Planescape
MODRON MARCH
After returning to Sigil, the group goes about its own ways a bit, although of course the Glenzorans see each other because they live together and Darin is a frequent visitor and date.
Darin and Anya choose to join the Society of Sensation and are given their recorder crystals. When they have one good experience for each sense, they are to come to the Civic Festhall, record the experience, and then see if they get to join the faction. The experiences aren't expected to be collectors' items -- the faction, after all, has an incredible library of sensations and neither Darin nor Anya has lived very long -- but they should at least demonstrate that the two hopefuls have the makings of a good factioneer. That is, the sensations should be somewhat unusual and very vivid.
Violet and Angel, on the other hand, decide at last to join the Harmonium, over some protests from the others. Basic training will take eight weeks, so they pack up and leave for the training camp in Arcadia, out of touch with the others for quite some time ... and leaving Darin without two of his favorite dance partners, too.
Although Angel and Violet are gone, Balthazar Thames continues to occasionally send the group small errands that help them keep their rent and Chirper's bills paid; he seems to be engrossed in his research into the Prophecy of the Four Doors and has little time for the normal errands he's asked to perform. The group can choose to carry out or decline the beings sent to them. Most of the errands seem innocuous; messages or shipments to be carried to various portal towns, for the most part. One involved guarding a small shipment of the Planar Trade Consortium ... apparently the ogre mage Estavan, whom they met in Balthazar's hallway, remembers the group. One or two errands brought to the group are a little shadier, perhaps referred to them by their "friend" Barl Hoxun of the Bottle and Jug. The group may decide to avoid the petty kidnapping being brought to them by a horned tiefling, if it likes, although the 50 gp is pretty good wages compared to the paltry sums most of the other errands cost. It's hard to build up a reputation in Sigil!
But there's other stuff going on in the Cage, as well. The Athar are also doing a lot of study into the Prophecy of the Four Doors, and although Factor Katrina -- Angel's grandmother -- is often busy, anyone who decides to continue to visit her (she had set up a tea date once a week with Angel) will learn from her that the Athar -- indeed, all of the factions -- are extremely concerned by the dwarf's intimation that Aoskar might return. Aoskar, after all, was the god who used to inhabit the Shattered Temple in which the Athar now make their headquarters, and the temple was shattered by the Lady of Pain. Nobody in the Cage wants to see the Lady of Pain get annoyed again; she tends to just start destroying things and exiling berks to her extradimensional Mazes without much concern for the right or wrong of the matter. So a lot of factions are interested in finding out what the dark is behind the dwarf's blaspheming.
As if that weren't enough, there's also quite a fuss over the Great Modron March suddenly occurring 150 years earlier than normal. Modrons aren't known for changing their operating procedures, after all, and they aren't talking to anybody about it ... not that they've ever talked to anybody about the March, of course. The Athar are concerned that the early march might be linked to the alleged return of Aoskar, although Katrina admits that there's no real ground for their worries. Darin and Anya will hear a buzz in the Society of Sensation that this early march is a good thing -- a sign that the modrons are finally asserting their individuality. Angel and Violet, in the Harmonium training camps, don't hear much about it until they get some R&R in Melodia, at which time they hear rumors that the Harmonium want to stop the march, because it's clearly a sign of chaos and disorder in the multiverse. But regardless of what one believes about the march, a lot of cutters and berks from Sigil have left to follow it, especially Signers and Sensates ... seems that there's usually a big party around the March (at least until it reaches the Lower Planes) as folks get together to watch the rare event, visit the planes, hawk wares and services to the other march-followers, and so forth.
