ZCW note 24jul2009

At the request of Master Zhou, investigated rumors from Iron Mountain. Heard stories of high monasteries tangling with each other, not exactly going to war, but vows of revenge, and people fighting each other who shouldn't be.

Notes on the "Fog Ship", aka "Moon's First Daughter": The crew as a whole aren't a homogenous set. The captain and the first mate have a camaraderie that speaks to a reasonably long relationship. The captain and the mate aren't really talking, but the more junior members of the crew seem to think that it's obvious that the ship is from the Shrouded Isle (fog ship, fog island, that's kind of hard to keep secret). But I don't get a sense that they have one particular Shrouded Isle port that's their "home".

We tried following Ti Jun around for a while to see if we could see who's interested in him (hence, who might be the unknown people behind the grand plan to attack the Butterfly Kingdom). Lijuan's dog, Ho, got his back up and barked at a couple of people who seemed interested in him; these people then melted back into the crowd. Lijuan thought it was a protective-type bark.

While we were off walking around with Ti Jun, it would appear that a couple of guys came back and did something with my stuff. (My ferret became agitated when I had him roam around my stuff.) No clue who they were, though they made some comments about why the Dragon Army cares enough about me to assign me my own soldier. I confess that they have a point.

I'm coming around to the theory that the whole grand plan against the Butterfly Kingdom (i.e., per Takanata's I Ching reading, the assassination was from a country other than the Savanna of Tears, and yet another party instigated both the Assassination plan and the Blockade plan) is actually part of a larger plan designed to overextend the Savanna of Tears in preparation for some kind of devastating strike against it.