Alexei shakes his head. "I am not certain. He is honourable and ambitious and I know I can trust him. I don't know how many votes he could command or if he is interested. He is the best candidate now that I know Lucius is not, for he is something more than a Flambeau, and it is for this reason that I know he is not in league with the Guerrnici; his original House was Tremere. But truly, I might find a more suitable candidate once I arrive, but in all likelihood it will be a compromise candidate. I hope it is one who is in the Milites though, at least that could give us hope for mobilization and unity against the conspirators."
Do not think of solving this overnight. Small steps. You want someone who wants to increase the organization of your House. That works against the foe.
((It should also be readily apparent that many speaking with a common voice is better than speaking with one. While Alexei can bamf to Castra Solis, others cannot. It also isn't unreasonable to expect that many magi who received letters from Alexei had forwarded these on to their sodales who did not receive them, and that Mons Electi makes an attractive stopping off point for magi traveling mundanely from the Rhine to Castra Solis, as I foreshadowed with Tristan's unexpected arrival.))
Okay, it seems I misunderstood something.
As I had it:
Garus is dead, Appolodorus too.
I thought we were only alive because Valerian didn't think we were "in" on Applodorus secret and that we ignored him to be our ennemy.
So acting normal would have been acting normal for magi who think there were attacks against the order, but don't suspect the ennemy to be valerian, and have to reason to be particularly targeted.
=> To me, to valerian's eyes, we were small fiches, had no reason to be particularly suspicious of either him nor the guernici, and had to maintain the charade.
If Mons Electi is "under siege", or if valerian knows we are his ennemies and has targeted us, I'm at a loss then, given that, as far as I understood, this situation (open conflict) would be hopeless.
Aye. To attack even "innocent" flambeau who are clueless about his plans! Our ennemy must be insane indeed. We must find another way.Especially as neither jacques nor I can directly teleport there.
(Feel like I missed a lot of things, despite trying not to 
)
Isen is quite angered at the turn of event.
The culprit! How did he dare betray us, betray our house like that!! And how did he fooled Reynault? I am quite tempted to go to wizard's war with him, despite being ill-suited to such a challenge. We must find a way to oppose him, but, politically, we've made fools of ourselves, and lost any support we might have had.
Isen is quite somber.
Sadly, I feel the same way.
Going out of Mons Electi isn't all that difficult. For exemple, with both invisibility and magic-masking charms cast upon us, we could fly out there, take an unpredictable path. I can use Seven League Stride to evade any ambush, which gives me a lot of flexibility, if not the wide range you enjoy.
As for you, you could use Muto Corpus to change your appearance and teleport there. Hell, we could all use it to go out as a bunch of grogs. I doubt they'd target us.
No, the real problem is Lucius. We can't undo our support, nor do we have any way to expose him*. I can only think about force as a way to do it, yet I don't think this would work. I would gladly stab him to death, even if this would have me deemed a traitor and killed, but this would equally damage our cause.
- Do we? Have I missed something? The only clue I get about lucius being a traitor is that bit about him sending us to the rhine. I don't understand: If he's fooled us into supporting him, he want us there to speak for him. What did I miss????
Isen would quite agree with Laetitia 
This might be exactly what we need.
Tremere have always been defiant of Hosue Guernicus, and they understand the value of strategy, and unity.
But even if we can count on him, we must undo the support we provided to Lucius.
(...)
Maybe, if we can send the idea that we turned on him because he betrayed us, and treated us as servants to boot, we can convince enough people to vote against him. As you said, Flambeau are princes, and they wouldn't approve of any of that.
But then, the situation would only get worse!
It's one think to sneak a few magi out of Mons Electi, it's another to smuggle a host of flambeau magi. Unless we take the mercere portals. Assuming they are safe. Which we shouldn't: It's easy to trap or destroy one.
Ok, laying this bare, because apparently I was too subtle. Lucius sent Alexei on a fool's errand. Quite simply in the time alloted there would have been little time for Alexei to garner support and travel the Rhine.
So, letters have been written, supporters for Lucius have been gathered by Mons Electi, they're traveling to Castra Solis. Some will travel there directly and some will not.
Further, the idea that they would trap Mercere Portals in advance of the Tournament and election of a Primus is pretty far fetched, there are other people besides PCs involved, trapping the Mercere Portal. Destroying one, that's always possible, but Isen, Alexei and Jacques know that as of a few days ago the Mercere Portal between Harco and Castra Solis is intact.
If the enemy acted before they were ready in a moment of rashness, they are going to do things in a way that tries to minimize the overall effects of their actions and two maneuver events in such a way that will prove a strong foundation in the future.
Okay, maybe I'm dumb, but I don't understand.
We garnered support for Lucius, the guernici candidate. So they had every reason for us to go to Castra Solis and raise support for him there, not reason at all to send us away, as we'd have spoken on his behalf.
But he send us away nonetheless... And, based on that time thingie alone, we deduced that Lucius was a traitor... But, unless he or the guernici learned of our deduction (how?), they should think we'd go to the rhine, and would have no reason to stop us from going to castra solis.
Worse: some of the magi that we convinced to vote for lucius may stop by, which means they have to stop them too, either before or after they speak to us?
I'm sorry, I completely miss the point of why would lucius send us, his allies away (as he had fooled us).
I may see the point of blocking road access to castra solis in case we deduced he was a traitor and wanted to stop us, but what if we had taken the road for the rhine?
Please, understand, I don't wanna say you fumbled, I rather feel like I missed something important which makes this seem illogical to me and am trying to put it all together.
Because, I played my hand and Tristan arrived. Tristan wasn't fooled. I explained things to qcipher, and it wasn't explained the way I would do it. His character should not have jumped quite to the conclusion he did, as quickly as he did, but he should have been worried.
I rolled knowledge rolls for Jacques and Isen to know anything about Lucius, and they failed, Isen even botched, so he might still believe he's a good candidate, despite what Alexei says. I didn't mention the rolls, because I didn't want things to get setup.
Yeah, I probably did fumble this, I make no bones about it. I would've thought that sending someone on a trip to the Rhine with very little time would seem...rushed. That it would stand out on its own as something that doesn't make sense. Like I said, it's subtle. I'll not do subtle again.
Putting it another way, this is a game of chess. Lucius made his move, forced his opponent to respond in a way that favored him. The opponent discovered this by seeing Alexei and your letters being sent in the Rhine. Tristan moved to intercept that, being a known entity to the opponent it was decided that he should be confronted directly. And indeed he was attacked on the road to Mons Electi, and with the fact that Tristan would've boxed Alexei around the ears for having not learned the list little bit about the Order and its history and members, Alexei would have had (final) confirmation that Lucius had used him.
So there you have it, you have the story, you got a bunch of magi you wrote to from the Rhine coming to vote for Lucius, but they really shouldn't. Some of them will stop by Mons Electi and some will bypass it going directly to Castra Solis. The enemy now knows that Tristan is there explaining what's what to everyone who can hear it. Their objective is only to delay the party which they can do in myriad ways since the routes to travel to Castra Solis are more or less known to everyone. They could mire the roads in mud for a couple of days: boom, you're late. They can force you to send one representative or a few representatives to do politicking, boom, you're ineffective.
Trapping the Mercere Portals is risky, and has the potential to hurt them as much as it helps them, since it is likely they will have supporters coming through as well, and may not know exactly when they arrive.
So, after some consultation with the Mons Electi Treasurer, confirming what I understood, as of Summer of 1222, Mons Electi has in its stores 24 pawns of ReTe vis. Now, as you know ReTe vis counts as a pawn of each when it matches the TeFo combination of a spell. Hermes Portal is a ReTe spell. I had kinda figured, that by having 24 pawns of that vis on hand, and having disclosed that the chess game occurs on seasonal basis, not an annual basis that players would see such a vast amount of wealth and just decide to make everyone's lives easy. But it appears in my hasty planning, I overlooked the fact that players would forget about how much vis they had, and not necessary recognize that the vis source is 6 pawns every season now. Or would just decide to discount it without discussion.
Next time the SG outlines options at the beginning of a thread, I honestly expect some dialogue, either IC or OOC about those options. I think we've been at this saga long enough for you to know that when I say something as SG, it generally has a purpose behind it. It isn't up to me to explain that purpose, but it's a strong hint to kinda of work it out. I honestly don't expect a covenant that is quite rich (and bragged about it at the last Tribunal) to show up at a Flambeau Tournament like a bunch of hobos all tired from the long journey on the road. Assuming that the overland travel could go smoothly, you don't think it's reasonable to impose some kind of Long Term Fatigue penalty for 30 days of continuous travel? You don't think that sends a loud message to all the other Flambeau there?
Are Merecere/Hermes Portals safe? The answer to that question is best answered on whether or not you think the enemy can attack or interfere with you in a way that allows them to get away with it.
I had gotten the hint but I think we need a portal on the other end as well which would make it impractical given the short amount of time that we had.
Presumption is unwise, exploring it IC or OOC is the best way to figure it out.
Okaaaaaaay!!!
I (I think) mostly get it now. Probably. I guess.
Thought the same way.
I think the safest/fastest route is to use mercere portals. It also allows us to bring the grogs we may need.
But we need to be sure the road is safe.
A way to do this would be to send a grog first, while we used an Intangible Tunnel-like spell to spy on his surroundings through him. Once we know the road to be safe, we can come through. Slightly better: Alexei takes an AC to the grog, and comes last through the portal. But if we're ambushed by assaillants we didn't detect, he can teleport to the grog and take them by surprise.
Only problem is, Isen sucks at Intellego.
((I like Isen's plan about travel. We also should try to funnel as many Flambeau through to Mons Electi on the way there so we can try to change some minds before we go. We send a Grog through with an AC, ensure that it's safe, then Alexei goes through and the rest, If Alexei draws out a trap and the rest come right on his heels they can see the treachery and provide backup.
I really hope I didn't miss something, sorry, had a bnch going on on the homefront. Gratz on your kitchen's completion JL! I know the pain of kitchen remodelling))
I was overambitious in this story. It's honestly much easier on me and everyone if the Hermes Portal is done. 24 pawns of ReTe vis a year is a lot (and so is the 24 pawns you now have in storage as of the beginning of Summer 1222), and you guys need a way to funnel it to someone who can generally use it more easily, and convert it to other things. I'm killing multiple birds with one ReTe chess piece, so to speak.
So, are you guys going to send Wen and someone else fast running to Harco, or work with Korvin and redcaps, note, he can't get to Harco all that quickly, and you'd probably need to pay a Redcap well, if and when he comes by. Redcaps are coming by rather often, but Mons Electi is a bit of a sleepy destination for them, although a might bit better than Cunfin.
If we're talking about literally sending a fast runner, how about the cursor, Melanie, who was designed to be a fast long-distance runner?
The distance is on the...long side, probably something like 16 days worth. She'd also need to stay in good inns getting good quality food and a good night's sleep each night. It's not going to be cheap, but it ensures that the redcap might not leak the details.
Of course she would. After all, she's the covenant's most important grog. It's only fitting that they entrust her with their most important mission, and that she be rewarded accordingly. (She has Proud)
and as long as she doesn't have to ride a ship, horse, or cart, she'll be fine.
Shortly after the meeting adjourns, Alexei, on his way back to his sanctum (or wherever), find himself accosted by an irate-looking Mélanie.
"What's this I hear about you magi looking outside the covenant for someone to run to Harco for you?" she yells in French. "You have the fastest runner in all of France right here, why would you want some redcap to go instead of me?"
Alexei was rubbing his temple after a vigorous meeting and too much wine when the young woman begins yelling at him in French. He looks at her bleary eyed, struggling to remember her.
"Uh...Pardon? How have you heard..? Nevermind. I thought we were sending Wen and someone..." he stops and thinks better of finishing that sentence. "...Someone to make sure this very important task is finished. Fastest runner in France eh? Well we could definitely use that...see me come the morn, we'll discuss your role in this."
((Two messengers can work well, double our chances))
Mélanie nods her head once, emphatically. "Good," she says. "I will see you in the morning, then you can give me directions on how to get to Harco and whatever message you will have delivered."
The girl, who at 16 is already taller than Alexei, turns and trots away.