The Danger Gang are polite for once

Well, a lot has happened. I’ve grown a lot, in very personal ways. But—I learned a lot by boring Chung Quel. I worn’t bore you with those details, or most of the details about how we freed Mazu from the temple of the rainbow dragon where she was keeping a village of people alive in a desert not fit for life. Let’s just say that this world is much larger than the “european” world I was used to. There were things there that were clearly bad horrible and other things that were not so bad and horrible. Out here, I don’t even know. Do you let people starve? Why not resettle them somewhere else. Maybe that is what we should have done. Maybe I should tell Mazu to do that. She seemed to think that letting herself die to save them was the best thing.

In all of this confusion, though, I have Zombres’ high strung voice to act as a guide, telling me what the very worst outcome could be, and how we can try to aver that. Even if you don’t know what the best thing to do is, it’s always good to know what the worst thing that could happen is, and to make sure that it doesn’t if it looks likely that it will. That is the drudgery work that Jesus has put me in contact with these lunatics to do. To keep the worst at bay. I’ll just have to leave him to sort out the difficult issues of people starving in a beanies desert.

According to Zombres, the worst thing is Dr. Lao getting a second moon. To stop him, we have to get some monsters into some places where Solomon put them, and keep them there. To keep them there we need to get some seal magic. To get that, we need to talk to a dragon king. To do that we need to rouse him from his apathy. To do that we need to return his spit and daughters. To do that we need to talk to a different dragon—this time one with a single foot.

I’ve skipped a few steps there too—because there is a faceless lady, the corpse of a prince, a lot of shadow goop, and a urine soaked rug between us and the apathetic dragon king. But, I am already doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t do, so I will stop now. More immediately, we asked Mazu and Vettle what they know about Kuei. They say we shouldn’t try to fight him, and that his wife is pretty dangerous in battle and we should not fight her either.

Before I narrate—here are some questions and some answers.

1. Does Kuei possess the Dragon King's daughters? No

2. Does Kuei possess the Dragon King's spittle? Yes

3. Are the Council of Nine attempting to distract us from another nefarious deed that will occur simultaneously with their appearance at Yeenoghu's prison? Yes

4. Is She Who Has No Face actively allied with Dr. Yueh Lao? (By which I mean: is her residence in the Dragon King's pagoda coincidental?)  Are these questions actually opposites?

5. Would (or _could_) using one of Mazu's pearls to wish that Evelake would forgive God (by which I mean You) actually advance his rehabilitation? Glory-osky, if a wish could fix things, wouldn't he have wished for something by now? But it can't hurt, right?

no

6. Kuei mostly knows where the dragon king are.

7. Dr. Lao’s daughter has no love interest

8. Is the distraction thing, the initiation of the moon plan by H&H (nope)

9. Is it some H&H action? No

10. Is it some lao initiated thing. Yes

11. Is She who has no face opposed to Lao (no)

12. Is Kuei allied with Lao (no)

13. Bogateer Ivonovna’s had does not control the Mayawan (no)

14. The Bloodstone is not safe

Zombies knew someone who knew how to get to his castle, so we visited them. These people were snake people, so Zombres did not want to trust them, but he had no choice. Happily they were trustworthy. I think it was an enemy of my enemy situation. This whole trust thing, I will never understand it, but I have put my trust in Jesus, so I don’t have to. Speaking of things I don’t understand, those snake people are looking for the dinosaur king. I think we met a friend of his, going to the dragon king’s pagoda. But zombres didn’t trust these people who helped us enough with that information. I guess trust is a crooked one way street sometimes. In addition to trust, favors flow one way, as these guys give us a gilded fetus for good luck. Hong Pray they call it, though his prayers weren’t answered unless he really wanted a golden skeleton in death, and said that their pals would probably not immediately kill us if they saw that we had one of them. Sometimes these things are alive, I guess, and if they bite you you dance to death. So, I guess Saint Vitus has something to do with this place. He was an alright guy, so it can’t be al that bad.

Anyway, we get into some trouble with some elephant-snake thing before we can go into this dragon’s pagoda. Once we’ve gotten the door open we buff up, and I ask some weasels if they’d like to help out. 8 of these yellow throated guys decided to, and boy that was nice of them. They’re cute suckers, with yellow throats and white cheeks. I wonder if they’re related to the yellow throated warbler? Probably not, because those are birds—but who knows?

So, we wander around inside for a while and finally meet someone who looks like he’s in charge. It’s two snakes that are actually one snake with human arms. He asks why we’ve come and who we are to have spoken the sacred language of the yuang-ti. We respond, moderately politely. Not as polite as is to my liking—they seem to really value that outside of europe, and Zombres tries to intimidate this guy. But this guy gives us an alright offer—he says he’ll pass information on to Kuei, and if that guy likes it, then he’ll chat with us. If not, he won’t. Then he asks some weird timid mice-men to escort us to the waiting room.

In this room there’s a chest. Now, the information we gave was about a thief. Zombies wants to open the chest. But, clearly that is a bad idea. If you walk into a place and declare that you know who stole a thing, and then you start poking around where you haven’t been given permission, you’re certain to be considered a thief who is trying to slander someone else. We have a long conversation about how short my bladder is and decide to wait an hour before going to ask for a status update. In that hour i’ve taken the time to update this little log. But, now that I’m done I guess I’ll play with these majestic creatures who have generously decided to keep me company here. We have about 20 minuets to go before I need to empty my bladder.