Friday
Transporting in from Ustica, we arrived on Meadhros with only the slight complication of Lemming forgetting where we were aiming for. Still, the fifteen of us got there safe and sound and missing only Xavin, who’d decided not to sail to Ustica with us but was going to make his own way there.
As we walked from the circle to the guildhouse compound, I saw a man in the bushes watching us. I waved at him and shouted hello, but he ran off. Which I guess meant he was a spy and not just a local, since spies often get a bit edgy when you wave at them.
There were a good number of beastkin attacking the guildhouse, though they didn’t seem intelligent, or able to speak (and believe me, Althea tried with that Conch of Translation). There were also the local Tribe who seemed intent on butchering the beastkin. Then they met Scavenger, Mouldy and Sheyna, and got very confused. Most seemed to figure we must be evil ourselves, since we have Beastkin friends, though we did explain lots. I got talking to one guy who was very interested in where we came from, though since he worked from the point of view that everyone was a tribe with a totem animal, things got a bit confusing. I think he got the idea that the Sena R’Ios tribe worshipped lemmings, since most of us are either in HouseD or the PBs. Still, it kept him happy anyway.
Xavin turned up eventually, unhampered by the beastkin who kept attacking, though mildly hampered by the fear causing beasties who’d been attacking the guild a lot of late. They used Freeze a fair amount, which was awkward since there were only four of us there were mages capable of dealing with that. And when I was Shattering Rath I got Frozen myself. Aldous and Don Alexis mocked us thoroughly until we unfroze.
Hope had brought along her shard of mirror, a bit of glass that Tap had found in the library that had a guy called Arryn Maedhros trapped in it. Since we were on the island of Meadhros it seemed logical that they were connected and yes indeed, Arryn told us that he owned the island (at least, he had when he was in the real world, not trapped in the mirror).
The Tribe got really annoyed at us for having Beastkin with us and for not automatically trying to kill the Beastkin on the island. Carabas tried to pretend our beastkin were under control but they weren’t impressed and wandered off muttering dark mutterings. Which culminating in them doing a ritual to trap all of us in the mirror with Arryn. Which at least meant we got to meet him in person, though the whole ‘being trapped in a tiny sort of alternate world’ thing wore thin quickly. Also, it meant that no one from the real world could see and hear us except a shaman of the Tribe. So we went and chatted to her while the rest of the Tribe gloated about how they’d destroyed us all, and sang songs. Tapper accompanied them on the Jaw’s harp, which worked all the better since they couldn’t hear it.
While I and some others were out laughing at the Tribe, some random green goblin thing turned up. I have no idea why, but apparently it was connected with Misha in some way. So someone cast Sleep on Misha to see if that solved the problem. Not only did it not, but during this time Misha was murdered. On the grounds that no one else had thought of it (since the guild aren’t that used to competent incantors), when I got back I asked Footnote to Speak With Dead to her, but she didn’t know what had happened. Nor did she have any particular ancestor she wanted to go to, so we said our farewells and wished her luck in the next life.
Other Events of Note:
Footnote asked me to tell him something he didn’t know – he now knows the average length of a parrot snake. Fear causing beasties get very confused when you stick “I was very brave” stickers on them. Then they Freeze you anyway. We discovered that St John will provide cake, if you shout loud enough. Vincenzo made copious notes about everything.
Saturday
The next morning we had to set about collecting all the pieces of the mirror, which had helpfully become stuck in the mirror with us. We also found out that there were two shrines, one to fire and one to earth, which we discovered when beasties produced by both attacked us. There was also a cave which we couldn’t get into, but which we presumed had some significance on the grounds that we couldn’t get into it, it had lots of strange carvings on it, and didn’t look safe. All it needed was the ritual circle to be nearer and we could have hosted a Gathering there.
The Tribe’s totem animals were all in the mirror and most of them showed up carrying various shards of the mirror. However, despite the fact that they were trapped there they still felt that we had to earn them and as such we went through a series of challenges all day to do so. Many of them were reasonably fun – Quinn and some of the Harts had to track Wolf through the forest for ages then hunt a deer to impress him, while Lemming led the Lions to rescue Eagle’s daughter (who turned out not to need rescuing after all) which impressed Eagle so much she gave us a shard. Althea and some other of the Harts solved some puzzles to win Owl’s shard.
Bear challenged three people to single combat against minions of Wendigo, an evil totem. Nym, Devlin and Magnus McTaff accepted the challenge and Nym and Devlin won their fights though Magnus was beaten. Bear also took umbrage at Lemming’s supportive chant of “Nym! Nym! He’s our man! If he can’t do it, Devlin already has!”, but he still gave us the shard. Nym could and did do it, by the way, though Wendigo’s people beat Magnus.
Salamander wanted us to fix the shrine to fire, which was out of balance. Ah, balancing a circle, something Althea and Sheyna were itching to do anyway, so along with Treacle, Rua and myself they planned something. However, a guy called Lukas started first, so that saved us some hassle. Which was lucky, because the fire monsters started attacking us as we did, so we formed a big line between them and Lukas. I was fighting next to Rob McTwatem on one side and we got a bit separated from the others. Then Rob got taken down by them.
When it became clear they were still hitting Rob on the ground I tried my best to draw them off I tried to draw them off and convince them to hit me, but it didn’t work well enough and they killed Rob. The circle was cleansed but I was pretty shaken. I apologised to Chiefy for not being able to save Rob, but he accepted there wasn’t much I could have done.
Later in the evening, when we went to talk to the Shaman (who said she’d lost control of the Tribe to the Tribal ritualist) we overheard that they were planning a ritual to wipe out the beastkin on the island. Which we weren’t best impressed at. With little or no time we sent a runner back to camp, begging any and all contributors to meet us – and the Tribal ritual team – at the circle.
What happened next was a triumph of desperate good intentions over any and all common sense. As the aptly named Fat Ritualist sealed the circle and began his ritual to kill the Beastkin, Lemming sealed the circle in the mirror realm and began an ad-libbed and simultaneous ritual to stop theirs from working. As they called on Eagle to spread the plague, we called on the Winds to ground Eagle. As they called on Salmon to drive them mad, we called on Sol (via his amulet of mind healing, which Rath was wearing) to heal them. I was a bit disturbed at the idea of Sol as an ancestor, but since both Lemming and Rath have been at various points I don’t suppose it’s as big a thing as it used to be. And all the while Mouldy called upon the Great Horned Rat to deny them the blessing of plague, as they weren’t worthy of it. Which was pretty good logic. They chanted and danced, we chanted louder and danced harder. Rath nearly stomped a hole in the ground as we danced round, between and at some points through Fat Ritualist and his people.
The rituals finished and Lemming almost collapsed. All of us felt more drained than ever before, but no matter how much we’d put into it, I reckon Lemming had put in even more. All we could do now was pray that it had worked.
Aldous came up and told me that Snake had chosen him for her challenge, and could some more Lions please get themselves chosen too. I wasn’t desperately keen but after she chose Xavin I decided I probably ought to. So I got myself chosen and the six of us went and played Circle of Treachery with some of Snake’s minions.
Myself and Aldous teamed up to batter one of them, while Xavin teamed up with Scavenger (I think) to take out another. I ended up in a mage battle with one guy, which I won by virtue of having some Iron Will spells cast on me earlier and so I could counter and cast faster than he could. Chiefy McTwatem got into the spirit of things and stabbed up Xavin, but the rest of us fought tactically to make sure one of us beat Snake’s minions.
It got down to me, Aldous and one of the minions. Aldous won on a technicality – the technicality being that as I defeated the minion but it broke my legs, I wasn’t standing and so Aldous won. I considered requesting that as my apprentice he healed me, but thought that might be taking the Mick a bit.
This meant that we had all mirror shards, so the totems turned up to watch us do a ritual to fix them. Then it turned out that in fact we were missing one, and so the totems went a bit mental and started ordering everyone around till they discovered Michael Meadhros, the second pattern inside Arryn Meadhros’ body, had one. Then everyone who’d won a shard was shouted at until they agreed to go and do a ritual with the totems. I was suddenly very grateful to Aldous for winning Snake’s challenge.
Since it was a ritual Quinn, Catholicon and I felt honour bound to go down and stand around in the dark attempting to watch what was going on, and Carabas came along for similar being-life-master-based reasons. However, we couldn’t see anything and little or nothing appeared to be happening anyway. We tried to help but it quickly became obvious that Mouldy knew what he was doing, the totems knew what they were doing, and the only job needed was some form of arbitration to try to bring these rituals together. Which was being ably done by other people already.
Catholicon attempted to wind people up a bit by battering Quinn’s shield and making it sound like there was a fight going on, but he didn’t achieve much more than making a few nicks in it. Eventually Carabas made an executive decision that there wasn’t much we could do here, it was dangerous to leave the camp unattended, and furthermore he was a Lifemaster and it was getting chilly. We were forced to agree with him and went back to the fire by the guildhouse.
There I shared a bottle with Tap while we sat around and talked a load of random rubbish, occasionally getting reports from the ritual area. After a further forty minutes someone came up complaining that the guild ritual team was being pedantic and slowing things down interminable. I pointed out – admittedly somewhat pedantically – that the entire ritual team was sitting round the fire. The point was accepted that we probably weren’t also standing in the dark by the ritual circle.
About ten minutes later an explosion of laughter from Quinn informed us that the totems were currently attempting to rebuild the mirror in the dark.
Five minutes after that, Lemming, Arbella and most of the other Lions were sent back to camp for the heinous crime of Singing Rude Songs While Everyone Was Stressed. Apparently “I Used To Work In Durholme” wasn’t conducive to a successful late night ritual in the mud.
Finally, despite our not being particularly helpful (but in our defence, being really quite warm), the ritual was successful and we all popped back into the real world, which was ably demonstrated by the Tribe helpfully turning up to try and kill us again, thus proving they could see us once more. The guy who had tapped us in the mirror in the first place, who had been descriptively if not politely dubbed “The Fat Ritualist” turned up and proved himself to be not only a fat ritualist, but also a fat necromancer by Fatally wounding lots of people. Which was just plain antisocial, and so with Rooster’s help myself and Arbella both cast Sleep spells at him to stop him. Sadly his minions protected him then woke him up, but it was worth a shot.
A shout went up – “there’s a beardy purple Lion behind enemy lines!”. We counted off and yes, Culain was definitely missing. He was very fortunate – he’d been missing for about eight minutes before Tap rescued him. Karl Von Krumm wasn’t so lucky though, and was killed in the attacks.
A bit of confusion following Lemming’s rescuing Diedrac from a Befriend spell seemed to cause Diedrac to fall in love with Lemming. Lemming refused his advances despite Rooster’s offer to marry them. Possibly because it wasn’t clear which of the pair Lemming’s wife Morven would have killed first. Eventually Diedrac realised Lemming wasn’t that attractive after all, and much embarrassment was avoided by both, at least until everyone else found out about it.
We spent the rest of the night driving off Fat Ritualist’s attacks, and, in the case of the Lions, playing Cake or Death with Rooster.
Other Events of Note:
Owl’s unique pronunciation style led to Footnote being renamed Foot-Noot when they were talking. Foot-Noot offers no guarantees that he’ll ever again answer to this. Quack was the only one who managed to fall in the lava at the fire shrine. Vincenzo contributed making notes, at one point I believe he even went so far as to use the word “debacle”.
Sunday
At some point yesterday, I’m not sure when, some people had successfully opened the cave. The stuff inside proved that the Fat Ritualist couldn’t die because he was connected to a Life Elemental, and there was a potion which could be made to separate him from it. Xavin reckoned that from all those years of brewing strange potions he had the skill, and apparently there was some flowers in the local area which could be used as source material.
First thing when we got up, Carabas sent a load of us out to hunt for these flowers that we needed to separate Fat Ritualist from the Life Elemental. People went out in groups of three or four to scout about.
I went out with Deatach, Culain and a young scout called Garrick, and on the way we met Catholicon, Quinn, Rath, Tap, a young drow princess and her minder. Then we met a lot of the Tribe, who were slightly less friendly, though just as keen for us to join them.
Had it just been the adults we would have fought it out, but we didn’t feel we could risk the young princess’ life, and so we bugged out through the trapdoor. At which point someone with a better sense of geography than me pointed out that, as we were reasonably close to Empire-held Erin, we might not actually be protecting her at all. Still, we’d started so we felt we should finish and we all went through the trapdoor. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been visiting Empire territory, though I somewhat doubted we’d have as welcome a visit. Dunno what the Armengarians made of it all.
We landed in a highly dignified heap on the floor of the Lucky Potato. Hurried investigation proved that it wasn’t behind Empire lines, it was about half an hour from a ritual circle, and furthermore, it was Catholicon’s round.
As we wandered back to the circle it occurred to us that as we’d gone missing in the woods where the Tribe were known to be and that may possibly confuse people. So, as loyal Demetians, we decided to nip back to Archon and leave a note by the circle in case anyone was worried – we may not be a very cohesive group, but we do have a busy message board.
There was a message there waiting for us – Lemming and the others had assumed we were dead, the Harts and Vipers had left en masse, the compound had fallen to the Tribe, and Lemming was on Holy Isle leading a ritual to power up our forces to retake the island, so if by any off chance we were still alive we were welcome to join them.
We decided to nip over and let people know we weren’t actually dead. They were very pleased to see us, not least because us turning up meant they had enough contributors and didn’t have to pull up the Power Of Two Lands banner to conduct the ritual. Then Bear turned up, having presumably also nipped to Archon and read the sign, to insist that we did the ritual on Meadhros. It wasted about half an hour, but totems can get stroppy so we did.
The ritual gave power to everyone carrying Lions symbols – the PBs, Armengarians, CKs and House D, plus Tap, Catholicon and Garrick. So we set out to check everyone was ok, find Xavin (who I hadn’t seen since that morning, which was a bit worrying) and destroy Fat Ritualist. And when we met up with the others, we found that the Harts and Vipers had come back – presumably the faction members had had to leave for similar reasons to us.
Once we’d chased out the Tribe a bit, at least enough to get a breathing space, Xavin explained that he’d been able to make the potion to separate the Fat Ritualist from the Life Elemental and thus making him mortal. Which gave us a chance, at least.
Also inside the cave was Michael Meadhros’ body – Michael’s pattern was currently in Arryn, which was pretty awkward for all concerned. Figuring that, like many of Erdreja’s problems, if could be best solved by ritual, we begged Rua until she kindly agreed to do the ritual – after all, for someone who’s moved all the power from one ritual circle to another, anything else is a doddle. Although I couldn’t actually contribute, having contributed to Lemming’s earlier ritual, I helped out in case anything untoward happened.
Suddenly, something untoward happened. Very shortly after we began, Fat Ritualist and his minions attacked aided by Wendigo (the evil totem we’d heard about earlier).
Rua held the ritual together triumphantly while the rest of the guild defended us. As soon as Michael opened his eyes – in the correct body, I mean – we charged out and joined in to help. We got out relatively unscathed, but Father Catholicon was killed by the totem Snake. We’ve still not entirely got to the bottom of why so I’m not going to go into that.
Once the Fat Ritualist was out the way the Tribe broke free of whatever spell he held over them, and became a great deal more friendly. Arryn (or possibly Michael, or conceivably even both) gave the guild permission to build a guildhouse, which was fortunate as we’d already built it, and so everyone was congratulated several times until Quack pointed out that now the mirror was fixed, we all had homes to go to. And so we did.
Other Events of Note:
Lemming had the great idea of defeating the ritualist by chucking the mirror at him so he broke it and got stuck inside, but this was declined just in case it caught us all. Pity, it would have been quite poetic justice. Rooster decided to try to make Arbella pregnant by Lemming, though why is still a mystery to us all.
All Works are © Original Author
(OC Author - Marianne Wells)