Session 61: Let Them Eat Cake
General Summary
With an illusion of Industria created for the dinner, actual Industria heads off to meet with the rebels. She goes in disguise as a bat-being and when the rebels ask for everyone to introduce themselves, she simply calls herself “Batman”. Batman learns that the rebels plan to assassinate a noble to show the people of Basilla that they do have power. The target is somebody within the Kociak family, but the leader of the meeting won’t reveal who until three days later. Batman collects some tokens to invite others to the cause and with that, flies off into the night. Meanwhile at the dinner, there’s more awkward poems and jokes on my part as everyone celebrates my new status.
Dinner goes off without a hitch and no one suspects a thing of our Industria clone. When actual Industria returns, we send the clone off so she can slip in. She tells us what the rebels plan after everyone else files out of the dining room, though one family member runs back in to introduce themselves. His name is Luca and he’s my cousin…who we’re all instantly suspicious of simply because he’s being way too friendly. But no matter how hard any of us try, we can’t find anything actually wrong with him; so we bid him farewell and I go off to have some bonding time with my evil grandma. Elathera casts arcane eyes on me so we can figure out just how powerful Sunyeros is and with that, I’m off.
In talking with Sunyeros, I learn she plans to throw a coronation event for me in a week’s time. She tries to lie about who the father of her children are, but it’s not very convincing. Still, I don’t press her about it on the off chance it makes her more suspicious of us all. She tries to coax me into leaving Rikius again and assures me that I’ll get to meet my new husband in due time. When we all reconvene for the night to discuss what to do about any of this, Luca follows us all to let us know that Sunyeros wants him to keep an eye on us at all times. He’s curious as to why, but we’re not willing to reveal anything…nor is he. When I manage to read his mind, he’s waiting on us to admit our association with the rebels and when we continue not to, he grows frustrated with us.
After he leaves empty-handed, we start to piece together that Luca is most likely the rakshasa in disguise. We still need more information to work with, so Industria uses magic to probe Sunyeros’s mind while she’s sleeping. We get confirmation that the rakshasa is the father of her children and he’s been with the family for many centuries. His true name is Jahangir, but we can’t get her to confess that he’s going by Luca currently. The family’s plan for me is to have me act as a stand-in for the assassination the rebels have planned. They want me married off to their rival so when I’m inevitably killed at my coronation, the people will put the blame on the rival family and oust them from power. That would leave an opening for the Kociaks to take even more control of the islands and make sure that Sunyeros and Jahangir’s children are the only rightful heirs left.
Our plans for a slow build to a proper revolution are thrown out the window as we have no choice but to kill the rakshasa as soon as possible. And with a possibility of Sunyeros dying too, I have no choice but to actually take the throne temporarily in order to keep the island from falling into chaos. We’re worried of her disturbing our plans to be rid of the rakshasa, so I suggest we distract her with a miscarriage. Everyone’s immediately uncomfortable, so then I say we simply cut the babies out of her so they don’t die with her. Industria’s on board for that plan, but Elathera and Rikius are all degrees of horrified by that. Elathera mumbles something about erasing Sunyeros’s memory, so that provides us with another less morbid option. We can either kill her and save the children, or simply let her go through with giving birth and immediately wipe her memories after. In that case, I take the throne and tell the people that she’s become too ill to run the island and then we can all sleep better knowing we didn’t do a forced C-section on somebody.
With that settled, we head to Elathera’s plane and prepare to fight the rakshasa. Once in position, she opens a gate that forces him over, but before any of us can do anything; he teleports somewhere else on her big ass plane. With no way of knowing which way he went, she opens another gate and her and Industria use magic to lock him in for good. After a few hits exchanged though, the rakshasa’s had enough of our bullshit and flies away to escape the dimensional lock. This doesn’t leave a whole lot of options for any of us and growing tired of his antics, Elathera pulls off some complicated scheme
to trap him in a mage’s enclosure with her…and then turns him into a book.
Given how old this particular rakshasa is, this book is h u g e and impossible for any of us to move. After we deal with Sunyeros, maybe we’ll find the time to pour through the millions of pages and learn the details of the curse he inflicted on my bloodline.
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