By the end of the day, Cash Charmer had managed to sell the pirate ship, crew and everything, to a local merchant house. Speaker never did learn how much money Cash got from the deal, as he was busy brushing up on the history of creation and whatnot in the house of learning, but he did understand that the crew had been sworn to serve its new captain faithfully.

The scholars in the house of learning were a strange mix. There were mortal ponies studying simply to enlighten themselves, but there were also lesser gods of various kinds of knowledge, some of which used parts of the house of learning as their spiritual sanctums and personal libraries. Equally, then Speaker quickly concluded that calling the place a ‘house’ was a gross understatement: The house of learning in Great Forks was a giant structure with almost countless wings and additional structures constantly being added, each containing multiple libraries, study halls and auditoriums where ponies from all over creation were reading, studying or writing tomes and scrolls on nearly every subject of academia imaginable. The whole place looked like a single library that had metastasized and grown uncontrollably upwards and outwards. It was a marvel that any of Celestia’s light reached the inner halls at all through their stained windows.

Apparently the place was popular for quite a number of reasons: Only the realm and Lookshy had libraries of equal size and content, but they both regulated the access and use of them, although for very different reasons. The house of learning allowed for studies of nearly anything, with the exception of anything involving demons or other topics that could endanger Great Forks. The catch was that would-be scholars had to fund their own studies, limiting the house of learning to ponies who either had a sponsor or saddlebags full of silver bits.

For Speaker, getting into the house of learning proved remarkably easy – but that also came with a price. At the gate he flashed his caste mark and honestly declared his intentions: To update himself on what had happened since the first age, so what he remembered from the past could be put to better use.

This caused a riot amongst the historians present in the house of learning, as Speaker found himself mobbed by ponies that were endlessly curious to learn of the first age – and some were apparently willing to literally step over others to get at Speaker first. As enforcers broke up the mob Speaker found himself in the office of the headmaster of the house of learning.

The office was decorated much like the rest of the house of learning. There were long, narrow tapestries covering the walls from ceiling to floor, each with a litany, prayer or koan to encourage and glorify academic achievement and the divinity of true enlightenment. Of what furniture there was in the office, most of it was wooden cabinets and shelves filled with scrolls of ancient wisdom. They were all decorated with lavish carvings that resembled spirits and ponies that playfully appeared to write on endless scrolls that would coil around them.

The headmaster turned out to be the very god of libraries. By Speaker’s reckoning, such a position probably wasn’t a fancy position to hold up in Yu-Shan, in heaven – so taking on a more direct position in Great Forks was probably infinitely more rewarding on a personal level. Appearance-wise, the god looked like a dragon with scales made of sheets of paper, each containing writings from every piece of literature that had ever been made and stored in a library. The god was roughly three times the length of a pony, making its serpentine body quite imposing, but its appearance made it look as if were made from living origami, except its eyes, which were swirls of rainbow ink and its whiskers of calligraphy brush hairs that kept dripping on the floor.

Explaining his plight, the god appeared sympathetic, but also very strict and incredibly well organized – to the point that the god had apparently developed its own unique divine indexing system for all the scrolls and tomes in the house of learning. It was so keen on indexing and proper labeling that the god had no name beyond ‘God of libraries’. It was also greatly interested in having Speaker look through many of the older documents or copies of ancient tomes, to verify the truthfulness of the content, so that they might be properly labeled as either fact or fiction.

In exchange for help in finding the historical records that he wanted to read up on, Speaker agreed to help the god.

For the next three days Speaker spent most of his waking hours in the house of learning, alternating between wracking his mind in trying to recall details from various first age events, and reading up on what had happened since his last incarnation. Spirits and ponies would come to him with an endless stream of well-preserved tomes and copied scrolls to have their contents verified in the golden glow of Speaker’s anima - although quite a few of them would get exceedingly upset whenever Speaker would claim that a scroll or book thought to contain scraps of first age lore was pure fiction.

Every morning Speaker would go from the north district to the house of learning, and in the evening return there to Sunrise Glow’s apartment. Both of these walks involved awe-inspiring treks through the temple district, which had new festivals and parades every day. Sometimes it was ponies flinging one hoof-full after the other of colored dust around in a bright whirlwind as part of some ritualistic dance, or choirs of colts singing in long processions with some high priest or priestess of some sort walking in front.

In the evenings Speaker would learn of what the rest of circle had been doing. Shimmer was trying to make contact with other Lunars operating in secret in and around Great Forks, with various degrees of success. Apparently there weren’t many, if any at all, as the few hidden messages Shimmer had been able to find were quite old and worn.

“Worn hidden messages?” Red curiously inquired, while enjoying Sully’s latest culinary creation.

Shimmer waved her right hoof around, as it became liquid silver and sprouted three silvery claws: “Some Lunars spend quite a lot of time in animal form, especially if hiding from wyld hunts or scouting around civilized areas. We've developed a written language based on claw marks and scratches that any Lunar with claws, fangs or talons can write as an animal”

Demonstrating a few doodles of this strange form of writing in the dust on the floor, Shimmer added that you could usually tell by how weather-worn the scratches were how old the messages were. Looking dejected, she also noted: “Lunars have usually stayed away from places where lots of ponies live, especially civilized areas – they’re usually targeted by immaculate monks and ponies who’d still hunt us down if we get too public”

Speaker couldn’t help but wonder if that meant that the Lunars had been completely inactive in the course of creation since the usurpation of the Solars. Shimmer gave him a smile: “Darling, of course we’ve been active in the millennia you’ve been missing – just rarely publicly, and usually with keeping creation safe one way or the other, making sure that the dragon-blooded didn’t botch things up completely. We just couldn’t take credit for much, as the dragon-blooded have an ugly habit of wrecking and killing everyone we influence”

In the meantime, Red had continued being bodyguard to the ponies that Sunrise Glow preached to, and with Cash Charmer’s help they had been slowly going up the hierarchy of the gang attacking them, finding the pony who gave the order to harass and extort the cultists, beating them up, and then finding out who gave that pony the order. Red was confident that they’d find the real source soon enough.

Cash Charmer had equally done as promised – having acquired himself a fine blue silken tang-zhuang jacket, with the edges of his sleeves and the mandarin collar being embroidered with golden thread. Beyond that, the Eclipse caste Solar had also spent quite a lot of time getting the lay of Great Fork’s economy, to see what would be easy to make money with. Sadly there were no immediate sources of profit, so Cash bemoaned the fact that his talents were being wasted, which apparently ‘forced’ him to spend his spare time entertaining himself in various brothels and massage parlors.

Sunrise Glow was not happy to hear of Cash wasting time with such frivolities– and surprisingly, Sullen Hoof agreed: “Most of Great Fork’s brothels are stocked with slaves in case you haven’t noticed. I personally find that practice deplorable”
Cash found Sully’s dislike of slavery amusing, considering that Sullen Hoof was from Nexus, where the Guild – creation’s single greatest merchant organization – sold enough slaves on a daily basis to populate entire city states.

Sullen Hoof reacted poorly to this, and in a flash he was holding a surprisingly sharp spatula in his mouth to Cash’s throat: “No pony should live in chains”

“Well then do something about it – but I doubt that the three would let you free the primary workforce for Great Fork’s agricultural production” Cash said, his voice only quivering slightly.

Releasing Cash, Sullen gave Cash an angry look: “Master of disguise remember – I won’t be doing anything, but who knows, you might”

“Calm down, the both of you” Sunrise Glow said, sounding like a stern old matron, despite her youthful voice. Speaker couldn’t help but get the feeling that Sunrise sounded and acted much older than her age. Maybe old memories from the first was affecting her as well? This made Speaker wonder if his first age memories had changed him in any way.

The next day, Speaker finished his brushing up on the slightly less than ancient history of creation and other more recent events. He barely needed to skim the scrolls or books at the house of learning to internalize the events, for with a little dash of essence he could perfectly recall facts and descriptions of events that he’d only glanced at for a split second

Before leaving, the god of libraries asked Speaker a personal favor: To transcribe any first age literature he might remember and send copies of such works to the house of learning. If Speaker was to do so the god promised to repay the favor most generously.

Speaker agreed, stating that he would like to compile a manual of exalted power to describe the Solars – so creation could once again learn of the glorious sun-touched that now trotted amongst them, without have immaculate blowhards twist the facts.

Entering the courtyard in the tenement with Sunrise Glow’s apartment, Speaker found Red and Cash Charmer embroiled in a furious fight with twelve or so other ponies, all of which were dressed in identical grey jackets, who seemed quite intent on killing Red and Cash.

Judging from the half-dozen additional unconscious and bleeding ponies in grey jackets scattered around the courtyard, Red and Cash were winning the fight, but it was a slow process: Their assailants were armed with what appeared to be the kind of knives and cleavers used in the fisheries out on the docks, while Red and Cash only had their hooves – well, they also had essence, but it seemed to be a fairly even fight at the moment, with Cash having acquired some nasty cuts along his back and neck. Red only appeared to have blood on her hooves, and that probably wasn’t her own.

Speaker would have preferred to stay out of the fight, but as he stepped into the courtyard two of the jacketed ponies tried to grab him, forcing him into the fray. If he could, Speaker would have loved to summon Gift to aid him, but he knew that he needed that precious half-minute or so of concentration to do something like that, so… time to improvise.

Red was spinning back and forth, landing heavy blows and powerful bucks that were sending ponies flying left and right into the walls of the tenement with great essence-empowered force, leaving bloody pony-shaped impact craters that somepony was probably going to have to fix later – but the ponies being smashed into the walls weren’t being hurt by it that much, as most managed to stagger back onto their hooves and rejoin the fight moments later, it was clear that Red was slowly beating them into submission.

Cash was having more trouble avoiding getting hit, as his wounds were slowing him down and he obviously didn’t have much training in how to dodge incoming blows, resulting in his only means of defence being to parry the incomming blows with his own hooves - a painful feat considering that he was parrying cleaves and knives.

Speaker managed quite well on his own, using his Gear Catches Gear technique to intercept each blade being swung at him, then disarming each opponent and throwing the blades in trough a doorway behind Red and Cash, preventing any of the ponies from retrieving the weapons again during the fight.

“Who are these ponies?” Speaker called out, holding off his two now disarmed assailants with a strong martial stance that clearly signaled that they would get hurt if they tried anything.

Red replied, in between punching and bucking ponies with a fury that only a Dawn caste Solar could muster, that they were thugs from the gang that she had been tracking: “Apparently their leaders have taken offense to our actions– these mooks were sent to kill us off”

The fighting continued for another couple of minutes. Anyone who’d ever been in a fight would know that such is a long time to be fighting, but in the end the gang ponies were chased off, at least those still conscious. Speaker instantly went about staunching the bleeding on the worst-injured gang-ponies, while Red congratulated a somewhat wobbly Cash and busy Speaker on a good fight.

Cash appeared elated, stating that he was just happy that he wasn’t wearing his new silks when the gang-ponies had arrived, but his gait revealed the serious nature of injuries as he dragged himself back into Sunrise Glow’s apartment, leaving a trail of blood as he hobbled along.

While Red was hauling out the unconscious ponies as soon as Speaker was finished with them, other tenants from the tenement started coming down in the courtyard. Some were understandably frightened over what had happened, fearing later reprisals, while others who had witnessed the fight from their windows were amazed over Red and Cash’s ‘fighting magic’, saying that they fought like dragon-blooded immaculate monks. Red couldn’t help but find that amusing, considering how most immaculates would react to hers and Red’s true nature. The residents didn’t get the joke as they didn't know that Red and Cash were Solars.

Returning to Sunrise Glow’s apartment, Speaker patched up Cash, telling the wounded stallion that he needed to learn some better defensive charms – or just learn not to get hit. Cash said that it wasn’t his fault that some of the gang-ponies snuck up on him when he was fighting that many, but even Red agreed that such could be avoided with good hoof-work and knowing how to position oneself in a fight.

When the others returned and Red had told them of the big fight, Sunrise Glow appeared more concerned whether or not this would get them evicted from the tenement, but Cash assured the filly that such wouldn’t be an issue – him having apparently already used his silver tongue on the landlord, which prompted Sullen Hoof to jokingly inquire to whether that meant just talking to the landlord, or whether Cash had done something else with his tongue to the landlord. Cash coily replied: "I don't kiss and tell"

In the quiet of the moment Speaker told the circle that he’d finished his brushing up at the house of learning, so he now felt comfortable telling the circle what he knew of the first age if they were interested.

“Oh excellent, I’ve been looking forward to this” Sunrise stated with a decidedly youthful-sounding cheerfulness, which made everypony look at her in surprise.

Seeing as how everypony was acting very surprised that she was even able to sound happy, Sunrise quickly noted that Great Forks was in part ruled by the god of storytelling, so this was one activity that she had grown to enjoy – in moderation of course – since her very earliest of days.

“Well, okay then…” Speaker began, pulling out a stack of notes from his saddlebags.

Everypony gathered around the burly hazel-colored stallion as Speaker began to tell his story.

“You all know the wyld, right? With its soul-eating changelings and other horrors? That’s all there was to begin with. No rhyme, no reason, no steady flow of time or causality, only the random imagined whims of the unshaped changelings that would fade in and out existence as they fed on each other or devoured themselves. Then one ‘day’ a powerful conglomerate of changeling minds decided to bond together into a permanent form! The first of the primordials, Malfeas, the empyrean light and the first tyrant, who defined that from that moment on there ‘was’ something and that something was called Creation” Speaker began, Sunrise Glow assisting by conjuring up transparent but vivid images of what Speaker described as he went on. Speaker made a note for himself to learn how to do that at a later date, scribbled under where he’d noted to learn how Cash had bounced across spears and feathers when he had been thrown to him at the city gate a few days earlier.

“Other primordials followed and submitted to Malfeas’ rule. Sacheverell, who added the concept of future through its ability to foresee it and thus adding linear time and past to creation. Gaia… you may have heard of her. Her sub-souls are the elemental dragons, which defined the elements as we know them today” Speaker methodically explained, reading point for point off his notes. It wasn’t a terribly interesting form of storytelling, sounding more like a scholar reciting from a scroll, but it was news to everyone, even if it didn’t make all that much sense to some of them.

Raising a hoof to interrupt Speaker, Cash had a few questions: “Hold on, you mean the dragon-blooded and the realm all worship a primordial? And what do you mean by sub-soul? A pony only has one soul, everypony knows that”

“Actually, a pony has two souls – the primal hun soul for emotions, and the intelligent po soul for consciousness. If you knew anything about spirits or the occult you’d be aware of this” Sunrise said in a very matter-of-fact fashion.

Speaker nodded, taking a deep breath to think on what he remembered of primordial soul hierarchies: “True, and the dragon-blooded do worship the five elemental dragons – but I doubt they understand their origins, as few remember these facts. As for the thing about souls… well, primordials are, or were, weird like that. Imagine if your primary consciousness, your brain if you would, could go down and have a chat with one of your kidneys, who was a thinking being just like yourself, who might be having a love affair with one of your eye-balls. Primordials were made up of many souls, and that’s just one aspect of how weird they were! One was a sea of acid, another a river of pain”

Going back to his original stack of notes, Speaker elaborated on a handful of other primordials, like the one known as ‘He Who Bleeds the Unknown Word’, the primordial who trotted around creation naming everything – including Malfeas and the other primordials. He also mentioned Kimbery, the sea that marched against the flame, the primordial who appeared as an endless sea of acid. Cytherea was the one who, together with Gaia, created life in Creation.

“…and then there was Autochton, the great maker, who added three things to creations that I think you’re all quite thankful for one way or the other” Speaker said, sounding very happy to finally having gotten around to his favorite primordial.

“That’s the one you said who made Gift earlier, right?” Shimmer asked, just to be sure.

Nodding enthusiastically, Speaker willed forth Gift for all to see: “Autochton devised the concepts of faith, dogma and tools. Cecelyne, the endless desert, might have come up with the idea of laws to codify Malfeas’ rule, but it was Autochton to came up with the notion of religious dogma and the spiritual mechanics that allow gods and primordial alike to be ‘fed’ via faith and prayer. He essentially invented the idea of religion as we know it. Oh, and he came up with the idea of tool use in every form imaginable. If you use fire to cook, or clothes to stay fashionable, you owe Autochton your thanks for coming up with that aspect of reality”

What followed was some brief by-discussion on the actual meaning of tools – to which Speaker simply explained that prior to that it was speculated that primordials and whatever else was alive, could only do what their given physical or spiritual bodies and powers directly allowed, but with tools one could do so much more.

“Okay, but come on – this is turning into a show and tell on primordials, give us some action, tell us what happened to birth the Solars” Red bellowed, causing Speaker to scramble forward through his notes.

Speaker quickly got to the point: “Okay, so the primordials created creation, making it the center of the wyld. The changelings outside of creation weren’t happy with that, since many of them considered form a kind of heresy to the formless chaos that used to be. Of course, the primordials preferred to have fun instead of constantly defending their new toy, so they made the gods to maintain creation. The problem was just that they made the gods with free wills, hopes, dreams and aspirations, just like the mortal ponies that had also been made at some point during that time”

As the story went, the gods quickly got tired of fixing creation over the course of untold ages whenever the primordials went on a rampage and knocked an elemental pole loose, or kept all the fun toys away from the gods. It was during this that Celestia, the unconquered sun, was formed, to take over from Malfeas as the sun of creation: “Of course, it turned out that Celestia’s sun was too bright and powerful, for its endless warm light burnt creation, so they came up with Luna and her moon to siphon off excess daylight every now and then, inadvertently creating day and night”

Shimmer found this part of the story quite interesting.

Speaker went on to explain how the gods still hated their jobs, but were bound by the nature of their creation to never rise up against their primordial masters – but… there was a loophole: “They could still make things that would rise up against the primordials”

It was in the early stage of that plot that Autochton got involved, for he had developed a great dislike to his fellow primordials. Autochton had made the ponies as perfect beings to exemplify dogma, faith and tool use, which they up until then had done just fine by building small tribal communities and worshipping the primordials, but the other primordials liked to kill them by the millions for sport – or similarly break whatever other new creations the great maker could think up for fun and games. So, Autochton created the soul shards known as exaltations to give rise to the Solars, the Lunars and Sidereals.

“Sidereals?” Sunrise asked, being absolutely certain that she would have heard of a fourth kind of exaltation if such existed.

Speaker explained that they were the exalted of the five mares of destiny, the five goddesses who oversaw the loom of fate up in heaven: “They could tell the future and advised the rest of us, but I fear that with the Lunars not having heard from them since, then the dragon-blooded probably killed them off just like they did the Solars. There were only ever one hundred Sidereals, so compared to the millions of dragon-blooded, it wasn’t a fair fight, even if one sidereal could manage to kill a thousand dragon-blooded before being slain"

Speaking of dragon-blooded, then Speaker noted that the primordial Gaia, long time lover of Luna, feeling similar disdain for the reckless destruction the other primordials wreaked so gleefully on creation, had her sub-souls spawn the unicorn ponies, the aptly named dragon-blooded: “Originally they were more elemental than pony, but after it was found that they could have foals with mortal ponies… well… we a lot of big armies to beat the hordes of demons that the primordials could spawn”

Thus came about the primordial war where the exalted ponies then did as they had been tasked: They killed that which had not been made to die – and they did a dandy job of it. However, the part about primordials not being able to die was real enough, for they hadn’t designed creation to handle such an event: “If you’ve wondered why ghosts exist… it’s because when we killed the primordials, the cycle of reincarnation that all souls usually follow, well… it broke, at least a little bit”

“So the shadowlands where the dead walk and ghosts haunt are from that?” Sunrise wondered.

Speaker thought hard for a moment to get the facts straight in his mind: “Some of them – the death of the primordials, as they ‘fell through creation’ created the first of the shadowlands, but after that all that had to happen for a shadowland to form was enough ponies dying in one area, like a battlefield that isn’t cleaned up fast enough”

Adding the little detail that right after the primordial war almost half of creation was covered in shadowlands, and that the cleanup took centuries, Speaker proudly stated that the gods gifted creation to the Solars via the mandate of heaven as reward for their efforts, the gods relocating to Yu-Shan, the great palace city of heaven.

“Do you remember what Yu-Shan looked like?” Sunrise asked, looking genuinely curious.

Speaker shrugged: “Glimpses, but to be honest, mortal words and standards of wealth and luxury simply aren’t good enough to describe it. The cobblestones they use are bricks of solid gold, and there are pagodas of pure jade the size of countries. It’s something you have to see”

Having reached what was arguably the highest point in the story, Speaker also explained that the Solars of what was then declared to be the first age, expanded a great deal on creation, using powerful charms to solidify bordering sections of the wyld into new parts of creation.

“You see, the biggest event I could find mention of after the dragon-blooded usurped us and formed their creation-spanning Shogunate, was the Great Contagion” Speaker said, his brows furrowing and voice revealing an unmistakable sadness.

The Great Contagion was known well, to a certain extent, across creation. Every pony was told as foals of the stories of the Great Contagion that killed entire nations, for it was this plague that essentially ‘reset’ creation and its nation states, as no known sovereign power survived the Great Contagion. Speaker elaborated that of what he could remember of maps from the first age, compared to the maps of creation he found in the house of learning, then the great contagion must have triggered massive and catastrophic loom failures: “Basically, creation continues to exist because there are animals and ponies around to constantly reaffirm it. When you walk on the floor here, you reaffirm that the floor is solid and that it is wood. When a bird flies in the air it reaffirms that the air is… air – but when nearly everything died during the great contagion, large parts of creation were left without anyone to say that it should keep working”

"Loom failure? Creation was wrecked because a weaver her hooves tangled up?" Red wondered.

Speaker chuckled: "Uhm, no - I meant the loom of fate, a big thing in heaven that tracks reality and causality. It records your fate and ensures that when we touch the fate of another pony the weave shows it, for otherwise it doesn't happen. Now, with the chaos of much of creation falling apart like tha-"

“Oh, I know what happens next!” Cash blurted, happy that the story had finally reached a point he was at least slightly familiar with.

Red gave Cash a hearty pat on back, with such force that it halfway knocked the wind out of the lithe stallion: “We all know that story. The changelings invaded creation when it saw us at our weakest, to eat our last dreams and plunge us into the chaos of the wyld. Then around eight hundred years ago, when things were looking worst, a unicorn mare found an ancient weapon on the blessed isle that in one fell swoop either killed or chased off the changelings, and she crowned herself the Scarlet Empress of the Realm of Equestria”

“True, although I’m certain that Lookshyan historians would disagree with giving her all the credit… the remains of the unicorn shogunate were fighting horn and hoof to stay alive, and the biggest remnant to survive was the 7th legion, under Chumyo Never-Run, who fortified the ruins of Deheleshen, renaming it Lookshy – and aren't we lucky for that?” Speaker said, it being painfully obvious to everyone present that Speaker was still very loyal to his city state of origin.

Red agreed, recounting the dozens of times that Lookshy’s 7th legion had taken the brunt of the many invasions the realm had made, in attempts to conquer the prosperous river provinces of east: “If it wasn’t for Lookshy we’d all likely just have killed ourselves when we exalted, thinking we’d become demons like the immaculates say we are”

“I hope no Solar actually does that – that’d be just plain embarrassing” Sunrise Glow glumly noted.

Cash shrugged: “I don’t know. I wasn’t sure what’d happened when I exalted. I don’t think it’s impossible to some exalted ponies doing something stupid like that”

The circle stayed up late that night, discussing what to do next. Speaker was still adamant that they get a safe location to work from, where they could retreat to and regroup in case of trouble, as well as build up support for their ultimate return to power: “I mean; it’s not like I expect us to retake creation as just us six. There are hundreds of Lunars out there, and Shimmer said that she’s seen plenty of signs of other Solars reappearing as well. So we need to make sure that when they show up that they have a place to go and find help, especially if they’re scared or confused like Cash said”

With that in mind Sunrise Glow said that she had recently heard of a situation that might work out well for them: “Yesterday, I was looking for one of my cultists at the docks, when I saw that a medical relief caravan is being assembled on the north shore of the yellow river. Asking around I found that a quarter of Great Fork’s most potent medical supplies have been sold for this… and it’s a whole guild caravan build set up, so this is quite big”

“Yes I heard of that, considered buying supplies and trying to sell to them – but really, it’s a medical relief caravan commissioned by some smalltime shogun who’s got a rat problem, how does that benefit us?” Cash commented, making a good point that going to some place afflicted by plague, which was the second most feared disease known next to the Great Contagion, was generally considered a really bad idea.

Sunrise Glow stood up and arched her back, trying to look as tall as possible, as she declared: “If you had paid more attention in the markets, you would know that the shogun who commissioned the caravan is the shogun of the Chung lands – and the ponies I talked to said it was a colt who was the new shogun”

“WHAT?” Red burst out, shocked that Sunrise would keep such a secret from her.

Sunrise calmly explained that if they were to go to Red’s homeland and rid them of the plague, something Sunrise appeared supremely confident that Speaker would figure out, then they could either have Red claim the throne or gain a very grateful, powerful, and hopefully impressionable, ally - and a safe place to stay in the case that wyld hunts come after them.

“That sounds like quite a plan – I like it!” Cash said, while Red quivered slightly, appearing torn between being angry over Sunrise not telling her sooner, but also overjoyed to finally have an excuse to come home, as well as horrified over hearing that her home was being ravaged by plague.

“Wait a second, Red, you left home almost a decade years ago – do you have any idea who this young new shogun is?” Shimmer asked, remembering that Red had told them that her father had been the shogun when she had left.

Red pondered for a moment: “Well, Swift Hoof was supposed to be the heir, I was second in line. My parents hadn't born any other foals then, but I guess they could have afterwards - but why'd there be a new shogu- oh heavens, the plague”

It suddenly dawned on everyone that this meant that Red’s parents were most likely dead, which killed the mood of the planning session quite thoroughly. Red still seemed intent on going though, now more than ever: “If we save all of Chung and what’s left of my family, I will most certainly earn back my name – and the rest of you will be equally honored” Red said, sounding ever resolute, like a general confident in her battle plan.

Sunrise Glow noted that the caravan was just getting started. It would be weeks, if not a month, before everything was ready and loaded on the north shore. Red didn’t want to wait that long for obvious reasons, but Speaker was quick to point out that even with his powers he could do little to stop an outbreak of plague on his own – sure, he might cure some, but thousands of others would need help - and might not appreciate not being among the few chosen who get cured. The medicine that caravan would bring, most of which was still in production, Cash added, was crucial to allow all the ponies in Chung to be saved.

“So then what? I won’t just sit around and wait until some stupid herbs dry here!” Red said, the mare’s voice booming with fury.

Sullen Hoof cleared his throat to get everypony's attention: “I think I know what we can do in the meantime…”

“And what would that be?” Sunrise inquired.

Sullen Hoof said that yesterday, right before getting ready to set his final plans in motion to reveal the corrupt managers of the slave dormitory kitchens, he came across a strange shop in the southern district staffed by changelings. Speaker was quick to ask if Sully surely didn’t just kill them all, but Speaker turned out to have been too quick, as Sunrise Glow explained that there did indeed live a handful of changelings in Great Forks: “…and they’re well aware that they have to play nice. I do believe that the right word to describe them is that they have gone ‘native’. I know of the shop, they sell glamour and illusions. If you want a dress to actually sparkle, they can make that happen. They take their payment in dreams”

Speaker still didn’t like Sullen Hoof having anything at all to do with changelings, so he was even less thrilled when Sully turned out to have known one of the changelings in a past life: “Well, that’s what this guy claimed anyway. Said he knew from a guild merchant where a manse fitting the description of one I had once owned was located”

Being torn between his curiosity for what might be in the manse of ancient artifacts and his intense dislike of changelings, Speaker chose to just shut up and listen. Sullen Hoof explained how the changeling was willing to give the information in exchange for a small service…

“What do we have to do?” Cash asked, eager to do a little treasure hunting in an ancient first age manse.

Sullen Hoof said that they simply had to go fetch a some ‘pennants’ from a freehold not far north from the yellow river, a bit west from Great Forks. The changeling had apparently sent an apprentice to get them, but the apprentice should have been back over a month ago – and there wasn’t room in the changeling’s schedule to get them himself.

Speaker wasn’t sure if it was worth it.

“Come on Speaker – this guy is legit. Only eats dreams or emotions from ponies who let him. Heck, its apparently illegal for him to do anything beyond that, and these changelings have been living in Great Forks for centuries!” Sullen Hoof pleaded.

Sighing, Speaker agreed. The circle agreed to venture forth first thing in the morning.