Aldinoch

[Alinar]

Alinar arches an eyebrow when Aldinoch explains his concern over the artifact destruction, and listens intently on the following discussion.

"The Master, then, is likely the only one who knows the true culmination of these rituals. Haven is disrupting and redirecting them to save the life of this 'Dreamer' - or so they believe. Is this not yet another guise of the Master? Have we simply been acting as another cog in his overall scheme? I, personally, cannot accept that Phanterra is merely the product of someones imagination."

[GM-Mike]

Aldinoch considers the words of Alinar and finally nods. "You may be right. It wouldn't surprise me anyway. Part of the Master's success at manipulation is getting people to believe what he wants them to believe, sometimes through words, sometimes through magic. He has been known to have success even against the strongest of minds."

[Alinar]

"When one values something, one can be manipulated. Haven places an appropriately high value on a great many lives, the Dreamer says the world will be destroyed unless Haven does as instructed. Haven must either obey, find another way to remove the danger, or disprove the danger. It would be safe to assume all efforts at the latter two options have been for naught, leaving only the one option."

[GM-Taki]

*Korrigan nods as Alinar speaks.*

"Bingo. I don't know how much magic it takes to recreate reality for YEARS, but I'll bet it takes a whole lot less to make the world look like hell for a little while. Maybe the reason we've haven't found shit about this is that there ain't shit to find...

If the Master wanted these rituals to happen giving them to the Tear and telling them what they wanted to hear is a good way to make it work.

I'm also guessing our involvement might be more than just another way to make sure the ritual happens. We've been interrupting these rituals and killing the hell out of the Red Tear. I've noticed that that crazy bowl-on-a-pole lights up every time one of them dies. I'm not sure if the Red Tear would be willing to sacrifice themselves for that ritual, but if they needed to die to make it work, sending us in at the right moment would be a good way to get them all dead in a hurry."

[GM-Mike]

Aldinoch nods. "That makes sense. We need to figure out what he's doing, and it would be nice to try and disable to device before we kill the next round of red tear. That of course makes it trickier..."

He looks concerned for a moment and then in a quiet voice, "A month or two before I...defected...the Master came to me, triumphant, saying only you, here in Haven could stop him now. He had never confided in me before nor since, and now I wonder if somehow he sensed in me that I would one day be here, before you, leading you right where he wanted you to go..."

He looks down at the floor a moment, and then his head snaps back up. "No matter. I've come to believe that perhaps there was truth in his words nonetheless so I propose we get set to move out, figure out what he's planning, destroy the device, then the red tear, then the Master...and then myself."

[Alinar]

Alinar archs an eyebrow. "Odd that you would seek your own destruction, as well. Why?"

[Jamie]

Aurora looked up from a corner of the inn, where she had been sketching in a small black notebook.

"So what you are saying, Aldinoch, is that weeks before you betrayed everything he stood for, this 'Master' of yours, who had no reason to know you from any of his innumerable minions, came to you and told you how to stop him... and it never occurred to you that just maybe there was something suspicious about that?" She shook her head in disgust. "I know we... questioned... you very thoroughly to make sure you were telling the truth, but did anyone think to check if you were under a charm, or a suggestion?" She frowned again and tapped Aldinoch's forehead. "Or barring that, perhaps we should just check to see if you've got a working brain."

[Marcus]

Marcus had come in quietly several minutes ago, but had remained quiet while the rest spoke to each other, first busying himself with cleaning his gear and weapons(though precious little could ever be seen sullying his personal effects- he cleaned them almost compulsively), after which he had moved onto dome of the dishes behind the bar.

When Korrigan spoke of the magic "item" reacting to each death of a Cultist, he paused for a good length of time, and then shook his head, wide eyed.

"It might be paranoid of me, but I'd never thought of it that way, Korrigan.

By the Light, we may have been assisting someone with blood sacrifices for a ritual. It makes sense- if you need bodies sacrificed, which do you use: a crowd of innocents- which others like us will surely wish to save, or set up a group of villains as the fall-guys. Villains specifically tailored to be ones that we here in Haven are sure to move against "for the common good", and that we will use any and all of our maximum force against, thus ensuring the highest possible death toll?

I'm not sure which I would be more horrified about- that such a thing might be enacted....or that even unknowingly I would be a willing participant.

I think this changes things about our goals in the Corsair Isles, if that is truly our next journey. You can be sure to count myself and Fionna in when we leave. "

[GM-Mike]

To Alinar

The corruption that exists within the red tear rests within me as well. I feel its pull. I want to corrupt, to destroy, and I have the power to do so. It's only this singular focus that keeps my mind off such things. I must be destroyed. It is the only way to assure the total victory that I seek.

To Aurora
I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that he didn't know me or that I was just another minion as you put it. I was as close to him as anyone in the organization. We talked regularly, though I never felt he confided in me like he did on that occasion. And I believe I was checked for charms and suggestions, though my memory is fuzzy on that particular topic.

Aldinoch just nods in agreement as Marcus talks

[GM-Amanda]

"Hang on."

Cirrus leaned over from her perusal of Raphisto's latest delivery, dropped her bag on the counter, then picked up and tilted Korrigan's bottle into her beak, rolling the vessel carefully as she finished her pour to avoid a single drop spilled, liberating approximately a jigger's worth.

"I'm not drunk enough to have this conversation yet. Let me see if I've got all of the major points here, and I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong. One, and most importantly, we're assuming you're right in saying that we need to do something about these rituals, and we shouldn't be able to win quite so hard. I have yet to find a problem that can't be solved with a proper dose of explosives. So if we take that as true, then point two, we actually did good in Gateway with the Jetstone Offensive smashy beaty fun time, theoretically if this Master pendejo is trying to rope us in to doing his laundry. Eventually we had a time of it in Suspin, even if I had to take a back seat to soothe the natives. Three, I can't believe there is NOTHING about any of this drenn in any of the books I'm still not allowed to touch. If you're gonna run a Lethnal Shuffle, you have to make them look right before you go left. Aldinoch, you can feel free to chime in here, but if it was really as easy as saying "Oh look, there's stuff to stab over there, go do it!", I'mma be right angry at myself. There's gotta be some other kind of feeder about it we haven't found yet, one little nugget of truth for the marks to latch onto, and I'll have to go on a liberation mission if these Corsair islands are necromancy central like you say, refer to point one. Point Four, we have no *good* backup plan if this goes up the cloaca. Point Five, in direct violation of point one, if this Master is twisting us around so we can do the white glove sweep after years of thump in the night, whatever he is doing is EXACTLY my business. Point Six, I might have broken Lemus' brain, so he's even more likely not to be right in the head. Point Seven... how can I put this... the guy who showed up to tell the grand heroes of Haven etcetera that the grand heroes of Haven etcetera were the only ones who could defeat the former master of said messenger. Even if you were quote unquote close with the pendejo... REALLY? Scratch point three, I am horrendously upset with myself."

She slumped down heavily in a chair and extracted the cube from her pouch. Her feathers puffed up and down rhythmically according to the twitching of a length of wood in one direction or another.

"Point Eight - this does all make sense. The energy was being redirected when we moved the machina, we just never stopped to ask from *where*. We may have succeeded more than we hoped in Suspin with the light beam of doom. We just have to reverse the order. Blow it all up, then stab anything that isn't us. We usually end up having to do it the other way around, and if we've got a gropo trying to play us, we can't fly this straight."

[GM-Mike]

Aldinoch stares at her a moment, blinking a couple of times. "I think you got that all right, but, I don't know, maybe I'm getting older but I only understood about 25% of what you just said, but yeah, let's go with it."

[Alinar]

"Hmm. Capturing Red Tear members rather than killing them is also not an option, as they have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to destroy themselves in such a situation. Upon such death their tainted power would undoubtedly still be syphoned. This is indeed a clever puzzle requiring significant consideration."

[Rothek]

* rothek was trying to follow the conversation....and failing miserably. cirrus spoke really fast and the thought of inadvertently helping the red tear made it very hard to suppress the urge to bound over the table and rip aldinoch's head off with his jaws, he didn't want to stain the floor of the tipsy traveler though. so in an effort to keep from having to pick bits of aldinoch out of his fangs the beastman went back behind the bar and returned with a tankard and small keg that had "merguncy supliey" scratched on the side of it.

rothek looked at the tankard then the keg. the beast chuffed and looked at korrigan as if to say "oh what the hell", he then got back up to put the tankard away and when he returned rothek yanked the stopper out with his teeth, spat it out on the table, tipped the entire keg up and took a long drink.

[Marcus]

*Marcus raises his hands in a placating gesture*

Now, first of all, I would want to reiterate that this is all a theory, so please, no one take this as canon. I may simply be far too suspicious of arcane events that I am having a hard time keeping up-to-date upon. But I have to say that if I were an evil man, it's exactly something that I would absolutely love to enact against my foes.

(To Alinar)

Be that as it may, if that theory is in any way accurate -which is to say that we might actually be the cause of something terrible by killing all these Red Tear- we need to find out if that is a possibility. Then, if there is some sort of kernel of truth to it, we could go further into finding out if there was some way that we could break the link, because it's a sure thing that we will need to be taking action against the Cult, but we also can't have that necessity be working against us and towards our enemies' actual goals.

If there is some foul deed being perpetrated by what we are assuming to be heroic actions for the common good, it's something we need to nip in the bud right now.

[Alinar]

"The possibility certainly exists and its probability is alarmingly high. The Master's schemes must be disrupted, and if we do play a vital part then there can be little doubt that we are also in a superb position the thwart them utterly. The question, of course, is how. Understanding the nature of these rituals and the expectations of the Master and/or Dreamer, as well as those of the indivual cultists, their backgrounds and communications, might all prove decisive boons."

"There are a number of avenues of study I would like to pursue. I will remain here to test the waters of various investigations while the bulk of Haven confronts the next ritual site. Concentrating on a single avenue of approach is ill-advisable at this stage."