COG '03 - The Case of the Missing Liver

Friday
I arrived bright and early and, unsurprisingly, alone at the Convocation of Guilds. This last part due to a side effect I’d picked up in a ritual earlier, which was making it pretty much well nigh impossible for me to go back to Lantia, and pretty tricky to stay in one place any more than a couple of days.

I headed in and met Rath talking to three Goblins, Zig, Zag and one whose name I didn’t catch, plus a guy called Rowen Boats who seemed nice enough, and we all charged off after some bandits. We didn’t catch them so Rath set the goblins to look for Cajun, and I headed off into the guild tents.

When I got into the guild hall El Nino gave me and Alvin a copy of the Ustica laws. All the usual stuff plus, interestingly, that the Prince Bishop was to be given the respect he deserved. I wondered how my PB-given right to slag him interacted with that, but none of the militia guys I asked was sure.

Owing to my early arrival, I was the Healer’s guild for some time until I persuaded some other people to join, and then Quack turned up so I could foist off responsibility onto him. He reckoned he could fire it back, but I’ve had a lifetime’s experience of being unimportant and I know its easier to pass the blame upwards than downwards. Went to talk to Cajun but he was busy. Daisy taught the goblins to slap their thigh when they saw me. I managed to persuade them my name wasn’t Bob but that was about as far as I got.

I got talking to some of the locals and it seems that some git’s been wandering around threatening people for money, and using a hammer to petrify them if they didn’t pay. This was worrying, because we were fairly sure the guilds took the hammer at the end of last year’s CoG to stop that happening again. When Thingtallion, the golem who runs the pattern forge, turned up to ask each guild to send him a champion to defend the island, I asked him about what the locals had said. He looked worried and promised to look into it, as did the militia.

I got talking to Terry Downpour about things with the Lions and the Vipers. He had an odd tendency to assume that the Lions all worked together, so what one of us did he assumed all of us knew about in advance (hah! If only we were that organised. Or coherent) but once he accepted that like any nation we have many different people, we both pretty much agreed that we want peace but don’t actually have any authority ourselves. We were possibly getting somewhere, when this blue and white lassie appeared out of nowhere and came towards us. I started to draw my sword to defend us (Terry’s taken an oath that means he won’t strike first) but she moved too fast, grabbed my wrist, and we were travelling through the void.

Instead of going to the ritual circle like most teleports though, the kidnap ended in the tavern, which was a relief. But I still had to get back to the guild hut. When I did though, I was surprised and somewhat flattered to find out how worried about me people were – Terry had raised the alarm when I vanished and people were looking for me. I spent the next few hours explaining to people that yes, I had been kidnapped, but I was better now.

Other Items of Note:
El Nino is pronounced El Ninio, I don’t know why. The kidnapper was an air sprite, there were fire, earth and water sprites around too. The water sprite could sense healers (and me, somehow). The fire sprite burned people. Dunno what the earth ones did.

Saturday
As I was having a cup of tea and desperately trying to wake up, I heard a voice behind me saying my name. As I turned round, I realised how much I’d missed Xavin in the few weeks I hadn’t seen him. I was glad to see him there.

When I was in the healer’s tent (we had brought our own tent with us), two people in quite brightly striped tabards came up. They explained that their land (not a land I’ve heard of though) was gripped with disease and they’d like a hand dealing with it. I’m not sure where they went – I got caught up in other things – but it quickly because obvious they’d brought the disease with them. We identified that Melethan had become a carrier and so he tried not to heal people unless he had to (since that was a way to spread the disease), but the disease was still spreading so we knew we hadn’t caught all the sources.

The diseases were quite complex and only a few people – Xavin, Treacle, Quack and Brother Cormac – were able to identify them and their cures via pattern scans. However, the symptoms of each were quite distinctive so I quickly learned to diagnose from them.

Rath came up and asked me if I had a red and purple robe, and a badge that said “I love elves”. Turned out the unliving emperor Josharim was coming, and Rath wanted to make a good impression.

We had learned early that morning that the skeletal lord that had been Cerryn was on Elvas, and a mission set out to rescue his pattern. I was one of the first to volunteer, of course, but mages aren’t great against the undead and I wasn’t one of the final list chosen to go. I was a bit disappointed, but them’s the breaks.

On the plus side, since Misha was off with them, it gave me a chance to try and organise a ritual to cure her without her knowing. In case it didn’t work and she got disappointed. There weren’t many ritualists on site though, and Master Earth was off fixing some shrines that people had found.

Someone asked me if I objected to a skathen ritualist. Heck no! As long as he wasn’t an undead necromantic skathen ritualist (which Mouldy assured me he wasn’t) then the guild would let me hire him. So we had a ritualist, or rather, a ratualist as he preferred to be known.

In the interim Josharim came to ask the guilds to join his empire. Nice of him to ask, I guess. Through a wonderful display of wordplay and persuasion, Cajun and some others persuaded the emperor and his Minion that, although there weren’t enough representatives of the guilds here to make that decision, if he’d stop attacking Amnor we’d be far more likely to support him. Amazingly, this worked, and Josharim agreed to a cease-fire and to send in supplies, if the Armengarians agreed to it too. So Xavin agreed to go back to Amnor and ask Armengar if that was what they wanted. Go Cajun!

When the mission to Elvas came back we got stuck into the Misha ritual. Mouldy had the idea of Misha re-swearing the Guild-Sworn Oath in the circle, which seemed great till we realised no one could remember the Guild-Sworn Oath. I knew vaguely it was something about not hurting people unless you really had to and preferably not sleeping with your clients, but I didn’t think that was overly helpful. Sol, Quack and Misha couldn’t remember it at all and Elani hadn’t bothered taking it. Esmund volunteered to be the Guild Sworn-At Oaf, but we reckoned that saying “bum” to an ex-PB probably didn’t have the same resonance, even in a ritual circle.

Mouldy got cross and wasn’t happy about doing the ritual without anyone knowing the oath (I assume his usual ritual group is more organised, it wouldn’t be that hard), till Misha suggested just swearing to uphold the oath she once took, without actually naming it. Which seemed an ideal cop out.

Finally, I’d tracked down Misha, a ritualist, ten willing contributors, a planned ritual and a ritual circle, all at once! I was pretty ecstatic. At least, I was until I discovered – again – that agreeing to contribute to a ritual didn’t necessarily mean that people were actually intending to contribute to a ritual. I flipped out about this enough at the time so I’m not going to go into it again, but four hours later we were only missing four contributors from the minimum number we needed. Quinn kindly raced of and got Alvin, someone (can’t remember who) found Dia, and Dia found Jarvyn. I begged them all to the best of my abilities, and when they heard the cause they agreed. Then Merath wandered in to the tent and I likewise begged him. He agreed, in theory, if he wasn’t busy but not right now. I got fed up and reminded him he owed me a life debt and I was calling it in now. I don’t really like doing that but it was true and so he agreed with fairly good grace.

Sadly some unliving then turned up and we had to break up the ritual practice. I know it was a valid reason but I was really getting frustrated. Then I got really calm, lent out my sword, got paralysed, nearly bled to death, didn’t really care and realised I had one of those diseases. Fortunately, I’d helped Xavin cure so many that when Quinn pointed out my symptoms, I could tell him the cure. And fortunately again when I woke up we managed to get the ritual organised and sorted, with only a minor glitch when Elani declared we weren’t allowed to do it. Fortunately that was because some people were using the Forge (see last year’s CoG report) and she didn’t want us to seal the circle. Which was reasonable, given my contention last year that no one should seal the circle in case people bounce to Elvas. Still, we’d been intending to transport somewhere else anyway and that didn’t involve sealing the circle so that was fine.

We picked up Celadore on the way and eventually went to Winchester (“We can’t go to Archon because I really can’t go to Lantia” “Ok, let’s go to Lammas” “By my power lets go to Lammas” “This feels weird where is this?” “I dunno, Lantia somewhere” “By my power lets got to the Dragon’s Eye” “Uuh, Treacle, the army here says they’d like us to go somewhere else” “Are you sure?” “Oh, for goodness sake, by my power lets go to Winchester”).

Once there we did the ritual, which involved us forgiving Misha and, while not lifting the curse (for one thing, we weren’t powerful enough and for another, Lasha asked me not to), we aimed to turn it into a geas – it would only return if Misha went wrong again, which everyone knew she wouldn’t but she had agreed to that cos it was pretty much the only thing we could do. Part of the ritual involved acting out people who had had horrible things happen to them, and people seemed to turn this into a competition. I went first and played a blind person. Raphaela had no legs, Merath was a wild elf, and Alvin, oddly, told us he had no liver.

As Mouldy unsealed the circle there was a blinding flash of light and then darkness. I stumbled forward towards Misha, who hugged me and told me that not only had the visions stopped, she also had her link to the plane of life back. I hugged her back and told her I was glad but I still couldn’t see a fething thing. All of us were living out the people we had been in the ritual, and we limped and stumbled triumphantly (but slowly) back to Ustica. I guess in a way I was lucky: I wasn’t in pain. Or running round the woods, which was cold and dangerous. Quinn and Sandry looked after me while I tried to look after Alvin.

Suddenly there was a lot of shouting and someone grabbed me, pushing the Trapdoor into my hand and telling me to activate it. I did and we ended up in the pub, where Quack mind healed me to get rid of the blindness. Then he worked on the wandering urge thing I’d picked up in the ritual in Lantia, which was a bit trickier but Quack managed it without resorting to Type 2 mind healing. For which I was grateful.

I separately explained to Sol and Quack my problems with the ritual and lack of contributors and they were both supportive and trying to work out what we can do. Between the three of us (four once I drag Father Catholicon into it) I’m sure we’ll get it sorted.

Alvin instigated a brief argument about what happened to his liver – he said I ate it, I pointed out that as he had it back now, the worst I could be accused of was temporarily mislaying it. Someone else said that if anyone, it would have been the ritualist who ate it, and someone else said that as Alvin made up the story, perhaps Alvin was the one who ate it. So the mystery of who ate Alvin’s liver remains outstanding.

In the evening there were all sorts of wandering oddballs, including people who tried to Enthral Quinn, and some people looking for magical things who attacked a few people, including Inado from the Gryphons.

Other events of note:
Evaine, Master Earth, Celadore and some others went out and found shrines to each of the elements. When they balanced the shrines the sprites stopped bugging us. Rath converted briefly to an ancestor called Samaria, but changed his mind once Quack spoke sharply to him for about ten minutes. A number of people including Daisy, Debreni and Carabas became champions of Ustica, I’m not entirely sure what that entails. So l nipped off to the planes of life on his way to Elvas, and picked up the Orb of Life. Which as well as looking pretty, allows me to scan people’s patterns. It feels very odd.

Sunday
I got up, got a cup of tea, and went into the healer’s guild tent to find out that the guild needed me to organise another ritual to cure the disease infecting Chi’ and Mel. I had no objections in principle, but I didn’t honestly think I could survive another five hours like the Misha ritual. And Master Earth wasn’t there and Mouldy wasn’t sold on the idea since he liked disease and didn’t approve of curing it. Fortunately Treacle managed to get Merath to agree to not only perform the ritual, but to write it too. I was desperately grateful, especially when Merath said he had enough contributors and didn’t want me. I really hate writing rituals from scratch in such a short time.

A guy called Dar Williams from the Sea Bitch crew came into the guild, and it turned out he had no pattern. Following Cerryn’s instructions, we told him he was dead and to lie down in the corner and we’d bury him later. He didn’t really want to but otherwise wasn’t overly bothered and the rest of the crew said they’d get him to dig the grave himself to save us hassle, which was kind. Our general consensus was that either he or someone else had bet his pattern against the Avatar of Gambling, and the crew’s general agreement was that it was probably Shanks. Rath gave Dar a note (“WARNING: This man is rubbish. Please don’t hit him”) and we figured we’d wait and see what happened.

Ys popped in to warn us that a necromancer from Ys’ homeland would be dropping by with his unliving army in a few hours. Always handy to get advanced warning. Ys and I had a brief argument about whether it was a sensible idea for him to hang around and help out in the fight, and we generally agreed that no it wasn’t but he was going to anyway. Which is fair enough.

I was sitting in the Healer’s tent when someone’s cloak flicked off my face - which was annoying enough - when I realised it was Xavin blanking me to go talk to Josharim. Amnor’s answer was as we’d hoped and expected – they accepted the cease-fire.

The necromancer turned up, noised up and got beaten up. In the process Ys got decayed but Josharim healed him. The Emperor’s minion, Verspatian, invited people to come home with him to the Empire – not as hostages, he did say – to see what their teaching methods were like. Xavin and I decided to go to see what it was like and see what we could find, so we went to ask Verspatian if it was ok if we went for a week or so, intending to find other Lions and talk to them afterwards. The guy said “Ok but we’ve got to go now”, so we had to leave a few messages and just hoped they got back to people.

Along with the other people who were coming with us – Xoanon, El Nino, Esmund, Ren and some others I didn’t know then – we went up to the ritual circle where there was the most extraordinary performance going on. Three paladins told us they had to go through immediately, so Verspatian politely let them and their ritualist, a catkin, go first. The conversation they were having suggested something was going on.

“Transport us!”
“Where?”
“Anywhere! I don’t care! Just transport out them back in again.”
“Why?”
“Just shut up and do it!”

Verspatian was quite amused by all this and asked us if this was what we meant by herding cats. It was exactly what we meant, but we weren’t thinking about the performance in front of us. We were thinking about the seventy-odd people spread out in a V behind us with Gwion at the front, and about the people of Amnor who were in front of the citadel walls shadowing the retreating Empire, and unprepared for the cease-fire to suddenly end. Bizarrely, we had to save the unliving guy.

Verspatian still hadn’t noticed the wedge even when Lady Imogen came up to distract him as well. We were trying to hurry him on, but he was being very polite and refused to leave until Lady Imogen had her questions answered. Since her questions were insane and meant to be unanswerable, he wasn’t doing a good job. We formed up in a defensive circle and wondered if you could Dismiss someone through a circle seal.

Luckily, when someone sealed the circle, Verspatian finally turned round and noticed the biggest two-line conga I’ve ever seen. He quickly bounced us off to the Empire lands – all of us, including Lady Imogen and Celadore (and his Tome) who’d been in the circle too.

They looked very sheepish, but they persuaded Verspatian to take them back to Ustica and he did so. Esmund realised he’d signed up for this trip as a representative of the incantor’s guild. Esmund resigned. Quickly.

We walked off through the Calebi city that the Empire were rebuilding, wondering exactly what we’d got ourselves into this time.

Other items of note: Esmund is going to the Empire’s lands with the main aim of selling his book. The Tome of Water vanished for a bit but it’s back now.

 

All Works are © Original Author

(OC Author - Marianne Wells)