Swamped

There doesn't seem like much more to say with him, this situation seems pretty straightforward. Maybe ask him what the specific wrongdoings of the director have been? Youve only heard vague accusations so far.

"Look, what exactly is this about? If our host has done something wrong, I certainly want to know about it."

He looks at you disapprovingly.

"It's not your business, human."

"It could very well affect whether my group is able to stay in this camp or whether we have to fend for ourselves in the desert, so yes, I think it is my business."

"I know your type. I'll explain the charges and you'll dismiss it as some old-fashioned religious nonsense, refusing to understand the severity of it."

"Well, it must not be a very strong case, then."

"What!"

"If you had a strong case, you wouldn't be so reluctant to say what it actually is. That's what it looks like to me, anyhow. Feel free to prove me wrong."

Jeremy seems completely thrown by this. It takes him a few minutes to gather his thoughts and respond.

"Prove me wrong, human. Show me you have enough knowledge of our ways that I won't have to waste time explaining every little detail to you."

He smirks cruelly.

"What does it mean to be recognized by Reth?"

"It means to do a great deed in her eyes," you respond.

You didn't realize grebling eyes could open that wide.

"How did you know that? How could you know that?"

Well, you've got an opening here. Should you just ask for the explanation, or should you try to do something more with this moment of shock?

Skip over it, saying that youre not completely stupid and youve picked up things while youve been here, then ask him for the explanation.

"What, do you think I haven't talked to the priest here just because I'm a human or something?"

Jeremy takes a few moments to gather himself.

"There is technically a priest at this camp, it's true," he says. "But it's a subject that isn't likely to come up in casual conversation. Few have been recognized by the goddess, after all."

"Look, I answered your question. Are you going to explain what this is all about now?"

He looks at you disapprovingly, then seems to settle on getting it over with so he doesn't have to talk to you.

"The Jawbone Mountains near here are sacred grounds. The director has been trespassing."

"What's sacred about them, exactly?"

Jeremy suddenly seems much more comfortable. Must be he sees this as a chance to berate someone for believing the wrong thing.

"What does that matter? Reth has deemed them sacred, so they are sacred. There is nothing more to discuss!"

"So, you don't know?"

Jeremy glares at you.

"It is not the place of mortals to question the decisions of a goddess."

You've definitely struck a nerve here.

"All right, fine. But a mountain range is a pretty big place. So just how much of it is the sacred part? One mountain? One peak? The whole thing? The whole desert it's in?"

"Unfortunately, while I have long argued that the prohibition should be extended to the entire range, I have not found much support from the church leadership. Fortunately, the argument about boundaries will be quite irrelevant this time."

"And why's that?"

He seems to pause, before his desire to gloat wins out.

"Because I have proof that the director left the place with sacred relics. There is no way she could have claimed those without trespassing through the very heart of the mountains!"

Funny, you'd think that would be theft, not trespassing. Well, you've got something to ask about now, at least.

"And what relics would these be?"

Cages

Jeremy pulls a sketch out of his pocket and waves it in your face.

"These relics," he says. "I've seen them in this camp before, but I couldn't prove where they were from. Until now!"

It takes you a little bit to interpret the drawing.

"These just look like cages. What's special about them?"

"They have been blessed by Reth! What more reason do they need?"

"Well, look, I know the ways of the gods are beyond mortals and all," you say, making a very limited effort to sound humble. "But why bless a cage?"

"Supposedly, because some legendary figures escaped from them," Yvonne says suddenly. "But I can tell you we didn't get them from the mountains. We got them in the ruins of an old city, one we haven't figured out the name of."

Jeremy's face turns pale.

"But they're supposed to be in the mountains! Look!"

He pulls out a weathered scroll, with another depiction of the cages.

"Maybe they were at one point, but if they were removed, it wasn't by us." She looks at the scroll. "Hang on. Just what language is this in? I don't recognize the script."

"I... I don't know, my source didn't say. They just provided me with a translation..."

You stare him right in the eyes, which is probably very intimidating given your relative height.

"And just who is this 'source' of yours?"

"A concerned servant of Reth. They didn't tell me their name, and I didn't see a need to ask."

Of course he didn't. He doesn't seem the sort to ask questions when they're inconvenient for him.

"Well, either they've uncovered a previously unknown language or they gave you a forgery," Yvonne says. "So have you got anything proving it's real?"

"My faith in Reth tells me it is real!" Jeremy howls. He definitely wasn't expecting this.

"Well, it's not my place to question where you put your faith," Yvonne says calmly. "But what's the church going to think if you're claiming faith in this scroll and they have reason to believe otherwise?"

Jeremy doesn't even respond. He just scurries away. Dominique arrives just as suddenly.

"About time you shook him off. We've got a lot to talk about."

Yvonne looks a little bit pained.

"I suppose we do," she sighs. "Step into my office and let's get this done."

You follow her in. Dominique seems annoyed. The two of them don't seem to like each other much, but for some reason, the dislike seems more pronounced now.

"Rider ran off when I told him about the prisoner trying to kill him, then Marshall and Captain Long disappeared trying to follow him," you explain. "I got the details as best as I could from a talking lizard, which I promised to feed, and also I found a strange sphere buried in the ground."

"And I have a theory as to what that was for," Dominique interjects. "Based largely on the ring you found."

"Ring?" Yvonne asks. "Oh, right, you were saying something about that a while ago."

"Right. The ring was weirdly heavy. I asked Dominique to have a look at it."

Yvonne turns toward her.

"So what did you find out?"

She starts explaining what she already told you - the ring is mostly useless as a magical item but has a distinctive ether signature and a trained wizard could identify it from a long way off.

"But there's one other oddity about it as well," she says.

The way the metal was forged matches distinctly modern techniques, and can be traced to its manufacturer.

"It's about the ring itself. Most of the enchanted items I've seen are fairly old, but it's clear this ring was forged within the last ten years or so. In fact, I can identify just who made it."

"Well, that's not necessarily that odd," you interject. "If it's about tracking the object, for whatever reason, they might have just bought up a bunch of stuff."

"That was my initial thought." Dominique then hands you a sheet with some sketches and notes. "But you don't need to hire a master-class metalsmith like Madeline Carrotpatch if you just want random things to enchant."

You look over the sheet, which is basically about design similarities with the ring and Carrotpatch's work. You don't know much about the structure of this stuff, but you do know that Carrotpatch jewelry is rare stuff. She charges a lot, so she gets few customers, so the pieces are very identifiable. You had to deliver a brooch once and were given a ton of warnings about not letting anyone other than the recipient see it.

You didn't usually hear how your boss got ahold of the items you delivered, but you heard even less that time. It was that rare, and that valuable.

And somebody got a ring from that smith and just tossed it on the ground in the desert.

You only half-listen to the conversation between Yvonne and Dominique, because now you can't help but wonder just why.

It seems like a signal to someone, but also a sign of identification that could not be easily forged. It suggests that whoever planted it is not only worried about conveying the right message, but also ensuring someone else couldn't plant a false message, which in turn suggests we've got multiple opposing parties engaging in clandestine activities involving wizards and ether in this camp.

You pay a bit more attention as Dominique says something about getting to her main point.

"I think the ring might be a signal to the wizard. The ether signature would point the wizard to a particular place, and they could cast a spell there. Opening a gateway, for example, though really there would be as many uses for it as there are spells."

And that gives you a thought. Suppose somebody catches on to your signaling method. Suppose they try making a fake signal to interfere with your plans. How could you prevent that?

You'd make the signalling object expensive and hard to replicate.

"This is just a guess, I don't know anything about if it's actually possible," you say. "But maybe the reason for such an expensive ring is that it's a sort of, guarantee? Maybe if your hypothetical wizard is looking for an ether signature, they can tell what sent it, and this ring is a lot harder to fake than, say, a rock."

Dominique looks thoughtful.

"That makes a lot of sense. Having an ether signature to trace would make it a lot easier to cast the sort of spells that would let you view an object from a distance. Still, that's an awfully big expense to pay for added security."

You reflect on that.

"Yeah, most people with that kind of money don't like spending it if they don't have to. Hard to justify if you just think your signals could be tampered with, but don't have any evidence anyone's actually trying. Which is to say, somebody probably is trying. Suggests we're dealing with multiple groups here."

"We knew that already, more or less," Yvonne says. "We had the intruders yesterday, the people I met with last night, and today we've caught an agent of the church and someone from a heretical rebel group. As far as we know, any of them could have planted the ring."

"And any of them - even all of them - could be considered a credible tampering threat by whoever did," Dominique adds. "Personally, I suspect this ring was planted by the group that's making the gateways. But that's mostly a guess. We're not going to know for sure unless I turn off the ether shielding I've got it under and a gateway appears in my work tent - a risk I'd rather not take."

Hmm. Now that she mentions it, that's a major issue with your current theories, isn't it. If the important thing is where the object is, and you're concerned about tampering enough to hire an expensive metalsmith... well, shouldn't you protect it from being moved? That seems like a huge oversight.

There must be something you're missing here.

Perhaps the ring's relocation is itself considered useful information to your mysterious monitor. It could reveal important locations within the camp, or details about the camp's ability to perceive and react to magical threats.

Scary thought... Is it possible that the ring could gather and betray information about those who touch it?

"Maybe they just use it for spying from a distance?" you muse. "There wasn't really anything stopping us from picking up the ring and moving it. So maybe they just figure they'll pick up whatever info they can if that happens."

"It actually wasn't that easy to pick up," Dominique says. "You might have been able to move it, but for a grebling it's nearly impossible without some way to deal with the enchantment. If they assumed there were no humans here, and that our equipment wouldn't be good enough to move it without breaking the enchantment entirely, it would be easy to think it was safe."

"The sphere I found didn't seem heavy, though," you say.

"Then I should have a look at that and see how it's different. It might have been placed by another faction for entirely separate reasons. Director, are we done here? If so, I'll investigate that immediately."

Yvonne looks a little disappointed.

"As much as I appreciate cutting meetings short, Dominique, there's one more matter I have to talk about first."

Is it the cages?

You hazard a guess.

"Is this about those cages that guy was going on about?"

"Indeed." She unrolls the scroll she grabbed from Jeremy. "I'm pretty sure this is fake, but the sketch is quite real. In fact, it's too real, another reason why this is probably a fake."

"Too real?"

"She means that it shows the cages as they are now," Dominique says. "But they're thousands of years old. They were sheltered relatively well, but not perfectly. The elements still took a toll on them."

"Exactly. Someone sketched these after we found them. Now, we haven't heavily limited access, but we also don't go around letting strangers in with sketchpads. And I'd be very surprised if someone drew a likeness this good purely from memory."

"So you want to know who made this sketch," you interject. "That makes sense, but why are you asking Dominique for help with this? It doesn't seem to have much to do with her specialty."

"Probably because she knows pretty much everyone else in camp is going to be reluctant to consider their friends potential suspects," Dominique says. She sounds a little bitter, but not surprised. "She wants me on it to make sure every possibility is covered. Am I right?"

"You don't need to be so cynical about my motives, Dominique. I'm asking you because I think whoever did it may have used magic."

Dominique doesn't seem any more pleased.

"And why do you think that, exactly?"

The drawing doesnt make sense, artistically. There's just some things about the shading, the lines, that wouldnt be there in an actual drawing.

"How can I put this... It doesn't look like this was drawn at all."

You're confused, and Dominique doesn't seem to understand any better.

"The shading is the main thing. Artists use shading to emphasize certain things. They make deliberate decisions about what to darken and what not to. But look at the shadows here."

She hands the scroll to Dominique, and you ask to take a look. You see what she means; the shading doesn't seem to have any sense behind it. Looking a bit more closely, the lines don't seem very smooth either.

"The lines bother me more than the shading," Dominique says, before you can comment. "But your overall point is clear. This looks less like a drawing and more as if someone were looking at the cages and somehow directly transcribed what they saw onto paper, with all traces of color removed."

"That's why I suspect magic."

"It's possible. It's also possible they have some sort of automatic drawing device."

"Well, you've got the best chance of anyone here of figuring out the difference," Yvonne says.

"Fair enough. That said, I've got a lot of other work to do, so it may be a while before I have results. Unless you think it's pressing enough to make this a high priority?"

Her tone is almost accusatory.

"At the moment, no. But I may change my mind if I get a better idea of why whoever it was went to all this trouble to get Jeremy in our way. I think we're done now."

You feel like she mostly just wants to stop talking to Dominique.

"Right, then," Dominique says, not sounding much happier. "Corvus, let's go and see about this sphere of yours."

"And getting the helpful lizard some food," you add.

You hope nothing happened to the mudpike you used as a marker.

---

You're now someone else.

>a grebling

You're using a strange mudpike you found to fend off hungry lizards and something else much bigger.

You're cursing yourself for being so thrown by the director's accusations that you let her keep the scroll. You still have the translation, of course, but she's going to cast doubt on it and you'll be right back where you started.

And you didn't get any support from the former guards you brought along. So now you've just started poking around outside the camp in hopes of finding something they don't want visitors stumbling onto. You're going to need some evidence of their heresy to keep this from being a total waste of time.

If only your regular congregation hadn't fallen ill so suddenly, you'd have been better prepared - someone surely would have spoken up when she grabbed the scroll, at the very least. Then you might not be surrounded by lizards. At least there was a weapon here to keep them at bay with.

Not a weapon you're particularly good at wielding, mind. It's too long and heavy for you to do much more than wave it. But it's not all bad - that length does make it easier to keep distance between you and these damned lizards.

Now if only you could figure out how to break this holding pattern you've gotten yourself stuck in.

Use a rock.
Your entire congregation fell ill? that seems odd.

If only you weren't surrounded by desert sands, maybe you could find some rocks to throw. But all you've got are grains of sand, and the lizards weren't particularly dissuaded by your previous efforts at throwing sand in their eyes.

You suppose there might be a stone or something sunken in the ground, though, so you dig around a bit. And you find something.

It's not a stone. It's round and metal. What even is this, and what is it doing out here?

Well, it's as good for throwing as a stone is. You toss it at one of the lizards.

Which promptly vanishes. That's enough to scare off the rest, but it doesn't make any of this less strange.

Could this sphere be some kind of weapon created by the camp, perhaps hastily hidden outside once they learned you were coming? That might be just the evidence you need, if you can find someone trustworthy to study it and work out exactly what it does.

But you're not going to have much time to think about that. You can already see some figures leaving the camp. You quickly pick up the sphere and try to figure out how you can get out of sight before they spot you...

...and then, suddenly, you're somewhere else, with no sphere in hand. The lizard you struck earlier is right in front of you, looking displeased.

Although the human walking towards both of you looks even more displeased.

What now?

Pick up the lizard and pretend like you meant to...teleport here? Totally intentional.

It's clear that you need to take charge of this situation. If that entails making a few embellishments about how, exactly, you ended up here, then so be it.

You pick up the lizard.

"Well. This confirms most of my suspicions. I only need to clear up a few more details, such as who precisely you are..."

The human grabs you by the shoulders and lifts you off the ground.

"I'm starting to wonder if that fool is really as bad as hiding things as he seems, or if he deliberately made it too easy to find."

"Reth will not look kindly on you harming one of her priests!" you shout indignantly.

The human suddenly looks amused.

"A priest of Reth, you say? Maybe Ash did something useful after all. You can save us quite a lot of trouble."

This isn't how you were expecting the conversation to go, but you need to maintain whatever authority you still have.

"I don't see why I owe you anything."

"I warned your goddess of a threat, and helped to mitigate it. I should think that counts for something."

You're about to protest, but you suddenly feel strange.

Oh no. It's Reth, isn't it? But what is she trying to tell you?

She's... amused?

Reth seems... amused? Maybe she doesn't think it was much of a favor.

"While I'm sure Reth appreciates whatever you may have done, her power is great. I'm sure she could have handled it herself."

You aren't sure how that came across to the goddess, but the human's not very impressed.

"I don't mean to ask for a favor. Rather, I have a plan, which would also be to your goddess' benefit, and you can help with it. Otherwise, we can toss you in our one holding cell, which currently has two humans in it. So it would be rather cramped."

You aren't sure how to respond. Reth doesn't seem to be providing any new guidance, either.