Interlude: Pursuing Peace Prizes

Upon landing, a host of Lizardfolk accosted us, led by the mistrusting Aota. He would believe in Mystery Inc's pursuit of peace, accusing us of antagonizing the tribes with our war machines, trying to persuade the rest of the Herb that we slaughtered most of their kin. When tensions were at their height, Toma, representing the Herb, stepped forth and vouched for us and asked us to coordinate a summit of all the region's leaders for further negotiations in spirit of the agreement between the tribes and settlers of old. With that, we returned home to prepare for the memorial service, but first we made a quick stop at Maria's, the resemblance between the necrobard and her still weighing on our minds. She claimed to have no relations either in her living years nor afterlife. That night, I helped Jeeng remove the cursed sword from his mother so they could find out what's been happening with her. The next day we paid Lady Maria a visit to further inquire her relation to the necro bard. Darren demonstrated one of the musical rituals we witnessed in the jungle and this drew the attention of Maria's servants for moment. She quickly dispelled the effect and said she might know of such rituals to charm the dead, a possible result of the experiments done to her and a group of orphans in her past. This, Justine gleaned after convincing her to trade personal knowledge via the brain switching device Darren recently tried. L. Maria was not pleased to say the least but agreed to assist us in the matter should anymore knowledge from her past prove useful to our cause. Next day, we took our airship to the post war celebrations. There, the various leaders and representatives of the region we just saved, presented us with presents, among them, a staff of healing for myself from the Silver Flame. To conclude the ceremonies, L. Justine gave a rousing speech. We noticed Jeeng had to slip away discreetly and Darren informed us later that he was chasing a lead on his missing father. Apparently the necro-bard wanted to give us one last ultimatum: bring him the soul engine or suffer more personal loss at his hand. He also offered the heads of the Mist Tribe leaders to sweeten the deal as it were. We weighed our options carefully with the counsel of the council. Surprisingly, Patrice pushes for more time to build up arms to bolster the settlers' bargaining power during the 'peace' talks. More shocking, or perhaps not at all, M. Justine agreed, fear mongering the potential retaliation the lizafolk might seek against us. Nevertheless I saw her true intentions with this play. She hoped to gain Patrice's trust and thus get us closer to the soul engine. After returning home we contacted the bard to accept his proposal and give him the same time frame the council gave us. We also divided our efforts to prepare for acquiring the engine. For my part, I would try to convince Red to lend his aid, in addition to researching various other methods of safely extracting souls from the engine.