Ring of Harps

Day One:
Upon arriving at Norhault, Jona Tavish and myself were transported to Merinhault by the Mages' Guild guard (two extremely polite young gentlemen). Unfortunately when we arrived there it was already dark, but we could still see the petrified trees with seaweed hanging from them. It looked very ghostly at night. The Guards escorted us up to the camp, where the Mages' Guild tent was still being put up. There we met up with Rurik and Jax-Ur. I also saw several of my friends from the Harts - Torwell, Nattie and co. Master Water and Akhbar Al Rashish, the embodiment of Magic, were also there.

Merinhault is the isle that has floated up between Armengar and Unicorn lands. As far as we are aware no one has claimed this isle yet. Alhtough there is a ruined branch of the Great Library there (except the door that links to the main branch has gone). Walking down the seemingly endless Index corridor, looking at the empty shelves was disheartening. I think I can understand why Scullion chose not to attend the weekend.

Within the ruins of the library we found an alchemist's table which had been placed there within the last three days (it later turned out to belong to one of the guild members who'd been there before us). This table was continually used over the course of the weekend for the people who had been out gathering herbs.

A short while after returning from the ruins, a group of the Lions' Prince Bishop's Men appeared from the direction of the Ritual Circle, demanding to know who was in charge and what we were doing on their land. It turns out that they had been trapped in the void somewhere between five and seven years (their exact words being "since the Nosta Kar", but I'm not quite sure when that was).

Soon after this most of the people went back up to the ruins for the night, as it was better lit and had more solid walls (ish) than the Guild tent which still wasn't open. Which meant whilst we were in the ruins talking to the sea elves that used to live on the isle whilst it was underwater, the so-described "shaggy magical water creatures" sea hags decided to raid our tents. There was a bit of a fight, but I couldn't see what happened...

After we had fought off the sea hags I found out that Rurik, Jax-Ur and a few others had found a small obelisk outside in the woods, with glowing lights, and upon being invoked it spoke to the person touching it (i.e. it spoke in their mind) and said they had passed the first trial, and there was another seven trials to go. Apparently, various then proceeded to cast spells at it until they passed the second trial. I can only assume here that it had given them some sort of hint or riddle to make them do this. It then said something about the third trial being completed "in the sun's shadow". So we got to twiddle our fingers for a bit on that one.

It was at this point that Jona and myself went to bed early, but from what I understand than not long after we had gone there was another encounter with some (as James Harper described it to me) "Harder, red shaggy sea hags".

Day Two:
Upon rising, Jona and myself accompanied James Harper and went herb gathering, bumping into Nattie and co, who were hunting a giant crab for breakfast (I'm not sure they actually caught it, but it sounded fun). Whilst we were doing this, ourselves and a few others were attacked by a displacer beast. Upon killing it we went back to the obelisk (which was called Balanus) and discovered we had inadvertently passed the third trial - before most people where even out of bed.

The obelisk then informed us that trial four was about knowing "the rules of engagement", at which point there were many jokes about marrying various people to it! James Harper put himself forward... for the trial.

Meanwhile when Nattie and co had come back from hunting the crab, they informed us that they had found a necromantic tomb/barrow with a few undead shambling around. We decided we would wait for more people to turn up before we went to investigate it fully.

When we finally headed over to the tomb, James Harper discovered some poisonous plant, which he called Bella Donna. Whilst we were waiting for other people to catch up with us, Torwell offered to show Jona what ruttage was... so I sent him off with her... when they came back out a few moments later, Torwell was her usual perky self, whilst Jona was crawling across the floor. It may take me a while to apologise for that... oh well!

Not longer after this there was a shout out from the area where the obelisk was, and we returned to find that the obelisk had sent out its champion for an honour fight (it turned out that this was the first of five champions that it sent out) with one of the Bishop's Men. The champion won. It then called for someone else to fight it an honour duel. James Harper stepped forward. He won (of course), with which the first champion disappeared. Then the second champion appeared and whereas he had been completely honourable the second was rude and aggressive, and again James Harper won. The third was very cowardly, but often made the first attack and would repeatedly vanish when an aggressive action was taken against it. Eventually it was vanquished by a freeze spell. The fourth seemed to be some sort of minotaur. They started this challenge by setting a trap which made it disappear - we thought we'd done it and then it reappeared. Eventually James Harper managed to beat it to death. The fifth champion appeared, it had a blacked-out face and would disappear every time it was hit, then reappear somewhere else. It was eventually dispatched with some non-sharp weapons. This was the end of trial four. The fifth trial we were told would have something to do with Mages - cue one slightly panicking Eliween - and whilst we waited for this trial to begin, Jona and myself headed back to the ruined library. I would like to point out at this point that all the creatures we faced during the trials were illusary and therefore no real creatures were harmed - even though we were!

Upon returning to the ruins, I was asked to evaluate a wooden box (I was told it was magical first) that had been found behind the entrance gate (entrance to the ruins that is) and I found that it had been made during the First Empire. I don't believe it was worth anything though. But we did discover that upon any object (unless it was living) being placed in the box it quickly transformed into the old imperial coin and vanished. We believe the money is what the item is worth and that it goes into Imperial coffers.

It was at this point that the Ancestrally possessed chessboard appeared. The Bishop's Men decided to play (against everyone else's advice). Cue various yelps of pain as they were harmed in various ways... well, we did tell them!

We also found out that whilst we had been doing the fourth trial the group of people who'd gone to the barrow had found a barrow revenant and that she used to be a Harper in life. I never did find out any more on this subject other than that they laid her to rest on the following day before we left the isle. But apparantly there had also been two river trolls near the barrow, who can apparantly regenerate nearly anything apart from damage dealt by ancient artifacts.

After lunch a group of sea elves turned up again to talk, and two of them escorted a small group of us down to the obelisk where we were waiting for the fifth trial to begin. Whilst on our way there, Jona decided it would be a good idea to invoke Akhbar. The result was that there was no real outcome except a very evil laugh from Akhbar and smiles from everyone accompanying us (except I noted the sea elves).

Also during the walk the sea elves managed to gather some herbs which they refused to give to us unless we could find something to trade with them. James Harper traded them his pack of cards and then taught them how to play a card game - I think it was snap or black jack.

All of sudden five glowing objects appeared on the ground. A couple of people picked them up, immediately disappearing, it turned out they were mages. Myself and three others decided, after watching the other glowing sticks disappear with people, to pick up the last as a combined team - Jona and another gentleman grabbed the stick at the same time whilst myself and another lady held their hands. Surprisingly enough, I'm the one that got chosen to go through to the trial - cue more panicking!

The idea behind the trial was to guard our five markers whilst grabbing the five monsters' markers. Unfotunately I'm not sure how we won as I was asleep through most of it. The sixth trial was to be a test of sportsmanship and teamwork.

Once the trial had finished everyone headed back up to the ruins and used the alchemist's desk. Jona and myself went back to our tents for food, and on our back to the ruins we discovered a group of fire demons who proceeded to chase back towards the ruins. There were several waves of them and it was discovered that they were appearing out of some sort of void box. Which for some reason didn't have a lid. However, James Harper came up with the novel idea of placing logs on it - this worked for quite some time. At this point the sky above us opened and and it poured down with rain. So we took shelter in the Mages' Guild's tent (which finally opened and I learned had countless counter spells on or in it), and not moments after this happened Master Dark and Terwin of the Wolves arrived[1]. It turned out that the lid for the box was a void shield and unsurprisingly Terwin had it. He'd apparantly brought the box here until he'd found the shield (or something like that).

After a while (afternoon time-ish), whilst we were quite happily singing various Wolf songs in the tent (I even got to join in on "Till Death Do Us Part"!), when the call went up that the sea hags were doing a ritual. We couldn't stop them as the seal was already raised, but we did stand there and heckle them through the whole thing - "Remember, it's elements not elephants!" being a very popular phrase. The ritual basically cast an aura of immunity on everyone on the isle, meaning enchanted weapons stopped working for a period of around an hour. Whilst the spell was up we were also attacked by river trolls (again) who seemed to be doing very heavy or crushing blows.

Not long after this Jona and myself (having had a horrible headache all day) decided to go back to our tent and a little lie down. Unfortunately I fell asleep during this time period so we were away for quite some time and have no knowledge of what happened - for that, my apologies. I thought I'd been well rested the night before - it turned out I was wrong.

Upon our return to the ruins we were informed of a "black shadow" (for a lack of a better term). It appeared suddenly and then disappeared for no real reasons until someone told us it was looking for an amulet of a sphinx, which allowed the wearer to cast high magics. The obelisk then told us that the seventh trial would be held tomorrow and would be a hunt in which we were the hunters and we'd be hunting "the prey".

Whilst we were there I had a quick chance to evaluate Balanus (I was curious, okay?). So not only does he appear completely sentient, he's also a superiorly made ancient artifact. Later I found out that he was created after the last Cataclysm. Although someone did tell me he had a pattern with some form of decay on it. Martin was also checking everyone, to make sure that they weren't a Conclave agent. I believe everyone there passed inspection.

The evening passed quite quickly due to the lovely bardic competition (well it did take a few hours...). During this time there was not a lot of activity, except for the succubus that turned up and befriended my stupid boyfriend, but lucky for me (and for him too) the Bishop's Men came over and hacked her into iddy diddy little pieces... Unfortunately, Jona's still convinced that I should have met her, because she was "nice really!".

Later on we spotted a white shape moving in the trees (the ones between the ritual circle and us) and at the same time we heard a cry for help from the tuins. Everyone dashed up to the ruins excpet the Bishop's Men who went to deal with the flickering shape. Upon arriving at the ruins we found they were under attack from another bunch of fire demons and discovered that there was a person sized chess board on the ground. Unfortunately as soon as the fight was over, Jona and I went to bed (so, we were tired!). But I did find out in the morning that for every demon that jumped onto the chessboard a chess piece appeared (five in total). Not actually too sure what happened after that but someone else might know.

Day Three:
It was a very busy morning, but we did complete trial seven - the hunt. Basically I just followed the others during this, whilst Jona waited to help lay the revenant to rest. But during the course of chasing our prey we bumped into: some red faced demons (we ignored them I think); three trolls (we gave them some money - about three stell); some Imperial Nobles (we slotted them after much arguing about whether we had the right to hunt on this land); some spiderkin (again we slotted them, but this time I got to be useful and purge people of poisons); and finally a dark unicorn which could only be harmed by blunt weapons. Upon its death some of the beastkin (i.e. Matt) tried to eat it to see if that was final to pass the trial, but since the meat was poisonous we decided quickly that it wasn't. The final thing that ended the trial and teleported us back to the obelisk was the removal of the Unicorn's golden horn (I can't remember the name of the chap who received it but I'd recognise him if I saw him again!). Balanus then told us that for the eighth (and final) trial we would need "everything at our disposal". Such warm thoughts came to mind then - not!

It didn't take too long before the eighth trial begun, after Martin went and accepted it from the obelisk he was teleported away to where the fight (for that's what this trial was) was to happen. The fight itself consisted of waves of displacer beasts, ghouls, grey-faced demons, weird creatures that could paralyse by touch or petrify by looking at you, or even have a continuous forbidding or retribution on them (O got to kill that retribution one more or less on my own - after Jona got someone to sleep it and tied it to a tree). There was also a mind flayer, which upon being killed for the second time meant we had passed the eighth trial and eventually won. Most of the people there walked back to the obelisk to find out what this meant.

Balanus then told us that because we had passed all of his trials that anyone who'd passed them (i.e. only the people who were there that weekend) could trade knowledge with Balanus as he was just the tip of the library. A library of what and by whom we are still not sure of. I'm hoping Rurik got the chance to find out because at this point lots of people crowded around it and realising that I wasn't going to get the chance to talk to Balanus myself, I left to go and pack up my things with Jona (who had gone straight back to the tent after the fight). Although Balanus did mention that there were other access points across Erdreja, he would not tell us where.

And there is the end of my report.



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Editor's notes -
[1]Terwin was in fact Master Void at this point.
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