Open issues:
The Ed Saganami issue is quickly resolved — he's free.
Five days of Downtime happen, as the party mediates and prays to the Passions. Mank lends the party a few hundred mounted troops, who ride around the city of Rochester. They carry sharp sticks for poking things which try to escape.
Steven gets 19 successes on an Occult roll to figure out what happened to Ed, and explains to the party that he's dead. That's right, Ed's Dead — he fell into Vestrial's plan to recruit master martial artists who are, being dead, immune to most of Death's worse problems.
While the party is out staring at Rochester, a vast squarish pyramid flies over the horizon, it's shadow blocking out the sun over the entire campsite. Kenisha and Steven identify it as a Theran Behemoth &mdash the Sky Point, a 250-gun flying fortress. Lieke runs into the city, rips up a tree, plants it into some ground, and Claims the City Rochester as the Proerty of Camrish. Tristian doesn't use a steam shovel to make a bunker for the party to hide in.
The Therans declare themselves as the Heirs of the Great Republic, here to take residence in their ancient capitol seat of the Province of Barsaive, the City of Parlainth, "Tremble and Pay Heed. All crimes committed in our absence will be pardoned upon confession to a Magistrate."
Lieke tells them thanks, but that this is Rochester, and the party would be happy to let them have Parlainth, but this isn't it, and they don't know where it is. "Have a nice Day." About ten minutes later, the party sees a shuttlecraft of some sort detach from the upper side of the Sky Point and drift down towards the camp. They assemble a small pavilion for diplomacy, and put on some coffee.
A squad of armored guards (all Elves in Ashigaru, funny swirly crystal armor) set up a perimeter, then a pair of young men and a young woman come around the corner of the shuttle. They engage in a ritual greeting process, bowing their ways forwards to the party. Kenisha introduces herself, and prods the rest of the party through the introductions. The apparent ambassadors introduce themselves as:
The party fumbles its Socialize rolls, but manages to get the Therans seated, served coffee, and emphasize that this is Rochester a few times. The Therans pull out a map and point out that this is a city right where the map says Parlainth should be, so is clearly Parlainth. Steven explains the whole city-beacon-summoning thing, with as few details as possible.
Nevertheless, Mnemon Darik appears to have heard the phrase, "Dreamers of Camrish" before, when Lieke claims the party does represent Camrish (Southern Town), to have dealings with Camrish (Ork City) but not represent it, and to represent themselves as those who struggled to return Parlainth to this spot and the Dreamers of Camrish."
Much negotiation ensues. The PCs show off a blood-ape head from inside Rochester, and point out that no Parlainthians survived to return here. The Therans mutter that even if some residents move out or die, or some buildings are knocked down and rebuilt, the Essence of the city remains. Steven suggests performing Name-tests. The General asks for permission to hunt in the primeval forest across the river (the Brithan forest). The party says yes, warns them about the Brithan, and points them towards the northern hills, out of the range of the (West|Black) Hills Tribes.
Interlude: "Please be aware. A low-powered shot is about to be fired." Then bits of deer go flying past the party, followed by the shock wave. "That was low powered?" says Kenisha, clinging furiously to Tristian's ears.
The party splits up and scatters to the four winds. Steven informs Travar of what's going on ("Imperial Agressors being aggressively imperial"), runs some side deals for provisioning the Behemoth, and sends a message off to Throal mentioning that Thera's awakened. He then flits to the other end of the setting to talk to the Myrkrydia. He successfully recruits support from both of them. Then he sends a messenger off into the swamp.
Brightforge Tristian builds himself a skateboard (?!?) and heads off into Black Hills territory. He swaps beer with them and mentions that a nearby Empire is here and looking to conquer and negotiate, and they may wish to have somebody there to deal. He swings by New Camrish and shares a quiet moment with Speaks with Stone and with the Spider Mages. All three agree to come and deal on Tristian's side.
Kenisha talks to Mank and Rag Vorn, and gets them Very Excited about coming and following her into the negotiations. Then she plays pictionary with the Brithan, and brings them in too.
Monolieke hangs around sniping at Blood Apes and dispelling Cloud Arsenals.
Over the next week or so, armies (or at least field forces) trickle in, with negotiating teams at their heads.
Rasbrin takes over the campground setup, ensuring that everybody sits boy-girl-boy-girl, barbarian-civilized-barbarian-civilized. There are about a thousand men in the field. That at least doubles the count of the horribly technically superior force above. Now if you can just get them on the ground...
On the excellent tactical advice of Upandal-inspired Tristian and Steven Mandrake, Lieke leads an expedition to move everybody into Rochester, clearing out regions from Horror influence (mostly) and arranging with Tristian for cover. Three shuttlecraft come down to talk about this.
"I thought we were here to talk about this; now you're moving troops into Parlainth," says the Daimyo.
Lieke, speaking for the party, lets her move a hundred men into the other side of the city. Kenisha has some of her umfriends from the Masked keep an eye on them while semivisible.
Now the Daimyo offers to bribe you all to go away: "We can offer sinecures, a satrapy setup perhaps, regional governorship can be put on the table. What will it take to peacefully resolve this matter? After all, you did put a bunch of buildings in what's clearly our city. We tested, and it's strongly linked to the name Parlainth. We observed no link to the name Rochester."
Lieke says he recognizes their former claim, but it is currently the possession of the UCAS. They then suggest that if the local barbarian natives say this is now their city or something, that's fine, maybe we can talk about something else: the walls and the territory are clearly ours, and the Province is that of the old Empire, which we inherit as the New Republic, so please move your buildings out of there. We're willing to wave the fines and corporal punishments, since your intent was clearly to do the good and right thing.
The party begs for half an hour to talk that suggestion over with their allies, and then get back to the Therans. A little sprite is seen blitzing out of the Daimyo's shuttlecraft, heading very fast towards the distant South.
7 XP for the run, and my thanks to the players who were there for a great session. Coordinating armies of hundreds, lots of negotiations, all kinds of cool stuff.