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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Mon May 07, 2018 1:54 am 
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A thought crosses Arkady's head. Sometime before they go he asks Vanire: "Are you acquainted with a Styric named Zalasbra?"

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Mon May 07, 2018 9:48 am 
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"Excellent!" says Vanire. "We leave at first light tomorrow."

In response to Arkady's question he says "Never heard of her. Why do you ask?"

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Mon May 07, 2018 11:55 am 
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Arkady considers grinning, then decides not to. "If Lady Sephrenia isn't available, he's going to be the one who helps us cure the Queen. Perhaps you should get to know him as well."

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Mon May 07, 2018 4:53 pm 
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Felix will spend more time trying to categorize the various rooms in the palace. When he's in need of a stretch he'll see if any of the knights want to spar against him and Theresa. After that he'll tuck in for the night.

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Tue May 08, 2018 1:27 am 
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"If I have anything to say on the matter, the Lady Sephrenia will be there," insists Vanire. "But I should no doubt talk with this Zalasbra as well."

Much to Felix' dismay, the same bug sometimes seems to be in multiple rooms. It seems that, not having figured out who the things belong to, a few of the guards are carrying them around so they can ask people 'is this yours?'

He does manage to identify a few of the bugs as 'mobile', though.

He ends up sparring twice, using blunted wooden swords; first against young Berit, one of the initiates. It quickly becomes clear that Berit isn't comfortable with the idea of hitting a woman, and Theresa quickly takes blatant advantage of this fact, leading to a win for Team Felix (though it is two-against-one). In the second sparring match (against one of the more senior Knights, one who has no compunction against hitting women) the fighting is a lot more even - though the Knight does win in the end, he has to really work for it and compliments Team Felix on being able to provide a really good workout.

Despite the bruises, Felix sleeps really well that night.

--------------

Next morning dawns, and the journey back to the ship (two days) happens without incident. Vanire heads off to talk with Captain Argent (who is accompanied by David and his everpresent clipboard, and Doctor Vanderbilt to describe what the cure needs). If one of the party wants to translate, that will probably be helpful - if not, they'll struggle through the meeting with the translator program and a tablet.

Zalasbra, incidentally, is nowhere to be seen. Enquiries are made, and apparently he had left earlier that morning in order to "go and meditate or something" in the surrounding forest, and is expected back tomorrow or the next day.

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Tue May 08, 2018 6:33 am 
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Arkady will translate, and as he does so try to pay attention to the folks doing the talking with an eye towards figuring out what's not being said (if anything).

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Tue May 08, 2018 9:41 pm 
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Felix will also be on standby so he can hear the conversation. He'll take a moment to survey the work that's been done so far and work on drawing up some plans to improve construction speed and efficiency.

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 9:23 am 
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It's quickly clear to Arkady that everyone's motivations are slightly different - but no-one's making any particular effort to hide their motivations.

Vanire wishes to have his Queen restored to life and health. Part of this is due to a sense of patriotic duty; part of it is also due to having a very good idea of what will happen if she actually dies and the entire country is more or less left in the hands of the corrupt Primate, with practically zero chance of having any way to legally oust him.

Captain Argent wants the local leader to be someone who owes him (and the colony) a debt of gratitude. He's clearly ready to brown-nose that debt of gratitude into more tangible benefits.

David wants to ramp up the colony's production as quickly as possible. To him, the meeting is a disruption in his busy schedule, tolerated only because it holds the promise of great returns in the future. Nonetheless, he is the first to call people back to order if they get distracted, and keeps everyone on-topic as much as possible, mainly in order to ensure that there is little to no time wasted in the meeting. (However, he does not rush - one gets the impression that David would carefully read the small print on his cellphone contract).

Dr. Vanderbilt's concern is entirely the safety of the patient. That the patient in question is in this case a Queen doesn't bother or concern her in the least. She's very definite with regards to the odds of the Queen living for the first ten minutes after the Crystal Throne goes down (not great at the moment, and after a brief discussion with Vanire over certain symptoms that the Queen had displayed shortly before being sealed in, her estimates can be narrowed down to the lower end of the range). Nonetheless, as non-great as the odds are, they're a whole lot better than zero.

Unfortunately, Zalasbra being absent, the question of the precise role of Styric magic in the cure is hard to quantify; of the people at the table, the one with the best knowledge on this topic himself is Vanire, and all he knows for sure is that Styric magic can't heal all the damage the poison causes. However, he happily accepts the statements that Arkady recalls Zalasbra having made as accurate.

Having dealt with the odds of success of the procedure, the meeting then turns to two points; first, can the odds of success be improved (Dr. Vanderbilt thinks that this is possible; at the very least, she wants to consult with a few experts currently still under cryonic suspension, and they will need a bit of time) and secondly, exactly what is required for the cure (in a logistical sense). As far as the logistics go, given the amount of equipment required for the various medical procedures, it is quickly decided that the equipment will need to be transferred first to the Pandion chapterhouse (either by truck or by horse-and-cart), taking as much time as necessary; and then, when the time comes to attempt the cure, this equipment will be taken (guarded by a large number of Pandions working in shifts) directly to the throne room (the necessary walls knocked out to make room at this point as well) and used within two days - hopefully before the Primate manages to arrange to have the stuff smashed.

Vanire would clearly prefer to have the Queen restored as fast as possible (for obvious reasons), but by the same token would rather not risk her not surviving; in light of this, he doesn't think that the Terran equipment should go beyond the Pandion chapterhouse until Sephrenia is back and has been consulted with regards to the Styric magic side of the cure.

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 6:17 am 
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Some time in the not too distant past...
Weremensh wrote:
Arkady will help wade through the recordings from the bugs for a while, then eventually go talk to Roger about coming up with some kind of system to automatically wade through it for us and at least flag key words.


"Well, any system even close to being usable is going to be beyond a one man job. And that's not even accounting for the added wrinkle of teaching one of our computers to understand a non-earth language... ah, but well I suppose we could use an earth language as a stand in. The ship's voice interface is robust and fairly portable* I believe... but I imagine the results would be more hilarious than practical.

There's also the issue of storage. Voice recordings take up a lot of space. More than David is likely to give us."

(OOG: I'd probably have to spend a fate point to declare that though =)

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 2:56 pm 
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Roger: Science: +5 Genius (Computers): +1 Roll: -1 Total: +5

The biggest problem with any sort of keyword search through sound files is that there is no phoneme data for the Elene language - and thus no way to translate the sound to text, and match a word typed in. In a flash of lateral thinking, though, Roger realises that typing in the word is not strictly necessary - and he manages to kludge together a sort of audio search engine from pre-written libraries, which merely requires you to speak a word (or short phrase, but it really works better with single words) and then searches through the recorded sound files for another occurrence of the same spoken word. There's also a slider for 'sensitivity' - turn it too low, and you'll get a lot of false positives, but if you turn it too high, it might miss people who merely speak with a slightly different accent.

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 9:46 pm 
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With the meeting largely resolved, Felix would like to turn to the matter of the potential incursion of Rendorish Fanatics and start discussing potential plans for that with Vanire. Depending on how long it takes for them to build up steam (and assuming that Aramsham hasn't simply forgotten) it could take them a while to reach the surrounding lands.

If Vanire wants, Felix would also like to take him on a tour of the ship's facilities. With Captain Argent's permission, of course.

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Fri May 18, 2018 3:54 am 
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Vanire seems unconcerned - the Rendorish fanatics, he says, would be easily dealt with as soon as they step out of the desert (where they have the annoying habit of vanishing amongst the dunes). Of course, he'll have a group of Church knights on standby and is working on a more reliable means of communication with Sir Parasim; but by and large, the fanatics are (in his opinion) likely to be no more than a minor problem.

Captain Argent magnanimously insists on leading the tour himself, perhaps so that he can control where it goes. He's more than happy to show Vanire the medical bay, one of the smaller working hydroponics bays (and one that is not yet up and running), and a few other areas on the ship; but he deliberately avoids the cryonics bay, the store rooms, and all the other now-working hydroponics bays.

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 1:49 pm 
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Arkady tags along to translate and eavesdrop.

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 3:13 am 
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Felix and Theresa will get to helping build things on the colony for the time being.

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 Post subject: Re: Pandions On Trial
 Post Posted: Fri May 25, 2018 2:37 pm 
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Arkady discovers nothing of note during the tour; Captain Argent is hiding some of the Terran's capabilities from the locals (and most certainly hiding the sheer number of Terrans still in cryosleep) but there seems to be malice in that omission; indeed, nothing but caution. Vanire, for his part, notices that the tour is evading certain parts of the ship, but does not ask about them - yet.

On the following morning, as Vanire is preparing to leave, Zalasbra returns from his brief absence, and a second round of meetings re The Cure is promptly arranged and held, with an expert in Styric magic now present and contributing. The only information that Zalasbra provides, though, is that (a) Styric magic undeniably can restore the brain, but that (b) Zalasbra himself is not personally able to work that particular spell. However, he is also able to confirm that (c) the Lady Sephrenia is undeniably capable; her personal presence will thus be required to restore the Queen's full mental faculties. Zalasbra also raises the point that having a Styric healer (of which he describes Sephrenia as "the best mortal example") at hand during the first minutes, after the Crystal Throne is removed, can surely only improve the Queen's chances.

Once this meeting is over, Vanire leaves to return to Cimmura, and a couple of days later a few carts, containing exactly sufficient supplies to wake up the medical staff that Vanire had requested awakening (and the exactitude of those supplies had been carefully negotiated by David and Vanire with the help of Arkady as translator) arrived, and said medical staff were woken and put to work on the problem of the Queen's cure.

--------------

On the following day, Sir Bevier (still carefully listening to the various conversations recorded in the Palace) flagged one particular conversation for immediate attention:

Quote:
The sound of someone writing on paper; this bug had been previously shown to be located in the Primate Raven's private study

Footsteps approaching, a knock on the door

Raven: Enter.

Sound of door opening

Raven: Why are you -

???: Silence.

Two seconds of silence follow. The scratching of the quill is absent, but background noise from outside the office can still be heard.

Raven: Expla-

???: Silence.

The scratching of the quill resumes.

Raven: But -

There is no audible interruption; the scratching of the quill merely stops for a few seconds before continuing.

???: Speaks two words in Styric - Sir Bevier suspects that the words were part of a minor spell

Brief sound of crackling flames

Two sets of footsteps, leaving the room.

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