From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison)
Subject: [KQ][TGMOAB 7.z] Things Done In Secret
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 21:01:21 GMT


[ADMIN]

This post does two things.  First, it gets the Kron quest back in
wrap-up mode.  Second, it sets up Mithrandir's proposed thread in
which some group of intrepid individuals helps to  prevent Sorceror
from bringing something Real Bad into town.  Whether or not that
turns out to be Silken alone or a group depends on how people
respond - email him if you're interested in joining it.

Meantime, I wasn't able to get this back through him for character
review before he left for the day, but I have his all-clear to post
it.  My apologies if there is anything that doesn't read right in
character, we can fix it later.

-----

Rhoan had started threateningly towards him when Silken laughed in
mockery, but thought better of it when he saw that 'Raelf showed no
sign of being offended.

+  Silken felt oddly light headed, and leaned sat down for a moment.
+He felt ill, and confused. That man, in his vision. They were arguing
+about him or something, and Silken had been in denial mode, or tragic
+mode, or something like that.

'Raelf whispered an aside to Marcel and Rhoan.

"He's fighting a curse - I think it makes him kind of crazy sometimes.
It seems to be part of what made him attack Kron.  I misjudged - pushed
him too hard before he came all the way down from the highs.  But he's
burning it off - should come around in a moment."

+   'Raelf had done confusing things, like turning into a ... thing while
+telling him that life the universe and so on were not locked up in a 
+time something or other. The jist appeared to be that he didn't have 
+to take on a doom and gloom approach.
+   Confusing chap, this 'Raelf, never met anybody like him before.
+
+   He stood up rather groggily, holding his stomach, with a slight
+grimace on his face of discomfort.
+
+  "I'm sorry, 'Raelf, how would we uh stop uh him?"

The surfer stepped over to Silken and spoke quietly in reassuring tones.

"My fault, dude.  I forget you don't see things the way I do.  I can't
let you close enough into my mind to share it all the way.  The thing
you're carrying is contagious and you don't want to spread it, right?
But I still might be able to show you ...  Something's about to scry
us again, we need to be screened.  <<tempus fidget tao>>"

The surfer gestured a complicated shape with the staff and time twisted
in a loop around the two, forming a five-sided 8-dimensional solid.  From
the outside it was like looking into the heart of the snowstorm.  On the
inside, there was a pervasive feeling of peace and safety.  A small flat
disk on the floor, the swirl of light and dark in balance, radiated a
sense of stability.

'Raelf watched for a second to make sure it was having the desired effect
on the elf, then spoke.

"You see time as a linear thing.  Normally that's true, but not here in
Generica.  Here, there's all these godlike monsters, that creature that
was manipulating you, and the Great Mother you saw in your vision, and
at least four of the mages in the Guild, and the Wyeriun, and a half a
dozen others, all of them drawing on the power of the dimensional nexus
that focusses here.  Then there was the Thing, some clowns from a possible
uptime set off a timetravel experiment, and that broke the continuity web.
Time isn't linear here in the short run.  You can move back and forth.

When I changed, I turned into someone who has a real strong timesight.
I wanted to share that view with you so you'd know what you needed to
do, and I made a mistake - I forgot you were still coming out of that
berserker state, and tried to give it to you all at once.  Anyway, what
I showed you wasn't very clear, was it?  Let's see if we can work out
a way to communicate."

<<Air to .3 Fire to .8>>  The mage flickered briefly, the pertubation
showing as a complex pattern of energy flow before Silken's senses.

"I'm going to shape a threespace representation of what I showed you.
I'll hold the original in my surface thoughts for you to examine at
the same time.  You tell me if there's anything you need clarified."

Smoke began to waft off 'Raelf's hand and sculpted into the air, a web
of tendrils that forked and joined and split.  He pointed to one branch.

"Here, this is what I meant about Kron being forced to go to the Mother.
This represents the probability chains where he went to her.  This is the
ones where he didn't.  See how this fits the timesight image?  When time
forks, there's always a cause.  For this one, Kron died.  All these little
channels are things that aren't different enough to matter, they absorb back
into the main one.  See, in that line, you get here early enough to stop
Kron, and he dies.  Not what was intended, eh?

See, His sister Cheyenne was part of Great Mother, and had taken control.
Cheyenne was behind his summons: she intended him to go there, and the
only fork where she didn't get her way, was because he died.  But look
here at the details for what happens when he died.  See, Great Mother
goes nutso, starts eating everything around her, only a few hours and
she has enough power to overwhelm all these other beings, and then it
merges with the other timeline where Kron was absorbed - Nexus returns to
the worship of Her Grossness, and there, about four hundred years future,
she gets taken down again by someone with Elder Magic.  But by then,
everything in Nexus has been eaten - it's a wasteland again.

Now, off this skinny little thread here, the two percent of reality where
Kron wins.  That's because I was there.  Could have been almost any magician
or psychic with the right skills, the one who fills that role, just has to
be able to protect the others from HER for the twenty minutes that it took
Kron to deal with Cheyenne.  Provide a distraction, so to speak.
See, the important part was that he got there sane.  So this is what
really happened, everything else is just smoke and mirrors now."

Silken nodded.  This made much more sense, taken in pieces instead of all
at once,  but it still didn't explain how they were going to evade the
disaster he knew was coming.  'Raelf continued.

"Now, I originally couldn't see all of what happened after that - too much
noise on the other end of the timeline.  But now that it's become the true
line, I can see this other stuff.  Here, this is where your vision came in.
Impressive, by the way - you managed to reach past a major discontinuity.

So this is where the world stands right now.  We're here, just past this
fork.  See, there's the branch where the guy behind that irritating little
sniper magician gets to call up his demon.  Here, before he gets started,
there's a branch that takes off to the side.  One part is where you are,
the other part is where you aren't - see, in the timesight image?  Where
you aren't, the demon gets called.  Where you are, nothing.  There's
something you can do at this particular place and time that makes his
summoning ritual useless for at least a week on the same timephase that
he shares with Great Mother.  I can't really tell what it is - there's
too much fog, and see, you're hard to spot from place to place there.
Anyway after a week, Der Grossesh Mamoun'll be recovered enough to fight
back, and he doesn't dare to try his calling at that point."

"But you can't tell me what I'm supposed to do there?"

"No, sorry dude, but there's something kinda familiar about the way your
time trace keeps fading in and out..."

Silken was thinking furiously, trying to come up with some kind of a
plan or a solution, something to make sense out of this mess.

"I've got it.  Figured it out, dude.  That's a cosmos fade.  My kind of
work, but it's got your signature on it.  Which means I need to give
you some help here.  Am I right that you can't do any of the mental tricks
that move you from place to place?"

"My mental powers are mostly mind touching, and those are erratic lately."

"OK.  But you need to be able to navigate around a bit."

'Raelf whispered something that couldn't have come from a human throat,
and reached into a suddenly-open pouch on his bandolier.  He pulled out an
object that was clearly too big to fit inside.  It was flat, about the size
and shape of a practice shield.  He reached in again and pulled out some
odds and ends - a strange looking grip, a spool of gold wire, a felt pouch.

"So what this is - <<disjunctivus parturitus clavius>> - is a (yank)
travel device.  This sparkly red thing here (he pulled a sphere from
the surface of the flat thing) is the heart of it.  Lets it move in
time and space.  The little blue gizmo makes a barrier so you won't
get shredded in the process.  You know the discipline for invisible
mind?  Yes, no?  Well, focus a visualized `nothing here' through the
blue dude and you'll be harder for the bigbad to see you."

He stuck the sphere, with some additional gems and rocks from the pouch,
on the end of the handle, while the elf watched.

"I need to touch you to get your pattern.  May I?"

"Why?"

"So this will only work for you.  I don't trust anyone else with it."

"If you have to."

There was a mild tingle and a look of distaste as the mage touched the
elf's hand.  "Man, do what you can to get rid of that curse.  But this
other stuff is prob'ly more important right now, eh?"

He carefully wrapped the handle with gold wire, and a muttering and a
moment of disorienting flame/ice/wind/nothing left it a gold-wrapped
handle similar to that of a sword, with a few glowing gems flush with
the flat surface where the blade would be.

"There, it's attuned to you.  It'll be inert for anyone else.  It knows
when its really YOU - that berserker state won't be able to use it.
Here's what it does.  First, it'll take you up or down a timestream by at
most a half day from your "real now".  It gets power for this from the
timeforks, so it should work to get you where you need to be here in
Generica.  While you're in motion, you should be able to see the timeforks,
but they'll look more like the image in my mind than this smoke-construct,
so I've put in a bit of help.  The timeline you want to be on will glow
in blue, the one you don't want to be on will glow in red, and the ones
that don't matter will be in gold."

Silken nodded - should be easy enough to follow.  Time would tell.

"Second, it gives you a barrier that protects you from the travel forces
while you're in motion, but while you're travelling you can't easily
affect the rest of the world - you can sort of see it but not interact.
It'll stop line-of-sight magic, but if they have your name or any other
kind of contagion, or they can reach around dimensional corners, they can
still reach you, if they know you're there, so don't get careless."

'Raelf paused, thought a moment, then continued.

"Third thing it gives is a way to reach me.  If you get in trouble to the
point where you know you can't get out, I'll give you a hand, but please,
only use it in an emergency.  Just think my name into the red rune in the
middle, I'll find you in time.  Oh, and it won't be easy to lose it - side
effect of the attunement."

He handed the device to the elf, then meticulously replaced all the left
over stuff in the bandolier pocket.

"'Raelf?"

"Yeah?"

"One thing.  How do you start it?"

"Oh.  Sorry.  You just think `go' and expect it to take you, and it
will do the rest.  When you want to stop, think `stop' and it will
deposit you where and when you are in the timestream.  The barrier
will vanish when that happens, so remember to be sneaky.  Also be
careful about paradoxes - they're dangerous, so don't do anything
that like, prevents you from doing what you've already done."

"Thanks."

"No sweat - sorry about earlier, I wasn't thinking.  Should have waited
til you were back in control.  Be careful.  It looks like you can get
through with what you need to do and not get snuffed, but there is a
chance you might get hurt, and I'd just as soon not be demon chow."

"What if I get there and scope it out and find out I need some help?"

"Well, you can always phase back a few hours and bring more folks in.
The booster can only carry three people at once, though.  Or you can
call me, like I said.  I'll still be around for a few days.  Got some
cleaning up I have to do here."

"Got it."

"When you're done, meet me at the Dragons' Inn and I'll buy you a brew."

The pentacle vanished from around them.  The others had left the roof,
and 'Raelf started looking for the stairway down.