![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Gathering 1117
Sep. 12th, 2017 08:36 pmThis is the story Obsidia would tell if asked. Please don't take it as IC if you're not someone she would realistically tell - I trust we're all grown up enough to tell the difference.
Friday:
The King of Cymria was busy, but wanted to talk when we were not busy. I promised to do so as soon as both of us were not-busy at the same time, and caught up with him ten minutes before the final battle on Monday. However Kerr, and Squishy did a sterling job of not being busy for me at the right times, particularly Kerr who pretty much got everything sorted. Since Cuthbert was still wandering Cymria at large we assumed He was just getting to know our new home and generally showing His agreement with the plan to move, which was a great relief to many of the more devout of the unit. It looked like we would be moving to Perddu, which is pronounced Purthu, and next to the waters of truth, which is pronounced with as much drama as possible. Kerr spent the weekend correcting anyone who didn't use sufficient amounts of style when discussing.
Squishy was trying to make himself known to the mages of the faction by pointing out that basically he did literally everything you wanted from a mage with the possible exception of Enchanting yet. The point was made when one of those herb-mouth zombies (I'm sure there's a technical term for them, but I don't know it) went running across the camp and someone shouted "Stop him!". Squish leaned back in his chair, and the creature was stopped. If there's a point to high magic beyond looking flash, I don't think I've encountered it yet.
As dusk began to fall Gwen grabbed me and said they needed a rescue party to go after the people who'd gone to rescue the rescue party for the mission to the Jade Palace. This had all kinds of cock up written all over it, but the alternative was not helping and then folks would have definitely died instead of probably, so we went for it. Arriving at the Jade Palace we found that it was very pretty and inhabited by the odd short person and many many tall terracotta golems. And a number of fallen Dragons. Zolos Magnifico, our transporter, started setting up a quick exit as it was pretty plain we couldn't take these guys. One of them demanded to know who we were, somebody answered Dragons (which I must admit I think I would have prevaricated on given that we were the fourth group of Dragons to come stomping mud across his carpet), so the Cathayan leader demanded to know if we were there to answer for the Dragon nation's crimes.
I waited for the first Dragon to answer. Or whoever was in charge of this mission. Or one of the ranking faction members, of which there were a few. Or anyone, really. Kerrimar's balls guys, I've been in your faction a year and half of you don't admit we're Dragons yet. Ok fine.
"No, not exactly. No definitely not actually, at least not till we know what they've done and then we'll probably want to find out why too to be honest. We're here to collect our fallen and - I'm sorry, there's a guy there with glowy hands and it's really weird."
"I happen to be the Jade Emperor of Cathay!" declaimed the glowy hand man, proving my theory about why people who know more of what's going on should be the ones to negotiate. Still, he turned off both the fire and time gauntlets so I'm calling that a win.
The upshot was that as well as tramping mud across his carpet we'd also stolen his mum. I gave vague indications that I would investigate his claims and reinforced the desire to get our people back, or at least for him to keep them alive to bargain for his mum back. We got most back but he insisted on keeping the one in heaviest armour to make some point or other, and that was Constable Moo - Bigorn. I was still trying when Zolos transported us back. It was clear that there was no point to any further attempt.
The mood was a bit more subdued in the Cocks that night, until somewhat unexpectedly, King Frax came round to visit. More in keeping with usual terms, he asked me to stop calling him King Frax. I think he's scared that if we can persuade enough people he'd be stuck with it. In keeping with the tradition of Princes and Crown Princes before him, he'd had a rotten day and come to the Cocks to hide from the faction and chill out for a bit (we had Nahiosi singing with us at another point, presumably on similar though less regal grounds). Of course, he'd brought half a dozen bodyguards but I don't think he'd entirely meant to.
The Jade Emperor came round and we needed everyone we had to defend the camp - and also defend his mum, who considered the Dragons' involvement as less of a kidnap, more a rescue, and was insistent that the Emperor used to be such a nice young man until he shoved a Wellspring of Evil up his bum. Nice young man or not our people were dying, the enemies of the healer's guild had also sent some poorly timed minions who seemed considerably harder than the Emperor's, and Frax was clearly increasingly aware of the half a dozen warriors he'd brought to stand around looking important. Diplomacy was served as he agreed to release them to join the fight.
The problem we had was that in the dark it's hard to tell friend from foe particularly when not everybody knows you. Enemies were dragging people off to the transport circle so we had to keep charging forward and then it was difficult to ensure we had everyone back safe.
Three of our dead were returned to the command tent: the one I knew best was Amethyst. She, like the others, had been Magebolted and then hit with a corrupting ailment, so sending her pattern to the Ancestors was to priority once the danger was passed and those still living had been rescued. Sina did the necessary and I managed to dredge up one of the Dragons faction wake songs, since No Lion Stands Alone wasn't exactly relevant (and in many ways, hadn't been for years).
More excitement ensued down at the ritual circle as there was a lot of shouting, which we thought we should go and join. Some Jade Empire minions were doing a ritual, I'm not sure what the aim was but it involved having someone from each faction in the circle. I recognised Belenus, though not the others. Things kicked off, from within the circle I think, and the seal collapsed in a wave of noise. We rescued everyone and then a bunch of Dragons charged through the voidgate aiming for the Jade Palace.
"They are dead" Styx told me "Styx knows this, if they go to the Jade Palace then they are already dead."
"You never know." I replied, as much as anything because I'd seen who was in that party. "If anyone can I think it's probably that lot."
"No, they are dead."
Actually, I don't think any of the folks we lost that day were the ones on the mission, they mostly sauntered back through the transport circle some twenty minutes later. But I may be wrong, things were a bit hectic.
Frax made it back safely but the Lions were also hit hard and they lost both Nyanthi of the OEB and Dorian of the Freeblades during the night.
Saturday:
Miskin stepped down as high bard and McKenzie stepped up. I forced the kids to wait until eleven to begin the rounds with their shop as no one is up and ready to think first thing on a Saturday, let alone be ready to be jumped on by enthusiastic children trying to demonstrate how a bookmark works. Tragically for them though, in the middle of muster Su ran in to say that there was a member of my lance who had turned up in the Lions. They'd told her about Avalon then given her a cup of tea while they went to find one of us to talk to her. So of course I ducked out of the muster and me, V, Nemiel and Noctis rushed over to talk to her.
It was Bonfire, aka Alexandria Mayhem. I'd kind of given up thinking any more of us would make it back but it seemed she was as pleased to see me as I was her. That doesn't stop the odd wind up however and so when I gave her the quick run through of what she'd missed I omitted who was the current Prince Bishop. I did ask if she had any questions and given that she didn't at that point, I asked Frax and Sam for bets as to when she might find out. Sadly Bonfire reached Kerr before I did and so she didn't get the message. Bonfire came over and was sarcastically polite at me till I apologised, but in my defence we haven't had the chance to wind each other up for ages.
Sir Michael had taken over with the kids who were having fun with their shop, selling things for random prices (generally a stell for everything), so they didn't miss out. I thanked him but it was my duty day with the kids, so I took over and took them for lunch.
I met Master Gau'Ban while I was feeding my wards, plus Nyanthi's pair. Little Squirrel decided to cuddle him, which was met with an expression of polite confusion.
"Is it trying to stab me?" Gau'Ban asked, with mild interest.
"I don't think so, no."
Snowflake came over and decided to investigate what was happening too. As the pair of them started to nick the daggers from his bandoleer and throw them at him (well, I say at him. I mean inexpertly in his direction, despite being about three feet away), he gave me that look.
"I blame you for this."
"I blame me too."
The lass from the orphanage who was looking after Nyanthi and Karma's kids had to go, so having removed the dags from the enthusiastic children I agreed to go look after them in the Lions camp for a while which also gave me an opportunity to go say hi to people. Belenus had developed an interesting condition which meant that he randomly spawned angry mobs. Knowing Belenus this was pretty much like an early birthday present, particularly because they were uncontrollable, but apparently it was linked to the Jade Emperor mucking around with the circles so he probably doesn't get to keep them.
Adamu proved once again that he sees the world differently, as he handed me an orb created from the destroyed patterns of the PBs who died in the void rift of Belac, which had been used to power him back when he was a void creture rather than a full-blown elemental. Adamu is actually a great guy, but every so often he just doesn't get how people work. it was a kind thought and I tried not to be creeped out, though largely unsuccessfully. Once I thought about it logically, it was a better solution than any I could think of for them, it's just a rather unusual thing to be presented with.
Various things happened, mostly to other people as I was on small person duty and looking forward to Sunday when Sir Michael took over. (OOC: I'm generally fine with babysitting, but I really wasn't feeling it this event and the fact that they decided to skip kids plot then clearly got antsy because their friends weren't around certainly didn't help). One thing that did happen though was Carrion got his fire strand ripped in the same way Tyrell did at the Moot, though this time we thought we might have a solution. All it would take was a reckless ritemaster, and more power than was feasible. Fortunately both are pretty easy to come by, and 267 thaums later Carrion was alive and Alok was practically glowing in the dark, having collected a new and interesting way to screw up his pattern - though to be fair, the revelation that manipulating 5x the sensible amount of magic has some side effects wasn't a surprise to many.
Sir Michael took Riann for a traditional Albione meal which involved scones, jam and cream (not necessarily in that order) and - one must assume - curry and cheap lager. I note this pretty much exclusively for the glare he gave me when I suggested that, so I thought it must be true. And therefore needed a larger audience.
Rin came by wearing a mask, which he explained had many wonderful properties but also made him love turnips. Rin hates turnips. Except, he loves turnips. Kerr immediately offered a gold to the first person to bring her a turnip. Nobody was surprised.
I went to put the Swan kids to bed, when a major attack began so they were allowed to stay up until they ran out of thaums. Actually the healing station of small children about to go to bed was a pretty useful one, and we decided to do that again going forward.
The Jade Emperor continued to attack, as is his wont, and we were pressed pretty hard. I was healing one chap, while I watched Farwanderer sorting out Jack. Slowly, like my eyes were getting tired, Jack started to fade. I blinked, but the effect continued, faster and faster until he was transparent and still fading. Farwanderer yelled at him, but he was gone. We lost a number of others that night too, including Lanceman Horace, a lad just sent over from white lance that morning, and Moch Dar, the badger Geroid had introduced me too, plus another lad I knew by sight, and more besides. By this point in the weekend, I think we had lost thirteen not including Jack, who we were still holding out hope for.
Sunday:
Sunday morning we were greeted bright and early by a squinting and mildly embarrassed Lord Dragon just letting us know that if he'd said or done anything offensive last night he didn't mean it and wanted to apologise because he'd been extremely hammered. One of the people nearby mentioned that they'd lost track of him around the Tarantula camp, which surprised and concerned Cail as he'd been fairly convinced he hadn't been near that half of the field. Mind you, he didn't remember anything after standing on a table in the guilds and declaring himself queen of the blow job tree (other than being asked to leave), so he did accept his memory may not be 100%. He decided to extend his apology tour beyond the border of the camp and include pretty much everyone in the Hartlands. It may have been easier to just take out an ad in the Testaments.
Nemiel and Fi had headed back to Cymria overnight, and returned with some turnips. Kerr WAS pleased. Ryn was less so.
The Healer's guild fixed Alok at noon, and the scout's guild wanted to know what the faction was doing about Jack. As did I. Farwanderer had an idea and seemed pretty passionate about it, so I left it with her. It was good to catch up with the guild and as ever I learned more about the weekend there than I had the last two days. The Jade Emperor was trying to put together the regalia of Evil, eight items powered by fire, time, evil and chaos. The Custodians of Evil, who were almost universally petitioning for a better name, were trying to stop him. There was also a regalia of peace and therefore presumably one for each cadre, but that seemed to be a problem for another day. Also Lord Percy of the Gryphons had had a grand idea for the factions to enslave the guilds but the guilds weren't keen. This also seemed like something other people could deal with and so I decided that while I wasn't going to push over those with greater interest, I was going to make sure Jack got dealt with.
Several hours later however, nothing had happened and Anariel amongst others was getting more and more miffed. Since a miffed Anariel can be problematic, to say the least, someone had organised a tracking rite and I ended up serendipitously in the right place and the right time to help out. We found that Jack was in Dal'Riada, but seemingly in all of it simultaneously. Since "spread thin across a wide area" is not a naturally tenable position, this seemed like something we should try to sort out quickly.
Heading over to the Dragons with Anariel, I found Farwanderer again who rushed off to find Cael and get started on the next step of what we might be able to do - work out where in Dal'Riada he was and get an idea of how to bring him back together. I had a few errands to run, so I left it in Farwanderer's capable hands.
When I got back to camp, the plan was to get the Dal to look over the winter months, perhaps spend some time in the great library researching what might have happened - basically, the people who most deperately wanted Jack to be ok didn't have the skills they needed to do anything about it, and the people with the skills were most of them were too heavily involved in other things to put them aside at this point. Everyone I approached knew someone else who would be better to ask, but who wasn't around. I didn't want to just fall back on the people I knew but I was getting more and more frustrated and the Pisces part of my brain was getting more and more stabby, so I invoked the principle that Karen Gets Things Done and between her and Geroid they persuaded Zolos to add it to his list of rites for an hour's time and then it was just a case of Farwanderer and I getting stuff organised for him.
Zolos was leading a rite with all the children of the Dragons to break Simon's control over the kids he'd kidnapped, which involved a guitar-fuelled sing-song to the Ancestors, then he followed it up with a somewhat less creepy ritual using the still-beating heart of a possibly dead murder fae. Sadly we didn't get the answer we were hoping for - Zolos and Farwanderer both came out of the rite with images and aftershocks that led them to believe that there was nothing we could do to reconstitute Jack as it wasn't the right time. From the way Farwanderer took it, it sounded very much like the way fae talk about "returning in the spring". Ultimately it seems he was hit by the time gauntlet in the same way as Tyrell was hit by the fire one and while we were able to save Carrion after that the attack of Tyrell had been irreversible, and Carrion's had had to be done quickly. Hopefully Jack's being weird would give a bit of wriggle room but I wouldn't hold my breath. (ooc: I know Dan had to go home but in game it seems pretty final so I hope if they bring him back it will be with a feasible excuse)
The day continued into night, many things happened, few of them relevant to me. Snowflake accidentally started busking and made 2 gold and some necklaces, Ryn refused to eat a raw turnip, two of the Dragons won the entertainer's competition. The Swan kids sold a lot of "happy thoughts" to the guilds, scrolls with cheerful messages (or at least cheerful to their mind), which seem to have gone down well. I have it on reasonable authority that Taci has kept the one saying You're A Good Example To Others as evidence.
Much later, once it was dark, it was just another fight against the Jade Emperor, if indeed there is such a thing, when there was a shout from the front that all healers had to get into the command tent RIGHT NOW or they were going to die. No one at the back knew what was happening, but that was a pretty definite and desperate-sounding shout.
I went to the command tent, confirmed my suspicion that it had no back exit, and opined that corralling into a dead end was not the greatest survival tactic. Someone told me that I was entirely right, but no one at the back had the authority to do anything different. The part of my brain that had kept me alive for seven years in the void and a similar length of time in Erdreja decided that this was bullshit and I headed back to the front to face whatever healer-destroying evil was out there head on.
It was a dragon. An actual massive dragon. So yeah, I was very aware that I had to stand back to avoid just becoming a healing sponge when I get caught in some of the major effects that were blasting out, but it still seemed a better idea than being trapped in a dead end tent and at least that way I could help quickly pick up the wounded before they got eaten. This was a real concern, and was how we had lost some Dragons previously. The Dragon was seen off, fortunately at the gate, but shortly afterwards a cry came up that there was a dragon down at the guilds. Not really sure whether that was a wounded comrade or the same creature we'd just faced but ready to rescue just the same, the warband charged.
"Why do we do this again?" someone, I can't remember who, asked me. I gave the answer without thinking:
"Because we're heroes and they need us and that's what they do."
Suddenly I remembered asking that same question of Polly, years ago, and getting that same answer back. The fight Polly died in. I gritted my teeth and offered a quiet prayer to Kerrimar that we would all return safely.
It was the bitey kind of dragon, and everything was bedlam. It had the Emperor with it (I presumably hadn't noticed him up at camp), who took the opportunity to rip Cail's pattern thread which meant that Alok took his newly-repaired pattern and blasted it with even more magic than he had done for Carrion. Oh, and the Dragon attacked the rite halfway through. I lost track of the rest of the unit at that point as people hurried in all directions. V headed one way, Nemiel another and I a third, the main aim being to keep the Dragon away from Alok's rite. Successfully, I might add.
I came across Nemiel lying unconscious in a chair so I sorted that out and we started trying to gather everyone together. I ran into Hatstand (I think Hardtstaddt, but I can get behind the nickname), who told me that he had been bullied into a deal with the Taker of Names to collect 100 patterns for him by the moot next year. To that end, he needed my help. I immediately volunteered my assistance as well as that of Karen and any other seamstresses I happened to know, and I will be sending him as many different patterned offcuts for the blanket he's making the creature as I possibly can. Also Karen's face when I told her I needed her to help me gather a hundred patterns and drag them to a ritual circle was almost as good as Irinaye's when she found out.
We couldn't find V, having last seen him about three minutes before the dragon came in, and so headed back to camp hoping he'd headed up before us. He had not. We went back and searched the guilds and ritual circle, but couldn't find him anywhere. Hoping that he had taken Vox and gone to another faction to make a deal, we figured that wandering around the whole field looking for him would be pretty dumb and just hoped he made it home. Either way, there was nothing we could do now.
Back in camp, the CKs had discovered a monumentally drunk lad who looked vaguely familiar, and seemed to have stuck a tabard on him. I thought that was more our thing, but whatever. White lance had decided that sending reinforcements in dribs and drabs was the best thing and had sent another single lanceman to assist. I went to have a word with Sergeant Major Kerr to ask why this was policy and was told that it was because White Lance hate her and want to suffer, because two can play at that game. I have total confidence in her abilities.
This night, we learned that the Dragons hadn't heard a lot of our songs and so some of the perennial favourites came out. McKenzie nearly choked at The Crawl and Baron Antoine (introduced as being "The Ballad Of Bad Ideas", which seemed like a fair description), and with Sina's help I sang the updated version of Never Going Home that I'd adapted, adding a few verses to bring it more up to date. I felt pretty awkward and I don't know what Reth would make of it, but I felt it was important and it went down pretty well. And then we went back to the silly stuff. At least I assume it was silly stuff. I'd hate to think Gwen was serious about the moose.
Monday:
Early the next morning, I ran into Davis again and I remembered where I'd met him before, he was the landlord of a pub Meg and I had raided back in the gang wars. Good times. I left him to talk to the CKs about it - V and Vox didn't return in the morning and so we had to accept that they weren't coming home. With a heavy heart I headed up to the Lions to let them know.
There weren't many folks up in camp, but I did get to pass on the news to some of V's friends and then one of the Wardens handed me some armour they'd recovered from some chap who'd stolen Tope's sword - the sword they gave to Smiler - and I decided it was best to head off before things got political. I handed the armour off to Sam and bimbled back to camp in surprisingly good time for muster, which was good as I wanted to speak to the Dragons as a whole. Someone the previous night had sympathised over our losses and asked if that meant we were going to go back to our faction which I know was just them being nice, but I felt it was important to thank them and point out firmly that we were in our faction.
We the PBs and CKs - had been asked to take the "last line of defence" position holding the ritual circle, on the grounds that we were both hard enough to hold for a while and disciplined enough not to wander off. Before anything started though I did exactly that, to generally chat to folks and because when you're in the guild area you should always take the opportunity to pop by. In this case doubly so, because not many of the guild were fielding and so Gau'Ban had a surfeit of magical items that needed used. I left the guild with the training dummy's cloak, an amulet that let me cast high counter from time to time, and a higher power rating than I'd had in my life.
There were two rituals being done - the first was to collect the regalia and the second to remove the Wellspring from the Emperor. So I'm layman's terms first they were stripping the Emperor down and then attempting proctology, given Cail's description of how it got in there in the first place. The first was a considerably more easy job to defend than the second. Other than a dragon noticing us and almost heading our way most stuff managed to be held off the final line of defence, but it became obvious that following the first ritual the Emperor was considerably more annoyed (and presumably cold) and was pressing harder.
There was a sudden shout from the ritual circle and the Custodians of Evil all filed through the Dal'Riada, which for unknown but probably practical reasons was the best place for ritual proctology. Not all of them could fit before the void rift sealed, and then the ritual circle started making some extremely distressed noises. Four of the Watchers - Cosaint, Bliquis, and two others I couldn't really see - decided to jump into the circle and start walking around in ominous circles, which seems to be a popular hobby amongst ritualists.
"What's happening your Grace?"
"Uuuh..... well I think the ritual circle is doing its best to explode, and the watchers are trying to persuade it not to."
"Oh. Is that good?"
I shrugged "Probably better than the alternative."
Since the Emperor seemed to have vanished, probably to Dal'Riada as well, and his forces had decided that they couldn't get anywhere by attacking the ritual circle rather than just randomly attacking everyone, we headed over to join the main battle force. Pretty quickly we encountered a Cathayan mage who was clearly very excited to be in a real battle for once, and was chucking around Magebolts like sweeties at a pantomine. I stepped slightly in front of Fi and made myself obvious in subtle ways I'd not realised I'd been learning and sure enough, I was his next target and with a huge grin I countered that spell the way I'd picked up over years in the Void - make it dramatic, make it loud, and make it look like you could do another one if your life depended on it. Which was of course not the case, as the amulet Gau'Ban had given me was good for one spell every hour. Still, the mage clearly didn't realise that as he put away the pointy finger, grabbed his staff, charged, and rapidly fell over as Nemiel did what Nemiel does best.
Without the Emperor's leadership the Cathayans peetered out and by the time the Custodians had got back from saving the world the fight had been over for some time. Everyone was safe, the Emperor was safe and no longer evil and less possessed by ritual circles than he used to be, and Anariel reckoned that the Belt of Time could possibly be used to reconstitute Jack. So all in all, a successful Gathering.
Friday:
The King of Cymria was busy, but wanted to talk when we were not busy. I promised to do so as soon as both of us were not-busy at the same time, and caught up with him ten minutes before the final battle on Monday. However Kerr, and Squishy did a sterling job of not being busy for me at the right times, particularly Kerr who pretty much got everything sorted. Since Cuthbert was still wandering Cymria at large we assumed He was just getting to know our new home and generally showing His agreement with the plan to move, which was a great relief to many of the more devout of the unit. It looked like we would be moving to Perddu, which is pronounced Purthu, and next to the waters of truth, which is pronounced with as much drama as possible. Kerr spent the weekend correcting anyone who didn't use sufficient amounts of style when discussing.
Squishy was trying to make himself known to the mages of the faction by pointing out that basically he did literally everything you wanted from a mage with the possible exception of Enchanting yet. The point was made when one of those herb-mouth zombies (I'm sure there's a technical term for them, but I don't know it) went running across the camp and someone shouted "Stop him!". Squish leaned back in his chair, and the creature was stopped. If there's a point to high magic beyond looking flash, I don't think I've encountered it yet.
As dusk began to fall Gwen grabbed me and said they needed a rescue party to go after the people who'd gone to rescue the rescue party for the mission to the Jade Palace. This had all kinds of cock up written all over it, but the alternative was not helping and then folks would have definitely died instead of probably, so we went for it. Arriving at the Jade Palace we found that it was very pretty and inhabited by the odd short person and many many tall terracotta golems. And a number of fallen Dragons. Zolos Magnifico, our transporter, started setting up a quick exit as it was pretty plain we couldn't take these guys. One of them demanded to know who we were, somebody answered Dragons (which I must admit I think I would have prevaricated on given that we were the fourth group of Dragons to come stomping mud across his carpet), so the Cathayan leader demanded to know if we were there to answer for the Dragon nation's crimes.
I waited for the first Dragon to answer. Or whoever was in charge of this mission. Or one of the ranking faction members, of which there were a few. Or anyone, really. Kerrimar's balls guys, I've been in your faction a year and half of you don't admit we're Dragons yet. Ok fine.
"No, not exactly. No definitely not actually, at least not till we know what they've done and then we'll probably want to find out why too to be honest. We're here to collect our fallen and - I'm sorry, there's a guy there with glowy hands and it's really weird."
"I happen to be the Jade Emperor of Cathay!" declaimed the glowy hand man, proving my theory about why people who know more of what's going on should be the ones to negotiate. Still, he turned off both the fire and time gauntlets so I'm calling that a win.
The upshot was that as well as tramping mud across his carpet we'd also stolen his mum. I gave vague indications that I would investigate his claims and reinforced the desire to get our people back, or at least for him to keep them alive to bargain for his mum back. We got most back but he insisted on keeping the one in heaviest armour to make some point or other, and that was Constable Moo - Bigorn. I was still trying when Zolos transported us back. It was clear that there was no point to any further attempt.
The mood was a bit more subdued in the Cocks that night, until somewhat unexpectedly, King Frax came round to visit. More in keeping with usual terms, he asked me to stop calling him King Frax. I think he's scared that if we can persuade enough people he'd be stuck with it. In keeping with the tradition of Princes and Crown Princes before him, he'd had a rotten day and come to the Cocks to hide from the faction and chill out for a bit (we had Nahiosi singing with us at another point, presumably on similar though less regal grounds). Of course, he'd brought half a dozen bodyguards but I don't think he'd entirely meant to.
The Jade Emperor came round and we needed everyone we had to defend the camp - and also defend his mum, who considered the Dragons' involvement as less of a kidnap, more a rescue, and was insistent that the Emperor used to be such a nice young man until he shoved a Wellspring of Evil up his bum. Nice young man or not our people were dying, the enemies of the healer's guild had also sent some poorly timed minions who seemed considerably harder than the Emperor's, and Frax was clearly increasingly aware of the half a dozen warriors he'd brought to stand around looking important. Diplomacy was served as he agreed to release them to join the fight.
The problem we had was that in the dark it's hard to tell friend from foe particularly when not everybody knows you. Enemies were dragging people off to the transport circle so we had to keep charging forward and then it was difficult to ensure we had everyone back safe.
Three of our dead were returned to the command tent: the one I knew best was Amethyst. She, like the others, had been Magebolted and then hit with a corrupting ailment, so sending her pattern to the Ancestors was to priority once the danger was passed and those still living had been rescued. Sina did the necessary and I managed to dredge up one of the Dragons faction wake songs, since No Lion Stands Alone wasn't exactly relevant (and in many ways, hadn't been for years).
More excitement ensued down at the ritual circle as there was a lot of shouting, which we thought we should go and join. Some Jade Empire minions were doing a ritual, I'm not sure what the aim was but it involved having someone from each faction in the circle. I recognised Belenus, though not the others. Things kicked off, from within the circle I think, and the seal collapsed in a wave of noise. We rescued everyone and then a bunch of Dragons charged through the voidgate aiming for the Jade Palace.
"They are dead" Styx told me "Styx knows this, if they go to the Jade Palace then they are already dead."
"You never know." I replied, as much as anything because I'd seen who was in that party. "If anyone can I think it's probably that lot."
"No, they are dead."
Actually, I don't think any of the folks we lost that day were the ones on the mission, they mostly sauntered back through the transport circle some twenty minutes later. But I may be wrong, things were a bit hectic.
Frax made it back safely but the Lions were also hit hard and they lost both Nyanthi of the OEB and Dorian of the Freeblades during the night.
Saturday:
Miskin stepped down as high bard and McKenzie stepped up. I forced the kids to wait until eleven to begin the rounds with their shop as no one is up and ready to think first thing on a Saturday, let alone be ready to be jumped on by enthusiastic children trying to demonstrate how a bookmark works. Tragically for them though, in the middle of muster Su ran in to say that there was a member of my lance who had turned up in the Lions. They'd told her about Avalon then given her a cup of tea while they went to find one of us to talk to her. So of course I ducked out of the muster and me, V, Nemiel and Noctis rushed over to talk to her.
It was Bonfire, aka Alexandria Mayhem. I'd kind of given up thinking any more of us would make it back but it seemed she was as pleased to see me as I was her. That doesn't stop the odd wind up however and so when I gave her the quick run through of what she'd missed I omitted who was the current Prince Bishop. I did ask if she had any questions and given that she didn't at that point, I asked Frax and Sam for bets as to when she might find out. Sadly Bonfire reached Kerr before I did and so she didn't get the message. Bonfire came over and was sarcastically polite at me till I apologised, but in my defence we haven't had the chance to wind each other up for ages.
Sir Michael had taken over with the kids who were having fun with their shop, selling things for random prices (generally a stell for everything), so they didn't miss out. I thanked him but it was my duty day with the kids, so I took over and took them for lunch.
I met Master Gau'Ban while I was feeding my wards, plus Nyanthi's pair. Little Squirrel decided to cuddle him, which was met with an expression of polite confusion.
"Is it trying to stab me?" Gau'Ban asked, with mild interest.
"I don't think so, no."
Snowflake came over and decided to investigate what was happening too. As the pair of them started to nick the daggers from his bandoleer and throw them at him (well, I say at him. I mean inexpertly in his direction, despite being about three feet away), he gave me that look.
"I blame you for this."
"I blame me too."
The lass from the orphanage who was looking after Nyanthi and Karma's kids had to go, so having removed the dags from the enthusiastic children I agreed to go look after them in the Lions camp for a while which also gave me an opportunity to go say hi to people. Belenus had developed an interesting condition which meant that he randomly spawned angry mobs. Knowing Belenus this was pretty much like an early birthday present, particularly because they were uncontrollable, but apparently it was linked to the Jade Emperor mucking around with the circles so he probably doesn't get to keep them.
Adamu proved once again that he sees the world differently, as he handed me an orb created from the destroyed patterns of the PBs who died in the void rift of Belac, which had been used to power him back when he was a void creture rather than a full-blown elemental. Adamu is actually a great guy, but every so often he just doesn't get how people work. it was a kind thought and I tried not to be creeped out, though largely unsuccessfully. Once I thought about it logically, it was a better solution than any I could think of for them, it's just a rather unusual thing to be presented with.
Various things happened, mostly to other people as I was on small person duty and looking forward to Sunday when Sir Michael took over. (OOC: I'm generally fine with babysitting, but I really wasn't feeling it this event and the fact that they decided to skip kids plot then clearly got antsy because their friends weren't around certainly didn't help). One thing that did happen though was Carrion got his fire strand ripped in the same way Tyrell did at the Moot, though this time we thought we might have a solution. All it would take was a reckless ritemaster, and more power than was feasible. Fortunately both are pretty easy to come by, and 267 thaums later Carrion was alive and Alok was practically glowing in the dark, having collected a new and interesting way to screw up his pattern - though to be fair, the revelation that manipulating 5x the sensible amount of magic has some side effects wasn't a surprise to many.
Sir Michael took Riann for a traditional Albione meal which involved scones, jam and cream (not necessarily in that order) and - one must assume - curry and cheap lager. I note this pretty much exclusively for the glare he gave me when I suggested that, so I thought it must be true. And therefore needed a larger audience.
Rin came by wearing a mask, which he explained had many wonderful properties but also made him love turnips. Rin hates turnips. Except, he loves turnips. Kerr immediately offered a gold to the first person to bring her a turnip. Nobody was surprised.
I went to put the Swan kids to bed, when a major attack began so they were allowed to stay up until they ran out of thaums. Actually the healing station of small children about to go to bed was a pretty useful one, and we decided to do that again going forward.
The Jade Emperor continued to attack, as is his wont, and we were pressed pretty hard. I was healing one chap, while I watched Farwanderer sorting out Jack. Slowly, like my eyes were getting tired, Jack started to fade. I blinked, but the effect continued, faster and faster until he was transparent and still fading. Farwanderer yelled at him, but he was gone. We lost a number of others that night too, including Lanceman Horace, a lad just sent over from white lance that morning, and Moch Dar, the badger Geroid had introduced me too, plus another lad I knew by sight, and more besides. By this point in the weekend, I think we had lost thirteen not including Jack, who we were still holding out hope for.
Sunday:
Sunday morning we were greeted bright and early by a squinting and mildly embarrassed Lord Dragon just letting us know that if he'd said or done anything offensive last night he didn't mean it and wanted to apologise because he'd been extremely hammered. One of the people nearby mentioned that they'd lost track of him around the Tarantula camp, which surprised and concerned Cail as he'd been fairly convinced he hadn't been near that half of the field. Mind you, he didn't remember anything after standing on a table in the guilds and declaring himself queen of the blow job tree (other than being asked to leave), so he did accept his memory may not be 100%. He decided to extend his apology tour beyond the border of the camp and include pretty much everyone in the Hartlands. It may have been easier to just take out an ad in the Testaments.
Nemiel and Fi had headed back to Cymria overnight, and returned with some turnips. Kerr WAS pleased. Ryn was less so.
The Healer's guild fixed Alok at noon, and the scout's guild wanted to know what the faction was doing about Jack. As did I. Farwanderer had an idea and seemed pretty passionate about it, so I left it with her. It was good to catch up with the guild and as ever I learned more about the weekend there than I had the last two days. The Jade Emperor was trying to put together the regalia of Evil, eight items powered by fire, time, evil and chaos. The Custodians of Evil, who were almost universally petitioning for a better name, were trying to stop him. There was also a regalia of peace and therefore presumably one for each cadre, but that seemed to be a problem for another day. Also Lord Percy of the Gryphons had had a grand idea for the factions to enslave the guilds but the guilds weren't keen. This also seemed like something other people could deal with and so I decided that while I wasn't going to push over those with greater interest, I was going to make sure Jack got dealt with.
Several hours later however, nothing had happened and Anariel amongst others was getting more and more miffed. Since a miffed Anariel can be problematic, to say the least, someone had organised a tracking rite and I ended up serendipitously in the right place and the right time to help out. We found that Jack was in Dal'Riada, but seemingly in all of it simultaneously. Since "spread thin across a wide area" is not a naturally tenable position, this seemed like something we should try to sort out quickly.
Heading over to the Dragons with Anariel, I found Farwanderer again who rushed off to find Cael and get started on the next step of what we might be able to do - work out where in Dal'Riada he was and get an idea of how to bring him back together. I had a few errands to run, so I left it in Farwanderer's capable hands.
When I got back to camp, the plan was to get the Dal to look over the winter months, perhaps spend some time in the great library researching what might have happened - basically, the people who most deperately wanted Jack to be ok didn't have the skills they needed to do anything about it, and the people with the skills were most of them were too heavily involved in other things to put them aside at this point. Everyone I approached knew someone else who would be better to ask, but who wasn't around. I didn't want to just fall back on the people I knew but I was getting more and more frustrated and the Pisces part of my brain was getting more and more stabby, so I invoked the principle that Karen Gets Things Done and between her and Geroid they persuaded Zolos to add it to his list of rites for an hour's time and then it was just a case of Farwanderer and I getting stuff organised for him.
Zolos was leading a rite with all the children of the Dragons to break Simon's control over the kids he'd kidnapped, which involved a guitar-fuelled sing-song to the Ancestors, then he followed it up with a somewhat less creepy ritual using the still-beating heart of a possibly dead murder fae. Sadly we didn't get the answer we were hoping for - Zolos and Farwanderer both came out of the rite with images and aftershocks that led them to believe that there was nothing we could do to reconstitute Jack as it wasn't the right time. From the way Farwanderer took it, it sounded very much like the way fae talk about "returning in the spring". Ultimately it seems he was hit by the time gauntlet in the same way as Tyrell was hit by the fire one and while we were able to save Carrion after that the attack of Tyrell had been irreversible, and Carrion's had had to be done quickly. Hopefully Jack's being weird would give a bit of wriggle room but I wouldn't hold my breath. (ooc: I know Dan had to go home but in game it seems pretty final so I hope if they bring him back it will be with a feasible excuse)
The day continued into night, many things happened, few of them relevant to me. Snowflake accidentally started busking and made 2 gold and some necklaces, Ryn refused to eat a raw turnip, two of the Dragons won the entertainer's competition. The Swan kids sold a lot of "happy thoughts" to the guilds, scrolls with cheerful messages (or at least cheerful to their mind), which seem to have gone down well. I have it on reasonable authority that Taci has kept the one saying You're A Good Example To Others as evidence.
Much later, once it was dark, it was just another fight against the Jade Emperor, if indeed there is such a thing, when there was a shout from the front that all healers had to get into the command tent RIGHT NOW or they were going to die. No one at the back knew what was happening, but that was a pretty definite and desperate-sounding shout.
I went to the command tent, confirmed my suspicion that it had no back exit, and opined that corralling into a dead end was not the greatest survival tactic. Someone told me that I was entirely right, but no one at the back had the authority to do anything different. The part of my brain that had kept me alive for seven years in the void and a similar length of time in Erdreja decided that this was bullshit and I headed back to the front to face whatever healer-destroying evil was out there head on.
It was a dragon. An actual massive dragon. So yeah, I was very aware that I had to stand back to avoid just becoming a healing sponge when I get caught in some of the major effects that were blasting out, but it still seemed a better idea than being trapped in a dead end tent and at least that way I could help quickly pick up the wounded before they got eaten. This was a real concern, and was how we had lost some Dragons previously. The Dragon was seen off, fortunately at the gate, but shortly afterwards a cry came up that there was a dragon down at the guilds. Not really sure whether that was a wounded comrade or the same creature we'd just faced but ready to rescue just the same, the warband charged.
"Why do we do this again?" someone, I can't remember who, asked me. I gave the answer without thinking:
"Because we're heroes and they need us and that's what they do."
Suddenly I remembered asking that same question of Polly, years ago, and getting that same answer back. The fight Polly died in. I gritted my teeth and offered a quiet prayer to Kerrimar that we would all return safely.
It was the bitey kind of dragon, and everything was bedlam. It had the Emperor with it (I presumably hadn't noticed him up at camp), who took the opportunity to rip Cail's pattern thread which meant that Alok took his newly-repaired pattern and blasted it with even more magic than he had done for Carrion. Oh, and the Dragon attacked the rite halfway through. I lost track of the rest of the unit at that point as people hurried in all directions. V headed one way, Nemiel another and I a third, the main aim being to keep the Dragon away from Alok's rite. Successfully, I might add.
I came across Nemiel lying unconscious in a chair so I sorted that out and we started trying to gather everyone together. I ran into Hatstand (I think Hardtstaddt, but I can get behind the nickname), who told me that he had been bullied into a deal with the Taker of Names to collect 100 patterns for him by the moot next year. To that end, he needed my help. I immediately volunteered my assistance as well as that of Karen and any other seamstresses I happened to know, and I will be sending him as many different patterned offcuts for the blanket he's making the creature as I possibly can. Also Karen's face when I told her I needed her to help me gather a hundred patterns and drag them to a ritual circle was almost as good as Irinaye's when she found out.
We couldn't find V, having last seen him about three minutes before the dragon came in, and so headed back to camp hoping he'd headed up before us. He had not. We went back and searched the guilds and ritual circle, but couldn't find him anywhere. Hoping that he had taken Vox and gone to another faction to make a deal, we figured that wandering around the whole field looking for him would be pretty dumb and just hoped he made it home. Either way, there was nothing we could do now.
Back in camp, the CKs had discovered a monumentally drunk lad who looked vaguely familiar, and seemed to have stuck a tabard on him. I thought that was more our thing, but whatever. White lance had decided that sending reinforcements in dribs and drabs was the best thing and had sent another single lanceman to assist. I went to have a word with Sergeant Major Kerr to ask why this was policy and was told that it was because White Lance hate her and want to suffer, because two can play at that game. I have total confidence in her abilities.
This night, we learned that the Dragons hadn't heard a lot of our songs and so some of the perennial favourites came out. McKenzie nearly choked at The Crawl and Baron Antoine (introduced as being "The Ballad Of Bad Ideas", which seemed like a fair description), and with Sina's help I sang the updated version of Never Going Home that I'd adapted, adding a few verses to bring it more up to date. I felt pretty awkward and I don't know what Reth would make of it, but I felt it was important and it went down pretty well. And then we went back to the silly stuff. At least I assume it was silly stuff. I'd hate to think Gwen was serious about the moose.
Monday:
Early the next morning, I ran into Davis again and I remembered where I'd met him before, he was the landlord of a pub Meg and I had raided back in the gang wars. Good times. I left him to talk to the CKs about it - V and Vox didn't return in the morning and so we had to accept that they weren't coming home. With a heavy heart I headed up to the Lions to let them know.
There weren't many folks up in camp, but I did get to pass on the news to some of V's friends and then one of the Wardens handed me some armour they'd recovered from some chap who'd stolen Tope's sword - the sword they gave to Smiler - and I decided it was best to head off before things got political. I handed the armour off to Sam and bimbled back to camp in surprisingly good time for muster, which was good as I wanted to speak to the Dragons as a whole. Someone the previous night had sympathised over our losses and asked if that meant we were going to go back to our faction which I know was just them being nice, but I felt it was important to thank them and point out firmly that we were in our faction.
We the PBs and CKs - had been asked to take the "last line of defence" position holding the ritual circle, on the grounds that we were both hard enough to hold for a while and disciplined enough not to wander off. Before anything started though I did exactly that, to generally chat to folks and because when you're in the guild area you should always take the opportunity to pop by. In this case doubly so, because not many of the guild were fielding and so Gau'Ban had a surfeit of magical items that needed used. I left the guild with the training dummy's cloak, an amulet that let me cast high counter from time to time, and a higher power rating than I'd had in my life.
There were two rituals being done - the first was to collect the regalia and the second to remove the Wellspring from the Emperor. So I'm layman's terms first they were stripping the Emperor down and then attempting proctology, given Cail's description of how it got in there in the first place. The first was a considerably more easy job to defend than the second. Other than a dragon noticing us and almost heading our way most stuff managed to be held off the final line of defence, but it became obvious that following the first ritual the Emperor was considerably more annoyed (and presumably cold) and was pressing harder.
There was a sudden shout from the ritual circle and the Custodians of Evil all filed through the Dal'Riada, which for unknown but probably practical reasons was the best place for ritual proctology. Not all of them could fit before the void rift sealed, and then the ritual circle started making some extremely distressed noises. Four of the Watchers - Cosaint, Bliquis, and two others I couldn't really see - decided to jump into the circle and start walking around in ominous circles, which seems to be a popular hobby amongst ritualists.
"What's happening your Grace?"
"Uuuh..... well I think the ritual circle is doing its best to explode, and the watchers are trying to persuade it not to."
"Oh. Is that good?"
I shrugged "Probably better than the alternative."
Since the Emperor seemed to have vanished, probably to Dal'Riada as well, and his forces had decided that they couldn't get anywhere by attacking the ritual circle rather than just randomly attacking everyone, we headed over to join the main battle force. Pretty quickly we encountered a Cathayan mage who was clearly very excited to be in a real battle for once, and was chucking around Magebolts like sweeties at a pantomine. I stepped slightly in front of Fi and made myself obvious in subtle ways I'd not realised I'd been learning and sure enough, I was his next target and with a huge grin I countered that spell the way I'd picked up over years in the Void - make it dramatic, make it loud, and make it look like you could do another one if your life depended on it. Which was of course not the case, as the amulet Gau'Ban had given me was good for one spell every hour. Still, the mage clearly didn't realise that as he put away the pointy finger, grabbed his staff, charged, and rapidly fell over as Nemiel did what Nemiel does best.
Without the Emperor's leadership the Cathayans peetered out and by the time the Custodians had got back from saving the world the fight had been over for some time. Everyone was safe, the Emperor was safe and no longer evil and less possessed by ritual circles than he used to be, and Anariel reckoned that the Belt of Time could possibly be used to reconstitute Jack. So all in all, a successful Gathering.
