Unbalanced Negotiations

Diplomatic action

Myska's Menagerie find their way through an antagonistic conversation with someone whose idealogy is... right... if too radical... wait, what?  No.  They're supposed to be the bad guys.

After landing for the evening, Chupta set to work repairing the airship as best he could using his flight, magical hand, and Jafi to work from both the outside and inside of the balloon. While he worked, Astrid set about focusing her attention on warding herself and her companions from immediate death if this midnight meeting did not go well. Millie spent his own time better gearing up his minions before turning his attention to lookout duties with the rest of his companions.
  In the hours that followed, conversation filled the void as Astrid sent waves of Dancing Lights radially out into the darkness beyond. The lights marked the some random passage of time as well as created a beacon to their location in the night. If anything, that might unspokenly serve as an act of good will towards their unannounced guests on their travel here. Astrid remained on the backed earth under Chupta as Crush took mid deck and Millie aft with his three minions armed with bows across the vessel.
  Some of the conversation had this evening was an attempt at constructive planning. Crush and Chupta questioned Astrid on what she even wanted to talk to this masked vigilante about. Astrid was no longer even sure. Her uninformed plan long ago was to gather temperance shards to magical induce peace between the Scales of Justice and New Derth to allow for actual negotiations. Now, though, without the shards and realizing that she didn't know what was going on, she just wanted to understand their point of view.
  Seemingly less constructive conversation led to Chupta revealing that he had nuked a goblin to save Jafi. Crush heavily questioned why he didn't snap Jafi out of reality instead of smoking the goblin with a shocking grasp in that moment and then snapping him out. Crush pushed on that, “This is the second time you have killed a goblin for no reason” referencing back to the initial giant attack at DragonKiller Sitting. Astrid defended Chupta's mistake though, as they were all fallible. She herself had accosted people in Bactran on a misleading divination for shards.
  As Astrid admitted the fault, a heavily accented female voice echoed up from the deck boards glad to hear that the party knew that they were fallible. On the next wave of Dancing Lights moving outward, the furthest stretch they extended before winking out revealed the helmed monk slowly strutting towards the party out of the gloom.
  The beginning of the conversation had the woman slowing and evenly pacing towards the group one foot in front of the other while her voice then echoed from the engines of the ship. In time when she got close enough, her voice stopped being thrown and it emitted just from her form having stopped 60 ft out from Astrid.
  The conversation started rather matter-of-fact like. The woman's name was Virtuosa and she led the Scales of Justice. Claims back and forth at aggressions back at Tombmesa were met with an impasse with both sides feeling they were in the right. In time, it would be revealed that Virtuosa's goal in the wastes was two pronged. She fought for the lives of people being sacrificed to greed and fought to protect a the wastes from needless destruction.
  The Heartsieve Wastes had gotten their name from the number of lives filtered through them in search for riches and treasures. In more recent times, the guilds and companies of New Derth were incentivizing more and more people to head out into the wastes to build their own graves. The rich build up the hopes of the poor to send them off to die for the accountant's books. While the Scales of Justice are primarily made up of folk with monstrous lineage, they are no longer the outcasts. The monstrous folk know they aren't wanted. Now they are watching the people who are “passing” in New Derth be subjected to the same treatment the orcish and goblinoids peoples have always seen. The half-breeds, the paupers, the mixed folk that feel like they belong in society are not the invisible victims being sent to their doom of an oligarchy that pretends to see them as people. The Scales of Justice oppose that oligarchy that continues to find new peoples to disenfranchise in a way to be thanked for it.
  Virtuosa also fights for the land itself. The Heartsieve Wastes is a land of stunning beauty. It's sunrises and sunsets mix with the rugged lands like a colorful snake with a venomous bite. It's open and dry lands are death to those who do not respect it. Despite that, the wealthy are sending many to tear the place asunder for unneeded wealth. The pop-up towns of wasted lumber to be left to rot. The mines to be carved through the landscape like scars across a pristine land. Destruction and death for needless resources. If all the people who were sent to the Heartsieve for gold and glory were to just go to the arable lands around the channels, they would toil for a better life with food and goods as their rewards beholden to no one else.
  The Astrid took the primary opposition to Virtuosa continuing to push for negotiations and a peaceful resolution. Virtuosa removed her masked helm to reveal what peaceful negotiations with those in power had earned her in the past. Her face was vastly scared with a ravine that cut from right forehead to left chin that left a crater where her nose should have been. She was not interested in talking with those in power for a peaceful ends. What small moments Millie chirped in here and in the future were in attribution to what they had seen of Silverfield supported Virtuosa's claims.
  Crush and Chupta pushed for some form of trade or barter. For resources, supplies, goods, something that New Derth could give her people for permission to mine in their lands. Virtuosa claimed the lands were not theirs. They did not want to live there. They only resided at Tombmesa as a base of operations for their work to fight for the new generation of unwitting outsiders and to fight for the land. They tried to push for the Scales of Justice to work with New Derth to be the ones to properly do the resource extraction so no new people would be sent to their deaths. Virtuosa spat at the idea of submitting herself to the oligarchy for their gain. The point was for no one to be defiling the wastes, not for them to do it more efficiently.
  Astrid saw this vehemence and pushed. She wanted to know how far Virtuosa's ideals went. What the limits of her morality were. Astrid pushed the attacks the Scales of Justice had on the people she supposedly wanted to save. Conversations revealed that while supplies where raided and embargoed on the mining towns, somehow most of the workers managed to escape the wastes if they chose to give up. Sure, the mayors, sheriffs, and the like found a bloody end, but the workers tended to make it out. Of all the horror stories that came back to New Derth, someone had to tell them. And as for the loudest voices, New Derth never shared the death counts of their own doing. The capitalist mortalities. They spread the propaganda they needed to cover up the fact that the Scales of Justice were merciful to the laborer. The prominent names, those in power, fueled the transmission of murderous propaganda.   Astrid pushed further that Virtuosa was unwilling to truly fight for her beliefs. If she wanted to really send a message, she should kill everyone and the guilds would instantly stop sending new groups. Virtuosa stood by the sanctity of lives and threw the extremist actions back at the woman who had spoken so much about temperance. The tiefling opened up a proposition. If Astrid felt that plan would work so well, she should take her airship and go carpet bomb Billowbluff. If she wanted peace so bad, she could solve it all in a single day.
  With that, Virtuosa turned to walk off into the night having given up on the party. In a last effort, Astrid mention far greater evils on the way. Mentioned dragons on the horizon. Mention shared goal. Mention other shards. And in that moment the Shade Crystal began to glow out on the deck of the airship. Virtuosa's attention was grabbed for but a moment. Astrid had to make the most of it.
  When Virtuosa sought to confirm such statements, Astrid agreed because to do otherwise would be to cast away this moment. Virtuosa had Astrid recount what she had said after the tiefling and initiated a spell that Millie would identify as a Detect Thoughts. Astrid's recounting was scoured for truth, yes, but Virtuosa also dug deeper to memories tangentially linked to gather more information than otherwise intended to be given. Astrid tried to guide those thoughts to end on her sudden, cold death at the hands of Scizzord and his pursuit of the same crystals that Astrid new pushed Virtuosa onward.
  Tentatively, conversations began to reveal more alluded elements of Virtuosa being empowered by a similar artifact aid her cause in the Heartsieve. She would not just abandon it. If the companions would help her drive New Derth's influence of the region and help save the oppressed people, she would turn over her fragment of the idol to them.
  In a sudden turn of position, Virtuosa pressured the party if their vessel could get airborne. Once receiving permission to climb aboard the vessel, Virtuosa called in her gnoll bodyguard from out in the gloom. The gnoll ran in with a bow, arrows, polearms, and javelins dotting her back as she carried a handheld geometric prism wondrous item. The gnoll used a grappling hook to climb about the vessel while Virtuosa stepped through the shadows to appear above board.
  As the ship raised up steadily, the sudden need to raise grew award as a minute passed with nothing happening or being said in the night. One minute turned to two and then two turned into a huge gout of sand erupting from the earth bellow them as a gigantic plated worm burst from the ground. Millie looked to the gnoll who still head the geometric prism. He could see the hair across her arm vibrating and and standing on end. It seemed the pair had called in the cavalry if the conversation didn't go they way Virtuosa wanted.
  The odd assortment of passengers this night then began loose plans on how they would drive New Derth out of the Heartsieve Wastes. The bulk of the idea would be to make a massive scene at Billowbluff and use that as enhanced pressure back in New Derth. A major point was having at least one major player of Billowbluff hierarchy survive to have their word mean more to their superiors. This started as all of the major influencers at Billowbluff surviving but both Virtuosa's feelings as well as suggested plans from the Menagerie involved some key deaths to sell the threat. Plans included winning citizen opinion with the Menagerie hunting a Burrowing Worm, surprise undead, and playing into Hrathlnax's appearance to have a dragon of their own appear in these lands. While minor, Crush could conjure a black dragon spirit to serve in the Scales of Justice. Once properly scarred, the Menagerie could fly everyone back to New Derth as heroes buffer the idea that the threat was too powerful to be fought.
  The plan would be work shopped over time. Myska's Menagerie would have two days of flying around the Shrieking Flats to even get to Billowbluff. From there, they would need to ingratiate themselves to the people to throw off the suspicion of “They just got here and now they are telling us to flee?”
  During private conversations, Chupta noticed something as the Shade Crystal continued to glow in the night. Pulling up his magical monocle, he once more saw the ethereal, crystalline dragon form of Myska trying to interact with Virtuosa. The tiefling was down having a private conversation with the gnoll companions. The spirit of Myska traced claws gingerly across the outside of the helmet and face mask, unable to touch her. The invisible form would then try to chug and caress the woman. Slowly, Myska went back and forth between the two unable to fully interact.
  Once the initial plans were confirmed, Virtuosa announced the she and her companion would be returning to their base and would return for further plans when needed. A flash of light stole them from existence. The following conversations among the menagerie were shattered when Millie noticed a belaying pin missing from where the gnoll had been loitering. The party first suspected possible scrying aid before Millie realized that teleportation can be rather inaccurate, especially at a variable location unless you have an associated object. With that small action, trust was disintegrated before the party.
  After finding an area to actually rest through the morning, the companions began their two day flight to Billowbluff. The hypothetical plans on how they would disturb Billowbluff and upturn the established power structures ebbed and flowed. At times, the plan was more aggressive with drawing a burrowing worm into the town directly while other times they favored the subterfuge of playing one prominent member of the town against the other. And then sometimes... the ideas exploded into creating a zombie plague “charade”... with real zombies...
  One ramification of these plans where actions taken to interact with Virtuosa again before their arrival at Billowbluff. If they wanted to partake in any plan with the burrowing worm, they would need the geodic prism that could be used to call them in. Millie magically reached out to Virtuosa to set up a meeting acquire the device. There was a quip thrown in alluding to the fact they knew she had stolen a part of the ship. She delayed coming until the second day of the journey. She did not deny or even take offense to them calling her out on taking the belaying pin. They had agreed that she would come back magically an the spare object allowed for such things to happen more efficiently. She would hand over the geodic prism with a great interest in having it returned to her when finished and warned them to make sure they were very far from Billowbluff before using it. With the interactions complete, she was gone once more.
  Amid planning during flight to billow bluff, Millie had an epiphany as to the greater situation. He remembered back to what he had learned about New Derth having the temperance shards that “promoted progress to prevent living in the past.” With Virtuosa speaking of protecting these lands and her own temperance shard experience, they very much matched the property of those Myska gave to “vitalize the wilds to prevent them from being overtake be fervent growth”. While these two sets of shards were not initially given to the same areas, the dwarven exodus and century of expansion had brought their influences together. Without the world knowing it, this all could very well be purely because of the Temperance Shards themselves opposing each other. Removing the influence of one, either one, would likely allow the other to win out quickly. They had seen the drastic ramifications of removing Mount Fohkala's cluster though that was heightened by the presence of the dragon. The level of ramifications here were unknown but likely present. Millie tried to explain his break-through to others in the party but they weren't receptive to it. Among the counters, Astrid argued that the temperance shards purely neutralized wherever they were. Whether the whole party truly disagreed with him or simply didn't understand the jump in topic and concept is unknown.