Session 0 - Isa

Until two years ago, Isaline Osler had it all figured out. She would rise through the ranks at the Dravanian Academy, she would graduate with honors as so many Oslers had done before her, and she would wield the Osler family spear as a proud and noble dragoon. Two years ago, Isa’s twelve-step plan derailed at step three.
King Jessamine Dravanor exiled three members of her court in 1252, throwing a massive spanner in the Cardian governmental system. Three families found their legacies ended, their windows of opportunity snapped shut, and their best-laid plans melting like snow in summer.
And Isaline Osler found her position at the Dravanian Academy tenuous at best, and then, months later, rescinded at worst.
All things considered, she’s taken it about as well as can be expected.
Her family seems to be taking the tact of biding their time for this to blow over, to earn their way back into the King’s good graces. A few sacrifices may not be too much to ask. It just depends on what, precisely, those sacrifices are.
The sun rises on a bleak spring morning, last weekend’s snowfall still holding on in the gutters and the overhangs, and a particular dragoon-in-potentia emerging from another night with no answers…
Isa has been in the First Ring of Cardia for about a week or two, and she’s been up to a few things, mostly about four to six steins a night, on average. But Performative Sobriety was one of Isa’s better unofficial courses at the Academy, because showing up hungover to morning inspection is Not A Thing That Is Done, and so her path down the street is impressively free of stagger and stumble.
She passes plenty of taverns, because Cardia knows how to beat a cold day, and a hot day, and a warm day, and a rainy day, and a… …and as she walks past one of them, she hears a somewhat familiar voice say from within, in an excited tone, “You’re sure? Osler specifically?”
On one hand, she thinks, I really just want to go to sleep. But on the other hand, she rationalizes, no more regulations against fighting, so how bad could it be? Isa walks past the door and steps quickly to the side, out of eyeline but in earshot as she tries to place the voice.
He stands about six-foot-two, with dark brown hair that is entirely too thick to be in the halfway stage of growing it out, plus a beard he’s sure makes him quite appealing. Burgundy pants and a silver and black leather jacket covered in extraneous zippers are certainly a fashion choice, likely encouraged by an older brother that doesn’t have all of his best interests at heart.
But Arthur Covus has always meant well, even when he told you six years ago he wanted to go by “Art” because it was “way cooler,” and he was sort of a friend, at some point, maybe, up on the Fourth Ring.
Art gives the bartender an eager smile. “You’re sure it was her? Absolutely sure?”
The bartender looks as if it’s entirely too early to be dealing with a Covus’s enthusiasm.
It’s too good a line not to enter on. “They don’t want me drinking in the student bars anymore, so I’m left with places like this,” Isa says.
Art turns, and gives you the broadest smile you’ve seen in probably months. “Isa! I knew you’d come back sooner or later! When did you get in?” He can’t quite figure out if he should hug Isa, shake hands, clap her brotherly on the arm, or salute, and settles for a very chipper hands-in-pockets sway.
“About ten seconds ago, when I heard you asking about me.” She squints. “And?”
“And I need to talk to you about—”
“Breakfast.”
“Yes. I mean no! I mean yes, but — is it safe here? Is anyone listening in? What I have to tell you, absolutely no one else can know. NO one.”
Isa sighs. “I could hear you from the street. Probably could have stabbed you in the back before you noticed. Also the food here is awful. C’mon.”
“Where’re we going?” Art falls along with her like nothing so more than a happy dog.
“You want privacy. I want food.” She starts stalking away down the street, making no effort at an easy pace.
He keeps up just fine — he’s always been in great shape, despite a lot of drinking and a lot of shirking duty.
There are plenty of places around here to eat, some of them even good.
Isa finds a small cafe two blocks back from a market area, the sort of place merchants go to get away from the crowds of customers. It’s late enough in the morning that the breakfast rush has died down, but the lunch rush is far away. She doesn’t let Art talk until she’s well outside a plate-sized pancake of shredded potato and her second mug of coffee.
Art orders three bowls of fruit and happily munches away. It’s a weird friendship he thinks they have.
“So,” Isa finally concedes, between bites, “You were looking for me?”
“Yes!” Art looks conspiratorially side to side. “I have come into a particular piece of… information,” he over-enunciates.
Isa stares flatly at him, making direct eye contact as she chews her rösti.
Art waggles his eyebrows.
Isa chews.
“Well, cheering you up certainly didn’t work.” Art sobers up a bit. “Isa, I’ve got some bad news.”
“Imagine that.”
“Your spear is part of this upcoming class rewards.”
Isa swallows, exhales, and puts her utensils down. There’s a beat before she speaks, and her words sound transparently rehearsed. “It isn’t my spear. It was held by my family. Now it isn’t.”
“Yeah, but that’s bullshit,” Art says flatly.
“It sure is.”
Art leans forward, looking down to make sure his jacket sleeves don’t hit anything sticky. “Isa, that spear belongs to your family. It was going to be yours! We’d practice with it! I mean, you’d practice and I’d try to throw rocks at fountains down on the third ring, but that spear is yours! Them giving it away to the—” He lowers his voice, almost apologetically, before continuing. “To the guy who comes in sixth in the class, well that’s…”
“Sixth? SIXTH?”
“I know. I know!”
“You’d think they’d done enough to us. Sixth,” Isa mutters, just glaring down at the table.
“Someone oughta do something.” Art holds the dramatic pose, occasionally flicking his eyes up to you. “I have plans to lay siege to the Academy, overthrow the Regents, install my own leadership, and rule over it with benevolent justice. Would you like to be a general over my troops?” He thinks for a minute. “They stand at the back, right?”
“They can. It’s commonly considered the more cautious mode of leadership.” She pronounces ‘cautious’ like ‘cowardly’.
Art doesn’t take offense. “But seriously. I can get your spear. I just need to know if it’s important to you.”
“Oh wait when you said ‘someone’ you were talking about yourself?”
Art looks affronted. “Well, yeah!”
She deflates a little. “Art I have spent the last two years being the one who is supposed to be doing something. I did something. It didn’t work.”
“Well, yeah. As long as King Jess is in charge, whatever bite bug crawled up her mountain isn’t going to let her say she was wrong. But that doesn’t change that a bunch of people are hurting because of her bullshit. And I can’t change that, and I can’t change what she did to you or your parents.”
“Watch it,” she warns him.
He continues on, undaunted. “But to take something that is so important to you, and make it just another thing they give away to a bunch of people who weren’t good enough… It’s not right. So I was thinking that, y’know, someone just goes and gets it, swaps it out with another one… I mean, it’s not important to them, it is important to you — to US — we fix what they broke. I fix what they broke.”
“Having the spear isn’t going to fix it…” She sighs. “It’d feel pretty good, though.” “How long has it been in your family? Like, generations, right?” Art leans forward across the table. “And they’d just give it away?”
“It’s symbolic, Art. Our loyalty to the Crown, imbued into an artifact. Of course they’ll give it away. Grant it as a favor to some new favorite. It says ‘hey, don’t bother coming back’”
“They can’t give it away if they don’t have it anymore…” He gives you a conniving grin.
“Now hold on. If it’s gone, then they’re going to know right where to look for it. And then I really shouldn’t bother coming back because then I’m a rebel.” Isa looks him dead in the eyes. “And I. Am. Not. A. Rebel.”
Art waves his hands in front of him. “No, no, I’ve got that figured out! We can get a replacement for it. A counterfeit. There’s—” He lowers his voice again, which is hardly less suspicious, if literally anyone were in here. “There’s a market for that sort of thing. I know a guy, Second Ring, he makes ‘em and gets ’em onto airships heading out toward the Triad, he says. It’s not going to be any worse of a spear for them, it’s just not going to be YOUR spear.”
Isa picks at what’s left of her breakfast. “So just to be clear: you sneak a counterfeit spear into the Academy. It’s good enough to avoid detection, which means it’s still perfectly useful to them as a symbol. In return, I get my spear, which I can’t use or even be seen with in public, or the whole scheme falls apart. Sound right?”
“Well, yeah, but you should say it optimistically, like you really believe in me.” He gives her a reassuring smile. “And it’s only until your name gets cleared. And all I need you to do is not be here.”
“Believe me, Art, that is something I’d be doing regardless of your scheme.”
Art reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a train ticket. “I’m supposed to be on a train tomorrow heading for the Kinneas Station in Caerwyn. It’s a long trip, so if this ticket’s been stamped and I’m gone, I’m clearly not here. In return, you can pick up what I need there, and then we’ll meet in Caelonde after it’s done; that’s the second leg of my trip. Which can now be your trip.”
Isa looks at the ticket in his hand. “Caerwyn. Thought about seeing Caerwyn. What am I picking up?”
“I need a sword. I mean, I have a sword. I bought a sword. I bought a guy to make a sword — no, that sounds really bad. I bought a sword from a guy, he just has to make it — I mean he HAS made it, I just have to go GET it.” Art rubs his forehead. “It’s for a girl. I bought a really good sword for a girl. Can you please go get it for me?”
“Well gee, Art. When you ask like that how can I say no?”
“There you go! I’ve always said you were all right, never mind what Lance said.”
Lance would be Art’s older brother. Isa never really spoke to him. “I never have.”
“Anyway. You got your ticket, your train leaves tomorrow at noon, and I’ll see you in two weeks in Caelonde.”
Isa picks up the ticket. “Right. Two weeks. Now I’m going to go get some sleep.”