Date: Twelfth of March, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

... --- ...

Job Arseoth looked about the table at familiar souls wearing new faces. All were downcast for one reason or another, as it turns out the bureaucratic machinations of banks and empires don’t like it much when the dead decline to stay that way. The small yard behind the temple of Kukko had become their unofficial meeting place, stuck as they were in the Temple District while their paperwork was being sorted out.

“To summarize our problems, and in no particular order, Enra still needs to complete her thesis, I’ve got a strange hole in my memories, Baar’Miin now has a literal spiritual advisor with an uncertain threat on the way, Sly isn’t any sort of halfling we know of, Index has a strange patron saint of sorts, and we’re all flat broke. Suggestions?”

Sly stuck her hand up, “money first. Everything else is easier if we can afford it.”

Enra patted Sly on the head, “no nicker-fingers now, not when your name is so squeaky clean!”

“Yeah, that’s about the only thing being legally your own kid is good for.”

Index scrubbed at her eyes, “tell me about it. It’s triply-complicated when there is still an ongoing legal debate as to whether one was alive in the first place, much less if an inorganic construct can even have a soul. Last I checked, two of the so-called ‘experts’ still weren't convinced I was even sentient on account of not being an elf, dwarf, or human.”

Job snorted with exaggerated poshness, “a blight on both their houses then! The Resurrection spell worked, didn’t it? And, last I checked, that spell requires a soul willing and able to return. Ergo, if Reincarnation worked, then you must have a soul.”

Baar’Miin chuckled and rubbed at her legs, “still doesn’t solve our money problem though.”

Job sucked air though his teeth and sighed, “no, it doesn’t. Best I can come up with is to head down to the Guild and see if there is any contract work available. Trebor Library, the Mage Academy, and the Crown all have to handle us with care until the legal types get their thumbs out, so that’s about the only fast legal coin I can think of.”

Enra tapped her teeth, “well….”

Sly poked Enra in the knee, “spit it out ‘big spoon’, we don’t have all day.”

“We could go back to Mevada and look about for some more loot there.”

Baar’Miin nodded her agreement, “we’re still the only five who know exactly where it is, right?”

Job shrugged, “sure, but how do we pay for the ferry to get there?”

Baar’Miin deflated, “oh.”

Index nodded, “We sell the information to the Guild, give them a leg up on escorting scholars to and about the place. The Mage Academy or the Crown would probably pay better for the information, but their hands are tied up in bureaucratic red ribbons.”

Enra held up one slender finger, “slight problem is that I’m technically part of the Crown myself, despite the current legal kerfuffle, so the Guild really is our only chance. Let me grab Elfyr, he’s still around keeping an eye on me, and I can work out some sort of settlement between the Crown and the Guild with regards to access to Mevada. I’m thinking about their international teleport circle network; how it will give all of the Mage Academies access to an Altheim National Heritage site and how that probably needs to be regulated before word gets out. Which of course means fees for the Guild and Althiem alike...”

Enra trailed off, but Job and the others could see the instincts of the scheming noble she was trying so hard to avoid becoming rise to the surface.

Date: Thirteenth of March, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

... --- ...

Job and the rest of the party were back in the yard at the table. Enra was bubbly for once, and Sly must have known something was up because she was practically bouncing in her seat.

“Alright, spill. What have you got princess?”

“Whelp, negotiations between the Crown and the Guild have been taken over by the proper Crown agencies, but…”

Enrta paused, grinning. Index cracked her wooden knuckles loudly, unimpressed.

“We get to escort the first proper survey team in. Guild experts looking to reclaim their old building and reactivate the teleport circle inside, and Royal Army scouts to probe the city. And we’re getting paid quite handsomely.”

Job frowned, “Royal Army scouts huh? From which Regiment?”

“Mevada is in Bera, so the Bera Regiment, why?”

“Commanded by Lord Bera?”

“Uhh…”

“Why probably doesn't like any of us all that much, given how we humiliated his heir-apparent?”

“Err…”

“Because Mevada would be a great place for one or more of us to have a very accidental ‘accident’ and just… vanish.”

“Ah.”

Index cracked her neck, “Given that a princess of the blood is leading the expedition, Enra herself is probably fine. If she didn’t come back there would be utter hell to pay. Still, we should keep our eyes out.”

Baar’Miin tugged on the tips of her braided hair, “would commanding such an expedition successfully be seen as a way for Morlen Daxina to redeem himself?”

Enra frowned, then nodded slowly, “or to utterly damn himself if it failed. So perhaps we should request that he lead the Royal Army detachment himself, as his own interest in seeing the expedition succeed would mean that he would have to keep us safe too.”

Job nodded, “it would also be a way to mend fences with Lord Bera. Show that, while the marriage option might be firmly off the table, there is no need for a bitter rivalry over a few drunken words.”

Date: Fourteenth of March, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

... --- ...

Morlen Daxana stared down at the cup in his hand. Simple water sloshed in the bottom instead of the strong alcohol that a back corner of his mind gibbered for. The last six weeks had been hard, but Morlen had stuck it out. Booze had made a fool of him when it had mattered most. It had nearly cost Morlen his position as the heir-apparent of Bera, so great was the social disgrace of making a scene at the Royal Wedding. Only the facts of Princess Enra’s own appearance and near-total disregard for the expected social norms of the occasion had saved him. What was one lordling elf passing out to a princess of the blood deciding to toss her own political career out to sea before it was even born?

Morlen had come home to Bera and the Bera Regiment. As the heir-apparent, he couldn’t command the Regiment directly as he would one day be its civilian commander, the political master holding the leash to a dog of war. But Morlen was not yet Lord Bera, and working with the new Royal Scout detachment had brought him back into physical shape and back into contact with military reality. On the day of the wedding, Morlen had mentaly spat on Lord Trebor’s Ironbark Regiment for its habit of recruiting from the gutter, and appointing those same gutter-born men as officers. Two days of working through tactical problems under the tutorship of a Royal Scout Sergeant had taught him just how valuable the skills men learned in the gutter could be on a battlefield, and especially in the Royal Scouts.

Morlen had learned how to ‘fight dirty’, how ambush and surprise were more deadly than any pikehead, and how information was the lifeblood of any successful operation. The physical training had brought Morlen to a peak form that he had never attained before. Gone was the subtle double-chin and whisky belly, replaced by the muscles to actually back a boast and the steel in his spine to match the steel in his blade. It had been humbling to learn the difference between parade perfection and true combat readiness, and a pair of joint exercises with the Ironbark Regiment’s own Royal Scout detachment had shown just how much he still had to learn. Those defeats had been humiliating, but better to lose in a drill then on a battlefield. And going up against men trained by veterans of the bitter mountain fighting of the Westmarch War, the Bera Regiment Scouts had at least managed to hold their own by the end of the second exercise.

A knock at his door brought Morlen out of his reverie.

“Letter for you Sir.”

“Is it of any particular importance?”

“Nothing specific Sir, but it is from the Crown.”

“Which lends it a weight all its own.”

Morlen took the letter, opened it, and read the short letter over quickly. His eyebrows rose, and he checked the seal twice to be sure it was real. “Sergeant, I think we’ll need to rework this weeks drill schedule.”

“Sir?”

“It’s Deployment orders. An escort mission, shepherding a batch of scholars and Guild casters through a cave. Details are all hush-hush, they aren’t even telling us where we are going ahead of time, just that we’ll have a local guide and that our destination is inside of Bera province.”

“Permission to speak freely Sir?”

“After the training you’ve put me through Sergeant? Always.”

“This is strange on the order of Crown Agent strange. Why us? We may be the local Regiment, but the Guild and the Crown can both call on mission-specialists better suited to this task.”

“I don’t know Sergeant. But I do know that we will not be fucking up our first ever deployment. Get with the men and find out who among them has any experience with caves or sewers as well as moving and fighting in cramped spaces.”

“Sir. Expected light levels?”

“Underground means cave-dark, but with spellcasters along for the ride, as well as non-elves from the Guild, we’ll probably have lights with us aplenty.”

“We’re going to be easy to see coming then Sir.”

“Agreed, and not my preferred choice either, but better that then blind. Our orders don’t include any hint of who our local guides are.”

“Sic Brenwhen on that Sir?”

“Better not, I’d hate to see his career cut short due to bashing heads with Crown Agents. I’ll ask for clarification in my reply of course. We’ll need all the information that we can get our hands on.”