The Gathering 1098

Sunday 30th August 1098

The day began quite quietly. The Harts held a muster early in the day, to address the various issues that had been raised the day before. The Queen looked sombre and close to tears as she absolved all members of the questing group of blame regarding Elias's death. Also announced was the fact there would be a battle the next day over the Dragon/Viper issue. On our side would be the Vipers, the Wolves and the Tarantulas, opposing us would be the Lions, the Bears, the Dragons, the Unicorns and Gryphons. At the end of the muster I announced the result of the Scald mission to be a success, although with large losses. I also mentioned that we had lost none, but this turned out to be false when a member of the Watchers of Darkwood mentioned that two members of his group had died on the quest (with such large numbers involved it was likely that I would miss the involvement of other Harts).

After muster I headed down to the market place to get some breakfast with George, Peregrine and Jal'al. Whilst we were eating we could hear the bells that signified undead arriving at the circle ringing at regular intervals. Finishing our meal we went to investigate. It appeared that some bugger had botched a ritual the night before, leaving a gaping opening to the Void, which the undead were taking advantage of. Whilst we were looking at the circle we noticed Iggy wandering around. It appeared that the sight of the undead had unnerved him to such an extent that he had forgotten his stick. When we pointed this out he exclaimed "Oh bugger" and hopped off to look for it. George then exclaimed and indicated the club. It appeared that the proximity to the unliving creatures had excited the power the War spirits had placed in the club, and it was now filled with greater power than ever before. We retired to the camp to inform then of this, and to prepare for our immanent ritual. This had been moved from 12.30 to 1.30 (some mix up at the Mages' Guild I assume) but we were still worried that if the undead kept appearing in the circle we would be unable to perform the ritual.

As the ritual had been moved we had time for another quick ritual practice. This finished we gathered a largish number of people to escort us down to the circle.

The return of Floris Brand

At the circle all was chaos. The bell was ringing continuously, and the strange (and deadly poisonous) mist known as the "Breath of Maar" filled the circle. Minor unliving were being held at bay at the entrance of the circle by the Mages' Guild guards and other warriors. One powerful unliving (that exuded a field of fear such that none could approach it) was wandering around outside. The Incantors' Guild tried desperately to form a wedge with sufficient power to dismiss the creature, and I and several other members of the group joined it. Our efforts were doomed however, as the creature heard our cries and kept charging us, the aura of fear scattering us in all direction.

I was then forced to leave the wedge as the Magthaldanas of the Mages' Guild had arrived to check the ritual group in to the circle. What she expected us to do I was unsure, as the circle was still impassable. Then I saw, within the circle, the figures of Belagrim and Tel Falcon within the mist. Belegrim seemed to be trying to draw upon the power of the Tome of Water to seal the void gate. As I watched he was overcome by the mists and fell, but Tel Falcon (unaffected by the mists, due to his close connection with the plane of light) healed him and supported him as he finished his chant.

As Belegrim finished there was a pause for a moment, then the bell began tolling again and I thought with sinking heart that he had failed. The figures that emerged out of the mist were not unliving however, but those of the Grand Master Mage, Floris Brand, and, being supported by him, the staggering shape of Papewaio (complete with comedy soot streaks). Papewaio had evidently survived the explosion, possibly with the aid of Floris. Although I did not have a chance to speak with him I theorise this: Papewaio was saved from the pattern-destroying effects of the explosion by the staff. Instead of destroying him it hurled him out into the void. It was here that Floris later found him and led him back to Edreja. This is of course complete speculation, but it makes sense to me.

Floris led Papewaio out of the circle, and Tel Falcon and Belegrim followed.

The Bacchanalian Wine Ritual

The circle was now all quiet, and we quickly assembled within to perform our ritual. Luckily Leah had remembered all the pieces of her ritual kit, and so we could proceed without further delay. The ritual was to brew one of the ancient Bacchanalian potions, a potion that bestowed great fortitude in battle. The recipe of this potion is highly secret, but the actual brewing involved three steps, the crushing of the grapes and other ingredients, the aging of the subsequent liquid by magical means (using the great age of the Club of Bacchus to perform this task), and the distillation of the aged brew into a potent spirit. A each stage the liquid was tested, and the final draft was sufficient to knock Cedric off his feet and render him completely unconscious. Dionysus also tried it, but didn't think much of it. This may have been a sign, as later events were to prove.

At the end of the ritual George prepared to open the circle, whilst we all took up our starting positions. As the last words of the opening chant were completed we were off, and had managed to remove all valuable items (including the unconscious body of Cedric) from the circle in under 10 seconds. George decided that he would stay in the circle and make his own leisurely way out (obviously having listened to too much Mages' Guild PR). In this case however he was justified and no attack materialised, so we wandered back to camp.

The Beauty Contest

After a short rest I was set upon by the Bacchus Brothel women who needed escorts to take them to a beauty contest being held in the Dragons camp (the "Miss Edreja 1098 competition"). Sang and myself "volunteered", and the group of us, consisting of myself, my sister (part of the escort, not actually entering the contest), Sang, Myron, Xantalia and Raithen (the two entrants).

The journey was quite leisurely, although the Dragons' camp was the furthest possible point from our camp it was also quite long. Upon arriving we of the escort joined the ranks of onlookers, whilst Xantalia and Raithen joined the competitors. The rules were flagrantly ignored when Rory McTwatem entered himself, in defiance of the rule that all entrants had to be female (unless he isn't telling us something) .

The judges, various high ranking nobs from the Dragons and Bears (one of which was blind!), had divided the contest into several categories: Grace, Physical Appearance, Mental Beauty, Style and the X Factor.

The contestants paraded about for a few minutes, and then the individual interviews started.

Xantalia went first, revealing her fondness for men, the fact that she worked in the Brothel, and that she was an expert at massage and other physical pursuits. I thought that this would be enough to get her a high ranking, especially when she went to work on the judges, showing them exactly what talented hands she had.

The next contestant was a Dragon, and rather than relying upon any sort of ability, style or anything else simply settled for taking almost all of her clothes off, lowering the tone of the contest immediately. At that point the contest was adjourned until later in the day due to reports of undead attacks on various faction camps.

Undead assault

We rejoined Xantalia and Raithen and headed out the gate, intending to get back to our own camp as quickly as possible. As we were passing the Bears gate however several undead came running towards us from their camp. I passed my shield over to Xantalia to defend herself with and wielded my club and sword. One of the undead attacked my sister, paralysing her from behind. Losing my cool I charged at the foul creature, raining blows down with my weapons. I must have struck it eight times or so as I back-pedalled away from its paralysing touch, striking alternately with my club and sword. My blows seemed not to affect it very much at all, and it eventually managed to strike me on the chest. I collapsed to the floor, my limbs stiffening as I was overcome with blackness. Luckily Xantalia was on hand to heal me, and I was up again almost immediately, in time to see the ghoul being chased across the market place by a man wielding a magic sword. My sister had also been healed by now, so we regrouped and continued on to camp.

Upon reaching the Guild tent I split off from the group in order to check how things were going in the Incantors. Appearances showed that the item tracking procedure I had developed was not working properly, so I resolved to have more though on the matter, then set off back to camp after arranging with Durith a training schedule for that winter.

Another distraction occurred when I encountered Fitz giving some training to a new recruit. I elected to help him out, and gave a salutary lesson in the benefits of sword and shield. Unfortunately, when demonstrating the use of two weapons against Fitz (who was armed with a pole-arm) my new club broke. I gathered the pieces together and went back to camp, vowing to have a few words with the weaponsmith.

On arriving at camp I discovered that I had missed all the excitement. When the camp quite empty during the afternoon (at the same time as the beauty contest) a squad of unliving had tunnelled under the walls and burst out inside the camp, succeeding in paralysing almost everyone. Luckily Dionysus had been on hand to get people un-paralysed, himself being unaffected by the blows of the unliving creatures. Eventually the creatures had charged the command tent and been destroyed by the ward in place there.

The Spirit of Beer is threatened

Now that things had calmed down we tried to get a Council meeting organised. Unfortunately Iggy was missing, and had not been seen since that morning when he had wandered off to find his stick. This meant that no firm plans could be made to spend money, as the exact amounts of money available were not known. A meeting of the religion was also called however.

George had some strange news for us, Tnuc, the spirit of Beer, had been strangely weak at the Ritual we had performed earlier. George also stated that this weakness had been present, to a lesser extent, at previous rituals, but he had not noticed it until now. This was probably the cause of George's drink tasting flat, first noticed at the moots. Various ideas as to the cause were bandied around, my own opinion (later proven to be correct) was that part of Tnuc had been captured by the people that were brewing the beer that didn't taste flat, and that we should seek them out.

George then stated that he would seek to ask Tnuc himself if the Ancestors would hear him. The meeting was broken up and we went our separate ways. Whilst this meeting was occurring a Privy council was being held, and just after the meeting the council of Barons was called. At the council of Barons George upheld the Laws of Bacchus by stating that we would not fight with undead, so the Tarantulas (or any other faction allied with us) had better not be fielding any. We later received assurances that this would be so, and thus were able to take the field.

A short while after the Baronial council ended the camp gate was attacked by a group of Chaos blokes. The Incantors among us formed up lines and repelled them away from the gate, after which the warriors (including myself) sallied out to meet them. The Creatures attacked in several waves, more arriving from behind when those in front were defeated, and they gave off waves of dread. This caused me to flee on more than one occasion, but the gate guard stood fast, due to the power of the Totem Pole. Eventually all the creatures were defeated, and peace came again to the camp.