it's still strange but comforting to wake up and feel that my dreams were difficult but to not actually remember them so i started the day extra thankful to selena for banishing whatever nastiness came up
but we'll come back to the topic of things that cause bad dreams
this morning involved a tour of the ballroom area followed by a couple hours of planning out who would be best positioned where and how to communicate
dowser himself admitted those plans would probably go out the window if anything happened – "once the enemy shows up it's all down to training and practice"
my training and practice are more in how to tolerate fancy social functions than in how to repel would-be enemies and nobody here takes unicorns seriously enough for me to qualify as "visible muscle"
so medya and i decided we'd mingle with the crowd and simply be ready as needed
after the planning we got some lunch
this region takes pride in their cuisine and their big specialty is a mushroom and rice dish that i can't get enough of
medya and i shared that and a salad of greens and pears and walnuts and some amazing cheese
and then fruit tarts that i wish i could share with my cousin "bran" so she could try to replicate them
is it obvious i've been a little hungrier than usual? something about my new legs?
after lunch we picked up our formalwear and i have to say the cape actually looks pretty good on me and it definitely accentuates my legs so i'm happy with that
and after a couple hours of preparation – and practice for how exactly i would avoid confronting jorlanna about the whole patent issue because yes medya i know this would be a very bad time for that discussion – we went back to the site but this time looking much fancier
dowser and zer' can do the same sort of mental link so they worked together to connect all of us
that's how the others filled me in on the more interesting people who showed up
for example dowser was clear about not liking the presence of professor "emmer sykes" who is an alchemist who made some not-very-nice things for cyre's military
and he was a little nervous about "senna redeker" who is a prominent knight in the aundair royal court
worse yet is that an ambassador from "all of sarlona" – zer explained that this claim pretends his people don't even exist – showed up with three large reidran bodyguards who were just like those husks-not-people we fought in wroat
jorlanna made her appearance and gave a speech (about as well as i give speeches) and it was about alliances and innovation and common goals which might have been great news except for her worrying taste in allies
we were only there to keep the party from being disrupted so of course that's what happened anyhow
the short form is that the reidrans started to attack zer' and then a bunch more showed up despite the outside guards
jorlanna and sykes had already disappeared off to some secretive meeting in another guarded room but we still had to keep folks from getting hurt so we scrambled to repel the attackers and get everyone to safety
at one point there was a loud snap and everything went bright grey for a few moments
i came to my senses pretty quickly but with ringing ears and tingly-numb left foreleg and much soreness around that shoulder
medya (and the scorch marks) said i'd been hit with a bolt of lightning!
that's twice now but i'm glad to report that it hurt much less than the first time
it still scared the shit out of me (no not literally that's an idiom)
no guests were injured so we did well but spark noted that sometime during the fight gwyr disabled one of the cannith door guards (not dead just drugged) and slipped into the restricted area beyond
then "d'cannith véora" – one of the others in the secretive meeting going on alongside the party – revealed to us that a very dangerous protoype artifact called a "skillshare" was stolen so now we have a strong guess for what gwyr was up to
sykes commissioned jorlanna to develop the skillshare as a tool for quickly training willing soldiers (sigh) but it sounds like he intends to use it to forcibly control not-so-willing targets which is about a dozen kinds of wrong in one bucket
i later learned that sykes has many more buckets-of-atrocity where that came from but for everyone's health i won't talk about those – it's bad enough that they're in my head now
it gets worse
it was palor who coaxed jorlanna into all of this by insisting it would help her become the next "grand gorgon" – head of house cannith but not a literal gorgon
and that once she'd done what palor and the bleak council (!) wanted then her husband and daughter would be freed from ... the time-stasis spell they'd been in for thirty years
she took us to her private lab where we saw them frozen in place
so that's what causes bad dreams