Gregorius barks a laugh at the suggestion of transforming the Amazons into men, and then considers the matter more seriously. "I'm leaning towards no on that idea, tempting as it is. There may come a point when we do want peace of some kind with these Amazons, and whilst fear may help with that, a sense of humiliation is less likely to - and from what I understand of the Amazons, that might have that effect. Changing their appearence and voice, though, absolutely."
He ponders a little more.
"I might be able to spont a Perdo Mentem spell to make their forget their own names, which should help with impeding their ability to make useful contact with their people."
Fray returns the look, however is quite serious, speaking in a low voice, "surprising that you think we need any option for these warriors to return. They have proven relentless. Shown no mercy. Once we have the the location of their commands, I thought they would also be dispatched."
Gregorius looks a little surprised. "I had thought that you had given them a conditional guarantee of survival. If that was not the case, then I'm entirely happy to kill them when we're done with them - it certainly makes things simpler. If you did, however, we should keep our deal - otherwise we look untrustworthy to ourselves and our allies" - he gestures briefly at the village auxiliaries - "as well as losing a potential opportunity to show our enemies that we take our word seriously. And the latter is important - even if we do end up engaging in a war of annihilation with these Amazons there are likely to be times where safe-conducts are of value, for instance. And a war of total annihilation is an extreme result."
The setup is however you want it to be--but I don't think the details particularly matter.
As for the messaging system, they tell you the next place they were supposed to deliver a message, and the options they had for reporting different conditions--but unfortunately, what they're supposed to report, and where they deliver that report, varies each time.
[OOC: There's possibly a difference in OOC understanding here. MTKnife - to what extent have the Amazons told us stuff vs to what extent has Gregorius extracted it using Posing the Silent Question?]
[Okay, based on that I'll withdraw Gregorius' objection to just killing them when we're done questioning them - I thought they'd been at least trying to be helpful. I can probably just about squeeze in without a retcon.]
Gregorius sighs. "You make a fair point - I'd been thinking that we'd learnt a reasonable amount, but of course it was mostly via Posing the Silent Question, which shouldn't really be counted. Is there anything else you want to ask them? As a warning, I can't do any necromancy, which restricts our options."
"I want the location of their leaders, or where their leaders were." sighs Fray in frustration.
"We have no real information, and their presence indicates this problem isn't going to pass. The attacks are an escalation, so without somebody to negotiate with we can only deal with the scouts and send a message. Perhaps we will cause enough harm to force a confrontation. I don't want to kill them, however I don't want them attacking anybody else, and can't see another path."
Gregorius shakes his head. "It looks as though finding their leaders is going to be drawn out, but we can potentially get there. I think the next step is to monitor their next message drop. Presumably someone will come for it, and we can capture them or track them to the next group. Hopefully it won't take too many hops to get to someone in charge - and if it does, then their messaging structure is going to be pretty slow and inefficient, which is worth something to us anyway. It's not foolproof, but I think it's worth a try."
"If it doesn't work...well, we have a rough idea of their homeland's location - my original plan was to scout for it before we got word of the force moving towards us. We could revert to that, although I'd want to be reasonably sure they didn't have a significant force remaining in the field first, and we'd probably have to do it without our cavalry."
"then lets monitor the drop in a similar way, and see what is found" replies Fray. Still showing signs of agitation like a clenching hand, Fray looks across the grass to the captives "if you think they are useful as captives, keep them. And if so they cannot escape."
"They're low level people - I don't think we're going to get much more from them, although I'll keep arcane connections just in case someone wants to do necromancy later. At some point we may want to acquire someone who can teach us their language, but I don't think that's worth dragging captives around for at this stage."
He sighs slightly, then goes over to the captives.
"You were told you'd be spared if you co-operated. But you haven't co-operated, and you've been slaughtering the local villages and threatening my own home."
He'll have Miklos' men kill them cleanly, before gathering arcane connections and riding off in the general direction of the rendezvous point. It takes no skill whatsover (EF 0) to note that he looks disturbed as he does so.
Gregorius briefly considers giving the village they recently passed an update, but he's not sure he wants to answer questions, and he doesn't have a good grip on quite how much safer they've become - there are probably more raiders than the ones they've found so far.
He becomes increasingly nervous as no-one appears at the rendezvous point. After no-one appears after several days, he'll ask Fray to do a scout in the vicinity of the covenant, in case they've been bypassed (and also pays keens attention to his Premonitions - Per 3 + Pre 3 (+1 allies speciality).
Dissatisfied with the progress and in a dark mood, Fray acknowledges "I'll keep searching both here and at home. Pity we cannot use their arcane connection to connect to their siblings and relatives, and scry their position. "
Fray's plan is to take a connection from where he is now, then return to the covenant using the Leap, which allows him to check in that all is OK. Then search both for signs.
Gregorius premonitions give him the feeling that the Amazons are one step ahead of him in some sense--that they have some idea what he's trying to do, and how he might go about doing it, and they're making an active effort to thwart him.
I'll say that Fray has gone ahead and made the Leap--and found nothing amiss either around the drop point or back home.
OOC: Is it reasonable for Fray to know the Faerie Magic virtue can target "family"? I have a hunch that maybe we get some help scrying on these amazons from base camp, using their families to find out more information.
Maybe? He's got no relevant Lore, and but maybe his relatively broad knowledge of Magic Theory would tell him something. I just rolled a 2 for him, which with Int and MT would make an 11--he's not sure, but thinks there may be something like that.
This worries Gregorius - the Amazons have far too good an understanding of how Hermetic magi work, and having Tasia captured for one season isn't quite enough to explain it. Either they've got some very effective scrying techniques or...does he know if all of the bodies of the magi of the previous covenant were discovered?
As a precaution against the former option, he's going to cast "Bitter Taste of Betrayal" (and wish he knew The Invisible Eye Revealed, although admittedly that probably only works on Hermetic Intellego spells).
Gregorius looks relieved.
"In that case, we need to make a decision. Either we press on to try to find the Amazons' homeland, keep searching for more of these Amazons, or return to the covenant. I don't think the band we've found was the only one, but I don't know how many more are active in the area. They're probably not close, or you'd have found them by now."