Chapter 2.2

[yhlee]

[Sorry I didn't get this out earlier, y'all. Happy summer/winter holidays!]

The Cantata emerges from the rift on an approach to the Lanterner stronghold called Autumn Pyre. The Cantata hums very quietly to reassure the mothlings, then falls silent; it's been impressed on the Cantata that discretion will be necessary. For their part, the mothlings have free run of an enclosure with Fluffy the Vraselian pseudo-dragon, and both mothlings and dragonet seem to be entertaining each other with games of tag and hide-and-seek. They are happy to play with any humans who stop by, as well.

Scan reveals that Autumn Pyre is heavily fortified by the standards of the day, mostly with invariant weapons like railguns and missiles. A few dozen moths are already docked there, and several more are patrolling the area. Two small Lanterner patrol moths, nearly identical, veer lazily toward the Cantata.

Patrol moth #1 hails the Cantata in several different languages, including the high language. For its part, it transmits the Lanterner emblem--a stylized yellow lantern against a blue background--and the speaker is requesting that you halt and identify yourselves. "This is the Lanterner Federacy in the year 852," the speaker goes on, "under the benevolent rule of the Honorable Aramis kae Pharon. Are you human? What are your hospitality requirements?"

[Feel free to take advantage of the between-moves planning post if you need to, and to make whatever preparations, including rearranging the Cantata's variable layout, you deem necessary.]

Comments

Re: miscellaneous reconnaissance - paging Iawa and Sulen

[zuhrovet]

[Sure--just tell me if you want to complicate things. I'm riffing on the thing where Runkeeper enabled mapping of secret military bases, for what that's worth.]

Sasha creates a fitness-buddy bot, in the persona of a tavernkeeper from Prisons & Pangolins Online. If you friend this bot, it will analyze your workout routines, tell you what character class you are most suited for (the wizard option is one of the most challenging, as it requires good hand-eye coordination and very delicate timing), and congratulate you as you "level up". Like human fitness friends who might wish to join you at the gym, the bot also gains access to your location. She pays to advertise the bot to people visiting the military gyms she has identified, and embeds a few ads in the mods she's already sharing. She'll also straight-up add it as a friend on some people's accounts, if she can identify a vulnerability in the tracker code that lets her do that. After enough people have friended her bot, it will be a popular friend that's recommended to others organically.

Re: miscellaneous reconnaissance - paging Iawa and Sulen

[yhlee]

[This will work well enough; no complications at this time, other than the fact that someone comes up with a bot that has a very similar "misspelling" name and is using it to advertise one of the brothels.]

Re: miscellaneous reconnaissance

[zuhrovet]

This was inevitable; the heptarchate thinks sex is one of the Seven Noble Exercises, and there's no reason Sasha should have expected the Lanterners to be more discreet. She makes a copy of the copy to advertise another brothel, since if everyone's going to try this she might as well have the advantage of her own tracking code, and tries very hard not to look at any of the associated images.