Malcolm had just gotten a good grip on the bag of groceries when a woman’s voice came from behind him: “Need some help there, Malcolm?”

  “No, I am fine,” he said, turning slowly. The woman standing there wore a perfectly tailored dark blue suit. She was very tall, very pretty, and wore her long blonde hair in a severe ponytail. “But who are you and how do you know my name?”

  She just smiled at him and said: “in a moment…let us head inside, okay?”

  He started to say something but decided it would just slow things down, shrugged and followed her to the porch. She smiled back at him as she knocked on the door.

  Carol opened the door, and the blonde woman fshed a badge: “Carol Bishop? Amanda Prescher, FBI. May I come in?”

  Carol gnced around the room, shrugged, stepped back and waved for her to go in. Malcolm followed in her wake, briefly met Carol’s questioning gaze with a shrug, and headed into the kitchen.

  As he passed her, he noticed Sandra staring at the blonde woman, an odd expression on her face.

  After a few seconds, Sandra stepped forward, and said: “Though I am sure we have never met before, somehow you seem familiar?” She asked.

  The other woman’s smile broadened: “Hello, Thellissandra. That is not surprising, since I am your sister!”

  Sandra stepped back, stunned. “But I do not have any sisters, except my Battle Sisters,” she said, confused.

  David moved to her side and Amanda said: “You might want to sit down for this. You know your mother left the Temple for three years, right?”

  Sandra leaned against David but remained standing in defiance. “Of course. That was where she earned her surname, Gryphonsyer.”

  “Did she tell you why she left?”

  “She said she needed to avoid the man she was partnered with.”

  “That is not true. She left at his suggestion, but because they had …been together two weeks before the assignment was announced. And she was pregnant at the time. They had been drawn to each other the first time they met and gave in to their desires even before either knew they would be partnered with the other.”

  Sandra slumped against David. “So Mikkledarmius…”

  “...was never much for following rules, even when it was his job to enforce them” Amanda interrupted. “They had a shared pregnancy vision and he used a Foresight Ritual that determined they had produced a daughter who would not make a good Battle Sister. They decided it would be best if she left the Temple to stay with his sister until the child was weaned, and then they could find a family to foster her with. In my case, they decided I had to be fostered on another world. This one.”

  David had pced one hand on each of Sandra’s shoulders and she leaned into him. “I have a sister?” She said numbly.

  “Yes. Amendaria, which became Amanda when William and Jane Prescher adopted me. It is an honor to meet you at st, Thellissandra,” she said. “Our father told me a few things about you, and that he regretted not being able to tell you about me, but, while he lived the fewer people who knew that I existed, the better,” the FBI agent informed them.

  “He never told me anything about you,” Sandra compined.

  “I know. I inherited dad’s love of secrecy, it seems. I got mom’s hair, height and gender and everything else from dad. Which I guess is just as well - if I had gotten mom’s looks, like you did, I probably would be a model or an actress and have few skills that could help you guys out.”

  The others had been watching silently until now. At this point, Carol stepped in: “Why were you kept a secret?”

  Amanda took a deep breath. “To answer that I must first understand how much you know about the current situation. You know what my sister is, correct? And what David there probably, perhaps certainly at this point, is, and what it seems those two,” she added, indicating Malcolm and Audrey, “are?”

  Carol looked at everyone in the room briefly before answering: “yes, and we know a renegade wizard of some sort named Elgarin is the cause of most of our troubles.”

  “The Betrayer is a major pyer but hardly the root cause. But regardless, though the Lost Arch Mage is a threat to his allies, a prophecy made at Elgarin's birth has led to him hunting down and exterminating all Artificers he could find, especially those who fled Pyrroth. He, or his allies, at least, even murdered my teacher the day before they killed my - our - father…”

  Standing next to him, Audrey could almost literally see a light bulb go off over Malcolm’s head: “you're the one who repaired the cars, right?”

  She nodded, then turned to Carol: “I am sorry that I cannot do anything about burn damage, though.”

  Carol was stunned: “You fixed my door? That's more than enough, heck I could probably fix the paint job myself if I could match the color. You saved me a small fortune!”

  “You guys took out that weasel - who was a bit more literal than I had realized - that I had been trying to expose for months, so figured I could return the favor,” Amanda replied. Then she turned to Audrey: “One of the reasons I decided it was time to reveal myself was the item I added to your car when I fixed it. Inside your glovebox is a greenish-white dome. It is a Waystone; it works kind of like a Portal Stone but can be attuned to any location you are familiar with. It should even boost your powers so that you can transfer the whole car and anyone inside it through the Pathways, but I have never tested that due to a ck of avaible World Walkers.”

  “Did you also fill out my incident report?” Audrey asked.

  “Not … well, no, not exactly. When I dropped off the folder with the information needed to close the open murder investigation about my father and my mentor, a young woman dropped that report off. I chatted with her a bit and found out what it was, and then let my pen fill in the details and returned it to her as I left the station.”

  “Your pen?” Audrey asked, confused.

  Amanda took a pen out of her pocketbook. “Yes. It can read and write on command. Can even do some simple transtions, but it is very literal and sometimes quite amusing.”

  “I suppose that is easier to believe, and more useful, than walking between worlds,” Audrey replied after considering this for a short while.

  Amanda then pulled some papers out of her bag and passed them to David. “You will need to sign these and turn them in at your work.”

  “A leave of absence form?” he said as he looked them over.

  “I doubt you will have time for both worlds for quite a while. Jumping back and forth will work for the others of the Five, at least for now, but not for you or my sister,” Amanda informed him.

  Sandra had been standing there, lost in thought. Suddenly she said: “I have a sister!” And, to the surprise of everyone, including Amanda and possibly herself, walked over and embraced the statuesque blonde.

  After a second of clear shock, Amanda smiled and returned the embrace. “I am gd we finally got to meet, sister,” she said quietly.

  “As am I,” Sandra replied. “Maybe we should go somewhere we can just talk for a while?”

  “Not today but soon, I promise,”. Amanda informed her. “For now, I must leave you. I have other investigations assigned to me that need attention and paperwork. Always paperwork.”

  Audrey let out a knowing sigh. “The second worst part of the job, after notifying loved ones of a death.”

  “You said it, Detective Ross. Well, I must be off, but we will see each other again…. Probably more often than you would like,” Amanda informed them and turned to leave, but stopped at the door and looked at her sister: “Dad was partial to Red Delicious apples, but I prefer the Ga myself. Let me know if you have a favorite next time we meet,” and then she was gone.

  After a few seconds, Malcolm spoke up: “should I be concerned that this whole thing just felt kind of normal?”

  Sandra looked at him and smiled slightly: “I have a sister!”

  David let out a low ugh, then looked thoughtful for a moment. “I wonder what she knows about the game? Have you guys been able to research more?”

  Carol and Malcolm both started to speak, stopped, and looked at each other, started again, then Malcolm stopped, bowed slightly, and said: “Ladies first, Okay?”

  Carol ughed but nodded and began talking: “It is a little tricky because these were written with multiple paths. We know most of what happened in the first one by the situation we find ourselves in. Malcolm had more time with the second so can talk about it better than I can, I suspect. The third one deals with the children of the main characters though, which is interesting. Namely the twins of the Lost Arch Mage and child of the Trickster. Oddly it does not go into who their spouses were and even suggests that the Trickster the authors envisioned was either female or, though they did not have the term then, genderfluid. It begins with a war involving D’Gar and the second queen to ever rule there and also introduces a concept that became a core element in the second edition, Children of Destiny. Apparently, this was initially intended for the offspring of Pyer Characters, but also allowable for any game master who wanted to remove any css or race restrictions. One of the example PCs is the first ever Battle Brother, and one of the Arch Mage’s twins, while his daughter inherits his full magical talents. The story goes down several paths, as to whether the goal is peace with D’Gar or conquest, and winds up traveling to other realms to combat the King of the Dead and the Lord of Contracts, or at least their chief Avatars, directly. It feels like it was written to be a stand-alone but to have a direct sequel that was never released, as there are hints to the involvement of the Outsider Gods and the Coming Twilight which are never expined. It also details a few monsters that are pretty brutal.”

  David considered all of this and nodded. “Malcolm, you studied the second adventure, the one we seem stuck in the middle of now?”

  “Audrey and I worked through it together,” he began, and David ughed.

  “I knew something was different about her but did not pay enough attention to you to put it together. Sorry for the interruption, but congratutions, you two! Please continue!”

  Malcolm rolled his eyes slightly but resumed: “Audrey, please interrupt if I leave out something that seems critical,” he began, and she nodded that she would. “As Carol pointed out, the use of multiple paths does make it a little difficult to know what does or does not apply, and there are some significant changes, like the four - Trickster, Healer, World Walker and Warrior - all start on Pyrroth and are sent to Earth to find The Lost Arch Mage, sometimes abbreviated as the Ell Aye Emm, which I will use from here out. The LAM’s pyer is given three options: to py the Doomed Magister, to py a bunch of NPCs until the rest of the group finds him, or to sit out the first chapter, which ends with his discovery. Oddly enough, the LAM works at a tech company and has a roommate who is either a best friend or a lover, and named either Menie or, believe it or not, Malcolm, depending on how the pyer and GM want it to fall out. The Doomed Magister is either a PC or NPC who accompanies the party and has an additional task of locating an Artificer and his Apprentice. The Artificer and the Magister both die horribly off screen, killed by agents of The Betrayer. The Apprentice is an agent of either a national police force or Interpol, named Amy Prentiss and is set up to be either a repcement character if a PC dies, or the character of a “drop in” pyer who takes part in a few scenarios as written but can py a rger role as needed.”

  Audrey stepped in at this point: “you did overlook two different starting options for the scenario - pyers bringing their own PCs into the mix instead of the four prepared roles, or the appendix which allows the PCs to start out on Earth and be brought, first together by the Doomed Magister then to Pyrroth by the Apprentice. I do not know that this changes much but I found it interesting. Also the rules on how ‘modern’ technology works were entertaining, as they predicted some stuff that is obsolete now and some stuff we do not yet have. For example, the ‘personal minicomputer’ - the object the LAM’s company makes, and what The Betrayer pns to use to locate the Artificer - he seems ignorant of the Apprentice - is pretty much a ptop of ten years ago but with a modern touch screen. Firearms are appropriately dangerous.”

  At this point she and Malcolm both seemed unsure how to progress, so Dave offered: “the Apprentice - is she supposed to be reted to one of the PCs?”

  “It is suggested but not required - she may be the long-lost sibling of any PC with a mysterious or incomplete background - or the sister of the Lost Arch Mage. She is probably the most open-ended character in all three modules,” Malcolm answered. “Oh, get this - when the LAM is brought to Pyrroth, he is immediately dragged into a romantic rivalry with an Apprentice Magister, whether the love interest is his Earth roommate, one of the four sent to retrieve him or one of four NPCs presented for that express purpose. And one of those four NPCs is named Thellissandra, though they use the name frequently in published stuff.”

  “I do have a moderately common name,” Sandra admitted.

  Malcolm smiled as he added: “She is also, if I can recall the wording exactly, supposed to be ‘of exceptional beauty, even in full battle dress, and, whether used in this subplot or not, pursued by at least one major nobleman.’”

  Sandra suddenly interrupted: “I believe I asked David this before, but time passes the same here as on my world, right?”

  Carol held up a hand: “I have this one. Possibly my favorite passage in the Dungeoneers Pyer’s Guide is the one on the passage of time: ‘It is a fact that much fantasy fiction deals with worlds where time flows differently than it does in the real world. Pyers of this game can rejoice that Pyrroth, the default setting of Dungeoneers, uses the same twenty-four-hour clock that we do. The twin suns mean the ratio of daylight to darkness is more varied.’”

  Dave interrupted her: “Someone, I need a tablet, a notebook, even a phone or ptop, quickly!” Then he turned to Carol and added: “Sorry to interrupt but I think I just figured out why Elgarin wants to support SearchNet, and maybe how to stop him!”