Not For Owen.

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:

Warlord	Faction	Type	Specialty	Feature
Risen Bones	Risen Bones	Lich Unicorn	Compulsion	-
Geldbit	independant	female	-	-
Malign Gaze Jr.	independant	female unicorn	skrying, rape/perversion	one-eyed
Saltwithers	independant	-	-	-
Scarflanks the Callow	independant	female pegasus	pegasus magic	featherless, scarred by Scion
Scion the Fleshgrafter	independant	-	chimeras	one of the oldest warlords (as in has gone the longest without getting murdered)
Numinous Spirit	Lords of Nevershyed	unicorn	-	-
Baleful Gaze	Lords of Nevershyed	unicorn	-	-
Genius Loci	Lords of Nevershyed	unicorn	Studied teleportation magic	Nevershyed alumnus of Crooked Tower (with Emerald Hues)
Sootstreaks	Probably Risen Bones	unicorn zony	Free Town	elective dictator of Freetown

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

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.
Farrisia's plan: We kill Malign Gaze Jr., work out an alliance with the lords of Nevershyed, and resolve all other conflicts through diplomacy.
Gabrio's plan: We tell the warlords about Nova's plan and leave to them everything work itself 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.

~Akasha