Swamped

If it's truly not here for you, then you should be able to retreat a safe distance and watch this play out. You never saw where the kidnapped appeared from, after all... There must be more going on here than meets the eye.

Meanwhile, Rudolph's burrowing seems to have uncovered something. Did he know those wires were buried there when he started digging?

You decide to get in the driver's seat, next to Yvonne. You can yell at Long later.

For now, you ask Yvonne to lead you some distance away, but not so far you can't watch. You want to know what the hell's going on.

The circle of crows opens slightly as you approach. Somehow, that seems worrying. Are they actually keeping you in? They're just crows.

Crows who showed up with a servant of the gods.

Regardless, Yvonne leads the wagon around the oasis a bit, and hands you a pair of long goggles. Seems she's been holding onto those for a while.

You look through, but you see pretty much the same scene. The woman's still chanting, and the giant crow is keeping its distance. You can't see how that's going to do her much good, since her voice has to give out eventually and her allies don't seem to be able to do much.

Suddenly, you feel the wind picking up. You put down the long goggles to make sure your mask is secure.

That's when you spot something even stranger than the giant crow. There's a robed figure just floating through the air up ahead, and the winds seem to be flowing around them.

They look like they're headed for the oasis. Maybe this is who the crow's really after, and the others are just underlings.

You look to Yvonne. She seems as baffled as you are.

So. What now?

Alright, better pump Long to see what he knows. You don't like being in the dark. Might as well debrief Simone at the same time and see what we know about the kidnappers and their motives.

"Let's go down below," you suggest. "I get the feeling Long has some inkling as to what's going on. Plus, we should probably talk to Simone about whether she learned anything while she was captured."

"You'd better not push her too hard," Yvonne says. "She's just been through a lot, you know."

"I don't plan on it, but fine, let me know if I'm crossing the line."

You go down. Simone rushes towards Yvonne and immediately embraces her; given the state of things, it's probably best to start with Long.

"Long. You looked real shaken up by that crow. You want to tell me why? Because it's about to get in a fight with a wizard, and I need to know if we should be sticking our noses in that."

Long looks pained.

"Do you know what the Marsh Fortress protects, Corvus?"

"Other than us, not really. I got the impression there's something and that's what all this stupid fighting is supposed to be about, but all that matters to me is protecting my home."

Long nods.

"That's how most of us see it these days. The official reason hardly matters to any of the frontline soldiers. In truth, it doesn't matter to me, either; I'm simply charged with executing it."

"And just like Rider, you do your job even if you think it's a dumb idea."

He chuckles.

"I suppose I can't dispute that."

"So what's any of this got to do with our situation here?"

"The gods are watching our battle in the swamp, and they are prepared to act if the Bogknights win. That was the crow-man's warning to me."

Well. That was a straighter answer than you were expecting, but you still don't know what in the hells it means.

Where do you go from here?

To the temple.

Press further on the subject of crows. Much further.

"Why a crow?" you suddenly wonder. "That's really been bugging me. I'm not much on religious lore, is a crow associated with any particular god?"

"Reth," Simone says suddenly. "Well, really she's about birds in general, but crows are her favorite. At least, that's what the pilgrims usually said."

"Pilgrims?" This sounds vaguely familiar, but you can't recall it as a main thread of conversation.

"Reth's main temple is in this desert," Yvonne says. "Because of the debt greblings owe her, we offer our camp as a resting place for her followers as they journey to and from it."

You start mulling over that.

"How far is it from here? I feel like we're going to get more answers over there than we are if we watch this fight play out. Neither side seems all that interested in explaining anything to us."

"It's a three-day pilgrimage from our camp, but the pilgrims go on foot for religious reasons, and that involves a lot of resting," Yvonne says. "With this wagon... I'd say about eight hours. It's quite the detour. And personally, if we don't need to stay here I'd rather get back to camp with Simone. You're the one who wanted to stay and watch."

"That was before a freaking wizard showed up!" you protest.

"If you really want, we could go back to camp now, and then you can gather a group to go check out the temple," says Rudolph. "It'll only add a couple of hours to the trip. Don't see how it'd help to go there, but if that's what we're doing, I figure we might as well regroup at camp first."

He's got a point. This isn't really anything more than a hunch, and if you go back, you can ask Rider to help you investigate.

But just as you're about to agree, Long finally speaks up, after a considerable silence.

What does he want to say?

Do you... feel that?

"Did the rest of you just feel anything?"

You're a bit surprised.

"No," you say. The greblings all shake their heads as well.

"I was afraid of that. It must be ether, then. I think it's best if I drive us back."

"Now hang on a minute. What are you on about?"

"You mentioned a wizard just a moment ago. I believe that wizard is preparing a very powerful spell, powerful enough that I can feel the ether flowing into it from all the way over here. And if there are any unusual effects of that ether flow, well, I'll be better positioned to notice them early, so I'll take the reins."

"No, I'll take the reins and you'll warn me if there's anything I need to watch out for. I know your type, Long. If I give you the reins you might just go charging off with the desert-horse towards the fight to stop whatever's going on."

"I suppose that's a fair assessment from your point of view," Long concedes. "Very well, then. Let's go."

You and Long climb out to the driver's seat and start turning back towards the camp. You still don't know what the hell's going on, but you've decided to figure it out later.

"Veer right!" Long shouts suddenly.

You do, even though you don't see anything.

Until, that is, a spiked desert plant explodes into a pile of juice behind you.

"The hell was that?"

"Exactly what I was worried about," Long says. "Large masses of raw ether being drawn in towards the spell. When you get that much together without a mind actively shaping it, it tends to be very unpleasant for anything solid that gets in the way."

"Can't you do something about it? You're supposed to be a wizard, can't you shape it or whatever?"

"Not any more," Long sighs. "But I can still sense it."

"Well, that's just great."

"If you let me take the reins directly, I could react sooner, rather than having to shout at you. I assure you, I do not have an impulsive and reckless plan this time. I am only concerned with getting us safely out of the affected area."

Well. Should you take him at his word and hand him the reins, or hold on to them yourself?

Hand Long the reins while you use the goggles to scope out what's happening back there, assuming you can see anything at through all these dust devils that are popping up.

"Fine," you mutter, handing over the reins. "But while you're doing that, I'm going to see if I can get a look at what our wizard is doing over there."

You put on the long goggles and look back. It's hard to tell, because there's an awful lot of small dust storms kicking up. You can see a few more splattered plants, though.

Wait a moment. Dust storms? They look to be converging...

"Is that bastard making a sandstorm?" you ask, incredulously. "Is that what's sucking in all the ether or whatever?"

"It would fit with the patterns I'm seeing, but it would also be even more worrying than it sounds," Long says.

"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Large-scale weather control is very difficult. I've never heard of it being done with fewer than a dozen expert wizards. But there are only four people over there, not counting the crows, and two were incapacitated the last I looked."

"So what you're saying is, either this wizard has lots of friends we don't know about, or we're dealing with a really, really powerful wizard."

"That is precisely what has me concerned, yes. But I suppose there's little we can do about it at this point except get out of range."

A question immediately rises to the top of your mind, and you know you're going to regret asking it, but you can't help yourself.

"You said 'little', not 'nothing'," you ask cautiously. "You wouldn't happen to be considering another option, would you?"

"Well, if we wanted to stay in range a little longer for whatever reason, we could make a diversion. I've got something here that might- might- work."

"Well. It's more of a theory," Long says. "If we were going to do something, I'd need to draw the wizard's attention in order to disrupt the spell so it's safer for us to stay here. And I do have an idea on how I could do that... but I can't actually be sure it would work. Since we don't actually have a plan other than fleeing, though, it's something of a moot point."

"Would it help us get away?"

"It would help you get away. I, however, would immediately make myself a target, and that sort of thing seems to upset you. And if it didn't work after all, I'd just be leaving you without a guide who can detect the ether."

"Might as well come out and say what it is you're thinking anyways."

"All right. I was informed earlier than my cloak has had its ether recharged. I might - and I must emphasize the word might here - be able to use it to siphon off ether from our wizard's spell. This would be noticed almost immediately, and it would be fairly obvious to anyone with ether detection abilities where the disruption was coming from."

"Okay, I don't quite get the magic stuff, but the point is, they'd seek you out to make you stop."

"More than likely. But without a next step to the plan, there's little point in it."

Ugh, dammit, it's just as you feared. He told you what he was thinking, and now you're wondering if there's something you can do with it, instead of just sensibly waiting to get back to camp and regroup.
You really hope you don't come up with any ideas before it's too late to turn back.

We don't have any skin in this fight, and joining in on the side of the crow god or the wizard(s) without knowing what they're fighting about could have unintended consequences.

The ether-draining cloak trick might be useful in the future, but for now we should get Simone back to camp safely and warn the rest of the camp about these strange goings on.

No. You are not getting dragged into this mess. At the very least, not until you've got some idea what it is you're getting dragged into.

Even if you were going to foolishly get involved without any further information, you'd be in much better shape if you brought Rider along.

Instead, you just make a mental note that Long's cloak is magic and he can maybe try to disrupt a spell with it or something. You're fully expecting to cross paths with this mystery wizard again, so any edge you can get is worth remembering.

So you just sit tight, and the wagon makes its way back to camp. You see a herd of unfamiliar desert creatures along the way, but they seem to be fleeing. Maybe it's because of the storm gathering. Whatever the details, it suits you just fine if they're not getting in your way.

The rest of the journey to camp is relatively uneventful. You occasionally glance behind you, and you can see that the full sandstorm has formed, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything in particular. Yet.

Finally, you arrive back at camp. Now that you're here, what should you do?

Yeah, any details you can get from Simone about the kidnappers could prove insightful. What do they want? Why did they kidnap her? Who and where are they?

You find you have a lot of questions about Simone, starting with what the heck she did to that crow-thing.

Chances are, though, that's a meeting a lot of people are going to take an interest in. And indeed, as Yvonne steps out, she says she needs to hold another meeting. You ask if you can sit in, and she doesn't object.

Rudolph opts to go off and see how Pubert's doing. You're not sure who handled with that particular duty while you were out; apparently, that was left to some other greblings with combat training.

A few minutes later, you're sitting in Yvonne's tent, along with Long, Rider, Theodore, some grebling named Boris you haven't really met, and Simone of course.

Simone starts explaining what she saw - and, more intriguingly, what she heard - while she was captured. You're more than a little surprised when she mentions mechanical people - especially with that glimpse you had of a mechanical hand when you got into a fight with those Dune Wanderers.

You hadn't really brought up what you saw with anyone, so now seems the time to raise the point. After all, you can't help but wonder if there's a connection.

"Human-sized greblings with mechanical bodies?" Yvonne says. "You didn't mention this before."

"We were distracted by the sandstorm afterwards," Rider says. "And then we were busy. I barely noticed the wounded one myself, as I was in a hurry to get away from the scene. I imagine Corvus got a much closer look."

"Yeah. I have no idea what in the hells those Wanderers even are," you chime in. "But apparently someone else is making bodies just like theirs, or close enough anyways. Guess I wouldn't know the details of how they work."

"Speaking of that, I tried to remember what I could of the original voice box design, in case Theodore could make anything of it," Simone says. She puts down a doodle of it in front of him. "They took my notebook and tore out everything related to the voice box, but luckily they thought I'd taken the amnesiac, so I was able to put down what I could remember."

"Unfortunately, it looks like you missed something important," Theodore grumbles. "This design doesn't make any sense as it is. I can't see how it would work at all."

"What do you mean?" you ask. "I'm no machinist, but I'm curious now."

Theodore glances at you. He seems slightly disappointed.

"I'll try to explain it in simple terms. There's several problems, but I'll start with the biggest one."

It doesn't have any room for ether baffles. The whole thing would implode immediately.

Yeah but a little device like this isn't meant for ether! It's meant for sound!

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you knew that ether acts in a similar manner to sound waves, hence the massive compression wave you almost experienced earlier.

Unless someone were to carefully craft something like this with precise calibrations, it would at best make a massive ether bomb.

somewhere in the swamp, Tom Eighth sneezes.

"There's no room for ether baffles. That is to say, something to keep the ether from building up. It would just destroy itself once it was activated."

You're more than a little confused.

"What's this got to do with ether? I thought it was a voice box. What, it needs magic to work?"

"I haven't worked much with ether, but I see what he means now," Simone says. "The exact details are complicated, but essentially, Dominique and I were working together a while back and we figured out that ether flows similarly to sound. What this means is, if you've got a device designed to let sound through, it's also going to be able to let ether through unless you take specific countermeasures. It's not actually a problem unless you're in a high-ether environment..."

"But we can be pretty sure there's a powerful wizard associated with whoever kidnapped you," you conclude. "So, there's probably lots of ether going around. Still, isn't this just one part of the machine? The ether baffles could be built around it or something."

"They'd be significantly less effective in that case," Theodore grumbles. "So you'd need to add more. It would be a tremendously inefficient use of space, and would likely complicate the control mechanisms you'd need to make the thing move. I suppose I can't prove it to be impossible, but I can't see why you'd design it that way."

"What if it was the metal?" you muse. "Like in that old fairy tale where the wizard's magic can't pierce the purified silver armor. Could you make the machine out of stuff that keeps the ether away by itself?"

"Theoretically," Long says. "Silver's resistance to enchantment is greatly exaggerated by folklore, but there are other metals known to impede ether flow. However, all of them are very rare. Constructing an entire human-sized machine out of them would take more such metal than likely exists on this continent. And yet Simone saw several of them."

"On this continent," Rider muses. "But we don't really know anything about what sort of supply other continents might have, do we?"

Everyone pauses to consider this. Finally, you speak up with the obvious question.

"How would you even get to another continent? That would take months, maybe years, by sea."

"How did you and I travel from the swamp to the desert in the space of seconds?" Rider asks in return.

"I don't actually understand how we did that," you say. "Other than it involved magic. But you think there are gateways between continents, too?"

Rider pauses for a bit before answering.

"Corvus," he says. "We have a member from a faraway land. Another continent entirely. Have you ever wondered how, exactly, he got here?"

"From time to time," you say with a shrug. "But I never gave it that much thought. The rule is, you don't go prying into another Marshguard's past, after all."

Rider says nothing.

"Wait, hang on. Are you saying you found out how? And it was a gateway?"

"If I did learn such a thing, I would not have the discretion to reveal it myself," he said. "I will only say that I conducted an investigation."

Well, that's frustratingly vague. But Rider seems to think it's relevant.

So where do you go from here?

The lodestones... the compass. Positing that the kidnappers have something to do with the appearance of the gateways, maybe creating or manipulating them intentionally as their own means of intercontinental transit, can we map the known positions of the gateways in time and space and look for a pattern? It could reveal where the kidnappers have been or where they're going, giving us clues to their motives.

You take a little time to gather your thoughts. You don't fully understand a lot of this stuff, but you think you can work something out based on the general ideas.

Pubert was transporting a special lodestone. Yvonne had a compass that could track the gateways. You haven't worked out where the Dune Wanderers fit in yet, but leaving that aside... the point that's coming to mind is that it's possible to detect the gateways before they open.

Which suggests there's some, you're not sure what the word you want is. Substance? Yeah, there's something to detect before the gateway even exists. So maybe, whether through magic or some other means, you can move that something, or possibly even create it.

Either way, that suggests that at least some of the gateways you've seen were placed intentionally by the wizard's crew. Which means, if you had a list, you might be able to figure out something about where they were trying to go.

"What do we know about the gateways so far?" you ask. "Where they've opened, and when. I guess we can't get that information about the swamp so easily, but you were keeping track of stuff like that here, right?"

Theodore nods.

"I can't say that our observations were complete, and we didn't realize what the anomalies were until Rider turned up, but we do have a thorough record of what we noticed. I'll fetch it."

He comes back with a rather large chart, and unfurls it.

"This is what we saw."

"I was tracking unusual sightings in the swamp before we voted to attack the Bogknights," Rider says. "I don't know that I could reconstruct an entire map of the swamp, but if I had one as a base I could put down most of my sightings from memory."

"Well, let's see if we can work anything out about these ones first," Theodore says. "We saw a few anomalies months back, then they stopped. Out of the recent ones, this is the first one we recorded, four days ago. We didn't see any activity for around a day afterwards. Seems to be somewhere in the Jawbone Mountains. Was there anything unusual on that day in the swamp?"

You, Long, and Rider all answer at once.

"It rained."

"More specifically," Long continues, "it rained much sooner than we expected. Though, the oddness and the coincidence of timing don't really prove anything in and of themselves."

"Unfortunately, it's not really feasible to go checking the mountains," says Yvonne. "We tried climbing them before, and it's really nasty up there. Fierce winds, kicking up lots of sand. And what few creatures do venture there are extremely dangerous."

"Which means it'd be a good place for someone to hide out," you muse. "If they had some way to manage all that, no one would ever dare go looking for them there."

"Well, even if that's true, we don't have a way to traverse them safely," Yvonne says. "So however interesting a lead it might be, we're not going to be able to check the place out. Unless someone has a clever idea for how we can?"

Can the principles of Simone's and Theodore's remote audio device be used to observe beyond the mountains?

"Hang on," you say. "Didn't Simone create a device to listen in on her captors? Could you make something like that to listen to the mountains from here?"

Theodore's eyes brighten suddenly, then the light fades and he shakes his head.

"That sounded like a good idea for a moment, but the problem is that Simone's eavesdropper was designed for a confined space. The mountains are enormous, and wide open. Indoors, sound is bouncing around everywhere, so it's easy to 'catch' it, so to speak. But out in the wild, it just spreads all over the place and fades. I can't even conceive of a way to do it without some kind of receiver at the other end."

"We could make one," Simone chips in. "I can already see how to scale it up."

"I'm not that concerned about the engineering side," Theodore continues. "But there are two problems to deal with before we even worry about if the equipment works. First, how would we get a receiver into the mountains, and second, how would we even know the right area to put it? The anomaly is our only marker, and our calculations on its location are very imprecise, because we couldn't get into the mountain to get better readings."

"Wait, wait. How'd you know it was there in the first place?" you ask.

"We picked up strange readings on an ether monitor," Dominique says, walking into the tent. "Pardon me for interrupting, but Rudolph said you ran into a wizard out there. And I'm the best ether expert you've got, so I probably ought to be here."

"It wasn't just the ether readings," Theodore continues, slightly annoyed. "We have a variety of devices for remote analysis. The problem is, we haven't been able to confirm any of our findings in the mountains, so we don't know how accurate they are."

"They work fine everywhere else we've tested them," Dominique says.

"This may be a dumb question," you interject, "but could you use one of those devices to help you get the sounds? They've got to have some way to check the mountains, right?"

"Impossible," Theodore begins, but he barely finishes the word before Simone says "Sort of." Everyone turns to her as she expands on her thought process.

"I don't think we could directly hear the sounds, but the tremor detection gear could, with a few recalibrations, figure out which part of the mountain has people talking. Sound is fundamentally just vibrations, after all."

"That's our early warning system for tunneler attacks, though," Yvonne says. "And that doesn't sound useful enough to warrant leaving us blind."

"Just tossing ideas out, darling. It's what we do when we're stuck, right?"

Rider suddenly speaks.

"If we can find the right spot, I believe I can get the receiver in place."

You hope he means by working his charm on some birds or something, and not by going there himself.

"I suppose that makes it worth at least exploring the possibility of modifying the tremor detector," Theodore says. "Boris, it's your device. What are your thoughts?"

"Not happy, but I will do what has to be done," Boris says. "We should start working out the details."

The greblings all start poring over a large piece of paper, making incomprehensible doodles and arguing about stuff that's going way over your head. You feel like now might be a good time to excuse yourself, this meeting's gotten past the part where you feel like a useful contributor.

You thank Yvonne for letting a birdbrain like yourself sit in, and prepare to leave. Just as you're getting your helmet back on, though, Rider gets up and turns to you.

"If you're finished here, Corvus, there is something I would like you to do."

You have an unpleasant feeling about this. What could he want?

Oh snap, it's a secret package.