Gorsedd 1105 - Reticilated No

Friday

I'd arranged to meet up with Jutah Fate, Lochlan Douglas and Kianan McAylwyn to travel through to the Gorsedd together. Lochlan was very much looking forward to having a holiday with no other PBs men around. I was trying to persuade Kianan to enter a song he’d written into the entertainer’s competition. It was called “All the World Was Against Us” and while I’d not actually heard it, Lochlan had been humming it in the pub one night and it sounded good.
As we transported through to this fun new island Dargan said he’d found, Cosaint stood waiting for us. His face lit up when he saw Lochlan.
“Lochlan! My young apprentice! I’ve got a job for you…”

Lochlan sagged. The job meant he was straight back on duty again too – seven PBs men, missing since the battle of Egg Isle in 1098, had turned up out of the void. Void Lance, as they had become known, had been caught up as a Nosta Kar rift gate opened on them and had got lost in the void ever since. They’d finally stumbled upon King Rogan’s land, a place House Demetus had also stumbled upon some years previously and saved from Charybdis’ plotting, and there they had found a path back to Erdreja. They also brought confirmation of our belief that Gabriel had a son by Rosalind and I spent a while quizzing them about all the various people I met while I was there. Apparently they have statues to us and everything, it’s really embarrassing.

Althea and Sheyna updated them on what they’d missed in the last seven years while Jutah, Lochlan, Cosaint and I investigated some lights in the woods. Despite repeated attempts at communication in various languages (and of course the time-honoured tradition of shouting “Do you speak common?” in ever slower and louder voices), they weren’t talkative and we concluded they were probably just Will o’ the Wisp.

We meandered over to the main encampment, which had walls and light and dinner and everything, making it a far better prospect than sitting in the dark by the ritual circle. We decided to skirt round the issue of why we had stayed out there so long.

Some sea elves came up to continue discussions they’d had with the guild at the moots. They weren’t very keen to tell the rest of us what was going on, but as Aben Nuath wasn’t around they were eventually forced to. Apparently some evil sea elves, called sea hags or hydrocons, had popped along to the guild one day and asked Pyrates how to go about blowing up a ritual circle. Pyrates had given them some tips and so they’d had a reasonably good stab at it. They hadn’t managed to blow it up but they had destabilised it lots, which is probably good for a first go. Though I presume they’re being a bit hard on Pyrates in their overview of events.

They told us to look out for the sea hags, who would dislike us because we were talking to the sea elves and thus had to be wiped out. Sea hags look exactly like sea elves, except their eyes are usually blue whereas sea elves eyes are usually red, except when they’re yellow or some other colour. This would be even more helpful advice if it wasn’t pitch dark at the time.

I headed back to Gallathrix to have a look at the census records to see if I could find out anything about void lance’s families. None of them had told me of anyone they were looking for, but I thought there was a chance. I asked Matthew (one of the desk officers who owes me a favour) to do a more in depth search, which would take longer, but I also had a look myself through the missing persons list and turned up two names that sounded like they might be Void Lancers – Obsidia Thunder and Damascus Revelation. But by that time it was really late, so I figured it could wait till morning and crawled back to the Tamerus guild house to blag a bed for the night (it’s closer to the circle than my own place, and I was utterly shattered).

Other items of note:
Vincenzo described one of the sea hags he fought as being as reticulated – upon further investigation he didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded impressive. No one knew what it meant either, but it was agreed that it sounded impressive, so we went with it. Aben Nuath later explained that the sea hags had also kidnapped and tortured him, which was a far more compelling argument against them than the sea elves had put up, but we couldn’t ascertain which ones had done it or where they were, so there was still little we could do at that point.

Saturday
I found void lance and passed onto them what I’d found last night. Obsidia Thunder was one of theirs, though still lost in the void – apparently there were almost thirty void lancers, but only seven had arrived here. Damascus Revelation turned out to be the name of the unit corporal, which made things a little awkward as his strict adherence to the PBs standing orders coupled with Misha’s recently mutilating me meant that he neither liked nor listened to me. I left Jerusalem Steel, the lance sergeant, to talk it through with him.

Went for a wander with Sister Bethanie, partly to look for herbs and partly to see what this island was like. There was actually rather a lot going on – as well as the sea elves and sea hags and a collapsed library that Saracen and Bliquis had mentioned to me, there was also a monolith shaped like a spike that was inhabited by the ghost of an elf, the burial mound of an old Harper, and the remains of a really rather huge crab. I was quite glad we didn’t run into any of them over the weekend.

We found a few useful herbs like yarrow, and a lot of distinctly unhelpful herbs like belladonna and dead tongue, which is about as nice as it sounds and gives you a rash if you touch it. Belladonna is nice though and some people said they thought they the roots were useful so we dug up one and planted it in Frax’ tankard.
The monolith was setting a series of challenges – eight in total – and people were trying to complete them. It was all pretty harmless, at least for the moment, and as the bards weren’t running a puzzle or scholar’s competition this time it made a good substitute. Course, it could be that later challenges would be less fun, but we could just stop playing then.

The current challenge – I think number three – was to hunt this beastie thing. It could only be damaged in one specific way, a bit like a doom guard, and so we mucked around trying to find out what it was. Since it was meant to be hunting some people set a trap for it, while others tried spells or just had a bit of combat practice. Frax distracted it from the trap setting by Enthralling it and spending five minutes describing the wonders of nature all around us, followed by a lengthy ode to the belladonna plant he’d just acquired.

Everyone was most impressed by his skill at talking on-stop nonsense, though when Damascus heard Frax was a fae he was distinctly less impressed. Getting really rather fed up with this by now, I asked him why he was so anti-fae. He explained that it was because of the standing order not to trust them, I countered that it didn’t mean he couldn’t be occasionally civil, most people present weighed in on my side and he either agreed, or pretended to to shut us up, but either way he stopped being horrible and we got on pretty well from then on. I’d like to think, given that he’d been doing it to Althea and Frax and a number of others, that I’d have objected even when I was human, but I’m not sure. That’s one of the many problems with this being a fae thing, I don’t know if it’s me thinking something or if it’s the fae thing trying to take over or what.

Everyone started wandering around doing their own thing, and so it was that myself, Carthage, Jerusalem and Bethlehem ended up in the enclosure when I noticed white –yellow fire passing the top of the wall. A quick check confirmed that none of us had ordered any fire demons, so we decided to prepare for a fight. Void lance were a bit miffed that they didn’t have horns (apparently there is a “horn check” necessary to identify most demons), but we fought them anyway. Annoyingly, I met one who was rather handy with his shield, which meant I ended up bleeding on the ground after a while. Carthage managed to heal me until I was conscious, but one of the demons chased him off before he could restore feeling to my arms. Which meant that I could shout advice and warnings, but frustratingly, not actually get involved at all.

Kianan, walking past, saw what was happening and charged in single-handedly, adding support until the rest of the people turned up and joined in mob-handed. I bandaged up my leg as we discussed what to do.

It was now chucking it down with rain so we decided to decamp to a number of tents the guilds had helpfully set up in case of just such a situation. My leg hadn’t recovered though so I had to beg help in walking and ended up limping along clutching Jutah for support and apologising lots.

We sat around in the tents swapping songs and chatting for the next few hours. Occasionally people went wandering in the rain but all in all, it was pretty miserable.

In a rare break from the rain, we decided to see if we could work out where the fire demons were coming from. Following their trail, and later just following where they were attacking from, we found a path and headed along it. A sparkly imp bounced up, demanding that Terwin’s shield actually belonged to her and she wanted it. Much argument ensued until the demons attacked and she agreed we could use it in the fight, though at some point then she nicked it and teleported with it. Still, it turns out Terwin can summon it back anyway, so no one was bothered.

The demons turned out to be coming from a box with a void symbol on it. I tried turning it upside down so they would be trapped, but it was far too heavy, I could hardly budge it. Lochlan and Frax had a scout around to see if they could find the lid but no joy, and it turned out that the shield was the lid, Terwin must have nicked it without checking. And now it was gone. Oh well. James Harper found a practical solution to the lack-of-box-lid problem and shoved a log on top of it. It shook and shuddered as the demons clawed at it, so he shoved another one on for good measure. The shaking stopped. Eventually a number of very strong people carried the box into the compound and the problem seemed dealt with, at least until Terwin turned up so we could get him to summon back his shield for us to close it properly.

Then the rain started up again in earnest so we scuttled back to the tents, and the majority of us stayed there until someone (who hadn’t) came in to tell us that there was a blue bloke doing an evil ritual without asking.

Despite the number of master mages on site, the sneaky blue bloke (sea elf or sea hag, it was hard to tell) had managed to seal the circle so hard they couldn’t drop it. It’s lucky not many people know how to do that, I think. But as we couldn’t get inside to stop his ritual, we decided to see how much we could affect it from the outside. Within the seal, he was invulnerable to everything except heckling, insults, off-putting comments and mockery. So in other words, he was in for a battering.

To start off, a bunch of us marched round the circle singing The Famous Bishop Hatfield loudly. Which caused the ritualist to giggle and threw him off his stride, allowing other hecklers to influence his vocals and make him slip up. Unless of course he had intended to call upon the powers of the elephant of fire. He declined to explain further regarding this elephant and from then on used elements instead. Apart from these screw ups though, he did a great job despite some very determined heckling and as dedicated evil ritualists expounding their powers despite interference, combat and pisstaking by the forces of good go, he was ranked second top. Better than Golgul, but the Fat Ritualist still has the edge. And the sport of Extreme Ritualing continues to grow in popularity.

The ritual still worked, possibly not as well as they’d hoped but it did work, in that none of us or the things in the area were affected by spells for a while. Healing still worked, though, so as attack strategies go, it was a little bit rubbish.

They followed it up with an attack from three trolls, who were reasonably hard but in general trolls tend to bounce most spells anyway so the ritual wasn’t actually a problem. And rather than follow up their troll attack with something quickly afterwards while we were still hurt, they decided to go for the more novel tactic of cutting their losses and running. If only more people we don’t like did that.

The barrow had turned out to be the grave of a long-dead Harper, one of the revenant ones. This girl was called Walks In Shadows – which, to be fair, she generally did, so it was a good name.

Back in the compound, there was a black shadowy thing wandering around. It kept appearing right behind people and then disappearing again. Martin Karlennon said it had sniffed a load of people and attacked another bloke, a trader, so he reckoned it was looking for an amulet the trader had sold on. I tried talking to it, which for some reason no one else had thought of. It couldn’t really talk back – not having a face cut down its powers of verbal communication somewhat – but by a series of yes/no questions I worked out that it was on a mission, it couldn’t tell us what, it wasn’t happy but didn’t think we could help it, it didn’t want to attack anyone else and wasn’t looking for the amulet. Bethanie checked it and found it to be a patternless magical construct. Jutah talked to it and it confirmed it wasn’t looking to hurt people, but after that it wasn’t seen again. I hope it found what it wanted.

Void Lance had to come to a decision. Master Dark could do a ritual to tie them to Erdreja so they didn’t get pulled back into the void again, but they weren’t sure if they wanted that. Partly because some of them weren’t convinced this actually was Erdreja – apparently they’ve been fooled by other places that were similar in the past – and partly because with Avalon currently cut off from Erdreja, they’d be like the rest of us, trapped apart from home. It took quite a bit of discussion, but they had decided they probably would stay. So Master Dark prepared to do a ritual to tie them here.

While that was getting organised, the latest challenge from the monolith came out – a test of sportsmanship, otherwise known as a game of jugger. Luckily, the Archon All-Comers weren’t available, so void lance put together a team. Vincenzo was a must after his performance last heartland games and so he and Ashen Blade were the polearmers. Frax and Carthage were the sword users, with Luxor and Jerusalem taking up the shields. A guy called Hans from the Vipers was persuaded to be the quick, and he was utterly fantastic.

Lochlan had a boost of confidence when he explained the rules of jugger to the team the monolith put forward, and this was borne out as our team hammered theirs 6-0. We cheered them as they left, with a far larger cheer reserved for Mr. Blowfish, the fish that was being used as a ball.

Cosaint and Eikara decided it would probably be a good time to hold the Gorsedd proper, and thus announced the competitions. They also announced the one from last time, the event report writing competition that I won, and I even got a prize! I was so proud, I’ve never won anything before. I won a scroll of Magebolt. Which, not being an invoker I couldn’t use, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to sell it on, given the number of scrolls of Magebolt that have been used for assassinations and attempted murders recently, so I offered to give it back to Eikara. Who very kindly swapped it for a scroll of Teleport, which I sold to the PBs. So everyone was happy. Especially me, since Lavernius later found a potion of free action to give me since I couldn’t use the scroll. I was really flattered.

I headed out to talk to void lance outdoors, where the rain had finally stopped. But I heard my name and got called back into the tent again. Kianan was complaining at me that I’d mentioned his song to Cosaint, so now he was getting bullied into playing it for the competition, and agreed to enter on the grounds that I was there to listen. Flatterer, but I listened and he entered. It was a great song, though I can see why he was nervous about entering it because it was angry. It was a song in the vein of Lion’s Pride, the kind of tattered banner waving one the acknowledges loss but accentuates pride, and he got a huge round of applause at the end. He passed round his hipflask at the end, starting with the Tarantulan girl present, to show there was no offence meant. And then he sang Black Velvet Band to lighten the mood.

Jutah wandered off to listen in as the judges made their decision, while Master Dark took void lance and Lochlan down to the ritual circle to stop void lance bouncing off into the void again. Jutah came back in time for both of us to go down and guard it, though since the entire ritual took place in black deadened clouds and we couldn’t see or hear a single thing, it rated as the second most boring ritual I’d ever been unfortunate enough to watch. Apparently it all happens in Master Dark’s head, so presumably a mind healer could see a fantastic ritual going on. I saw black clouds, and they weren’t even swirling.

Jutah started acting strangely, asking if I wanted to know who won the competition and then refusing to tell me for no real reason. Eventually he put down the sword he was holding and found conversation a lot simpler – he had a master mage’s sword that makes you act mysterious. Once he was more capable of speech he told me it had been a very close vote, but Kianan had won. Yay Kianan!

And the ritual was a success – though apparently no more interesting to be in than to watch – and Eliedra Darkleaf won the open competition, for a wonderful picture she’d done.

Lochlan, possessed as he was by Kerrimar, was delighted when a succubus came up to chat. Then was insulted when she came on to me instead of him, but when she looked down and realised I was female she pushed me and went for Lochlan instead. Having cheerfully admitted to being a succubus (to be honest wings were a dead giveaway), she seemed confused to find someone trying to pull her. I wandered off to find void lance, who took a surprising amount of convincing that she was a demon.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, she said she was, she’s acting like one, she has a seven foot wingspan…”
“Ah, but how many horns does she have?”
Having been persuaded that the succubus did indeed have two horns, they laid into her, much to Lochlan’s consternation. On the other hand, he was hailed as a saint of Kerrimar for failing to pull under such difficult circumstances.

There were so many possessions and moodswing weapons that it got hard to find someone who was themselves. Lochlan was being kerrimanian, Jutah had swapped mysteriousness for arrogance and Bethlehem was announcing that the eagle flies through chocolate. I like being possessed by Avalon, it lets me do my own thing.
As we headed back to the compound Jutah tried to teach me a bit about not being seen in the dark. I could see what he was meaning, about colours to wear and ways to move, but I don’t think I really got the hang of it. Certainly not enough for me to bet my life on it, so I stayed back near the compound and watched and listened for danger rather than going looking for it.

Akbar went out to see what he could see, on the grounds he was reasonably unkillable anyway, and I was pretty impressed with myself when I spotted someone moving in the darkness before Jutah did. As Akbar came back, not having found anyone interesting, we heard a shout of “By my power I rend your pattern!” followed about thirty seconds later by a cry. Didn’t sound likely – not many pattern rended people get a chance to shout at the time, let alone afterwards – but we instigated a quick headcount anyway. Once we ascertained that there was absolutely none of us out there, we ignored the voices (who were now dark dedicating each other) and just decided to stay out of the woods unless strictly necessary. There was only one mission judged to be of high enough importance to worth risking lives for – Master Dark went down to the ritual circle to enchant his beer.

A great big chessboard had appeared in the compound, which was generally hailed as a bad thing. The little chessboard had popped up, the one from the Moots that the bards had found (without, they claim, any help from Sol Tempest at all), and Damascus had played against it to see what happened. It petrified him – apparently you don’t get much time to practice chess in the void.

The big one wanted us to play with it and Ruok went over to talk to it. The general consensus was that we’d rather not play, even when the board set up a game and everything. It sulked. Ruok promised to play with it at the Gathering, but it still sulked off in the huff. Serves it right for petrifying people.

Other items of note:
The bards learned how to say no, possibly for the first time ever. The chessboard sulked - that was what they said no to. Eikara and Cosaint aren’t convinced the Harpers are doing very much either and aren’t really sure what they stand for now. Talking to Frax always makes me feel better about being a fae. I’ve agreed to teach Ruok physicianary, hopefully in time for the Gathering. Cosaint got surprised by something and was terribly embarrassed by his reaction.

Sunday
The monolith declared that there was one challenge left, a combat challenge. So we accepted, having hammered the jugger team so completely. Akbar worked out that the fire demon box – which was now burning through any logs we put on top of it – could be fixed by putting any magical item over as a lid, as long as we did a rite to make it work. It would only last as long as the magic item did, since without the imp to torture the demons would keep trying to get out, but it was better than nothing. Martin Karlennon donated a Mend scroll and Saracen, Bliquis and I started planning how to do it.

Down at the ritual circle, where we were planning to do the rite, there was much quiet discussion in groups until Saracen came storming over to me and told me there was no way he’d do this rite and he was shocked that I would. Closer investigation proved that, because the box would be harder to open with the imp inside, several people wanted to bind the imp back in for the demons to torture, in case anyone was stupid enough to try and open it, or forgot to renew the seal. I ended up getting really angry in that argument – I couldn’t understand why it was ok to torture someone on the assumption that some people in Erdreja are morons. Soon it was only Aben and Master Dark arguing that it was ok, and eventually they agreed to let us do it the non-torture way.

As we walked over to the clearing, Bliquis angrily told me that though she’d get involved in the rite, she didn’t approve of it and thought we should go with the imp-torturing plan instead. But she was prepared to help, which was good of her. When we got there I’d lost track of her. Rather than prolong the argument, Lochlan gave me one of his scrolls to use instead, since Bliquis had the one we were planning on using. I asked everyone planning on getting involved to get into a circle and decided that if I just got on with it, I’d probably figure out what I was doing by about halfway through.

“I call upon the elements of Void, of Earth, of Air, of Fire, of Water” I had a complete mental block as to what air had to do with it. Or earth for that matter, and why was I calling on fire to stop fire demons. Sod it. My rite, my rules. “I call upon the true elements, the elements of Them, of Us, of Change and Stability, of Stuff, of Goop, of Jamminess, of…” and I completely forgot what the last one is called. I managed ability, which is close enough to its actual name – Skill. Obviously the element I was lacking in at that point. I called upon Jerusalem Steel to explain why demons were bad while I got my bearings, which he did loudly and with great aplomb, though I could tell he wasn’t overly happy being involved in a rite.

For anyone confused, Lemming and I once worked out that rather than the hundred and sixty-three elements that Scullion kept discovering, there seemed to be just those eight forces that controlled everything, which we called the true elements or the demetain elements. I could explain why they were pertinent here if you really want.

I took over again and led the rite, with a bit of advice from Aben Nuath (again, impressively nice of him, since he hadn’t wanted us to do it in the first place) while demons attacked from all sides. Saracen took over when I dried up – it was taking a lot longer than I’d hoped, and every time we thought we had it another demon would force the lid off and burst out, but the PBs kept them off me enough that I managed to keep the box and lid together throughout and finally, after about fifteen to twenty minutes (it felt a lot longer) of fighting, shouting, ritualing, parrying and more shouting, it all came together and the lid held. I nearly collapsed.

Akbar came over and looked down at me critically.
"You did it wrong."
I looked up, exhausted, battered, hardly able to speak. Which is just as well, because if I'd said what I'd wanted to at that point he'd probably have magebolted me. Turns out he only meant I'd put the scroll on upside down so people could read it and thus could break it. Again, I don't really think it's my fault that some people are idiots, but in the end we covered it with a cloak, which solved the problem (apparently black paint would have destroyed the scroll, don't ask me how).

I headed down with most of the group to Walks in Shadow’s barrow, which Althea was going to cleanse. The healers present – Eliedra, Carthage and Sheyna – helped her and Master Dark watched until they called upon light too much for him and he fell over. Which was awkward – all the healers were busy fixing the barrow. Luckily, he wasn’t hurt, just embarrassed.

After the barrow was cleansed we went back to the compound where Saracen mentioned he was possessed by Monet, an elven Harper I’d met a while back. I was a bit upset to hear that – I hadn’t known Monet had died. Still, at least talking to Monet helped me to move forward on a long-term concern of mine, and he agreed to chat to me about the Muse at the Gathering.
He also asked me to help lay Walks in Shadow to rest. I wasn’t keen – I didn’t like the idea of attacking anyone who wasn’t attacking me first, even if she asked me to, just really didn’t appeal to me. I suggested Jerusalem who, as a Humacti, would appreciate the chance to lay an unliving to rest. Vincenzo and Damascus also volunteered, but Saracen asked me to do it too. So I felt I had to agree.

My heart really wasn’t in it and I was glad when she started fighting back. And when the PBs laid in with such enthusiasm that I really didn’t have to. Saracen laid the final blow and the revenant part possessed Bliquis, who had agreed to that. Nasty job all round, really.

The fight the monolith had been planning turned up and we bashed it. It was a lot harder than any previous fights we’d had that weekend, and if we’d known it was planning on sending illithids and medusas we’d have told it to stuff it, but we didn’t and so we didn’t. It wasn’t an easy fight but we pulled together and defeated them without losing anyone. I remember there were a few things who Retributed every blow, but helpful held their weapon in their right hand, which meant I was wandering around with an incredibly splintered right arm in a sling, but my fighting hand remained fine. The retributing construct looked sulky.

The fight won, the monolith let Sarison and some of his mates into the library it was defending, though I don’t know what they found. I hope it was worth it.

Sadly, I don’t think there’s going to be an event reporting competition on this event. Or possible not that sadly – I retire undefeated.

Other items of note: Vincenzo finds falling off a log difficult, which is handy as the Lions and Bears present had decided musters were better conducted standing on slippery logs (it reduces the risk of heatstroke in all concerned). He also wishes it known that he was awesome and an inspiration to all. Althea agreed to remind the mages guild not to let the demons out, in case any of them are daft enough to do so. Bethlehem eventually worked out what reticulated is – it means stripy. So we learned two new words that weekend – “reticulated” and “no”.

 

All Works are © Original Author

(OC Author - Marianne Wells)