Upshot: Elbret appears to have good intelligence regarding us -- said that we numbered "barely 15", but she may have mistaken Silvana and Stealth for Clan members, or her info is slightly outdated. Ekali told me that the defectors all left at once, so she could have gotten that info from them, but the possibility that she has a spy inside must not be overlooked. She also claims to have access to old grey/high elven artifacts (possibly dating back to before the high and grey elves split)...I have one of the alleged items, the other is apparently to be delivered upon your death. (The items allegedly can only be used by Good beings.) Her story is that she is interested in having a strong Good presence in the Shorin (guess who - not consistent with offing you, is it?); she also wishes to absorb the Nirduks. However, several attempts were made on my life during the visit, though none could be unequivocally linked to Elbret -- my guess is that their plan was to kill me and replace me with a dop (perhaps Sirax?). (A Shala person was hired to backstab me with a scarab; when this failed, she pretended to be dead and Sirax and his gnomish flunkies carted her off, but Sirax let slip the fact that she was faking, not realizing that I speak gnomish. [Tremere finished her off; since the items I liberated from her are Nightblade-type things, I think Tremere will make the best use of them.] Elbret's continued attempts to kiss me may indicate some sort of poisoned or drugged lipstick [also a Shala-type trick, I hear]. Sirax also planted some sort of dormant bee-in-a-honeycomb on my cloak on the return trip; it was removed before it could activate.) Anyway, it seems clear that Elbret wishes to absorb or destroy the Nirduk Clan. She claims that their Clan numbers roughly sixty.

Another note...Lekilum was a prisoner in their encampment when I was there. They claim to have caught him sneaking around; Sirax indicated that Elbret had run afoul of a group called the Black Widows.

I recommend against the Subleader exchange...even with Tremere's able assistance and Silvana scrying the situation, I can only dodge so many assassination attempts. The joint operation in Silverton also appears to be high-risk; Elbret may be more concerned with eliminating me and my team than the shades. (I'll also point out that since we are very short on personnel, the base will fall to Elbret rather than to us anyway, so it is unclear what we gain from the strike -- the Shades are less of a problem than the Spiders at this point.) If we have the cloaks to spare, one plan of action would be for my team to do some underwater investigation in the Silverton area and attempt to locate the undersea gate that we believe the Spiders have established; when Elbret strikes the island, we can go in and close the gate.

You once mentioned something about being absorbed by the Parnos -- while absorption doesn't seem like the best answer (esp. since we haven't established the nature of the extraplanar "interest" in our Clan), cultivating ties with them and with the Balan could be prudent.

An unrelated matter: on our way here, we learned that the Vortex, a Neutral/Evil Eastern religion, is going to be summoning an evil air demon into this area in the near future. Because of our reliance on air transportation, this development could represent a new threat to our mountain operations; we hope to investigate this as time allows, and hopefully disrupt the summoning. (We freed 40 people who were to sacrificed as part of this summoning on our way here, so hopefully we've slowed them down a little.) This also represents a personal threat, as I am partially sponsored by the Temple of the Wind, and this summoning is likely directed against them.

Some questions, also:

1. Why are the Shorin involved in this operation? (Elbret also owes Hajmola a favor, perhaps? And perhaps Hajmola doesn't want the Good guys to be too successful.)
2. Did the other Clans have dream experiences similar to ours? What have they made of them?

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