Entry 5

||Current date|| 11/1A/1577/7AE
 
||Current time|| 7 bells past High Sun
 
||Summary|| Found Kasen, lost Kasen, reconvened with the rest of the group and made plans to track down the thieves once more. The artifacts blew Vida's ship up. And themselves up. Ugh.
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Lesson learned. Never leave these fools alone for more than an hour or two.
 
What was meant to be a quick recon to find the Bastion's missing guide and suspected Garlean turned into a wild goose chase throughout Limsa and beyond. An hour turned into two, then two and twenty, and the next thing I knew I was spending the night in my usual room above the Drowning Wench, without a journal or a lead of any sort in hand. And then I go on one last morning jaunt around the city before I cut my losses, and there he was, plain as day on the pier with everybody else...only to vanish 'neath the waves before I could get a chance to even call his name. And of course I was needed, and lost my chance to follow him. The land clearly has plans for me and this group, and if my luck is any indication, Kasen seems to not be part of them. I suppose my curiosity will have to wait.
 
...That PARTICULAR part of my curiosity, anyways. I had no idea what in the seven hells happened between when I left yesterday morning and when I rejoined this morning, but Vida is now down about a quarter of her (VERY fine) ship, and the artifacts we recovered have been scattered to the four winds, if not destroyed outright. Back BELOW square one, somehow, and of course that's when the Lalafellin Maelstrom officer shows back up, ready for an explanation of the whole mess. I'm surprised we're still in the Admiral's good graces after abandoning our original mission and blowing up the one good thing we'd gotten out of doing so, but I suppose even the Navigator couldn't have foreseen the artifacts actually being some kind of aetherial storage devices...or, perhaps, just extremely overzealous pest control devices. (I probably won't get the image of exploded rat out of my mind anytime soon.)
 
The Admiral's good graces, however, means that we still have to track these thieves down...which will be difficult, considering they seem to have eyes throughout the city (enough to see Vida's ship explode), command over the powers within these artifacts (enough to MAKE Vida's ship explode, I'm sure, even if the others aren't), and unwavering confidence (enough to send Zim a Linkpearl TELLING her we were seen). I don't like our odds. But the others seem far more optimistic than I, so maybe their kami know something I don't. Regardless, I'll still be keeping an eye out for Kasen while we explore the area looking for our Garlean-hating Maelstrom-flying independent thieves. He's not in my future, perhaps, but he still has Maelstrom property. The quicker we find him, the less trouble he can cause.
 
...A shame we're expected to wear Maelstrom uniforms for this, moving forward. The crate in the embassy's yard was very clear on that front. I'll have to pull out the dusty set I got back when I first joined as an independent adventurer.