Africanism's big tenet is that colonized tribes' goal can't be to 'go back to how things used to be', because the world has changed in a way that makes that not just impossible but a desire that actively benefits your collective enemies. And that sort of makes me think about how everyone seems to be unconsciously aware that the past thousand years of relative peace are over and everything's falling apart, but both the Djute and everyone here are trying to be ignorant of that by pretending that they're either fighting or avoiding fighting a tribal conflict rather than a global one."
Lilian Rook	Pride. Confidence. Belief. Those are things that Lilian can make up for in her sleep. Not the shallow kind, either; it's easy to be brave when you weren't here for the fighting, after all and the people here won't respond to her attitude if the Silver Wolf still gives off that feeling of being willingly marched to hi death. Her own personal conviction, unquestionable as it is, still needs a vector to infect everyone else with.     That's why, once supplies are handed out, the sick are seen to, and contracts are drawn in their rough stage, but before Roy's negotiation about strategy, Lilian takes her sword in hand and marches back to the front 'gate', beckoning Dayan in specific, but otherwise "All of you who have yet to succumb completely to their shame. Any who still feel even the slightest yearning, whether it be for victory, peace, or redemption." to follow her. She'll accept any number of tagalongs, but not Dayan's absence.     And once she steps outside, Lilian waits at the edge of the field full of of ruined yurts and discarded arrows. Once the last pair of eyes she can summon is on her, she repeats "'Like grass' indeed." to herself, and lays her hand across the hilt of her sword.     "There are countless men who, knowing what you've been through, would still urge you to battle all the same. They would tell you to fight because it is inevitable; because you already have no choice in the matter, that no one does, and so it surely must be better to at least spend your lives bloodying Bern's nose than it is to wait to be slaughtered mere months from now. These men will urge you to fight as if those 'mere months' with your families and friends weren't worth more than anything they can promise you."     Lilian projects her voice to carry the words beyond crowd, to be heard by the villagers still inside the walls, not far away. The fact that she intentionally counts Dayan amongst them excludes him from her meaning by principle; something unmistakably intentional, given that he's the last person that she looks in the eye before shrugging off her cloak.     Once her fingers fully settle into place on Night Mist, she doesn't look back to the others again. Her eyes remain fixed straight ahead, across the garden of arrows.     "I urge you to fight because you've earned the victory that lies just ahead of us. You've trained, bled, survived, and endured everything until today, for this opportunity."     Lilian unclasps her cloak with her left hand, and shrugs it off her right shoulder. Her hand falls back down to the scabbard, freeing from her belt and holding it by the throat. Her footing shifts, as automatic as her breathing, exhaling everything from her lungs as she settles her posture, and drawing back in all at once.     The field thick with arrows, every single one, whether studding the yurts like nails and littering the dirt like leaves; each arrow to the very last one in sight comes apart. Cloven shafts beyond counting hang airborne for the space of a heartbeat, and tumble back down like hail. The sound is unearthly. Lilian waits for it to subside before finally sheathing her sword. She breathes out a second time, and the dissolving fog follows her turn back around.     "If you still spare any thought to your ancestors, then fight one more battle; this battle, with this army, which is unlike any other. Rather than spending your lives to bloody the enemy's nose, I call you to stake them on taking their head. Whoever intends to come with me, you can stop thinking of yourselves as ragged, hard-scrabble survivors, starting right now."     That's the tone she wants to leave Dayan's negotiations to start on.
Marigold	"Hm? Is there something?"      Roy, caught being envious of Petra's joie de vivre and childlike whimsies, confidently opens his mouth to describe why he can never allow himself the joys she does, and then is sort of winded for several solid seconds of doing that.      There's just no way to say "I wish I didn't have to be more grown-up than you" without sounding like a prick, it turns out.      "I- ah- um- n, no," he coughs after much too long. "It just seemed... I'm glad you're having fun. Really. That's all." Maybe this will make him confront his internal double-standards about maturity. Maybe.      "... then you're just admitting that you care more about the physical comforts of being alive than, like, philosophical virtue."      "Well..." Dayan murmurs, oddly enriched and smiling, "Hmmh, I suppose they are! But it took a great torture for them to admit it. Most people can pay a much cheaper cost to pretend they care about virtue. In that these warriors of mine can find a little pride."      "Move too soon, and a united Elibe could threaten his ambitions."      Roy nods cautiously, soaking up Dysnomia's words. "I'd... I would like to think that even the Bernish army would turn against him, if he were so open about it. I suppose it makes sense for him to bleed even his own men, in that case."      "If I were him, I'd have the whole world on its knees to serve to Iðunn on a silver platter"      And then a sharp disbelieving cough. "I-- I'm sorry?" It's completely unclear whether he means 'what did you mean by that', or 'I'm sorry for making you want to blow me up dragonstyle'.      "I know that you can intuit the rest."      "'Something that grew where nothing should'. I knew someone like that, once, Commander Lilian Rook," the old swordsman says quietly, face still a bit averted. "But your nobles' grace would be better-served by others. However grand your station, nothing you can give me is something I want. And nothing more you can take from me do you have a reason to."
Marigold	R     To Nobunaga's keen appraisal, the old swordsman seems remarkably harmless. In his posture, where his eyes rest, the way he holds his hands, there's no evidence of danger or skill.      Which must be wrong, because Flamel's psychometry just showed him bisecting light cavalry like a rock parts a river.      "If you'll entertain a visitor's curiosity, what's the *most* you could do?"      "Things that Father Sky could not compel me to do again," he says, softly-but-matter-of-factly, and it must be true because he sounds just slightly ashamed, which a man could never do while lying.      His eyes wander the ground for a moment before he speaks again. "Madeleine, I am a blind fool. You're young, and you seem kind. I hope for your sake that you don't understand. But..."      He eases himself down towards the ground, sitting, with his sheathed sword against the wall beside him. His eyes drift shut, as he tries to put words to something he can't quite reach. "... 'Sacae' and 'Bern'. 'Hope' and 'despair'. Names you cannot touch. There's something wrong with my heart, and... and if I let weightless words like those move my heavy sword, I will go terribly astray."      "we call them psychohazards, a sort of injury sustained in the heart, but you look like you've had yours for quite a very long time..."      "A long, long time," the old swordsman murmurs. By now Lugh and the other wagons have mostly caught up; the junior psychonaut comes to Flamel's side, proudly bearing a little backpack studded with merit badges. "Please? Agent Parsons is really incredible! It's a way to help people that doesn't involve any 'heavy swords' at all," Lugh earnestly tries to sell. "Yes, yes. I'll help you if you stay, but I won't leave here. My world is this big, and no bigger; I know my faithless heart's limits." He starts to open his eyes at the kid's pleading, wearily. "These seductions to adventure--" "Go on, Karel," says Lucius from behind Lugh, looking terrifyingly pitiless. "-ghck?!" "Shrinking your world to avoid fixing your heart. Is that all you've done since 'giving up the blade'?" 'Karel' looks like he's seen a ghost, clutching at his chest. Lucius obliges by walking over and grabbing the poor sitting man's ear as if he were a child to scold. "Was the matter with being the 'Sword Devil' the 'Sword' half?" "N-no, wait, you're--!" "Didn't I tell you any of God's children can grow and change?" "He hasn't aged! Do you all see him too?!"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"Madeleine, I am a blind fool. You're young, and you seem kind. I hope for your sake that you don't understand. But..."     Maddie's jaw sets, not with anger but with grim recollection of her own past. Her eyes are witness and testament to the end of worlds, and for a moment perhaps they speak for themselves.     "'Hope' and 'despair'. Names you cannot touch. There's something wrong with my heart, and... and if I let weightless words like those move my heavy sword, I will go terribly astray."     Madeleine follows the swordsman until he sits against the wall. Leaning back against the stone, she crosses one ankle over the other, settles in like she might be here a while. "Yeah. Mine too." It's a matter-of-fact comment that makes 'inner darkness and fundamental misshape of the soul' sound like the day's weather. "Long story, I guess, but I have a feeling you could follow along if I told it." A tilt of the head to glance half-downward at the seated warrior. "Goes down easier with a warm drink, though. Sure you wanna stay out here?"     Flamel makes his pitch, the swordsman rebuffs, and Lucius cuts in, finally putting a name to the man beside Madeleine. She makes half a sound as the priest reaches down for Karel's ear, but it's not exactly a laugh. "I asked the wrong guy if he knew ya."
Marigold	It's the work of some number of hours, if not the rest of the day, to wind all of the projects in Bayantset to their conclusion. Nobunaga's faithful workers fortify the town in their (little) great project; Lucius and Clarine help mend the sick; Sue suggests an only-moderately-inconvenient root that could be added to their diets from some several miles away.      Being reassured by Paladins forces being put here is contingent entirely on how much the villagers trust Multiversals, and also how much they believe Bern will be ousted in a short timespan. Both those qualities start at 'low', but steadily rise to at least 'low-moderate' over the course of the evening.      Some things take longer. Merlinus takes only an hour to make his survey of the yurts; effectively infinite money is at hand, but very finite craftsmen. He estimates eighty percent of them can be mended in two days, partially by scrapping the other twenty percent. Grim, but bearable.      "... You're saying we'll need to forgive them," says Sue, unpacking supplies near Petra. "The Djute. Because Bern is as big as both put together. And it wins when we fight."      Her jaw settles as she lifts something light and tosses it in a stack. ". . . We were like squabbling siblings once. I heard. I don't know how it can go back to that. Or better."      It'll have to, though. She can take that point.      Sue and Dayan both get taken in by the Psychonauts Ruse. They share a tent, not looking at each other; then Lugh springs his trap on them, putting him in her dreary rain-slicked mountain meadow where ghosts murmur in the fog, and her in his firelit grand hall where the light and sparks dance in mythopoetic shapes. In both, there's a similar squirming guilty knot to stab through. And for both-- They jolt up from their couches. "... How could you think that?" "How could you blame yourself? Sue, you're nearly still a child-" "It was the task you gave me, grandfather." "And I shouldn't have! I--" "I wasn't equal to it." "... No. You were. It just..." ". . . " As Flamel says. It wasn't fair. Breathless, afterwards, they can't look each other in the eyes again. But somehow they 'can't look each other in the eyes' a little less.
Marigold	Mustering the town's Kutolah to war, while expecting its Djute population to stay, is a tough sell. The dim awareness that Bern really is bigger than their spat, that their distant Djute loved ones should accept a bloody nose in exchange for pushing out the invader, has a little grip but is deeply unpopular.      It's Karel who does the most to steady that situation, surprisingly. Chastised by Lucius, he does his best to sell it to them; that 'this is a righting of the balance' between their people, and that 'those who came to press you back to service at arrow-point' can't be allowed to prevail.      They listen to him, at least enough to not storm off or kill anyone.      All throughout, there's a little thrumming in the townsfolk's conversation. "And Arna's cough was...!" "You really think those roots will help?" "Those Paladins are..." "Come now, we couldn't keep relying on Karel anyway..." "I suppose things can't get worse." "The yurts for free? Really...?" "And my, that man with the slicked-down hair..." "Yaru, you can do better than *him*!"      . . .      It reaches its peak when Dayan and Roy make their way outside the city after Lilian, and she gives her crowd-buzzing speech. There's a collective held breath as the arrows are trimmed and fall to the ground.      Thank Father Sky that they can't see Dayan's look of surprise when they do. He swallows, steadies himself, and walks up to pretend like he expected that.      Planting his sword in the dirt, he turns around to face his tribesmen. Sue smiles at him from the back. The preamble to his strategy against Bern is short; Lilian has obviated most of the need.      "Two winters ago, when Mother Earth tasted the thickest of our blood and wept, the Otherworld came to us. It did not come as our escape."      It wasn't fair. His voice cracks slightly. "It came, as the Divine Weapons did, because there is only so much wrong the world will tolerate before it places a hilt in our hands."