Getting the band together

[Corwin]

"That can always happen," Seira agrees. "The important thing is that they are all taken care of, and that the prisoners are both secure and treated well. And speaking of those, can Sanzha contact the efreet about a prisoner exchange? I'd like her to handle the details personally, or delegate and oversee the process."

[Anastasia]

"I'll see that she does it," Amaryl agrees. Then in your mind? 'Setting a precedent so that if one of us is captured, that we can expect to be ransomed rather than executed?'

[Corwin]

'Not one of us, but our troops. Encouraging decent treatment of captives and taking captives in the first place is in our interests. And on the other side, if that gives efreet incentive to surrender swiftly when I take to the field rather than waste our time fighting them to the death, once again we benefit.'

To give proper encouragement to her troops, Seira speaks out, her voice heard clearly by all. "They said it was an impregnable fortress. They said that slaves will continue to die in the mines as war rages all around them. But that was wrong, and just as we put an end to that for good, so will we do with other efreet holdings! Within our lifetimes, the day will come when we will free all those they have taken against their will!"

[Anastasia]

From your words a great cheer erupts out, echoing amid all the Cauldron for the sheer volume of it. Words echo long and loud and powerfully, the cheer even louder yet.

Okay, this is purely wrap up territory so do what you will until you're good with that, then tell me so we can get you to level ups.

[Corwin]

Okay!

I've already said what I intend for Sanzha to do/delegate and oversee with regards to prisoner exchange. My desire is to repatriate any of ours that were taken, plus as many of those from Celestia as we can manage.

Amaryl brought up an interesting point, so I'll let Sanzha deal with it as she wishes. The pair of efreet that surrendered to me said their families would be willing to ransom them, and if that is a preferred mechanism for dealing with the efreet, we can do that (so that I could ransom Donald, say, if he ever got unlucky with this precedent established). If we do allow for this, I would like Sanzha to receive slaves rather than any money.

I'd like to look at the lake of boiling adamantine that we looted from that place together with Elle and Lagann. OOC is fine, I'm curious whether we can tell what made it awaken into a huge dragon (and into an elemental that chose to come and live with us), whether that's something that will happen naturally as the lake stays with us and so on. Also, whether it's something sentient, or if we could use the adamantine for anything cool.

One of the freed slaves told me to look in that efreet's warded drawer, so I'm curious whether that held anything of interest.

Same with the papers that efreet was gathering and bringing with him. If there's actionable intelligence or blackmail on fellow efreet, that would be neat.

Finally, loot. I think you stopped updating it, but it should come down to what all the fodder efreet had, what the drawer efreet had, what the dead efreet that wanted to kill me for the Sultan had and the efreet statue that blocks dimensional travel. And probably a lot of adamantine on top of that spear I made.

[Corwin]

Oh, and almost forgot! Once Amaryl finishes sorting out the rescues, I'd be interested in hearing whether there's a captive hero/servant of another deity that I would need to repatriate, since I'd like to do that myself. OOC is fine there, too.

[Anastasia]

The ransom is generally set at whatever the ransomer can think they can get. There's various standards in efreet society about that - occasionally slaves are part of the trades, like any other good. It's generally up to the people in question.

It's not too hard to figure out the idea - an animating spirit. Something customized, you'd have to start from scratch since you destroyed the construct. You'd get a few hints from studying it if you wanted to pursue that.

Loot things will be handled in loot, I have a big final post there to get worked up this afternoon or tomorrow.

Most of the slaves aren't that powerful. Think brute workers rather than powerful heroes here. Some do revere various deities as is normal.

[Corwin]

I leave it to Sanzha's judgement. It won't be the last prisoner exchange during this war, and I'd like her to set a precedent for how it'd go. Let her get us the best deal she can.

I'll start a project on that since I believe we cracked one of the existing ones? And we do have an elemental similarly animated, so it's a good point of reference. We'll just ask him nicely whether he'd be okay with that.

The nonevil deities will be informed by myself, and if they wish to take action I will defer to them. Otherwise, we'll offer the erstwhile slaves the choice of repatriation or residency at the Cauldron.

[Anastasia]

Okay, none of that's urgent so congratulations, you've reached level up time.

I hope to get you going again by Wednesday or Thursday, depending on computer arrival and other level ups changing my workload.