One Through Ten

>Contact this Stumpus at once!

wait a second who is Stumpus
If they are trustworthy enough for what The Lawyer was doing then they are trustworthy enough to contact first

>Seconding Wichtel's suggestion to get the scoop on Stumpus ASAP.

Wait, wait... who's Stumpus? Can we contact Stumpus? Maybe contacting Stumpus would be a good idea.

Or a very, very bad idea, depending on who they are.

They all simultaneously realize that they have no damn clue who Stumpus is. It's not a member of the castle staff, nor anyone who visits or corresponds with the castle regularly. They read and, if they can, answer, all letters that come into the castle to minimize the amount of work on The Lawyer, so a letter from some 'Stumpus' would have been seen. This means that they must have been communicating magically. The secrecy they could understand after all, The Will is incredibly important, but this certainly makes things more difficult.

... Maybe someone should prepare some defenses in case of attack.

Eight walks off.
"Ok, you guys, we all know I'm not the most...diplomatic soul."
The others agree.
"So, I'm gonna go rouse the guards and give 'em a summary of what's happened. Keep this place on lock down, and make sure if any of The Lords decide to show up without contacting first, we'll see 'em, and I'll try and give y'all some warning through the hivemind. Stay frosty, sibs."

She exits.

((Note: Remember, just because she's leaving doesn't mean you can't check in on what she's doing at the same time of the others.))



And then, almost as if on cue, five of the ten answer stones alight. The other five are either already on their way or haven't noticed yet. One quickly rushes over and casts a quick concealing charm on The Lawyer's body. They're going to have to answer soon, and it's going to take a while to clean up all that blood.

"Ok, so." Five says.
" Mr.Bartholomew, King Killabillun, Chief Penuri, Oracle Moira, and Elder Wythe aren't calling right now. We could call THEM if we wanted to, but... frankly, Bartholomew is the only one there that doesn't completely creep me out."

"High Mage Vera, Head Scientist Anna, Hosts Donny & Penny, Lady Paloma, and Captain Wisp ARE calling and we should probably get to them as soon as possible. We could take it one at a time, with any one of us, or all of us, talking to them, or open up the answer stones all at once and just have a group call if we just wanted to get it over with. However, that could easily result in them fighting. Out of all of them, I'd suspect Vera to be the most. Uh. Difficult. Captain Wisp is probably going to be the friendliest, but also the most patient. They might react differently depending on which one of us answers, too..."

So. Who will it be?

((Note: If you guys don't remember the descriptions of The Lords, I understand completely. There's some short summaries of them in this post. ))