Indayd. Good to finally see the end of the matter. Although more adventures with this pair might be fun...

Considering I have a mental image of a dragon telling an innkeeper that she can handle heating her own bathwater, thank you, that's not off the table...

very nicely done... my mind was there and enjoying your words...

V.

Thanks. Sometimes it can be hard to keep the character voices straight in my head when they're trying to yell over each other.

I hear that... no pun intended...

V.

I enjoyed the endgame:) Thank you for sharing. Although I can hear Kaari saying "What do you mean, I can't have the suite? I'm a dragon...kinda need the room"

Yes, well, first she has to convince the current owner that she's the same person as helped them in the past anyway, since it has been a few years...

Not that she's exactly public about being a dragon anyway. The help she gave before could have been done just as a wizard anyway.

*snickers* You ever read The Fire's Stone by Tanya Huff? There's a sequence in there where the party wizard (who's also nobility but hiding) has just been told that flames get lit with matches in this establishment, turns to her companion and asks how the barkeep knew she was a wizard.

"Oh, there's a magical ward by the door to warn him. This is a good place; some places just refuse to serve wizards at all."

"Why's that?"

"They do too much damage when they're drunk."

An excellent jaunt of a tale. Glad you had the mind and time to share it with us.

Enjoy your time away from the daily toil.

The bit where the priest's chant activates the genuine pearl, revealing to the whole congregation - purely by accident - that they've all been worshiping a phony: elegantly done.

I really like the setup of the marginal outsiders possessing the sacred truth and being rebuffed in their efforts to restore it.

Yeah, obviously they couldn't return it quietly, there would be no story. And between thinking 'how can I make this as awkward as possible' and 'wait, what has the church been doing for the last hundred years anyway', this kind of popped into my head...

There are people who are always looking for power they can abuse, and organized religion sadly is one of the places where they can find it, along with the ability to put themselves into a situation where nobody will question them.

Very very true. That's why when I start *my* organized religion, I'll put in safeguards and stuff that'll cut down on corruption. For instance, every time they pass around the collection tray, I'll take a little money off the top for myself. I figure, like, if *I* take it, that means that nobody else will be able to take it, you know?

A very nice story. I'm sure the bad publicity this incident will create is going to make some deities very unhappy.

Oh, most likely, yes.