The adventure

The friends stayed to charm Screg some time longer. Representatives of a powerful empire, with whom one is about to be allied, deserve friendly treatment, and the introductions and courtesy were enjoyable, especially after some of the treatment that they had had on this new planet; the sorceresses sprang to mind.
The Mook, who were of a practical and rational frame of mind, were not deferent, as one might have expected from other humans, but their polite company was relaxing. They were very inquisitive, and the friends were finally able to explain of Grimpak's fate. The Mook were more upset about the loss of the data that he had been carrying than about the death of a member of their species, which although understandable, since none of them had known him, was another refreshing change from the human mentality.
They knew less than the friends about Dominus and the situation there, being a fairly isolationist culture, and certainly risk-averse: Grimpak's expedition was respected but only one of the Mook was even keen to step outside the building to do research amongst the flora and fauna of the planet, let alone travel unmapped areas of space.
They shared their knowledge of types of space propulsion and life support, most of which did seem to involve magic, although the Mook treated this as a force to be harnessed, rather than a spiritual aspect of life. They even helped Salva turn the glowing blue lazulite stone from the temple into a healing device, that could heal via an electrode attached to the skin. Salva hooked this newly fashioned regenerating stone to seven electrodes to heal them all at once, should it be necessary.

Of course, the friends couldn't outstay their welcome, having a message to deliver to Balbrak at the Umpani base, so reluctantly they tore themselves away from Arnika and onto another mission. They couldn't let events run away from them, having positioned themselves so fortuitously. They stopped in on Antone, who had nothing for them; if they wanted better equipment than they had, he said, they should visit his brother Ferro, the smith at Rapax castle, who had far better resources for good metalwork. They had to bribe He'Li again to keep silent about working for everyone, and help keep their secret, but given all that He'Li gave them in hospitality, and their standing arrangement for the sale of renewal potions, it was in effect a free potion, easily spared for a friend.

The friends trooped out of her bar with a wave, Salva bringing up the rear as usual, and getting a sly wink on his way out.
"She'll ask you to look at her plumbing next" Quentin mused,
"Yes, in her bedroom." Margreet added.
Karen, who had been dancing out of the doorway rather than watching their hostess, quickly latched onto the general idea
"Salva's got a girlfriend" she chanted.
"It was just a wink" he explained, "It would be for keeping our secret."
It was no use: his friends would have none of it.
"You should offer to show her your big gun." Quentin suggested
Shu Ting groaned.
"Or ask her help in polishing your sword!" added Margreet
Karen joined Shu Ting for the next groan.
"Yes. A good lick of polish..." Quentin began, but the groans turned to exclamations of disgust.
"Visual imagination, Quentin!" chided Shu Ting, her face contorted at the image.
"He'Li rubbing Salva's sword?" he persisted, in a tone of innocence.
"Stop it, please," Karen asked. Vi's confusion was plain, and Margreet put an arm round her and walked her to one side as they ambled along.

They teleported, via the T'Rang teleporter, to the Umpani base camp, and they gave Balbrak the alliance acceptance letter from Screg. He read it himself, and called 'upstairs', who ordered him to send his team up for a personal briefing from General Yamir.
"I'm proud of you, pups," he declared, the only break from his normally tough attitude "Now get going! The general doesn't like to be kept waiting."
He had given them log-in details for the Umpani computer system and access to its databanks, so on their way into the mountain they stopped at the whirring computer desks and had a quick browse of the briefing files, which explained a few things that had been mysterious.
There was an entry for Vi, again mentioning her possible relationship to a cosmic lord, and one for Bela, who was described as a Demon with personal knowledge of the cosmic lords or cosmic circle.
They learnt that the Umpani knew of an item that the Trynnie supposedly had, called the helm of serenity, that apparently must be worn in order to handle the Destinae Dominus; there were ongoing missions to retrieve it, to scout the Rapax territories and to map the underwater caves and Bayjin.
Finally, there was a detailed file on Z'Ant, whom they discovered to be a T'Rang queen, and therefore needing a different pronoun.
They took the long paths through the caves and lifts up to the General's Quarters and the operations room, where General Yamir thanked them personally for their successes. He wasn't finished with that, however: he gave them a scouting mission to find and rescue any remaining members of the caves exploratory team, led by Sergeant Glumph, and sent them to Rubble for underwater training.
While the general was in his personal office with his aides, pondering tactics, they raided the main offices, looting all the lockers of useful general supplies.
Underwater training consisted of a demonstration of diving kit, which Rubble was surprised to find the friends already knew: it seemed that the concept of scuba gear was a novel and rare one for Umpani soldiers. Vi was very unwilling to dive into the underwater caves, which she said led to Bayjin, so they used a teleport device in the restricted area of the general's quarters that took them to a large house, which might well once have been an inn, between Arnika and the monastery. There was a storage room there, and they kept one of the muskets and some musket balls, in case they would bring a good price in Arnika.
However, they passed Arnika by, and used the outlying house with the T'Rang teleporter to get to Marten's Bluff, and then to outside the Umpani base camp again, that being a quicker route to the mountains, they decided, than to go back to the general's quarters and through all the caves and the base camp.
They went to meet Bela again, feeling more confident now that they knew more about him. They bought another of his hugely expensive cloaks of many colours, which Quentin took, being the only one who hadn't a cloak yet. They also bought some potions from him, which they knew could form the basis of some of Margreet's alchemy. Based on the price of a meal and a drink, they had the equivalent of over £100,000 from the proceeds of their looting and Margreet (and Quentin)'s alchemy, even after buying the cloak for almost £20,000.

It was raining heavily, and Quentin was happy finally to have something waterproof to stop him from getting sodden; the flak jacket he wore was better than Karen's plate mail, or Shu Ting's To-sei-do, but they had cloaks too. On the mountainside they ran into a very dispirited pack of fire ants, backed by some more acid wings (types of flying serpent), whose affinity for water made them enjoy the rain. When they saw the friends the animals stopped their own chase and attacked, but were all killed. The friends met more acid wings, and some less dangerous flying serpents, all of which must have been attracted out by the heavy rain, like worms in the soil, wurms in the sky.
Cumulatively all these acid-spitting snakes would have been a problem, but Salva's regenerating stone kept them in good health, when they could spare a moment to hook themselves up to it. He found it quite exhausting to activate and use it, and began to sympathise with Quentin and Margreet, who knew all too well the sapping feeling of spell-casting. Quentin soon found himself sometimes needed to use his magic to restore Salva's energy, rather than health, because he felt so faint with hiking and using his gadgets at the same time.
There was a worrying moment when Margreet was badly injured and poisoned in a fight, and Salva was busy fencing with a serpent, but she used her own magic to heal herself and then cure herself; curing poisoning was something that they had needed, until now, pre-prepared potions to do.

In the main valley they used Salva's scanner to search for enemies, and thought that they'd ambush 9 scorchers. The scorchers, however, must have known exactly where they were, and were waiting with bated (and fiery) breath. Quentin's immobilisation spell, which he had managed to expand from needing focussing on one target to all enemies around him, saved them from a bad roasting, but they still got heavily burned as they chopped up the closest two. Salva's regenerating stone failed to activate just as they needed it: perhaps the pressure of the situation disturbed his concentration, and Margreet was slashed by a claw, and fell to the ground. Salva did manage to activate the stone, and was quite exhausted by saving Margreet who had not quite died, timing of death suddenly taking on a whole new importance. Her quicksand spell that she had been preparing in turn backfired, but the friends all managed to resist the strange tugging feeling they felt from the ground around them.
Regenerated by the stone, Shu Ting, Karen, RFS and Vi had ploughed through the tough lizards, and ST finished the last two off with showy thrusts and slashes with each of her swords.
Q, M gain levels!
They hunted down a granite golem on their way to the Rapax territories, and then did ambush four blistering scorchers, Shu Ting managing to pierce the eye socket of one before it had even flicked its eyes over to look directly at the ambush party. The other three died quickly, barely doing more than warming the dripping group of adventurers.

At the boundary of Rapax territory, which was clearly marked with purple Rapax flags, Vi once again exclaimed that she wouldn't enter the land of some of the most hostile and vicious beings known to the galaxy. After some discussion, they agreed that they shouldn't force her in, although the Rapax were hardly to be feared by people such as they had become.
They teleported to Marten's Bluff, and as Vi walked into the machine, with Shu Ting and RFS, they switched it to its last setting. This showed a picture with the very same purple flags that marked the boundaries of Rapax territory, so they had a shrewd idea of where they were going.

"Now how did we end up here!?" Vi shouted in annoyance "I'm not comfortable with this at all."
"I don't know what must have happened." Quentin patted her carefully on the shoulder
"Perhaps the teleporter still goes on the blink now and again. Don't worry though: you'll soon find that the Rapax die just as easily at the point of your spear at home as away."
"I don't want to fight armies of Rapax" she cried again, "I wanted to escape angry and vicious people when I ran away from the Dark Savant."
"If we see a whole army, they'll probably start arguing over who gets to go on a date with you, after being mesmorised by your face." he replied, the unsubtle compliment gleaning a rolling of her eyes, but at least shutting her up.
She followed them as they walked towards an area of little streams of lava.