--- Atrog ---

Their travel back to Northpass was luckily uneventful.

Rania had been surprised by that, but Atrog explained that being attacked so frequently would make little sense. How could civilians possibly trade if they should expect to be robbed or attacked by monsters on a weekly basis while traveling between settlements?

You kept your guard up so that you were prepared for the worst, but you should not actually expect to be attacked with regularity. It was statistically improbable.

When they arrived in Northpass and made their report to House Darklight, the matter was bumped up to the Interim Council. An accidental leak in an old facility was one thing, but what the party had encountered spoke of enemy action and had to be taken more seriously.

An emergency meeting was convened within the day, and the newly named team Nundru was asked to present their findings.

The Interim Council was lead by Oruk's version of House Ulein, founded by one of the incarnations of Cilia Ulein.

Cilia Ulein was an Old Power, and the High Priestess of Brytius. She had been blessed with the ability to come back to life by merging with a compatible individual whenever she died. Her goal was to achieve mastery in every possible skill, and Brytius would keep reviving her so long as she did not deviate from her path. She would sometimes spend a lifetime as a politician, or an adventurer, and win international renown, often without revealing her identity. At other times, she would spend a lifetime improving a mundane skill such as fishing, and become irrelevant to the world for decades.

Throughout her many lives, she had founded multiple dynasties in many different countries. Even though they were not related by blood, all of these noble houses shared a kinship with each other. This was mostly because newer incarnations of Cilia Ulein would scold them whenever they failed to work together, and no noble liked getting chewed out by the progenitor of their own bloodline. As a result, many countries who had a House Ulein put that house in charge of their foreign affairs, and Oruk was no exception. After all, if your country was negotiating with several other countries, and all of their ambassadors considered each other kin, then you were at a severe disadvantage if the same was not true for you as well.

This gave the Ulein Houses a tremendous amount of political leverage on the international scene.

At the same time, the Ulein Houses were perhaps the main reason why modern countries often consisted of multiple species, unlike older civilizations that had been racially homogeneous. Cilia Ulein's reincarnations could happen to any species, so a House Ulein could be found for any species as well. Historically, the main driving force that caused different races to work together and to mingle was military conquest, of course. Mixed forces were simply more effective than homogeneous forces. But in times of trouble people would often still divide their loyalties by species. The Ulein Houses ensured a degree of inter-species cooperation despite this.

Oruk was a rarity among nations that had much less speciesism than other countries. This was not because of House Ulein, but largely because Oruk's founder had taken a proverbial hammer to the country's previous culture. She had systematically killed off any norms and values that could threaten to divide the population. A citizen of Oruk was a citizen of Oruk, and that was that.

Back in the days of the conquest, a lot of nobles who fancied themselves superior had been asked to prove their superiority by leading glorious charges on the frontline, while Oruk magnanimously offered her best tutors for their descendants during their absence. Oruk had richly rewarded the survivors with lands in newly conquered regions. They thought they were being rewarded, even as their numbers kept getting culled. They also lived too far away to influence politics, while their children were being raised by tutors with different cultural norms and agendas. After only a few generations of this, nothing of their old culture remained.

"That is concerning news." Councilor Vol Ulein told the party, after Atrog had given his report.

The old orc was looking mostly at Dov as she spoke. Atrog suspected that the identity of Dov Shan as a member of foreign royalty had something to do with the heightened priority they had received. Calling an emergency meeting of the Interim Council was not done every day. Usually he was lucky when his employers deigned to speak to him within a few days of completing a mission, no matter how urgent they had claimed the matter to be at the time.

"An outbreak of a biomancy research project would have been concerning. A rogue agent is even worse. But the most concerning thing of all is that Captain Ambermoon of Bells End turns out to be a traitor, and that you killed him a week ago."

"Why is that the most concerning part?" Asked Atrog.

"Because I talked to him just yesterday." The councilor replied, to everyone's surprise.

"Boom! That's how you deliver a plot twist, Atrog" Rania exclaimed. "See! That was so much cooler than the usual thing you do, where you want everyone to share information about everything all of the time, and not keep secrets until the most dramatic moment comes to reveal them. Did you notice how much cooler this was than if she had told us earlier?"

Atrog looked at Rania, then back at the councilor. However twisted her logic, there was an important point in there, he thought. Why would the councilor not just tell them earlier? There had been plenty of time for a briefing before the council meeting.

"I see that the notes about your shaman's unique personality have not been exaggerated." Vol Ulein continued.

"To answer the question I can read on your face: The reason we did not tell you was because I wanted to see all of your reactions. I was expecting a deception of some kind, but all of you seemed genuinely surprised. Well, all of you except for Her Royal Highness. I expect you have been trained to school your features, haven't you?"

Dov gave a nod.

"An ability that ironically was counterproductive here." The councilor continued. "But I would be very surprised if the rest of you were able to lie to me. This alleviates one of my concerns. Investigations get ever so much more difficult if you can't trust your investigators."

"Now back to the topic at hand. Captain Ambermoon reported that the attacks on Bells End stopped a few days ago, coinciding with the time when you say you killed him. Yet you did not return to him. So he traveled to Northpass himself, to report and get more information. He also mentioned that the miasma around Greenwatch has grown in intensity, and he was worried about what was going on."

Well, there went any hope that they could retrieve Galanys' carriage. Atrog knew that the woman had lost practically her entire livelihood when they had to leave the carriage behind.

"Both your claim about the clone, or whatever this is, and your claim that the miasma is sapient are concerning. If the assumption that this is related to Transcendence Laboratories is correct, then that makes it even worse. We are going to launch our own investigation into the matter. Based on our analysts' preliminary findings, there is no easy way to reach that facility in any case. We would therefore like to keep you on retainer until the investigation is concluded. Use the time to prepare and plan."

The rest of the meeting was mostly spent going over minutiae and haggling over their retainer fee.

As a security measure, the party also agreed to give their testimonials again under a truth spell. This was not as reliable as it sounded and the Coros organization charged quite a bit of money for this service, but Councilor Vol Ulein was willing to pay for it anyway.

Lastly, Rania was asked to talk to the experts at the university, to see what they had to say about her claims.

As soon as they left the council, Galanys contacted the rest of the team through Dov's telepathic link.

"*Remember when she tried to shock us with the reveal that captain Ambermoon was still alive? I actually acted surprised on purpose, and she didn't notice. I bet I could totally lie to her if I tried.*" Atrog could practically feel the smugness through the connection.

"*Please, let's not bet on things that could land you in prison, Galanys.*" He replied.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

--- Dov ---

Dov entered the Temple of Duna and walked up to the head priest.

"I would like to purchase two resurrections, please." She said, and dumped the content of her backpack on the ground.

The limbless torsos of her siblings landed on the ground with a disgusting sound. She stared the priest directly in the eyes.

The man briefly glanced down at the mutilated corpses and raised a single eyebrow. Then he looked back at her without even a flicker of emotion on his face.

"Regenerating limbs costs extra. Do you plan to pay with cash or credit?"

Gods damn. The man was good, Dov thought.

She thought for sure this was going to get a reaction out of him.

When she had first entered the temple, she had gotten a strong, instinctive urge to mess with the guy when she saw his holy symbol. She had had no idea why. So she had left, and spent an hour combing through her memories to find out what could have left such an odd instinct in her. What she found surprised her.

The priesthood of Duna, goddess of entropy, tended to become stoic and very good at controlling their emotions. When you were forced to acknowledge the brevity and pointlessness of mortal existence during daily meditations, it was either that or going insane. It had become something of a game for her and her siblings to see if they could get a rise out of their mother Elona, who was a high ranking priestess of Duna. It never worked.

Now that she remembered, Dov saw no reason to break with that tradition, so she returned to the temple. She had hoped the man in front of her would be an easier target, but it looked like she had no such luck. Maybe it would work if she pulled out all the stops and acted like a pompous noble?

"You can charge the expense to the Shan Kingdom. Bill it to princess Dov." She said in her most haughty voice, while pointing at herself. "And a regeneration spell will not be necessary. We are an artificial species built from forgotten technology by the daughter of Vherdes the Hedonist himself. We can regenerate our limbs on our own with a bit of time. A regeneration spell would probably only lead to complications, since you don't know how to adapt it to our physiology. It could interfere with the enchantments woven into our very genes."

"Fascinating." The man replied. "Will that be all?"

--- Atrog ---

Atrog did the math, and calculated how much of his earnings he would need to set aside for his retirement.

He donated most of the rest to his favorite charities.

He only kept a small amount to pay for his guilty pleasures and to have a good time with his friends in Northpass.

It was what responsible people did when they suddenly found themselves with a financial windfall.

--- Rania ---

Rania was going to spend all of her money on cool stuff! It was going to be so much fun!

It was the twelfth of the month and the moon was gibbous. That meant that there was going to be a shop in town today that wouldn't be there tomorrow.

To find it, you needed to get lost in just the right way. Fortunately, nobody said that you couldn't get lost on purpose, and find it that way.

Rania was not quite sure why the shop worked like that. It did not seem very customer friendly. But then again Galanys had explained once that some super expensive brands actually did similar things. By making it harder to buy stuff from them, the people who did get the stuff could brag about it to their friends, and that meant they could make the stuff more expensive. She did not really get why you would want to do that, but people were weird. Probably just another cultural misunderstanding.

Rania worked out the correct location to start getting lost, which was in front of a staircase.

She looked around and pretended that she had lost her way. She climbed the stairs. She climbed another level of stairs. She sighed out loud about how she had gotten lost. She went down both sets of stairs again. She turned left and walked to the next corner. She looked confused and turned right. Another left at the next corner, and another right at the one after that. There was a shop in front of her that she had never seen before. She closed her eyes and thought about how lost she was. When she opened her eyes, she was pretty sure the door looked different. She opened the door and entered the shop.

There was so much cool stuff in here!

There were magic swords, and magic armors, and spell books, and weird magical doodads on all the shelves.

There was even a section for cursed magical items, and another for super-cursed actually-not-fun magical items.

Rania was glad to see that. Many similar shops did not organize their merchandise by curses and that often led to cultural misunderstandings. Customers often didn't ask about the presence of curses, and salesfey usually assumed that meant they would like to be surprised.

"Hello, what can I help you with today?" A pixie greeted her and floated over.

That impressed Rania even more. The pixie had not even asked her for her name. This place was very multi-cultural.

"Hello, I'm looking for adventuring gear and adventure-related paraphernalia. I would like to browse for a bit." She responded.

"Certainly! Feel free to ask me any questions." The pixie replied.

Rania started looking through the shop for the most interesting items she could find.

"Excuse me, I have noticed that you have Arrows of Dragon Slaying and Arrows of Werewolf Slaying here. Those sound pretty useful, but I'm not really comfortable buying racist arrows. Do you also have Arrows of Bad Guy Slaying?"

"Arrows of Bad Guy Slaying?" The pixie repeated questioningly.

"Yes. They are arrows that work super well if, and only if, the target deserves it."

"I have never heard of such a product, but it sounds interesting." The fey replied. "I could contact my supplier about it and see what can be done. But a custom order like this will probably be pretty expensive."

"Oh, don't worry." Rania replied. "I have lots of stuff to trade."

She began putting her gold on the counter. The pixie looked skeptical. Then she added some other items to the pile: Some rocks. Some flowers. A ball of yarn. A stuffed animal. A child's drawing.

"Oh wow! You weren't kidding." The pixie exclaimed excitedly. "Those flowers are so pretty! And that stuffed bear has such a melancholic story behind it. I just love it. I'm sure a collector will pay well for this."

Rania was glad that the items were so well received. She had paid those kids a lot of gold for the stuffed animal and the drawing.

She spent several hours in the shop, looking for cool things to buy.

She even made sure to get something nice for each of her friends. They would make for great presents later.

--- Galanys & Balron ---

"...and ten of these ten foot poles, please." Balron said.

The salesman looked stressed, but very happy. They had been talking to him for two hours already, buying everything in sight.

"Don't we already have enough ten foot poles?" Galanys asked "We even bought a few that can be collapsed with a command word."

"Yes, but those were made out of metal." Balron replied. "These ones are made out of wood. You never know when you might run into something that can dissolve metal."

"Oh, that's a really good point." Galanys said. "We should do that for our weapons, too. Some backup daggers made out of wood. Basically stakes against vampires, I guess. Actually, that reminds me of a thought I had a while ago. Do you think it would be feasible to build a composite weapon that just combines all of the different things that some creatures are weak against? Like some sort of wooden stake with a silver inlay and a cold iron frame, a mirror polish, and dipped in holy water?"

"I never thought of that." Balron replied. "I don't think you could feasibly get all of the different materials against every monster in just one weapon. But it's an interesting challenge!"

The two of them packed their purchases away in their recently acquired bottomless bags.

They chatted excitedly about the most plausible way one could construct an "anti-everything" weapon, as they continued their march through the shopping district, emptying entire shelves.

When Dov had learned that Balron was planning to buy equipment to help them on their adventure, she mentioned that those were basically a business expense. If it helped them all survive, then she was sure her parents would see it as an investment. A resurrection was significantly more expensive than most magic items, after all. So Dov had written them a check to buy "anything that could possibly be useful", and to "use your best judgment" on what was a reasonable expense.

In retrospect, Galanys thought, Dov would probably have phrased that differently if she knew Balron better. Not that she herself was one to talk, of course. Galanys was fully aware that her own penchant for combining items in weird ways meant that "could possibly be useful" was a lot broader than Dov had probably intended.

Anything that would be useful for the group would also be useful for her own survival, Dov had said. That meant that her parents would allow it as a business expense. Probably. And in any case, it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission for these things. So she wrote them a check, and then went off to get her siblings resurrected.

The first thing they had bought were bottomless bags. And then some more bottomless bags for redundancy. Then they went through the shopping district, and started filling them up. Contrary to the name, bottomless bags were not actually bottomless. It was pretty impressive to fill one, though.

They had even bought a new carriage. Granted, it was the team's carriage, and not Galanys' personal one, but what did that matter so long as she could live in it? It was much fancier than the old one, too. It was drawn by not one but four skeletal horses, raised by a very experienced necromancer no less. Two additional skeletal horses were currently de-animated and folded up in the trunk, as spares in case something happened to the primaries. The carriage itself was huge and beautiful. It was basically a mobile house.

Balron had already drawn up a plan to reinforce it, and apply all sorts of security enchantments to it. He said he was inspired by a prototype weapon Oruk fielded during the Great War, which was called a "tank". He had shown her a picture of it. It had looked menacing, and Galanys had fallen in love with it at first sight. It was going to be difficult to get the raw materials for the primary cannon, but it would be so worth it.

She had never seen Balron so happy before. It was like Christmas had come early for the man.

Galanys wished she knew what "Christmas" was. "Christmas has come early" was a strange phrase that Denissa Mardok had used a few times, and so nobles had started imitating her as they always did. But she refused to elaborate what the phrase was actually about. Galanys' curiosity meant that she could not just ignore a mystery. She would probably never find out, and it probably wasn't important in the first place. But the joy of discovering something new was just too important for her, so she got easily distracted by such things.

Banishing that useless train of thoughts from her head, she focused again on what really mattered: Could the tank be improved further by adding weird stuff to it? The answer was obviously going to be yes. It always was, in her experience. The fun was in figuring out what exactly she would need to add.