Actually, both are true.

The wall can't shrink inwards because the local deity prevents it. However, the local deity is Lawful to the extreme, and only works to prevent magic on ground that hasn't been fully conquered by the enemy. Once ground has been conquered, he no longer exerts influence there.

As long as the enemy fears traps on a piece of ground, they haven't fully conquered it.

Piper will happily explain this if asked.

Alright, I'll poke about and ask Piper for advice on dealing with the encroaching enemy. Also, IIRC, the Seeker is aware of whether or not it's victims are still alive, yes?

Could I use the extra materials I scavenged to build a makeshift silencer? And could I slow the advance of the enemy by harassing them from the wall?

Yes.



Yes, if you use your Universal Gadget stunt.

...or you could try using a crossbow. Those are pretty silent in comparison, and one can be found for you.



Probably a kind of a mixed blessing. It'll slow the advance of the Kinetic Wall if the enemy can't search an area. But, at the same time, driving the looters away from their looting is likely to drive them back to following Martel's orders.

You could slow the enemy by shooting them from the wall, though a crossbow would be a dead waste of time (to slow to reload, too short range). You could also drag out our sniper to do it (he's best suited) and have your character make a few time bombs. Get our pet thief to sneak the bombs into dead zones, they blow a few enemies away and suddenly they're scared of booby traps again, and *poof* the dead zone retreats. Then our pet sniper can shoot a few suddenly exposed high value targets. Later, rinse, etc.

Of course, we do know someone who could help make the local thieves invisible...

Balthazar isn't around at the moment and characters with missing players don't do anything substantial until the player orders them to. So having him do some sniping is not an option at the moment. I used up all my materials on the last batch of bombs and now if I want to do anything technological I need to use my Universal Gadget, which I want to keep on standby just in case of a true last second emergency.

And I don't think Piper's powers work within the city walls. Something to ask her about.

If I'm gonna do anything to stop the advance the only thing I really can do is march down there and do it myself. Do some running and gunning. Dashing in and out of various alleyways to keep from being caught and cornered. I floated the idea to Sir Sparhawk a little bit ago but got overlooked.

The best course of action is simple. Bribe the Patriarchs, ASAP. I could even head in there myself and use my Rapport skills to try and sway them to our side. Get a new non-Raven Arch-Prelate elected and get the army we need now.

We can't really bribe folks until the session ends; not without simply announcing we'll give two gold bars to everyone who votes for Ortzel while sitting behind a large pile of gold bars. Felix selling them on a new bribe will pretty much have to wait until dark when we either visit the corrupt ones or summon them.

But do recall that we still have a few boxes of rifle grenades and lots of bullets to go with the MG/grenade launcher; even without leaving the wall that can put a hideous crimp in the activities of the attacking army. Or you can use a few grenades to make a bomb or two. They don't have to be too big.

I don't think the grenade launchers have a long enough range to be useful, and even if they did once the enemy realized what was going on all the mercenaries will just scurry behind the barrier and all the Seeker victims will just sacrifice individual drones blocking grenades. It'll do a negligible amount of damage and probably won't buy us enough time for tomorrow's vote.

At this point I feel I've tried pretty much everything I can manage here out in the field beyond simply wading out there and engaging in battle in person. Something I'm not going to discount doing, after some consultation with Sir Sparhawk and Piper to see if we can do it and feasibly have a chance at getting away with our lives.

You can send individual notes to individual Primates, and you can ask them to step up to the guest gallery for a private word if you're talking about things that you'd rather not put in writing.

Observation suggests that the boys who carry the notes are not in the habit of reading them. You can't hide who you talk to, but you can keep what you say fairly private.

If there's nothing else to do before sunset, I can definitely just skip time forward until sunset. I just don't want to skip time until you've done whatever you'd prefer to do now. Whether that's laying time bombs or trying to bribe Patriarchs or whatever.

Yeah, unless I'm straight up offered a bi of extra ability to be able to do something I don't think there's anything I physically can do, here at the walls that won't be a waste of time and/or make things worse.

I think I'd like to head to the Basilica and invite some Patriarchs up for some discussions on how they might best ply their votes. You know, give them an idea about what they'd be getting into if they voted for Raven and what they'd be missing out on if they didn't vote for Ortzel...

If Felix does that, he may want to bring some gold. Otherwise they've got no reason to believe we have any.

If I do bring some gold... what was door security like? It'll be awfully odd looking if I get searched at the door and I'm found to be carrying lots of precious metals. Don't want that confiscated or anything.

Door security was mainly concerned with checking for weapons. You're fairly sure that they'll find the gold, but you haven't heard of any laws against taking gold into the Basilica.

I'm mostly concerned that if I bring in a bunch of gold and all of a sudden a bunch of voters change their minds, it might look funny. Would that get reported on by the door guard?

That's going to depend on whether the door guard's sympathies are with Raven or with Ortzel, and what (if anything) he personally thinks about bribery.

Just because he can't vote doesn't mean he can't have a personal opinion.

We don't need half a ton of gold there and then; one decent sized gold bar should do it. It's a proof that we have gold, not the actual bribe. Those can be delivered overnight.