In the town of Yenth, no stranger to odd phenomenon itself, you have been summoned to the local clave of the Order of Truth by Prelate Estere Mez, the second-ranking Aeon Priest in all of Malevich and director of all clave operations in the kingdom.

The clave in Yenth is small by the standards of the Order, a squat two stories of mud brick and wooden beams.  The few small defensive installations that have been worked into hollows in the building's facade and the sign out front advertising the hours of operation for the healing machine mark the structure as something beyond the work of the local townfolk.

Inside, the greatroom is well lit and warmed by a crackling fire in the hearth.  It is a welcome refuge from the damp mist soaking into the town today.  From past experience, you're familiar with the layout, passages leading to a kitchen, library, workshop, and a parlor for public appointments on the ground floor, three bedrooms and an office upstairs.

Drips falling off the thatched synth roof dampen your head as you cross the threshold.  Prelate Mez is sitting by the fire, perusing a worn tome as she waits for all of you to arrive.

A man wearing a hooded cloak approaches the doorway, drips from the roof twisting as if to avoid him as they fall.  He pushes back the hood to the cloak revealing a youthful face, but one where the right side of his skull has been replaced with a bulky metallic sensor.  A blue light glows where the eye would be.  “All signs pointed to you wanting to speak with me.  Others also.  I would guess five?  No four.”

He wipes a few errant drops of water from his face with his right hand, the flesh one.  A purple chord twisted around a metallic bracer seems to writhe as he does so. “No need to entertain.  I brought my own reading material.”

He crosses the room to another seat while slipping his left hand, this one made of synth and steel into the bag strapped to his leg.  There is a slight hum as the bag shifts noticeably.  When he removes the hand it has been replaced with a clear synth screen displaying text..  He sits, crossing his legs, “Trillain’s Oratory on Augmetic Interface.  Fascinating.  I purchased a copy off of a jack in Stirthal.  i don’t think she knew what she had to tell truth.”  With that he settles into reading.

An ill-shaped woman stalks into the greatroom like a stick insect, the glisten of rain on her lumpy, rose-colored skin only serving to make her look like a side of exposed meat, her absurdly small bright green hat only sparing her face from the worst of the damp.  The rain seems to make her metallic hair lie plastered flat in some place, and frizz outrageously in others.  Her silky cloak, dangling from her shoulders as if it wants to escape, is the only thing that seems to be of fashionable status, as the clashing colors and patterns of everything else she's wearing is hard on the eyes to anyone with a sense of aesthetics.

Zalbane sweeps her hat off just inside the door, the lights from the fire glinting off the crystal pendent that dangles in the middle of her chest.  It glows like a small sun, chasing away shadows from every corner of the room, making them swirl as she finds an empty patch of floor and sits down.

"Prelate," she says with a respectful nod, her voice oddly sweet coming from her tiny mouth.  "What do you need of us?  Oo, another interface book?" she says, switching subjects rapidly as she sees what Listran is reading.  She leans over slightly to see.  "Olfactory interfaces?  That's one I haven't seen before."

While not nearly as flamboyant as her allies Nalla does catch a few eyes as she walks through the rain, mostly due to the water bouncing off of her outer layer of clothing, simply sliding away as if it hadn't happened at all.  As she steps into the room she sheds one last layer of water onto the welcome mat, and is almost completely dry there after, just a bit of residual dampness.

Taking another seat near the fire Nalla offers the prelate a nod but does not otherwise distract her from her tome, simply enjoying the fire as it dries her out the rest of the way at a fairly quick pace.

Kase steps through the dripping water, then the doorway. At the threshold, she kicks the mud off of her boots and scuffs them more or less dry, then removes her hat, holding it slightly out the door and shaking the worst of the water off of it before fully entering. The charcoal-colored cloak couldn't quite conceal the heavy crossbow on her back, or the fact that she had come in her armor. It couldn't even try to conceal the heavy polearm she casually leans on as if it was a walking staff. Partly, she expects to be sent immediately off on some dangerous assignment, and partly she's just trying to look ready for that. She was a true glaive, after all, not just some random thug playing at being the muscle.

She steps over to the fire, greeting the others with a warm smile. The weather hadn't affected her spirits like it did some people. If anything, it seemed to brighten her mood. "I'm not too late, am I?"

Prelate Mez closes her book and sets it aside.

"Thank you for arriving on time," she smiles briefly, an expression that does not reach her remaining biological eye.  "I had hoped there would be a couple more, but my staffing requisitions have been ... slow to be filled."

She stands and pulls a large, rolled scroll from the corner.  She spreads a map of western Malevich out onto the table, weighting the corners with small oddities that chime and chitter when touched.

"We've finally gotten reliable information on the location that those strangers have been coming from.  It's some sort of metallic fortress in the wall of a narrow canyon in the forest."  She points to a star marked several miles north of the tree line.  "Airk, one of the local delves, was able to verify the site, but little more.  As he was observing, he heard a strange humming above, but couldn't identify a source.  It was somewhere over the canopy.  It went quiet a few minutes after.  Half an hour later, another of those foreigners arrived.  He was quite disoriented.  Airk tried to convince him to return with him to safety, but of course ... the language barrier.  The man, he seemed terrified of Airk's seskii and ran to the west.  Airk followed, slowly so as not to frighten him further."

Prelate Mez shook her head, although it was hard to tell if it was pity or frustration.  "The rains became heavier and obscured the trail.  By the time Airk located him again, there was little left but bones and scraps of cloth."

Listran looks up and nods to the others as they enter with a wink and a wave of his right hand that momentarily loosens the purple chord.  Hearing her misreading of the book’s title he corrects her gently, tapping the implant on his head, “Augmetics...  though I assume one could create an olfactory augmetic.”

Upon seeing Kase enter he returns the book to his pouch and regains his mechanical hand with a hum and another shifting of the bag. He contemplates the Prelate’s presentation.  “One would assume you have called us here to investigate that structure, Prelate?  What is your final intent for this location?”