056. Exalted

The motley dreams, and finds a way forward.

### Play of the Game:

Liz as Sophia, for leading the motley into the past to the tree of life, and dreaming of Power.

***"I love birthdays… a day to be recognized, and to play games!"***

In the workshop of The Spark, Patches tests out the new chip for her lightning gun, provided by the wints in the forest. It appears the chip activates a setting in the Entropic which allows Patches to literally steal Glamour from other beings… at the cost of incurring some Banality as well. Upstairs, Braum asks Kyoko for help in finding work so that he can continue to support his family while adventuring, and the two of them joke about Braum's lack of marketable skills other than his strength. Sophia and Ramzia commiserate about meeting the Crystal Circle: it was a definitely a "win" in Sophia's eyes, but perhaps they do all need some time to relax and enjoy themselves.

That night, the three members of the motley each dream, confronted by a choice. Braum stands at a fork in a path, one branch leading off towards the powerful, roiling ocean, the other towards his father, encouraging if poor in support. As he chooses to follow his father's encouragement, Patches finds herself behind a curtain, about to step out in front of a crowd of people, desperate for her knowledge to help them. While she eyes the door to escape, she eventually steps out in front of the crowd and into the light. Sophia stares at a playground, knowing that she should be waiting for her niece, but just across the street is a store with the most beautiful harp. While she longs for the instrument, she knows in her heart that her duty is to her niece, and so she waits.

All three members of the motley are suddenly in the Exhaust, greeting a graceful woman in a long, white, diaphanous dress. While Braum is suspicious as to why she has returned, Sophia and Patches question her: how can they get closer to the truth? "I am a steward of Fate," she smiles, "and you have learned from your mistakes. You made the right choices, including for those who didn't…." And the three wake up.

Patches, Sophia, Braum, Kyoko, and Zistor all awaken to find manila envelopes slipped under their doors: along with plane tickets to Halifax, bookings at the Lord Nelson Hotel, and confirmation for a rental car, they each have a scrawled note "Go away". Sophia smiles; Claude is making them take that vacation after all! The sidhe hunts for Incisor to check in on her after her Unleashing on Talus, and finds the redcap asleep in her room, a new shiner on her cheek. She tells Sophia that she had to go out thrashing after what she did to Talus, and indulged her Seelie side and her kith nature by setting fire to a man's garage who had been attacking his girlfriend, scaring him out of doing it again. As Sophia heals some of her Nightmare, Incisor implores them not to burn out, and to appreciate what they have.

As Patches and Braum learn that Zistor is quite well-traveled, having been born in Tel Aviv to diplomat parents, Sophia confirms that they all had the same dream the night before. The sidhe assumes that Starlight Dove was trying to tell them that someone still needs their help, or that they failed to help them… or both. The crew head to Halifax, and as Patches and Sophia meet a chimera in the hotel bar and exchange stories, Braum prepares to have the others in his dreams again.

Braum dreams of a single large tree in a field, which Sophia and Patches stare up at, noting that each branch seems to have a shadowed, silhouetted figure on it. Sophia climbs to the lowest branch, and speaks to a well-groomed man with a fancy shirt, who simply repeats her words back to her. "Who are you?" she asks. "I am the Quill of the Sun," he replies simply. Patches realizes that she cannot see the man as clearly as Sophia can, to which he only shrugs, suggesting that maybe she "doesn't know him in the same way".

Higher up the tree, Sophia discovers two figures on the same branch: a sallow woman with long hair, and a woman with a fox tail. She notices that both women seem to be branded with the same symbol, possibly Nordic in origin; the woman with the long hair tells the motley of their "greatest moment, a long time ago," when they saved her. Patches wants to know how they healed her: "I chose power, and then you helped me find even greater power." Braum, thinking that he might have the same power that he did in his previous dream, leaps up into the air, towards the highest branch, landing next to a fierce, young woman with red hair, and no shoes.

The motley find two more figures on another branch; Talus crouches next to a man with his hands folded. "In our darkest hour, we were not enough," they intone. They begin to steal Glamour from Sophia and Patches in order to keep their branch from cracking, as the man with folded hands thunders "In my own way!" in response to their questions about how they can help him. Patches climbs to a branch with a woman alone on it, seemingly made of light, who tells her how she had to make a hard choice to save one person who regretted the choices they made.

Waking from the dream, the motley tries to interpret what they saw: clearly, Ramzia had been "saved" in the past, and Talus had been somehow "failed". Perhaps Talus can only be "saved" from being a Dauntain by venturing to the time and place when he had originally been corrupted… somewhere in the Dreaming? And with a stern warning from Kyoko to go to bed, the motley do, although with more questions than answers.