Convocation of Guilds, 1104

Friday
I went to the Convocation in a somewhat pensive mood. I’ve been somewhat quiet ever since Conner was killed, until a mage friend of mine, Lia, beat me over the head a few times and pointed out that he was, after all, a treacherous git.

So we arrived at Ustica in good time, and thought that we were simply very early. In fact, very few people arrived. Since I’m not sure you have ever been to a Convocation, the best I can describe the usual attendance is ‘bigger than a Parliament, smaller than a Moot’. Except that this weekend, there were perhaps only 70 people present.

The Incantors' were the first to get a table, the Armourers' second, the other guilds either picked a table or went to hog the Healers' Guild tent until everyone was present except the Bards' Guild and the Mages' Guild. The Mages' I can sort of understand, because last year they had a big strop and withdrew from the Council of Guilds, but Bards' have the biggest membership of any Guild.

Anyway, we bimbled a while until finally realising that if this event was any deader, it would have it's own dismiss level. And so we went to bed.

Other notes: During our bimbles we encountered a group of will o’ the wisps, some sort of Air elemental that wanted to show us their grove, to the extent that if you let them talk to them for a few minutes you sort of followed their voices without thinking and it was only a big lad in armour stopped me wandering behind one into the dark. The rest of the evening was taken up with my mantra of “I can’t hear anything that isn’t me!”

Saturday
The first thing that woke most people up was the rumblings underfoot. These quickly grew to be so severe nobody could keep their footing. It was a somewhat disgruntled group that therefore met to be the Guild Council meeting.

Now, because there were no Bards' Command present the four lowly bards that were there decided that I should speak for the Guild. This was great, because this means I got to sneak in a proposal that never would have been heard otherwise.

After about forty minutes of argument and counter argument, regarding what’s become known as The Caer Dannon Thing (see appendix one) I stood up, and suggested an independent investigation at Caer Dannon, and the next thing I knew both the Mages as were present and the Scouts' were agreeing to send reports back. A very profitable exercise, all told.

At this point, Nym burst in, and explained that we had two new people on Ustica. The first were red faced fire elves, and the other were Salamanders, natives of the Plane of Fire. The elves said that the Salamanders were planning to put all their eggs into the volcano. At which most of us asked: “Huh? What volcano?”

It turns out that the elements on the island were seriously out of Balance, with Fire lording it over Water, the embodiment of which had turned up for random hugs and whatever other people do with him. Anyway, a very nice mage name Terwin was volunteered by the embodiments of Void and Water to do a corrective ritual.

I’m not sure what happened exactly, His plan seemed sound enough, but then he started listening to Pyrates, a mouthy scrap of magery who thinks he knows better than the elements themselves and bullied little Terwin into doing things his way. I didn’t hear the exact content of the ritual- I’ve never seen sixty-ish people move away from a circle in perfect unison like that before!- but Water screamed, grabbed the Tome of Air off Lia, and both vanished in a thunderclap that knocked everyone off their feet. The daughter of Creation and Void, a being named Archangel, had a go at Terwin on the grounds that he’d probably just killed her uncle, and he practically offered to fall on my axe for her. This rather mollified her, especially in comparison to Pyrates not showing even a little humility, and blithely informing Terwin that his next duty was to tell Aben Nuath that his future lay in hardback! A truly Cataclysmic beating was averted by Water asking Archangel nicely not to, and she was so pleased to see her uncle safe that they settled for freezing Pyrates where he couldn’t do any more harm, and merely shouting at the glubberingly apologetic Terwin.

Anyway, this was all terribly exciting for a little librarian, so Peter Swift took a number of us to the bar. On the way, we saw a wood elf wandering by herself in the forest. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how come everyone except the Lions has yet to be wiped from the face of Erdreja if they’re going to let their womenfolk wander about alone? As we went to fetch her, Peter groaned heartily, and picked a red flower out the ground with his hammer point. It took a moment for me to recognize it, then I recalled last year a problem named the Gardener (think Sengool with a serious plant fixation) used such flowers to overcome the Healers Guild.

“That’s very pretty,” said the wood elf brightly. “Just like the grove of them over there.”
We hustled the wood elf as soon as was decently possible to the Healers' Guild, who took one look at the flower Peter had and started arming up! We regarded the grove warily and rather annoyingly the Healers didn’t like my plan of naptha-ing the site from orbit, since it was the only way to be sure.

Distractions aside, we made it back to the tavern, where Peter was hoping to try some more ‘fairy brew’. He met up with Nym, and in the way of hard men everywhere they decided to have a play fight. Suddenly Peter snapped and tried stabbing us all to death. I’m not sure I managed to repel him away from me before he got a blow on me that sent me into a tree. Judging by the amount of blood on my neckline when I woke up, I was lucky the healers heard us squeal. It turned out the ‘fairy brew’ was Arcadian Ale, and the silly human had gulped a pintful. Elani finally mind healed him even as he tried gnawing her ankles off.

Deciding the tavern was also too exciting, we went back to the Guildhall, which was at least excitement with hot food served regularly. Suddenly, out of the ground rose creatures made of the plants we’d found earlier, who promptly foisted some sort of disease on me and smacked me into the ground for good measure. Just as we clobbered them back, more rose from the ground, and even seasoned observers would be impressed at how fast I can outrun a plant-thing at full terrified speed.

A little while later the scarecrows that the Archers' Guild had been using for target practice appeared to take the huff and animated themselves to cause straw-stuffed mayhem until the nearby mages shattered them into stalks. One of them had the nicest straw hat that I felt no compunction about looting from the body and wearing for the rest of the weekend. I looked as cute as kittens in it. Green spangly kittens. Eventually Lia, Elhonna and myself decided we’d been scraped off the floor for one day, and retreated to bed, where the ever increasing frequency of the tremors kept us awake a while.

Other notes: Ended up having a nice natter with the Salamanders. It turned out that they’d been living quietly on their own little plane before the Gasherim came and decided to wipe them all out to a scaly thing. Their families were tortured, killed and enslaved, and finally they had to flee to Erdreja when it became clear there was no hope of victory. So far so Nosta Kar, quite frankly, and it occurred to me that the Drakken who had opened themselves up to the Lions when they fled Avalon would probably be up for Salamanders living in the depths of the volcanoes where nobody else can. Runt McEwan pointed out the volcano on Sammarix, so between you and me don’t be surprised if lots of friendly lizards show up with odd accents and ask where the hot rock is. One thing that Lions at least didn’t have to suffer was that the Gasherim put a necromantic curse on the Salamanders rendering their queens infertile. Only one queen escaped, it was her final batch of eggs that was now incubating in Ustica’s new volcano.

Sunday
It seemed as though the ground couldn’t stay still for more than a moment, and rather shakily we exited the Guildhall- only to see twisting branches of lava unfolding down the hillside towards us. The Guardians of Ustica promptly went to have a word with the Salamanders, who were paddling in the flows. Anyone else eventually got forced back when the air near the lava started burning their lungs. The Salamanders struck a deal whereby if we allowed their eggs to complete their incubation, they could use their powers of fire to stop the volcano wiping out all life on the island. Truth to tell, we had no intention of stopping them anyway, since those eggs were the last of the race, and stopping them would have been outright genocide. Nonetheless, Daisy was worried, and made me promise that if the island did go, I was to transport out as many of the friendly local goblins as I could. Since this involved me fleeing like I’d just invented legs, I was happy to do so.

The Gasherim were not pleased, and declared war on the Salamanders and us one hour after noon. When we told them what they could do with their declaration, the Salamanders were rather touched that we’d decided to defend them and offered to stand with us with all their rather scary powers of fire.

While I was waiting I learnt a bit more about the Gasherim. They have several named, are fond of law, evil and necromancy, and field undead minions wherever possible. Judging by the powers they deployed against those who should have been immune to them, I have a theory they have some sort of psionic ability.

Anyway, battle commenced, and my attempts to put together a reasonably sensible healing post were short lived when the Gasherim flanked us and everyone broke and panicked. Varus burn it, I miss fighting with Lions. Not to worry, Miramel had previously handed me the Orb of Spirit, and the two of us kept to the outskirts of the battlefield while learning the joys of Dark Incantation. After a while it became too hot for doing much, and I went to fetch water for our troops.

I came to back to find that we won, the Salamders had hatched a new queen, and life was spangly. The Orb took up me up on my promise to show it the Libris, so we gathered up Lia and went home.

Other notes: The Militia Guild had the Hammer of Justice broken on some sort of quest several weeks back, and shards from the head were appearing all over the place. They’re so strongly magical that anyone trying to sense the magic of them will be flat on the floor faster than a dockside whore in front of an admiral. Due to the high numbers of Healers and the low number of everyone else, I’m not aware of any casualties, which makes a nice change for the Convocation.


Appendix One: The Caer Dannon Thing:
Vespascian's story is a small retrieval team was sent into Caer Dannon in order to fetch something (he won't say what) and blundered across Dragon command on the island. Concluding that capturing the command would end the war there and then, a group of experienced Imperial ritualists set about sealing the ritual circle against all transporting. Halfway through a massive amount of energy was pumped into the circle, wiping out the ritual team and obliging the Empire to hack their way across the island to get out, causing casualties.

Azik's story is that the Dragons blundered across an excavation that uncovered a device. Those near to it, Dragons and Empire alike were sent into a vision that made them think they were in the distant past. While there, the Imperial troops went after the formula for cold iron (see appendix two). When the vision proved false, the Empire started cutting through the Guild and Dragons alike, to the extent that they took to butchering the fallen.

The reason this is so important is that it would prove, one way or the other, as to whether the Empire can be trusted to keep it's word. The Empire swore that the Guilds could remain neutral, so why hack their way through the Incantors Guild guard? Part of the problem is that although the Dragons say that they threw the Incantors Guild off Caer Dannon, the Guild insists they own the Holy Citadel, a third of which was destroyed when the circle detonated. Also the Empire undertook not to kill anyone they could rather take prisoners of war, but there are dismembered bodies that speak of the Empire killing the fallen. If the Empire is proved to be breaking it's own rules, the other powers will have to consider everything the Empire has assured them...

Appendix Two: Cold iron
At the beginning of everything, there were two sisters, Danu (well known as the Great Mother) and her grumpier sister Domnu. They decided they would each bring forth a race to see who was best, so Danu brought forth the scintillating Fae, and Domnu brought forth the terrifying Formori. The sisters fell out, and so both races went to war. The Formori developed a weapon, a special metal called cold iron. Unlike normal iron this ripped the apart the underlying story that holds a Fae together, so even if one did survive a wound from cold iron, they would be both horribly disfigured and utterly insane with agony.

The formula for cold iron was lost by the time the Younger Races went to war; otherwise there probably wouldn’t be a single Fae left alive today, although rumour has it that the Dark Dwarves still know it, or they did until the lower reaches of the Underdark were flooded out last year.

If the formula were ever recovered, then this would be A Very Bad Thing.

 

All Works are © Original Author

(OC Author - Marianne Wells)