Akasha's Journal, do not refer to without looking at actual notebook in-game at least once per session

116

• We talked with Nova (after talking to Glassy Fracture, her secretary... I think)! I added to my notes below about each warlord. We're going to go meet Nova and Flint Spark in Nevershyed. Flint will stay with us and Nova will hand dossiers about each warlord over. In the meantime, we convinced her to put off the execution to the end of the summit.
• Then we kinda badgered Nova for a while about how she was too willing to resort to trickery and murder. I feel like we got through to her in the end that it's important to always try to do better, to expect to do better. Never to resign yourself to evil.
• Gabrio also got Elly to give us a passcode for when we meet so that we know it's each other. Then she got called away for something that deeply disturbed her but that she was confident we couldn't help with. Sigh... she has a long way to go before become the bearer of magic.
• Elly's passcode: "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit, shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it."
• I think it means, uh... fingers... that move... write stuff, then don't erase it, even when they cry. What?

115

• We were on the glider and in the air, headed for Free Town, before I even knew Emerald had changed our flight plan to there instead of Nevershyed. It was a good decision, but she didn't really ask anyone, so... yeah. It was a nice flight, though. The pilot had his kid fly the glider partway. Otherwise we went between exposition and sleeping. Which is often one and the same.
• Things picked up a lot more when we finally landed. We were immediately greeted and taken for bad guys. The guards took our titles (Dr. Dame Akasha the Sexy and Marvelous, and there could hardly be a better or more appropriate title to be found) and lead us to Sootstreaks, who almost immediately revealed himself to be Nova's "inside warlord" via blatantly and obviously lying that he didn't know her. Still, he gave us some great food (which tested non-poisonous) and accommodations. Talking with him gave me a bit of a greater understanding of the people we're up against, though there's obviously still blanks:

In any case, after we got back to our rooms, plans were laid out.

1. Nova's plan: We distract and diffuse the armies while Nova kills the warlords and solidifies Sootstreaks' rule over them under her and Risen Bones.
2. Farrisia's plan: We kill Malign Gaze Jr., work out an alliance with the lords of Nevershyed, and resolve all other conflicts through diplomacy.
3. Gabrio's plan: We tell the warlords about Nova's plan and leave to them to sort everything out.

...I am not in favor of any of these plans. Luckily, we don't have to decide yet. Emerald's going to skry Nova later and we'll talk to her. I hope to get more info on these warlords, why they "deserve" to die, and what she expects of us (like, when do we need to be where). If possible, I'd really like to convince her to take some alternate route than all this backstabbing and murder... but I really need to better understand WHY she's doing this, first, to really argue with her about it. So hopefully we can figure this all out soon.

So, in summary, I need to ask:

1. Where do we need to be when while you do what, exactly, where?
2. Why do we have to kill them all? Can none of them be spared? What are their crimes?
3. When you said you needed us to prevent the armies from turning on each other after you kill all the leaders... just how long will we have to be doing that? How long are we really committing to this? How will you be stabilizing and consolidating power up here?
4. And, last but not least, where is Flint Spark and can he join with us? It'd help a lot given we still sport an incomplete set of elements.

Oh, and one last thing: DON'T BOW TO ANY WIZARD! Sootstreak made it pretty clear that was a big no-no.