# The Elfblood Wanderers--New Story Hour!!



## Bob Aberton (May 27, 2002)

This is my first attempt at a story hour, so bear with me.

First, before anything, you should know some house rules of mine:

All arcane casters use the "Witch" Alt. spell list (DMG), and all spells require a Spellcraft roll to cast.

Attack and Defense are now skill-based. 

I don't have the player's character sheets on my computer yet, so don't ask.  Below is the current cast of characters.

Nystyra "Elfblood" Mageblood
Female Half-Elf Wiz. 4

Eliad Pelgrin
Male Gnome Rogue 3

Math of Greatree
Male Human Druid 3

Mathonwy of Greatree
Male Human Druid 3

Damara Khaza'ar
Female Human Fighter 3 (not playing currently; will be back soon)

Eiric Skaldsson
Male Human Barbarian 3

Diesa Swifthammer (retired from campaign)
Female Dwarf Cleric 2


I'll get around to posting stat blocks soon.


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## Horacio (May 27, 2002)

New story with interesting home rules... hum...
Horacio is tuned on...


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## cthuluftaghn (Jun 19, 2002)

It's been a while since you first teased us.  Looking forward to your story.


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## saFire (Jun 21, 2002)

Speaking as a player in Bob Aberton's campaign...

He apologizes for not writing sooner, but the computer kept eating his posts. He will try again, though!!!


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## cthuluftaghn (Jun 21, 2002)

That is an aggravating problem.  For long posts, I tend to type them in Word Pad, saving often.  Then I copy/paste into the message board.  Saves a lot of lost typing.


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## Bob Aberton (Jun 22, 2002)

Whew...

Finally, I got the first installment through without it being eaten...

Prelude

Nystyra Mageblood was lost.  Very lost, both literally and figuratively.

She had been an apprentice to Adrin Emberlord, Keeper of the Flame of the Brotherhood of Merlin.  For nine years, ever since she was 8 years old, she had been learning the Art of Magic under the watchful eye of Adrin himself.  Al though there had been many other apprentices in the Brotherhood of Merlin, she was the most talented, or so Adrin had said.  He hinted it was due to her mixed heritage.  In truth, she was only part-human.  Her mother had been a hardworking farmer's daughter, but her father...he had been something else entirely.  Erwyll Mathkeir Haddryn yn Ymwng'Tylwyth yn Dwr'cadaeru*, as the name implies, was not a human man.  Some folk in the village near which Nystyra was born whispered that her father was an incubus, a carnal demon come in the night to Nystyra's father.  The truth was, Erwyll was neither man nor demon.  He was a Fey, a reclusive spirit that lived in the the forests and danced in twilight meadows and sang under the full moon.  Nystyra's mother, Petra, had one ngith wandered far into the forest and gotten lost.  She was lost and afraid, but Erwyll, captivated by her charms, made himself known to her, and he wooed her.  She stayed in that forest for many months, emerging almost 7 months later in the advanced stages of pregnancy.  To her poor morified father, this would have been strange enough, but the Elfinwoods played strange tricks with time, and, though Petra had been lost for nearly a year in the woods, when she came out of thoses forests, she had only been gone for two days.

Thus, she never married.  Instead, when her child was born, she moved away from the village and away from the talk that always followed her.  There, beside the road, she made a small living gathering and selling firewood.  Nystyra grew up the daughter of a poor woodgatherer.  Until Adrin came.

He had come in the middle of the night, during a fierce storm, seeking shelter, disguised as an old and wayworn traveller.  He stayed for two days, while the storm lasted, and meanwhile, Nystyra discovered him studying a spellbook by the fireplace.  She watched, amazed, as he conjured up a candleflame out of thin air and made it dance around her like a firefly.  It was then that she decided that she wanted  to be a wizard, too.  Meanwhile, Adrin had heard the story of how her mother had gotten lost in the woods and emerged two days later, in the late stages of pregnancy.  His guess that Nystyra was a special child was confirmed when she showed a surprising aptitude for wizardry.

Her mother had not wanted to let her go, at first, but Adrin had persuaded her that it was a golden opportunity for Nystyra, for wizardry is a difficult thing to master, and it must be learned young.  She had better chances of success in life as the favored apprentice of a wizard high in the hierarchy of the Sorcerer's Guild.

So she had spent most of her life being educated to become a master wizard, an adept, in her own right.  Only the day before she had been presented with her spellbook and Charm**, showing that she was considered a fully qualified adept in the ranks of magicians.  Now it was time when she should go out into the world to make her fortune.

The only problem was, she didn't know where to go, or what to do.

End Prelude.  Next Installment:  Nystyra's First Adventure


*Literally, "Erwyll the son of Mathkeir the son of Haddrynn, of the Clan of Wellspring Rock"  Note that among the Fey, lineages are traced through the mother, not the father.

**A sort of Arcane focus.  A character can put up to 25 XP in it at one time, then the XP stored in the Charm is used to cast spells.  A first level spell costs 2 XP, a second level spell costs 3 XP, and so on.


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## cthuluftaghn (Jun 22, 2002)

Good start!  I'll stay tuned in.


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## Bob Aberton (Jun 22, 2002)

Thank you, cthuluftagn.

Together with saFire, that makes two people who read my story hour...

Hey, its a start


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## Bob Aberton (Jun 22, 2002)

Chapter 1

Nystyra sat in the corner of the bar, feeling miserable.  She had wandered aimlessly over the past day, eventually ending up here.   It wasn't a very high class bar, it was more of a cheap wayside hostel.  Still, the wine wasn't bad.

With nowhere else to go, she had come to this inn and decided to follow the advice of the bleary-eyed steward of the Sorcerer's Guildhall - when in doubt, get drunk.  Listlessly, she offered her cup up to be refilled, while half-listening to the music of a minstrel with a lute in the corner.  Judging by the music, not only was the musician apparently deaf, but deep in his cups, and the instrument wouldn't have been hurt by a little tuning up.

Soon enough, however, she felt something that roused her out of her torpor.  A hand was scrabbling around in her pocket, reaching for her spellbook!  Quickly, she reached out and caught the offending hand by the wrist.

"Oo, m'lady, please don't hurt me!  I was only...err...looking for something I lost!" said the pickpocket.

"In my pocket?"  Nystyra asked acidly.

"Eh...that wasn' one o' me better excuses, was it?"  I would-be pickpocket asked, grinning beatifically.  "Well...a man's got to be making a living don' y'know..."

Nystyra held out her cup to refilling, and began massaging her temples.  This was too much.  All she wanted to do was fall asleep and wake up in her old room in Caer Merddyn.  Still, she supposed, this thief needed to be taught a shaarp lesson.  Putting one hand to the little casket that hung around her throat, holding her Coal, she tried to focus her mind on the glowing ember, concentrating through a wine induced haze.  There was a sudden flare that flashed out of nowhere, and then her pocket seemed to speak.

"DON'T PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE THEY DON'T BELONG!"  "said" the spellbook.

"Oo, interesting!  Yer a witch, then?"  the thief said, fascinated.

Nystyra was nonplussed.  "Fascinated" was not the reaction she had been hoping for.  "Fearful," maybe.  Or "Terrfied."  But not "Fascinated."  This was clearly no ordinary pickpocket.

"No, I'm no ordinary pickpocket,"  the pickpocket said.  "Strictly speaking, I'm a Gnome."  As though to prove his point, the pickpocket suddenly began juggling a trio of torchflames.  

"I'm seekin' me fortune in the world, y'see,"  the Gnome continued.  "And, seeing as we know each other now, I'm thinking maybe we could travel together. I'm Eliad Pelgrin, by name and by nature*, by the way."

Nystyra's head throbbed, with wine and confusion.  A Gnome?  Travelling with her?  Travelling where?  She looked around the common room, full of drunks and with the thumb-fingered minstrel still plunking away on his lute in the background.  Anywhere, she supposed, would be better than here.

"Yeah, anywhere woudl be better than here,"  the Gnome said.  ""Course, we need money.  I don't suppose you have any?  Didn't think so.  Hmm..."  Apparently out of sheer boredom, he snapped his fingers at Nystyra's tankard, and as a tavern patron walked by, he held the tankard out toward the man.

"D'ye have any money?"asked the tankard.

The man peered at the tankard with bleary eyes, and then dropped a silver piece in it.

"Nice trick," he mumbled.

"Thank ye kindly," the tankard called out.

Eliad fished the silver piece out of him tankard.  He grinned.

"I have an idea," he said.

...

Next Installment comign soon...


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## cthuluftaghn (Jun 24, 2002)

Anybody that uses the word "torpor" in a complete sentence has my attention!  Thus far, your tale is crafted.... beatifically!


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 12, 2002)

And now...

Chapter 1 

Thus, Nystyra and her new companion decided to leave town.  Of course, they had no money at all, but ELiad proved a crafty manager of finances.

The Gnome was a bit of a jack-of-all-trades.  Sometimes he would perform magic tricks in the street - his "talking tankard" proved a great hit - and sometimes he would merely pick pockets.  However he acquired his money, he and Nystyra soon had enough to not only pay off Nystyra's bill at the inn, but also buy provisons and even a cross-grained old donkey who Nysytyra dubbed "Pebbles."

Neither one of them, of course, had any idea where they intended to go, but Eliad's carefully planned method of travel seemed to involve walking aimlessly mor or less in one direction until he found a place interesting enough to hold his attention for more than 5 minutes.  So it was that they trudged up hill and down, across the broken moors and rocky outcroppings of the foothills of the Pillars of the Sky, a long rocky spur thrusting out fromthe north slope of the Tor, for two days.

Nystyra was beginning to wonder if she was mistaken to travel with Eliad, as, for two days, they had not encountered any living thing larger than a squirrel for two days, when suddenly, up ahead of them, crouched on a rock, was something larger than a squirrel.

As they drew closer, they could see it was a man, clad in moss green and russet garments.  An eagle, a noble creature  whose wings spanned a greater space than Nystyra with her arms spread wide.  The man had his head in his arms, and he didn't see Nystyra at first, but the eagle did.  Fixing her with a glare like a razor, it ruffled its feathers shifted around on the rock with an air of subtle warning, as though to say Master, we have company.  The man heard it and looked up.   

He was a slender, tall sort of man.  He had green eyes and auburn hair that fell to his shoulders.  Nystyra noticed that he was, if not handsome, pleasing in appearance.  But his normally pleasant face was thin and drawn.  He looked like he had not shaved in days, and a long, nasty-looking bruise marred his forehead.  His eyes blazed with a mixture of rage and grief.

"Ahh...Hello," Nystyra said, somewhat uncertainly.

The man stared at her numbly for a second, and the looked pointedly at her spellbook, which was slung from her belt puch, in full view.

"You...You might want...to stay away from there," he croaked, pointing toward a small town which lay about a mile away on the horizon.  As he lifted his arm, the sleeve of his shirt fell back to his elbow, revealing a tattoo of blue woad on his wrist - a blue snake, coiling up toward his forearm.  Nystyra knew by this tattoo that this strange man was a Druid, one of the few worshippers of the Old Gods left in Avalon.  The Druids were fast disappearing into the mists of time.

"Why?  What is going on that I should stay away from there?" Nystyra asked.  She was not about to throw away a chance for a comfortable bed and a hot bath, after two days of trudging through seemingly empty and seeming endless moorlands.

"A witch burning...No, no, a Druid burning,"  he said, half sobbing.

"Eh...one of your fellows?"  Nystyra asked, awkwardly, but intending sympathy.

"My brother!" the man cried.


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 13, 2002)

Another installment is on the way, and its a long one.

Until next time,

BUMP


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 14, 2002)

Nystyra, for the first time in a long while, was shocked into speechlessness.

"I thought witch burnings were a thing of the past," she said.  In Avalon's early history, there had been quite a few, but a martyr named St. Ursian had changed all that.  In memory of St. Ursian the Martyr, who was beloved by Druid and Christian alike, the Church had agreed to stop burning Druids and preaching against the Old Gods.  A few fanatics had lingered, however, as some will always do, and they passed down their somewhat prejudiced views as well.

"Try telling that to them!" said the Druid furiously.  "For all my life, I lived in that town, me and my brother.  We healed their sick, we blessed their crops, and even shared a cup of wine with the local priest.  But a year ago, he died, and things began to get worse.  Then, a few days ago, a mendicant friar - a witch-hunter - came by, and he began to rouse up the town folk against us.  First they cut down the Great Oak, for which the town of Greatree is named, and the Dryad that had lived in the tree died of grief.  Then they came for myself and my brother, Math.  Silvercoat - that's my brother's pet wolf - tore the throat out of one, but the witch hunting friar took it as proof that the wolf was a familiar spirit, a demon in a wolf's body, and they overpowered Math and bound him to a stake to be burned.  I tried to fight them, but they stoned me and left me to die.  Math will be burned at noon, in two hour's time.  I cannot free him."

"Maybe we could help," Nystyra suggested, moved by his plight.  "What is your name, by the way?"

"My name is Mathonwy of...well, formerly of Greatree.  And thank you for your offer, but really, you'll only die.  You look to be a Fey, and that alone is enough.  They will catch you, and they will burn you as a demon."

"Not if I had help," Nystyra said.  His words, you look to be a Fey, and that is enough.  They will burn you as a demon, had given her an idea.  Surely the Fey would not be too pleased that the Druids, always their friends and allies, and, morever, servants of the Lady of the Lake, like themselves, were being burned.  Her father's clan had lived in a place called Wellspring Rock by the men who lived in the area.  Dwr'cadearu was the Elfish word for it.  Perhaps it was not too far to be reached in two hours.  She was grasping at straws, she new, but she could not very well give up and tell this man, 'Sorry, can't help after all.'

"Do you know of a place called Wellspring Rock?" she asked him, not having very high hopes.  It would be quite ironic if the Emberlord's apprentice died by burning at the stake.

"Yes...it is only an hour's walk, but I have never been there.  That deep into the Elfinwoods, only a high ranking Druid would tread, for fear of becoming lost, or enchanted by Elfin-harps..."  the Druid said, bewildered.  "But don't you see?  That is an hour in the wrong direction!  What about my brother?  What is in the Elfinwoods that would help me?"

"An army," Nystyra said, pleased with her own cleverness.

*	*	*

The first sign that they were being watched was the arrow that passed by Nystyra's head, so close that it severed a stray strand of hair.  

"Oo, don't hurt us! We surrender!" Eliad squeaked, covering his head.  He was obviously no bastion of courage, for he was shaking like a leaf and peering around anxiously.  It was probably, Nystyra reflected, the first time he had ever been, or thought himself to be in, any more danger than the chance that a stray footstep might squash him.

Then, the Fey stepped out of the brush.  He was short and willowy, with black hair streaked with gold, and eyes that continually and subtly shifted color, going from luminous grey to hazel to green to silver and back to grey again with every change in the light.  His skin was brown and his ears were tall and pointed.  He was clad in deerskin and carrying a bow and quiver.  He didn't .

"Mortals, why have you come to this place?  It is death for your kind to trespass here, in the realm of the Lady's* People."

"I am no ordinary mortal," Mathonwy said.  He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt, to display his Druid's serpent tattoos that coilned around his wrist.

"And I came to see my father, Erwyll Mathkeir Haddryn yn Ymwng'Tylwyth yn Dwr'cadaeru," Nystyra said, brushing back her hair to display her pointed ears.

"Your father is well known," the Elf said, "His children do not often come back to see him, but that you know his true name proves your intent.  And a Druid is with you, so you may be trusted.  But I must need place an enchantment over the both of you, in case you play me false."

"If that is what it takes," Nystyra said. 

The Elf began singing softly, under his breath, and suddenly Nystyra felt dizzy.  The world was spinning and her eyelids felt as heavy as castle doors.  She slid to the ground, asleep.  Across the clearing, Mathonwy did the same thing.

*	*	*	

When she was awake, she was staring an Elf in the eye.  It was a very familiar eye, the same shade as her own.  And the nose was eerily familiar too.

"Are you...Do I know you?" she asked.

"You must be Nystyra," the Elf answered.  "I am Erwyll Mathkeir Haddryn yn Ymwng'Tylwyth yn Dwr'cadaeru.  And, I suppose, your father.  What was your mother's name?  Was it...Dierdre?  Or was it Enid?"

"It was Petra," said Nystyra, feeling justifiably angered.

"Oh," answered Erwyll shortly, noticing her irritation.  The coversation dwindled from there, rapidly to a halt.  Soon, another Elf, an Elf woman, informed them that the clan had assembled and was anxious to hear the intruder's news and decide whether or not to punish them.

"They are going to burn my brother!" Mathonwy said, as soon as they reached the Counsel Oak, a huge tree that seemed older than the earth in which it grew.  A hundred Elves were waiting, sitting in a great circle.  The oldest ones sat their places with knowing expressions, while the younger ones laughed among themselves and at Eliad's jokes.  As a fellow Fey, though not of the same race, he had been trusted almost immediately.  Most  of the Elves were armed, with bows and arrows and bronze knives (iron is as deadly as poison to those of the Tylwyth Teg, or so Adrin had taught Nystyra).  Mathonwy's exclamation produced very little response.  Apparently the Elves thought it some inscrutable human custom to burn each other alive regularly.

"Perhaps you should be a bit more...expressive," Nystyra suggested in an undertone.  Speaking in public was not something she liked at all, for she was prone to trip over her own tongue at the worst possible times.

Mathonwy tried again. 

"My brother and I are Druids," he said.  "We are friends of the Lady as much as yourselves."  And he related the entire sad tale to the assembled Elves, finishing with, "And thus, you see, it is a gross insult to the Lady that a Druid should be burned in a town a bare league distant from her domain.  Indeed, when the passion of the townsfolk for burnings is exercised on my brother, where will they turn next?  They will be burning the very trees of the Lady's domain next!"  It was an impassioned oratory, delivered with much feeling, and when Mathonwy was finished, the counsel exploded.  Every Elf lept to his or her feet, shouting things along the line of "Outrage!" and even "Burn the mortals!  Let us see how they enjoy it!"

Because Elves are ageless, and live for many millenia if not slain by violence, generally they take a long to time to decide to do anything in unison.  Most of the time, every Elf acts as he or she sees fit, and then argues with the others why they should do the same.  

This was why Nystyra was pleasantly surprised when, almost immediately, the entire clan, from the elder, who had been centuries old in the time of Arthur Pendragon, to the youngest, who was barely a century old, took their weapons and set off at a quick jog through the forest.

In the town square, the mad friar was delivering an impassioned speech.

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!" he cried, foaming at the mouth.  "As the Good Lord cleansed with fire and the Spirit, so we cleanse this wretch before us with fire!" The friar's bloodshot eyes bulged out of his head and he grew purple in the face.  He looked on the brink of apoplexy as he raged on.  "With fire we cast out this plague for our midst!  The fires he fraces now will be candleflames compared to the fires of Hell in which he shall roast forever for his sins!"  He was now gesticulating madly as he screeched, pacing back and forth in front of the pyre.  He looked, Nystyra thought, rather like he had rabies.

The man tied to the stake was a burly, brutish looking man dressed in the green garments of a Druid, though his were torn and bloodstained.  Stubble dotted his chin, and half his face was crusted with dried blood.  He tugged frantically at his bonds, alternately cursing his fate and praying to his gods, Ceridwen and Llyr and Herne the Huntsman, to grant him mercy.

They had almost been too late, Nystyra noted.  A with a torch was already approaching the pyre.  Eliad grinned, seeing a chance for mischief.  He gestured toward the torch, beaming gleefully as the torch spoke to its startled bearer.

"PUT ME DOWN!" shouted the torch.  The man nearly dropped it.  His face went pale and he made an odd croaking noise.

"Sorcery!!" shrieked the mad friar.  "The foul demon seeks to save himself! Fear not, for we are doing the Lord's work!"

Nystyra decided to get involved.

"Funny," she said scathingly.  "It looks like you're doing murderer's work."

"Silence!"  the madman screamed, searching the crowd.  Nystyra stepped out of the crowd, her spellbook and Coal in full view.  "Another witch!"  the friar screeched.  "Burn her too!"

Some townsfolk stepped hesitantly forward, but Nystyra cupped her hands around her coal, concentrating on its fiery depths, muttering a hurried incantation.  The coal dimmed slightly, as power went out of it to fuel her spell.  Several townsfolk fell down, asleep on the spot. Others pulled back, giving Nystyra a wide berth. Others stepped forward, still intending to sieze her.  They never got that far, for the Elves, who had been hiding in the crowd concealed by enchantments, stepped forward, menacing them with drawn bows.  The crowd drew back.

"Hear me out!" Nystyra said.  Public speaking had never been her strong point, but she knew lives hinged on what she said.  This was no time for self-doubt.  "These men have been friends and healers for years.  Why do you now turn on them merely at the word of a self-proclaimed witch hunter.  Have not these Druids healed your sick and made your crops grow?  Did you not look on them as friends?  Why must this change, merely because this man says so?  Look at him.  He has more the look of a rabid dog than a holy man about him."  As she spoke, Mathonwy began untying Math from the stake.

The "rabid dog" was watching his triumph slip away before his eyes.  Desperately, he tried to rally the crowd.  Frothing and breathing heavily, he pointed his finger in the general direction of Nystyra, Eliad, and the two Druids.
"They are demons! Demons, I tell you! Kill them now!" he cried.

But the crowd was losing sympathy and respect for him.  Nystyra caught a few mutterings, "Ye know, she's right.  The thin one healed me daughter when she was like to die from the fever..." "Remember young Caddaric when he were mauled by that bear? Them two stitched him right up..." "Aye, they've shared my food and drink a dozen times..." "He does look like a mad dog, doesn't he?..."

"Burn them!" shrieked the mad friar.  His forehead was covered with sweat, he was twitching madly, and his eyes looked ready to fly from his head.

"Not very creative, are ye?" Eliad asked with an innocent grin.  "Didn' get much schoolin' when ye were young?  I bet ye can't even read that flyswatter ye're carrying."  He pointed to the dusty looking Bible the man carried.

"Back, demon!"  shrieked the mad cleric, frothing and spitting and turning purple in the face.

Meanwhile, Mathonwy had freed his brother from the stake, and they began to walk away.  The mad "friar," seeing his victims escaping, picked up a torch and made a rush for the pyre.  He never got that far, for a bowstring sang and his hand sprouted an arrow.  As he stumbled back, a crossbow bolt struck his backside.  Eliad lowered his crossbow and beamed in a self-congradulatory way.

"Oo, but that was a good shot wasn' it?"

Nystyra tried not to laugh as the friar capered about, holding his posterior.  She put on her stern face and said in a commanding voice, "Bad hound! Begone, you rabid dog, and should you return, elf-arrows will be waiting for you!"

The friar looked as though he was about to say something defiant, but then the full force of Nystyra's spell caught him.  His face turned a pasty white, and he looked upon Nystyra as though she waas his worst nightmare.  With a yelp not unlike a beaten cur, he threw down his Bible and ran away, in the direction of the mill pond. 



* * * ** * **  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **

Whew! that took a while...

DM's notes:  Although Nystyra doesn't have any ranks in Diplomacy, her player's good roleplaying gave her a +2 bonus to her check when she made her speech.  

Next installment coming later today.

By the way, if you are reading this story hour, please post comments, if only to say "This sucks," because I want to know that someone reads my story hour...


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## saFire (Jul 14, 2002)

excellent writing, huzzah, huzzah.
i remember that episode well. one of the few times nystyra didn't make a fool of herself...

just kidding
Any way, keep up the good work!!!


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## saFire (Jul 14, 2002)

oh, i didn't see that last part about my (drumroll please) good roleplaying!! I feel so appreciated... (takes a bow) anyhoo... thanx for the compliment, Bob.

Ta-ta


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## Spider_Jerusalem (Jul 15, 2002)

I just read through this and I'm enjoying it so far. And don't be so downhearted at the lack of response... all story hours take a while to get going (and there are a great deal of readers who don't log on, and they are probably reading...).

Couple of things though...

Make sure you go over your writing for mistakes before you post it. I know this might sound finnicky, but grammar faults and spelling errors really jar the reader out of the story. There are only a few, so nothing much to worry about.

Does this mean there are 2 druids in the party?

Does that mad friar come back? - I liked that guy.

Keep writing! It might only be 3 of us now, but the numbers will rise! 

Spider.


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 15, 2002)

A new comment! Oh Joy!

I'm glad to see my Story Hour's finally generating some interest...

I'll try to edit better in the future...

Yes there are 2 Druids....

And the mad friar might be coming back, though not in the near future...there'll be plenty other memorable characters, I promise...


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## Piratecat (Jul 15, 2002)

This is good! Nothing is more fun than a mad friar.


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 15, 2002)

The Almighty Piratecat!!!

*Rolls out red carpet*

Yes! I have readers! And famous ones too!


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 16, 2002)

Bump

Next Installment coming soon


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 18, 2002)

Next Installment:Before the crowd turned ugly again, the elves escorted Nystyra and her friends back to the road, where they made ready to depart.  But first, Erwyll, Nystyra's elfish father, spoke.

"Nystyra, I may have fathered many bastards over the centuries, but you are truly my daughter.  And as a father, I bestow a name on you, a fitting name.  Nystyra Elfblood, I name you, for you have done a great service to both Druids and Elves in warning us of that poisonous snake who was stirring the common folk against us."

"Elfblood!  Elfblood!" the Elves shouted with one voice.

"Three cheers for Miss Nystyra!" squeaked Eliad.

Nystyra smiled uncontrollably, enjoying this adulation.  She could get well used to this, she thought.  No sooner had she blinked her eyes, though, then the Elves had disappeared, gliding back into the forest without even a word of goodbye.

"Ah...my lady," said the Druid, Math.  His voice was harsh and raspy like a saw blade when he spoke.  "I...owe you my life, and I, ah, I would travel with you...dammit, never mind.  Mathonwy, you do the talking..."

"You'll have to excuse him, he's, well, not really comfortable around people.  What he means is, he owes you his life, and we have no place to go.  That is, we'd rather not return to Greatree, or we may find ourselves on a stake again.  If you don't mind, we will travel with you, at least until we find somewhere else to go," Mathonwy said, picking up where Math had, somewhat awkwardly, left off.

Nystyra tried to explain that she didn't even know where she was going, but it was clear to her that Math and Mathonwy were going to be stubborn.  Besides, it might be refreshing to have someone to talk to beside Eliad, who had the attention span of a magpie and as much inclination toward "borrowing."  And Mathonwy was handsome, she thought...

And so it was that they struck off to the north again, once again following the road.  They had found Math's pet, Silvercoat the wolf, huddled in a roadside copse next to the sign that proclaimed that Greattree was That Way.  Mathonwy proved an intelligent and sociable travelling companion, though Math wasn't sociable at all.  Nor was he particularly intelligent, either.  He barely spoke, and when he did, it was in short, one-word sentences.  He seemed more at home with his wolf than among humans.  

They learned from a passing farmer a few days later that there was another town not far from there.  It was called Urglath, a dwarven name.  Apparently, it was located near a played-out mine and had formerly been inhabited by a clan of dwarves called the Swifthammers.  They managed to glean these tidbits out from the farmer's mostly off-topic chatter, about his wife and daughters and fine young son, and how well the crops were doing this time of year, and didn't they hear that it was to be a long witner coming, and the harvest was doing quite well, and had they heard about Goodwife Sharp and her lover, that it was the talk of the town, and - they had a hard time shutting him up.  He was chattier than Eliad, which is saying a lot.

But they found Urglath eventually, by following the farmer's carts.  It was a small, sleepy town - or it would have been had it not been teeming with soldiers and camp followers.  Nystyra wondered if they had had the luck to visit right in the middle of a  war.  But as there didn't seem to be any fighting going on at the moment, the travellers strode through the town gates.  Inside, it was chaos.  Through narrow, twisty streets, crowds of people, from mud-covered farmers to dangerous looking soldiers, shouted and screamed and laughed and shoved one another.  Chickens, cats, and stray dogs chased each other through the streets, somehow miraculously not getting trod on.  And, of course, there were farmers.  Lots of farmers, in carts, who all seemed to have greatly short tempers, poor eyesight, and only the vaguest idea how to drive a cart.  It was as though someone had taken the entire population of Avalon and crammed into a space about the size of a tilting field.

As soon as they got into the gates, they had to immediately dodge a farmer's cart that flew down the road, with a furious peasant at the reins.  Another cart came speeding up the street from the other direction.

"Oo, I can' watch!" muttered Eliad.  He covered his eyes as the two carts collided, their horse breaking free of their traces and galloping down the street.  The carts both flew to pieces, vegetable and sheaves of wheat and ripe red apples flying everywhere, pelting the crowd.  The two drivers climbed out of the wreckage of their carts, then clenched their fists and began tearing into each other.  The Elfblood Wanderers, as they had named themselves on their long walk to this town, walked on, toward the sign of an inn in the distance.

After dodging another farmer's cart, picking their way through a jumble of sleeping drunks, pushing their way through a street fight between two rival mobs of unruly soldiers, and ducking a pan of dishwater thrown from a second story window, they finally made it to the inn, the Leaky Keg Tavern and Rooms, feeling like battle weary veterans who had fought their way through a besieging army, returning home to their nice, safe, fortress.

The common room was as crowded inside as the streets were outside.  Farmers, merchants, soldiers, and thieves rubbed shoulders in the cramped, smoky room.  The smells of stale beer, sweat, and food were overpowering.  Nystyra surreptitiously cast a minor spell, a cantrip that Adrin had called Prestidigitation, to create a waft of pleasant, pine-scented air under her nose.  She decided to get a room right away, to get away from the smell and bustle of the common room.  Math and Mathonwy also wanted to get away from the common room.  Nystyra could already tell that they were missing the fresh, woodland air of their abandoned grove in Greattree.  Eliad, on the other hand, didn't seem to mind at all.  Bearing a tankard only a little shorter than he was, he made his way through the crowd toward a table in the corner, where a odd, grim-looking woman sat.  She was so short, her feet didn't touch the ground.  Birds of a feather...,Nystyra thought.

Math, Mathonwy, and Nystyra fought through the crowded room to accost a harried-looking serving girl.  The tavern goers gave the them a wide berth - these strange travellers, with pet wolves and eagles and mystical look to them were not to be trifled with.  Although the serving girl looked to have seen sixteen or seventeen summers, she was barely five feet tall.  Short and stocky, she looked much like the grim woman in the corner table.  Family? Nystyra thought.

"Excuse...Miss!  Miss! Excuse m - " Nystyra tried to get the girl's attention as she darted around the room with a huge tray balanced precariously on two fingers.

"Rooms are upstairs, 4 silver crowns a night.  You get breakfast and supper for another 2 silver crowns.  Ale is a copper a mug, plonk is a silver a glass, good wine is a gold crown a glass.  Anything else?" she said quickly, not even looking at Nystyra.  Her whole manner was taciturn and hurried.  

"Yes, there is something else," Nystyra said.  "Who is that woman over there in the corner, the short one?"

"Oh that's my aunt, Diesa," the serving girl said.  In an instant her whole manner had changed, from taciturn and hurried, to friendly and conspiratorial.   "She's actually a Dwarven priestess, if you can believe that.  She normally lives underground - that's why she looks so pale.  Anyway, me and her, we belong to the Swifthammer clan.  Only I don't live underground - I wanted to see the world, you know, but all I see is the inside of this inn.  Anyway, I gather that she's come out from under her rock, so to speak, because she's looking for something...or was it because someone died?  Maybe its both.  Anyway, she's been very, well...grim lately, so I guess it must have been pretty important, what she's lost.  Privately, I think she could use a little help, she spends all day wandering around in the foothill out there and praying to her goddess, but she won't admit that she needs help.  She's stubborn as a boulder.  But anyway, who cares about that?  I mean, she'll find whatever she's looking for eventually.  If you ever need me, I'm here all the time, and - "  She never got further than that, because some soldiers at the other end of the common room were banging on the table and calling for service.

Somewhat later, Nystyra was in her room, sitting cross-legged in a pentagram design she had drawn on the floor with a piece of chalk.  She held in her hand her spellbook, a huge, wieghty grimoire she had written herself, under the instruction of Adrin Emberlord.  She immersed herself in arcane signs, sigils, and incantations, scraps of seeming meaningless rhymes, recipes to potions, and instructions on casting various spells.  Ginger, her cat and familiar spirit, prowled around her, occassionally crawling over her lap.  It was sometimes hard to believe that the lazy, orange cat was a supernatural spirit from Otherwhere that she had bonded to during a lengthy ritual.  It was this bond that allowed her to cast spells, and her Coal was the symbol of that bond, wrought by fire, branded with her own sigil, and marked with her blood and her familiar's blood.  Some sorcerers preferred using wands or staves for their casting, thinking they were more traditional, but the Coal was Nystyra's primary spellcasting tool.  So every day, she studied her spellbook and annointed the Coal with her own blood, infusing it with her life to keep it magical, and too keep it bonded to her.  

As hours passed and Nystyra didn't stir, suddenly her door creaked open.  Eliad walked in.

"Miss Nystyra, wake up!" he stepped over one of the pentagram's lines.

Nystyra was concentrating deeply on her Coal, her spirit floating on the Astral plane, in limbo between this world and the next.  When Eliad's foot broke the continuity of her warding pentagram, she felt a cold rush of air on her face.
Her eyes filled with visions of fire and blood.  She felt burning on her skin.  She was burning up!  Faces, leering and hideous, and all aflame, danced before her eyes.  Faster and faster, and faster still!  She was surrounded by phantoms, human shapes wreathed in flame.  Now they were dancing.  Around and around in a mad dance, they twirled, grinning horribly!  They were reaching for her - they would touch her, and she would die, she would join them, she would go mad...far off, she heard a scream.  It was her voice, she was screaming, and then, she felt as though she was falling.  Falling and falling, her spirit was literally falling back into her body.  She opened her eyes.  The horrid phantoms were gone.  The fire was gone, she wasn't burning up any more.  Eliad stood before her, looking concerned.

"Never," she said hoarsely.  "Ever.  Do that.  Again."        

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And that's why, kiddies, you never disturb a wizard(ess) while at her studies.


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 18, 2002)

*Bump*

come on, thread, please don't die

DON'T DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.................!


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 20, 2002)

Bump

Please, someone, anyone, read my story hour AND REPLY TO IT, I am getting very discouraged...it does not seem to be worth it any more...


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## Spider_Jerusalem (Jul 20, 2002)

If you keep updating, people will keep reading.

And I don't mean to sound harsh, but stop with the pleading, it only serves to put people off. 

Just knuckle down and post an update rather than bump it up again. Having said that, your story hour is on my "to read" list, so you have at least me reading. 

Don't give up. Thats the main thing.

Spider.


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 20, 2002)

will do, Spider...

*           *                  *                      *                     *               *      
"You did what?" Nystyra half-shouted, feeling quite exasperated.

"I...er...voluteered our services to th' dwarf lady down in the inn.," Eliad said.  Never before had Nysytra found his beatific grin quite so annoying.

"And she's waitin' for us right now," finished the Gnome.

"Why did you volunteer our services?" Nysytra asked, with forced calm.

"Well, she seemed like a nice sort, and well, she did mention she needed 'elp findin' someone she knew, and I thought   
that, well, ye know, its...its somethin' to do," he explained patiently.  "An' she did say that we would get rewarded..." his voice trailed off, and he looked at Nystyra as though he was a fisherman dangling a lure in front of a recalcitrant fish.  Why not? thought Nystyra, and swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.

"Very well," she said.  "But how do you know we'll get rewarded?  And what is she looking for?"

"Well, y'see," Eliad said, pulling a glittering gem out of his pocket and juggling it deftly.  "I think, where she's got some o' these, there'll be more forthcoming."

"You picked her pocket?" Nystyra said, her voice rising incredulously.  "One moment, you're saying we should help her, and the next moment, you're picking her pocket?"

"Ah, don't worry about it, I'm only borrowing it," he said soothingly.

Nysytra could only follow him, shaking her head incredulously.

Outside the inn, it was a grey, misty dawn, altogether an inauspicious time, Nystyra thought, to go cheerfully marching off, perhaps into oblivion, following the lead of a mysterious dwarf.  

Once they got outside the town limits, the view was no less encouraging.  The sun had just barely risen, and clammy whisps of fog still clung to the rock-strewn, grey hills.  Math, who Nystyra had heard was a tracker of some renown, was conversing with Diesa, who produced, with some hesitation, a short, gold chain, and Math let Silvercoat smell it to his heart's content.  Then, they waited, while the wolf sniffed around among lichen-blotched boulders.  And they waited.  Then, they waited some more.

Finally, Silvercoat sat up on his haunches and gave a long, ululating howl that sent a chill through Nystyra's bones, and darted off, bounding away toward a distant, grey hill.  The Elfblood Wanderers ran after, lead by Diesa. 

Half an hour later, they came upon Silvercoat.  She was sitting in front of a boulder cave, howling at the sky.  Try as they might, Math could not get her to go inside the grotto.

"Looks like your dwarf stopped here," he said, examining a scuffled stone which bore recent scratchmarks, seemingly from iron shod boots.  "But...there's something unnatural in there.  I can smell it, and its blotting out the dwarf's scent - Silvercoat can't track him anymore."

The Elfblood Wanderers looked at each other.  None of them wanted to be first into the cave.  Tiring of their timidity, however, Diesa walked in.

"Cowards," the dwarf woman said.  They could hear her voice echoing in the depths of the cave.  "There is noth - aah!"

Hearing her shout, the Wanderers looked at each other, looked at the cave, then looked at each other again.  Then they charged.

Inside, they could see what appeared to be a wizard's or an alchemist's laboratory.  Flasks of strangely colored liquids and odd-looking powders rubbed shoulder with massively thick grimoires with such subjects as diabolism and Goetic magic.  Slumped against the wall  was the body of a man, clad in robes that were covered with strange, allegorical symbols.  He had obviously not died a pleasant death, for his face was grotesquely swollen and tinted purple.  His eyes bulged out of his head, and his hands were clenched into fists.  His lips were peeled back to make for a macabre death-grin.  Diesa and Mathonwy, both healers, examined the body.

"Poison?" they both exclaimed at once.

"But who would want to poison a hermit, even one who practiced Black Magic?" Mathonwy mused.

"He bears all the signs of poisoning - some sort of poison that strangled him with his own throat muscles," Diesa countered.  "On the other hand...there is something...unnatural - or rather, supernatural..."

All of the Wanderers grasped what she meant by this, all turning to stare at the complicated design on the floor.  Nystyra remembered this from Adrin's lessons on summoning.  It was called a Tetragrammaton, and it was used to summon...

"Demon!" Eliad screamed, as a...something appeared out of thin air and stabbed at him with a wicked-looking stinger, fortunately just barely missing.  It was like a tiny little person, with a twisted expression on his face.  It looked cruel beyond human comprehension.  It had a tail, with a vicious little stinger on it, and it hovered in the air by means of bat wings.

Nystyra whipped out the shortbow that she had never had the occassion to use, sighted along the shaft, and fired, missing by a mile and nearly skewering Math.  In response, the Imp turned its attention on her and flew toward her.  Nystyra dropped her bow and called to mind a spell that would daze the vicious little thing for a moment or two.  Grasping her Coal, she fumbled through the incantation as best she remembered it, and concentrated.  Something, however, went wrong.  A wave of magic rolled out of the Coal, striking...Eliad.  

Eliad had been raising his crossbow at the thing, when Nystyra's failed spell hit him.  His eyes went blank, and gazed at the crossbow vaguely, wondering if he had been planning to do something with it.

Haste Makes Waste, Nystyra thought inanely, ducking as the Imp skittered by her head, striking out with his stinger.
However, Math unlimbered a heavy, spiked oaken club from his back.  With a wolf-like howl, his raised the club above his head and charged, striking the Imp a truly nasty blow.

The Imp, however, seemed unfazed.  The only damage to it that Nystyra could see was a single hole in one of it wings.  With a grating cackle, it drove its stinger into Math's shoulder.  Math staggered backwards, face purpling, eyes bulging, as the supernatural poison was pumped into his veins.

"Ceridwen help me!" cried Mathonwy, loosing a sling-stone at the little devil.  Apparently, his Goddess wasn't feeling very attentive that day, because the sling stone tore through the Imp's chest with a sickening crunch, but as soon as the wound was made, it healed itself.

Meanwhile, Diesa was trying to heal Math, who was retching and making choking sounds as the poison continued to burn in his veins.  

"Magic!" cried Mathonwy.  "We need weapons of magic!"  And with that, he emptied his pouch of slingstones into his hand, holding them high in the air, and intoning a prayer, a chant to Ceridwen.

Green Lady, Great Mother,
In travail and deadly danger
protect us this day.
From your great Cauldron
annoint our blades
With the magic of wind, of waves
Of trees and forest glades

To Nystyra's sorcery-trained vision, she could see that there was a faint green aura now surrounding Mathonwy's slingstones.  Loading one into his sling, he hurled one at the Imp, which was harrying Diesa as she helped Math to his feet.  The stone took the Imp on its shoulder, cracking the bone and throwing the wing out of joint.  The Imp spun around with terrible fury on its face, but Math had got to his feet, and, laying his hand on Silvercoat's snout, he intoned a chant.

Herne the Horned,
Lord of Beasts,
Keep well your own.
Strengthen her heart,
Her teeth with magic hone.

Now the wolf, too, bore a faint green aura on her teeth.  His spell done, Math collapsed to the ground as the poison overwhelmed him again.  But Silvercoat sprang forward, and seized the Imp in her teeth with a sickening crunch, and wrestled it to the ground.  Mathonwy ran forward, and, while Quickfeather, his golden eagle, and Silvercoat held the little devil pinned to the ground, Mathonwy loaded his sling with one of the magic stones and proceeded to brain the imp.  Again and again he struck, spattering himself and Silvercoat with black, evil smelling devil blood, until the imp, with its head smashed in, finally expired in a puff of greasy black smoke.

Later, outside the cave, Nystyra surveyed the butcher's bill.  Eliad, hit with her failed spell, was still in a slight daze, and Math lay on the ground, stiff and unmoving, with poison beating in his heart.  Both Diesa and Mathonwy were ministering to him, attempting to revive him.  Meanwhile, imp blood proved to be a devilishly staining substance, and not even spells would remove it from her clothing.

By nightfall, Math had recovered conscious and had apparently fought off the poison, but remained weak -he could walk no more than a few steps and all the Wanderer's combined strength could barely shift his massive frame.  

So, as much as they would rather not have, the Elfblood Wanderers made camp right outside the cave. 


By morning, Math was feeling much better, although he was still weak, and Eliad had finally remebered his  name.  So,      
after breaking camp, they continued on, walking toward the large, rocky knoll distant on the horizon.  The foot marks on the ground were heading toward the knoll, which Nystyra, in a fit of boredom, had creatively dubbed "Greytop," with steady purpose.  From the way they were sunk deeply into the ground, Math decided that the dwarf must have been wearing heavy armor, which, to Nystyra, implied that he feared an ambush, or he would not walk so far with a hundred-odd pounds of steel weighing him down.

By that afternoon, the Elfblood Wanderers had reached the foot of Greytop Knoll.  Silvercoat bend her snout to the ground, and, giving a short bark, bounded off, up the rocky path, toward a glint of steel halfway up the knoll.

By the time the two-legged members of the party had reached the spot, Silvercoat was already there, prowling around  
what looked like a stiff, cold statue.  It was a dwarf man, and he was dead as stone.  The glint of steel they had seen from the foot of the hill came from the evening sun, glinting off the hilt of a sword embedded in the dwarf's chest, keeping several red-feathered arrows company.  The rocks scattered around, and the grass, were thickly smeared with dried blood.

Upon seeing the dead dwarf, Diesa let her war-pick drop from her hands, and rushed forward, falling on her knees beside the body.  

"No...no...this...this cannot..." she whispered in a stunned, grief stricken voice.  She took one of the dead hands, and searched frantically for a pulse.  After a few seconds, she drew back, realizing that this dwarf was beyond her help, and had been for days.  She sat there, a tear running down her cheek, blinking and staring numbly at the body.  Then she screamed.

"Ulfgar, NOOOOO!"

****************************************************

That took me some time...

Next Installment, coming soon

Oh, and too any who found my constant pleading for replies annoying, I sincerely apologize.  It's in my nature


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## Wicht (Jul 21, 2002)

Just a quick post to let you know I have read and enjoyed your story thus far.


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 21, 2002)

Score! Another reply!

Thankyouvermuch, Wicht.


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## Horacio (Jul 21, 2002)

At last I've found time to read it 

And I like it a lot!

Interesting world, can you tell us more about it?


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 22, 2002)

I'm flattered, Horacio 

Well, my world used to be detailed in a thread on the old boards, but it sorta died.  I'll tell you the basics:

The campaign is set in Avalon, about 1,000 years after the "death(he's still alive in a vegetative state somewhere in the Elfinwoods)" of King Arthur of popular legend.

For 1,000 years, it has been ruled by the Nherianthir kings, descendants of Owain (Uwaine) of the Fountain, Arthur's nephew (son of Morgan LeFay and Urien Rheged of North Wales). 

However, 100 years ago, the last Nherianthir king died, and there were no heirs left.  Avalon had been left a wasteland by three centuries of war by then.

So Avalon is now a wild, lawless wasteland, with only a few poclets of civilization left (High Moor Hold, Glastonbury Abbey, a few scattered towns and one or two fiefs, and Caer Mellot*).

If you want a good idea of Avalon's geography, look up a map of Glastonbury village, and the surrounding area.

The Tor (Glastonbury Tor), elevation about 600 feet, is the center of Avalon.  On top of the Tor, there is an Abbey established by Joseph of Arimathea when he came to England.

To the north, there is the Chalice Well, where the Holy Grail (the Sangreal) and the Lady of the Lake dwell.  

To the south of the Tor is Wearyall Hill, slightly smaller than Glastonbury Tor and on the top of Wearyall Hill is the Holy Thorn, a thorn bush that sprang up when Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff in the ground.  This wonderous plant only blooms on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, no other time in the year, and is held to be sacred by both Druid and Christian.

To the southwest of Wearyall Hill is an area known as Allamid.  This area, about 50 miles by 55 miles, is a desert, brought about when all the rivers and streams watering it were diverted, turning it into a waterless, dusty plain.  It is inhabited by the Tribes of Allamid, a group of Celts famous for their horsemanship and their strictly matriarchal society.

A long, rocky ridgeline extends North-east of the Tor.  This ridgeline is known as the Pillars of the Sky.  It terminates in a rocky, bleak coastline known as the Icy Wastes, for the cold winds that blow their.

The Elfinwoods, the primeval forests where the Fey (highly modified Elves) dwell cover all of Avalon from the East slope of the Tor to the coast.

If you want any more info, just ask.  And does anyone know how I would attach a computer generated map of Avalon to a post?

*"Caer Mellot," if you run the words together, becomes Camelot (Caer Mellot=Caermellot=Carmelot=Camelot).  Clever, isn't it?


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## (contact) (Jul 22, 2002)

There is an attach file button on the message compose screen.  

Great setting, very intriguing.  Do you have a lot of meta-plotting in store, or do you imagine Avalon as remaining fairly static?

Where do the D&D monsters come in to the picture?


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 22, 2002)

Thanks, contact...I'm kinda computer stupid....

Meta-plotting?

Well, the world will remain fairly static for now.  However, if Nystyra survives this campaign, she will play a small but important role in a story Im writing, set 100 years in the future, dealing with the re-instatment of the Nherianthir line and the heralding of Avalon's Guilded Age.

My plots will revolve mostly around characters and their relationships to each other.  Not to spoil anything, but there are some unexpected twists in store for the Wanderers sometime down the road.

I'll post a map of Avalon sometime soon..


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## Horacio (Jul 22, 2002)

That info makes your story even more atractive.

Thanks!


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 23, 2002)

Just a *Bump* for the night...

Next installment tomorrow (hopefully...maybe not....)

All the maps of Avalon I try to make are just too many bytes, so You'll just have to imagine the topography in your head...


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 24, 2002)

Edit: Deleted double post.

Read the other one


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 24, 2002)

And now...It was near dark before Diesa stirred from her place by Ulfgar's body.

"We will bury him now," she said hoarsely.  It was not a suggestion.  It was a command.

"Its...err...its getting dark," Mathonwy said, somewhat timidly.  "Do you think we have time to build a cairn...we have to make camp, and..."

Diesa pierced him with such a baleful, bloodshot glare that he gulped and fell silent.

So a cairn it was.  Grunting and sweating, Math carried a pair of  60 pound rocks under each arm, while Diesa used her pick to break up the boulders around them.  Mathonwy pitched in as well, rolling boulders down the slope to where Ulfgar lay.  Even Nystyra pitched in, although it was making a shambles of even her tough, wool-and-leather travelling dress.  Eliad attempted to move a small stone, gave up, sat down, and then jumped up and began working again when Diesa gave him a sharp rap with the flat side of her pick.

Nystyra was fuming at Diesa's high-handed treatment of them, but she supposed she would react much the same way to the death of a comrade.  Math and Mathowy were also angry, though they took pains not to show it, Nystyra could see them muttering under their breath.  Eliad was far too cheerful to be angry.  Ever.

It was dusk by the time the cairn was finished.  Math and Mathonwy gently placed Ulfgar's body inside, then hoisted a capstone onto the cairn.  Diesa changed her robes to a priestly black, and passing her stone-carved holy symbol over the cairn, chanted a warrior's death-song in Dwarven.  Everyone stood around the cairn and listened to Diesa's prayer.  Though they could not understand the words of the hymn, they could feel the weight of sorrow behind it.  Nystyra saw a tear coursing down Math's stubbly cheek, and even Eliad fell silent, the smile gone from him face for once in his life. 

When the prayer ended, Diesa changed back into her travel-stained clothes and chain shirt, but lingered by the grave while the Elfblood Wanderers began unpacking their gear to make camp.

"Good-bye, Ulfgar," she said softly.  Then she shoudlered her pick and strode over to where the Wanderers were setting bedrolls and gathering firewood.

"We will not camp," she said decisively.  "We move on."

"What?" all the Wanderers said at once.  They didn't mind terribly helping to bury Diesa's dead friend, but what was the point in trying to track him in the dark?  He was dead and buried, which Mathonwy - not unkindly - pointed out.

"We must find his killers," Diesa replied.

"How d'yer expect me to track them in the dark?" Math rasped.

"I can see in the dark," Diesa said smugly.

"That's lovely.  I can't," the Druid growled back.

"Light a candle, then.  We must find Ulfgar's killers.  Not only do they richly deserve Dwarven justice, but they have taken Smedir," Diesa replied brusquely.

"Diesa, this has gone far enough.  We didn't mind helping you find Ulfgar, and we didn't complain when you told us to build a cairn instead of make camp, but we can't track his killers in the dark.  The trail will wait," Nystyra said.  As de facto leader of the Elfblood Wanderers, she decided to put her foot down.  After saying her piece, she strode off to her bedroll.  Math and Mathonwy gratefully followed.  Eliad also went to his bedroll, but not without giving an apologetic look to Diesa.

Muttering furiously to herself, Diesa shouldered her pick and strode off into the night.

The next morning, she was back in camp, sitting by the fire.  

"I thought you were going to hunt down Ulfgar's killers?" Nystyra said.

Diesa mumbled something to the effect that she couldn't find them, looking very embarrassed.  Because Diesa had a somewhat prickly attitude, and because Ulfgar's death had only made her even more prickly, Nystyra wisely didn't bait her any further.

Meanwhile, Math, Mathonwy, Silvercoat, and Quickfeather returned, Silvercoat with a dead pheasant clutched in her mouth, and Quickfeather with a squirrel in her beak.  Eliad, brandishing an enormous butcher's knife almost taller than he was, skinned and plucked the game, and then set them on spits to roast.  After much prodding, Eliad finally convinced Diesa to share the small keg of Dwarven mead she had brought with her, and Math produced a flask of Fire Brandy, a strong drink made from distilled apples and pears, spiced very strongly.   Then Eliad revealed his hidden talents as a cook.

Breakfast was a hurried meal of sausages, eggs, and pheasant, washed down with Fire Brandy or Dwarven mead.  Diesa, though no longer quite so anxious to break camp this time, was still impatient, and Silvercoat paced around and around the cairn, trying to find the trail, while Math carefully examined the rocky ground with a sausage in one hand and a mug of Fire Brandy in the other.  

Math had warned that the trail would be old, and it was.  Try as she might, Silvercoat could not pick up a scent.  However, he found some scuffed-up rocks and a single footprint leading away north, and that was enough for him.

There was no running after Silvercoat this time, for Math proceeded at a slow and deliberate pace, examining every imprint in the ground, every scuffed rock, and every crushed twig.  Once he got lucky and found a red-fletched arrow, like the one that the Ulfgar's killers had used, lying by the side of the trail, apparently having fallen out of a quiver.

So on and on they trekked.  And on and on some more.  Math was truly a superb tracker.  At one point, all they had to go on was a single crushed blade of grass, but Math didn't even lose the trail then, and they found another red-fletched arrow a little further on.

So this thin little trail led them to the shadow of the Pillars of the Sky.  And  then there they were, crouched in a small copse, watching an old ruin of a holding, flying a pure red banner.

"Psst!  Miss Nystyra!" Eliad called.  He had been scouting the holdfast, using Gnomic cunning and stealth.  "It's an old ruin, but it's still got walls.  The gate an' drawbridge are both open, an' there's three or four scruffy men in the gatehouse.  There isn't too many of the bandits, though.  I dinna think this'll be much trouble.  Come here now, slow and silent-like, that's the way..."

The former castle was so overgrown with shrubbery, small trees, and creepers that they had no difficulty creeping up to the drawbridge, within bowshot of the gatehouse.  Eliad loaded his crossbow and took careful aim.  Mathonwy and Math had come to the conclusion that they could beseech the vines for help if the enemy came out, using an entangling spell.  Eliad waited a moment, and then his finger twitched on the trigger.  The man at the gatehouse window suddenly clawed at the quarrel in his eye.  Nystyra drew a bead on the second head to show itself at the arrow slit, but her arrow skipped harmlessly off the left side of the slit and shattered on the stone wall.

Then, there was the sound of shouting from inside the gatehouse.  Throwing caution to the winds, Diesa hefted her war pick and charged through the open gate.  Math and Mathonwy followed, as did Nystyra, but Eliad took a different path.  Replacing his crossbow on his back, he began to climb the crumbling stone walls of the gatehouse, taking advantage of the ivy that enveloped the wall.  

While Diesa and the Druids took the stairs up to the gatehouse, Nystyra waited with her bow bent in the shadow of the portcullis.  Eliad had by now reached the arrow slits, and seemed to be considering how best to make his entrance  
when an arm, a hand, and a spear thrust out of one of the arrow slits and nicked him on the shoulder.  Nystyra fired again, this time hitting the hand that held the spear.  The hand and spear withdrew, and she could hear a muffled curse from inside the gatehouse. 

However, distracted by the nick to the shoulder, Eliad missed a handhold and fell.  Nystyra caught her breath in alarm, but then, from inside the gatehouse, she could hear Mathonwy's voice chanting a spell.  The ivy vines suddenly came alive and snatched Eliad out of midair, then lifting him up and onto the roof.  Which immediately collapsed under his light weight.  Fortune favors the fools, Nystyra thought.  Now Nystyra, seeing Eliad was safe, hurried up the stairs into the gatehouse.

Pushing her way through the half-demolished door, a scene of chaos met her eyes.  Math was beset by three sides, and Silvercoat was covering his back.  Mathonwy was trying to hold back a scruffy-looking spearman with his sling while Quickfeather darted around the room, clawing at everyone's eyes with her talons.  Diesa had just killed a man and was in the process of killing another, and Eliad was running around the edge of the room, pursued by a burly man with a rusted sword.  Nystyra, summoning up the magic of her Coal, Commanded Eliad's assailant to die, and the man sprawled to the floor in a coma.  Instead of thanking her, Eliad squeaked "Behind ye, Miss Nystyra!"

Nystyra was still puzzling over that when a rusty axe traced a bloody line down her back.  Eliad darted a crossbow bolt over her head, nicking her assailant in the axe arm, which failed to stop him at all.  So he tried a different tack.  

"PUT ME DOWN, B*TCH!" ordered the axe-man's axe.  The man stared at it suspiciously, giving Nystyra a chance to call to mind another spell.  In her mind, she pictured her request to the Coal, and recited the incantation that she remembered from her book.  A wave of magic which she - and nobody else - could see clearly as a pulse of bright, red light, veined with the smoky blackness of an enchantment, rolled forth from the Coal, striking the axe-man squarely.  His eyes suddenly popped out of his head as he stared at something fearsome that only he could see.  His face blanched, his jaw dropped, his axe dropped, and he turned to hurry down the stairs, only to be blocked by his companion axeman.  Pushing and clawing, the victim of Nystyra's fear enchantment tried to push past his comrade, who was trying to push his way through to get to Nystyra.  Finally the axeman got tired of his frightened comrade, and, with one stroke of his own axe, cut him down.

"Yer a pretty wench, aren't ya?" the axeman said, eyeing Nystyra lecherously as he advanced lazily toward her.  Nystyra began wishing her travelling dresses had higher necklines.  She risked a glance backwards.  There was no one to help but herself.  Darting backwards to giver herself room, she cast another fear enchantment at the man, but
It had no effect.  Apparently he was more strong-willed than his comrade.  She would need a different spell now, a killing spell, not merely an enchantment.  Adrin had taught only one such spell, and he had told her to use it only in the extremest need.  She closed her eyes and began concentrating.  She opened her mouth to say the incantation, but her assailant lashed out with his axe, gashing her arm.  Concentration rudely broken, she stumbled backwards, holding her wounded arm.

"Now don't be tryin' yer witchy tricks, slut," her attacker said.  "Just come along nice and slow like, an' don't make me use this again." He brandished his axe.  "I figger I think o' somethin' ta do with yer," he said, grabbing his crotch and grinning.

It was do or die, Nystyra thought.  She clutched her Coal once more and began the incantation.  When the man lashed out again, it wasn't with his axe.  He grabbed her dress roughly, and she felt his hands grabbing for her bodice as she finished the incantation.  For a second or two, nothing happened.  Then, there was a roaring like a fire, and gout of flame burst out her fingertips.  He screamed and jumped away as the fire washed over him.  His clothes and hair ignited.  Nystyra could smell the awful stench of burning flesh.  The man, now little more than a human bonfire, finally collapsed into a charred heap.  Nystyra retched at the smell of charred flesh.  Now she could tell why Adrin hated to use spells like that. 

Turning around, she saw that her companions had dealt with their respective foes, though not without cost; Eliad was somewhat battered, Diesa was bleeding from a head wound, and Math dripped blood from a dozen wounds.  One of the brigands had gotten away, however, and they decided that they did not have the time to patch each other up, although the Druids and Diesa did use what healing magic they had (not nearly enough).

Three-quarters of the bandit-occupied castle lay in ruins; one quarter, and the dungeons, was still in use.   The next room the Wanderers and Diesa came upon was small room, a guardroom of some sort.  When Math burnt down the door with ancient Druidic magic, they surprised three men, all wearing red armbands.  Two were gambling and dicing, the third was drinking ale in a corner.  They stared stupidly as the Wanderers strode in, led by Diesa, with a killing fury apparent in her eyes.  None of them had weapons on except belt knives, although there was a spear leaning on the wall next to the drunkard.  He lept up and made a grab for it, but Nystyra, grasping the Coal in its casket, chanted an incantation that sounded like a lullaby, and, waving her hand in slow lines back and forth, as though she were weaving a net, set out a wave of gentle, almost peaceful magic from her Coal.  The two gamblers fell, but the spearman charged Nystyra.  He recieved a javelin (from Math), a crossbow quarrel, a slingstone, and a taste of Dwarven holy magic for his troubles.  When he fell, Diesa stooped down beside the sleeping men and raised her pick.

"What are you doing?" Nystyra asked, though she had a pretty good idea.

"They are Ulfgar's killers.  They deserve death," Diesa shot back.  The pick began its deadly descent, arcing toward the first sleeper's forehead.

"Are you a healer?" Nystyra asked pointedly.  "Or are you a killer?"

The pick stopped, inches from the sleeper's forehead.

"What would Freya, the Mother of Dwarves, think?" Nystyra asked, pressing her advantage relentlessly.  Nystyra could see the turmoil on Diesa's face as she tried to sort through the situation.  Finally, she stood up and walked out the doorway.

"Come, let us go," she said shortly.  As they left the room, Nystyra saw Silvercoat snap the sleeper's throats.  So much for that, she thought wryly.

Very few rooms in the ruin were in use, except for the armory (the armorer promptly surrendered), and the great hall, whose doors they were outside of at the moment.  

Both Nystyra and Mathonwy called up spells to mind.  Math wound up and took a swing at the door with his club.  Diesa did the same with her pick, and Eliad loaded his crossbow.

It all went like clockwork - for the first few moments.  The burst open, and both Mathonwy and Nystyra began chanting their respective incantations.  Eliad killed a man with a crossbow to the throat, Diesa and Math waded in swinging, aiming for a man sitting at the head of the table, dressed entirely in red, and Mathonwy and Nystyra's spells took effect without a hitch.  Half a dozen of the brigands were cought by the spells, either falling asleep or finding themselves pinned to the table by the rushes on the floor when the rushes suddenly cam alive.  Both Diesa and Math scored hits, but only minor ones.  Then things got ugly.

Math took a spear in the belly.  Dropping his club, he clutched at the spear and groaned in pain.  Then he groaned again as he spun and caught another spear square in the chest.  Mathonwy dropped his sling, pulled out his healer's kit, and rushed over to his brother.  Diesa was fighting for all she was worth, trying to keep a pair of men with daggers and maces from finishing off Math, and Nystyra and Eliad were trying to fend off a a swordsman and a spearman.  

The man in red, the leader, was working the lock on a small door behind his great wooden chair.  Nystyra drew a bead on him, shot, and missed.

Things were looking very grim indeed when they heard two very welcome sounds: an eagle's shriek and a wolf's howl.  The animals, who presumably had been putting the three bodies the Wanderers had left behind in the guardroom to good use (as meals), had joined the fight.  Quickfeather stooped down from the rafters and raked a man in the face, and while the man was blinded by  his own blood, Silvercoat clamped onto his leg and began chewing.

When his companion turned to see his grisly fate, he, too, fell, this one to Diesa's pick.  When Eliad's two opponents saw the bloody-jawed Silvercoat and the eagle who had torn a man's eyes out, they ran.  By this time, the man in red had fled.

Diesa, Eliad, and Nystyra gave pursuit.  They were promptly stopped by the door, which was locked firmly.  While Eliad was working the lock, Nystyra watched as a slot creaked open in the door and a crossbow poked out.  Eliad, concentrating on the lock, didn't notice at all.

Time, for Nystyra, seemed to slow down.  She stared at the crossbow for an eternity, and then began running forward, toward Eliad.  So slow, so slow!  She was shouting, and she was far too late.  There was a click and a hum as the quarrel shot out of the crossbow.  Then there was a meaty thump as the bolt landed in Eliad's chest.  He staggered, lockpicks falling out of his hands as he clutched at the spreading red stain on his chest.  He looked at Nystyra, confused and bewildered.

"...sharp..." he mumbled, and fell.
****************************************************

Next Installment coming soon...does anyone grieve over Eliad?


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## Horacio (Jul 24, 2002)

It was a very good update... but you didn't need to post it twice  

Seriosuly, is Eliad dead?


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 24, 2002)

Damn! You're right...

an Enboarder since December, and this is my first double post  

I shall delete it (the double post) forthwith...!


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 24, 2002)

Anyway, as of later today I am going on vacation and will not be back till really late Sunday...

I trust my faithful reader(s?) to keep my story hour on the first page


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## Irda Ranger (Jul 24, 2002)

*Cool start!*

Bob,

As promised, I am reading the story. Good so far! I haven't fully caught up with all the posts yet, but I will get more time later in the week. I like your setting! Have a good trip, see you next week.

Irda Ranger


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## Horacio (Jul 25, 2002)

Good vacances, and read you on Monday!


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## Spider_Jerusalem (Jul 25, 2002)

This last chapter of the Wanderers got me completely hooked. I admit I wasn't too sure about the beginning, but now that the party has come together, it's great.

The character interaction is fantastic. I was wondering what sort of charisma Diesa would be shackled with to portray such a wonderfully antagonistic character?

Btw, have a good holiday.

Spider.


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## Taboo (Jul 26, 2002)

Well, I'm completely hooked!  Great story.  If Eliad IS dead, I will mourn for him, he's the first gnome I've read about that I've actually liked!

I hope you had a good vacation and welcome back. I can't wait for the next installment!


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## Horacio (Jul 26, 2002)

Taboo said:
			
		

> *If Eliad IS dead, I will mourn for him, he's the first gnome I've read about that I've actually liked!
> *




If you want to find another great Story Hour with a very likable gnomic character, read also Posy's Diary


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## Taboo (Jul 26, 2002)

Thanks Horacio, I haven't read it all yet, of course, it's a long one, but I've read enough to know it's a good one!

I really appreciate the suggestion! And you're right, I like Posy already.


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 29, 2002)

I'm back 

My vacation was great.  Thanks for the comments and compliments, all 

Next installment coming in a few days or so...


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## Bob Aberton (Jul 30, 2002)

Bob Aberton:  One of Those Things That Goes *BUMP* in the Night...

Next Update coming reeeeeeeaaaaaallllll soon, I promise


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 1, 2002)

The long awaited, hugely long next installment:It was near dark before Diesa stirred from her place by Ulfgar's body.

"We will bury him now," she said hoarsely.  It was not a suggestion.  It was a command.

"Its...err...its getting dark," Mathonwy said, somewhat timidly.  "Do you think we have time to build a cairn...we have to make camp, and..."

Diesa pierced him with such a baleful, bloodshot glare that he gulped and fell silent.

So a cairn it was.  Grunting and sweating, Math carried a pair of  60 pound rocks under each arm, while Diesa used her pick to break up the boulders around them.  Mathonwy pitched in as well, rolling boulders down the slope to where Ulfgar lay.  Even Nystyra pitched in, although it was making a shambles of even her tough, wool-and-leather travelling dress.  Eliad attempted to move a small stone, gave up, sat down, and then jumped up and began working again when Diesa gave him a sharp rap with the flat side of her pick.

Nystyra was fuming at Diesa's high-handed treatment of them, but she supposed she would react much the same way to the death of a comrade.  Math and Mathowy were also angry, though they took pains not to show it, Nystyra could see them muttering under their breath.  Eliad was far too cheerful to be angry.  Ever.

It was dusk by the time the cairn was finished.  Math and Mathonwy gently placed Ulfgar's body inside, then hoisted a capstone onto the cairn.  Diesa changed her robes to a priestly black, and passing her stone-carved holy symbol over the cairn, chanted a warrior's death-song in Dwarven.  Everyone stood around the cairn and listened to Diesa's prayer.  Though they could not understand the words of the hymn, they could feel the weight of sorrow behind it.  Nystyra saw a tear coursing down Math's stubbly cheek, and even Eliad fell silent, the smile gone from him face for once in his life. 

When the prayer ended, Diesa changed back into her travel-stained clothes and chain shirt, but lingered by the grave while the Elfblood Wanderers began unpacking their gear to make camp.

"Good-bye, Ulfgar," she said softly.  Then she shoudlered her pick and strode over to where the Wanderers were setting bedrolls and gathering firewood.

"We will not camp," she said decisively.  "We move on."

"What?" all the Wanderers said at once.  They didn't mind terribly helping to bury Diesa's dead friend, but what was the point in trying to track him in the dark?  He was dead and buried, which Mathonwy - not unkindly - pointed out.

"We must find his killers," Diesa replied.

"How d'yer expect me to track them in the dark?" Math rasped.

"I can see in the dark," Diesa said smugly.

"That's lovely.  I can't," the Druid growled back.

"Light a candle, then.  We must find Ulfgar's killers.  Not only do they richly deserve Dwarven justice, but they have taken Smedir," Diesa replied brusquely.

"Diesa, this has gone far enough.  We didn't mind helping you find Ulfgar, and we didn't complain when you told us to build a cairn instead of make camp, but we can't track his killers in the dark.  The trail will wait," Nystyra said.  As de facto leader of the Elfblood Wanderers, she decided to put her foot down.  After saying her piece, she strode off to her bedroll.  Math and Mathonwy gratefully followed.  Eliad also went to his bedroll, but not without giving an apologetic look to Diesa.

Muttering furiously to herself, Diesa shouldered her pick and strode off into the night.

The next morning, she was back in camp, sitting by the fire.  

"I thought you were going to hunt down Ulfgar's killers?" Nystyra said.

Diesa mumbled something to the effect that she couldn't find them, looking very embarrassed.  Because Diesa had a somewhat prickly attitude, and because Ulfgar's death had only made her even more prickly, Nystyra wisely didn't bait her any further.

Meanwhile, Math, Mathonwy, Silvercoat, and Quickfeather returned, Silvercoat with a dead pheasant clutched in her mouth, and Quickfeather with a squirrel in her beak.  Eliad, brandishing an enormous butcher's knife almost taller than he was, skinned and plucked the game, and then set them on spits to roast.  After much prodding, Eliad finally convinced Diesa to share the small keg of Dwarven mead she had brought with her, and Math produced a flask of Fire Brandy, a strong drink made from distilled apples and pears, spiced very strongly.   Then Eliad revealed his hidden talents as a cook.

Breakfast was a hurried meal of sausages, eggs, and pheasant, washed down with Fire Brandy or Dwarven mead.  Diesa, though no longer quite so anxious to break camp this time, was still impatient, and Silvercoat paced around and around the cairn, trying to find the trail, while Math carefully examined the rocky ground with a sausage in one hand and a mug of Fire Brandy in the other.  

Math had warned that the trail would be old, and it was.  Try as she might, Silvercoat could not pick up a scent.  However, he found some scuffed-up rocks and a single footprint leading away north, and that was enough for him.

There was no running after Silvercoat this time, for Math proceeded at a slow and deliberate pace, examining every imprint in the ground, every scuffed rock, and every crushed twig.  Once he got lucky and found a red-fletched arrow, like the one that the Ulfgar's killers had used, lying by the side of the trail, apparently having fallen out of a quiver.

So on and on they trekked.  And on and on some more.  Math was truly a superb tracker.  At one point, all they had to go on was a single crushed blade of grass, but Math didn't even lose the trail then, and they found another red-fletched arrow a little further on.

So this thin little trail led them to the shadow of the Pillars of the Sky.  And  then there they were, crouched in a small copse, watching an old ruin of a holding, flying a pure red banner.

"Psst!  Miss Nystyra!" Eliad called.  He had been scouting the holdfast, using Gnomic cunning and stealth.  "It's an old ruin, but it's still got walls.  The gate an' drawbridge are both open, an' there's three or four scruffy men in the gatehouse.  There isn't too many of the bandits, though.  I dinna think this'll be much trouble.  Come here now, slow and silent-like, that's the way..."

The former castle was so overgrown with shrubbery, small trees, and creepers that they had no difficulty creeping up to the drawbridge, within bowshot of the gatehouse.  Eliad loaded his crossbow and took careful aim.  Mathonwy and Math had come to the conclusion that they could beseech the vines for help if the enemy came out, using an entangling spell.  Eliad waited a moment, and then his finger twitched on the trigger.  The man at the gatehouse window suddenly clawed at the quarrel in his eye.  Nystyra drew a bead on the second head to show itself at the arrow slit, but her arrow skipped harmlessly off the left side of the slit and shattered on the stone wall.

Then, there was the sound of shouting from inside the gatehouse.  Throwing caution to the winds, Diesa hefted her war pick and charged through the open gate.  Math and Mathonwy followed, as did Nystyra, but Eliad took a different path.  Replacing his crossbow on his back, he began to climb the crumbling stone walls of the gatehouse, taking advantage of the ivy that enveloped the wall.  

While Diesa and the Druids took the stairs up to the gatehouse, Nystyra waited with her bow bent in the shadow of the portcullis.  Eliad had by now reached the arrow slits, and seemed to be considering how best to make his entrance  
when an arm, a hand, and a spear thrust out of one of the arrow slits and nicked him on the shoulder.  Nystyra fired again, this time hitting the hand that held the spear.  The hand and spear withdrew, and she could hear a muffled curse from inside the gatehouse. 

However, distracted by the nick to the shoulder, Eliad missed a handhold and fell.  Nystyra caught her breath in alarm, but then, from inside the gatehouse, she could hear Mathonwy's voice chanting a spell.  The ivy vines suddenly came alive and snatched Eliad out of midair, then lifting him up and onto the roof.  Which immediately collapsed under his light weight.  Fortune favors the fools, Nystyra thought.  Now Nystyra, seeing Eliad was safe, hurried up the stairs into the gatehouse.

Pushing her way through the half-demolished door, a scene of chaos met her eyes.  Math was beset by three sides, and Silvercoat was covering his back.  Mathonwy was trying to hold back a scruffy-looking spearman with his sling while Quickfeather darted around the room, clawing at everyone's eyes with her talons.  Diesa had just killed a man and was in the process of killing another, and Eliad was running around the edge of the room, pursued by a burly man with a rusted sword.  Nystyra, summoning up the magic of her Coal, Commanded Eliad's assailant to die, and the man sprawled to the floor in a coma.  Instead of thanking her, Eliad squeaked "Behind ye, Miss Nystyra!"

Nystyra was still puzzling over that when a rusty axe traced a bloody line down her back.  Eliad darted a crossbow bolt over her head, nicking her assailant in the axe arm, which failed to stop him at all.  So he tried a different tack.  

"PUT ME DOWN, B*TCH!" ordered the axe-man's axe.  The man stared at it suspiciously, giving Nystyra a chance to call to mind another spell.  In her mind, she pictured her request to the Coal, and recited the incantation that she remembered from her book.  A wave of magic which she - and nobody else - could see clearly as a pulse of bright, red light, veined with the smoky blackness of an enchantment, rolled forth from the Coal, striking the axe-man squarely.  His eyes suddenly popped out of his head as he stared at something fearsome that only he could see.  His face blanched, his jaw dropped, his axe dropped, and he turned to hurry down the stairs, only to be blocked by his companion axeman.  Pushing and clawing, the victim of Nystyra's fear enchantment tried to push past his comrade, who was trying to push his way through to get to Nystyra.  Finally the axeman got tired of his frightened comrade, and, with one stroke of his own axe, cut him down.

"Yer a pretty wench, aren't ya?" the axeman said, eyeing Nystyra lecherously as he advanced lazily toward her.  Nystyra began wishing her travelling dresses had higher necklines.  She risked a glance backwards.  There was no one to help but herself.  Darting backwards to giver herself room, she cast another fear enchantment at the man, but
It had no effect.  Apparently he was more strong-willed than his comrade.  She would need a different spell now, a killing spell, not merely an enchantment.  Adrin had taught only one such spell, and he had told her to use it only in the extremest need.  She closed her eyes and began concentrating.  She opened her mouth to say the incantation, but her assailant lashed out with his axe, gashing her arm.  Concentration rudely broken, she stumbled backwards, holding her wounded arm.

"Now don't be tryin' yer witchy tricks, slut," her attacker said.  "Just come along nice and slow like, an' don't make me use this again." He brandished his axe.  "I figger I think o' somethin' ta do with yer," he said, grabbing his crotch and grinning.

It was do or die, Nystyra thought.  She clutched her Coal once more and began the incantation.  When the man lashed out again, it wasn't with his axe.  He grabbed her dress roughly, and she felt his hands grabbing for her bodice as she finished the incantation.  For a second or two, nothing happened.  Then, there was a roaring like a fire, and gout of flame burst out her fingertips.  He screamed and jumped away as the fire washed over him.  His clothes and hair ignited.  Nystyra could smell the awful stench of burning flesh.  The man, now little more than a human bonfire, finally collapsed into a charred heap.  Nystyra retched at the smell of charred flesh.  Now she could tell why Adrin hated to use spells like that. 

Turning around, she saw that her companions had dealt with their respective foes, though not without cost; Eliad was somewhat battered, Diesa was bleeding from a head wound, and Math dripped blood from a dozen wounds.  One of the brigands had gotten away, however, and they decided that they did not have the time to patch each other up, although the Druids and Diesa did use what healing magic they had (not nearly enough).

Three-quarters of the bandit-occupied castle lay in ruins; one quarter, and the dungeons, was still in use.   The next room the Wanderers and Diesa came upon was small room, a guardroom of some sort.  When Math burnt down the door with ancient Druidic magic, they surprised three men, all wearing red armbands.  Two were gambling and dicing, the third was drinking ale in a corner.  They stared stupidly as the Wanderers strode in, led by Diesa, with a killing fury apparent in her eyes.  None of them had weapons on except belt knives, although there was a spear leaning on the wall next to the drunkard.  He lept up and made a grab for it, but Nystyra, grasping the Coal in its casket, chanted an incantation that sounded like a lullaby, and, waving her hand in slow lines back and forth, as though she were weaving a net, set out a wave of gentle, almost peaceful magic from her Coal.  The two gamblers fell, but the spearman charged Nystyra.  He recieved a javelin (from Math), a crossbow quarrel, a slingstone, and a taste of Dwarven holy magic for his troubles.  When he fell, Diesa stooped down beside the sleeping men and raised her pick.

"What are you doing?" Nystyra asked, though she had a pretty good idea.

"They are Ulfgar's killers.  They deserve death," Diesa shot back.  The pick began its deadly descent, arcing toward the first sleeper's forehead.

"Are you a healer?" Nystyra asked pointedly.  "Or are you a killer?"

The pick stopped, inches from the sleeper's forehead.

"What would Freya, the Mother of Dwarves, think?" Nystyra asked, pressing her advantage relentlessly.  Nystyra could see the turmoil on Diesa's face as she tried to sort through the situation.  Finally, she stood up and walked out the doorway.

"Come, let us go," she said shortly.  As they left the room, Nystyra saw Silvercoat snap the sleeper's throats.  So much for that, she thought wryly.

Very few rooms in the ruin were in use, except for the armory (the armorer promptly surrendered), and the great hall, whose doors they were outside of at the moment.  

Both Nystyra and Mathonwy called up spells to mind.  Math wound up and took a swing at the door with his club.  Diesa did the same with her pick, and Eliad loaded his crossbow.

It all went like clockwork - for the first few moments.  The burst open, and both Mathonwy and Nystyra began chanting their respective incantations.  Eliad killed a man with a crossbow to the throat, Diesa and Math waded in swinging, aiming for a man sitting at the head of the table, dressed entirely in red, and Mathonwy and Nystyra's spells took effect without a hitch.  Half a dozen of the brigands were cought by the spells, either falling asleep or finding themselves pinned to the table by the rushes on the floor when the rushes suddenly cam alive.  Both Diesa and Math scored hits, but only minor ones.  Then things got ugly.

Math took a spear in the belly.  Dropping his club, he clutched at the spear and groaned in pain.  Then he groaned again as he spun and caught another spear square in the chest.  Mathonwy dropped his sling, pulled out his healer's kit, and rushed over to his brother.  Diesa was fighting for all she was worth, trying to keep a pair of men with daggers and maces from finishing off Math, and Nystyra and Eliad were trying to fend off a a swordsman and a spearman.  

The man in red, the leader, was working the lock on a small door behind his great wooden chair.  Nystyra drew a bead on him, shot, and missed.

Things were looking very grim indeed when they heard two very welcome sounds: an eagle's shriek and a wolf's howl.  The animals, who presumably had been putting the three bodies the Wanderers had left behind in the guardroom to good use (as meals), had joined the fight.  Quickfeather stooped down from the rafters and raked a man in the face, and while the man was blinded by  his own blood, Silvercoat clamped onto his leg and began chewing.

When his companion turned to see his grisly fate, he, too, fell, this one to Diesa's pick.  When Eliad's two opponents saw the bloody-jawed Silvercoat and the eagle who had torn a man's eyes out, they ran.  By this time, the man in red had fled.

Diesa, Eliad, and Nystyra gave pursuit.  They were promptly stopped by the door, which was locked firmly.  While Eliad was working the lock, Nystyra watched as a slot creaked open in the door and a crossbow poked out.  Eliad, concentrating on the lock, didn't notice at all.

Time, for Nystyra, seemed to slow down.  She stared at the crossbow for an eternity, and then began running forward, toward Eliad.  So slow, so slow!  She was shouting, and she was far too late.  There was a click and a hum as the quarrel shot out of the crossbow.  Then there was a meaty thump as the bolt landed in Eliad's chest.  He staggered, lockpicks falling out of his hands as he clutched at the spreading red stain on his chest.  He looked at Nystyra, confused and bewildered.

"...Sharp..." he mumbled, and fell.

*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

"Eliad!" Nystyra screamed.  She fell to her knees beside him, looking in horror at the bloody pool in which he lay.  Tears burned her eyes.  She couldn't see him die, not here, not now!  Despite his kleptomania, his annoying cheerfulness, and his moments of mad courage and more frequent bouts of cowardice, he was, she realized, a dear friend, who had been with her at the beginning of her travels, and who she wanted with her at the end of her travels.  Frantically, she searched her mind for a healing spell.  Adrin had only taught her one such spell, and it was a weak one.  Healing had not been the Emberlord's strong point.  But she had to use it now.  Taking a deep breath, she began saying the words - 

- only to be stopped when Diesa roughly put her hand over Nystyra's mouth.  

"What are you...?" Nystyra demanded angrily.  "I was trying to heal him!"

"The quarrel must be removed first," the priestess said.  She took out a flask of some sort of alcohol and a sharp knive from a bag that hung at her waist.  Dousing the blade in alcohol, she prepared to make the cut.  "Remove his shirt, and hold him down.  This will hurt a great deal," she commanded.

When Eliad's shirt was taken off, the damage was revealed to be worse that Diesa thought.  The quarrel had punched right through his chest, puncturing a lung and then protruding out of his back.  Diesa sawed the fletchings of the quarrel off, then grabbing the head that stuck out of the Gnome's back, she pulled the quarrel all the way through the wound.  Eliad squirmed and looked like he would scream, but all that came out was a stream of dark red heart's blood and choked gasp.  Diesa then stared at the wound for several second, stunned by the seriousness of it.

"He will live, won't he?" Nystyra asked anxiously.

"The damage is worse than I thought," Diesa said grimly.  "Nevertheless, he may live, Freya willing."

She traced a rune in the air over the wound, and suddenly, a miraculous thing happened.  The wound began closing itself!   Eliad's breathing, while shallow, returned to normal, as did his heartbeat, and he no longer coughed up blood with each breath.

"How...?" Nystyra asked, astonished that the mortally wounded Gnome was so suddenly out of danger.

"It was not his time to die," Diesa said abruptly, thinking of another who had been close to her that she couldn't have saved.  A little worm of resentment that she could have been there for Nystyra's dear friend but not her own wanderer into her mind.  She squashed it savagely, reminding herself that 'Freya gives, and Freya takes, and who can gainsay her?'

For Nystyra's part, she thought she could understand Diesa a little more, having almost suffered the same grief as the dwarf.  Neither of them acknowledged this sudden understanding, but after that, Diesa was less sharp to Nystyra, and Nystyra was perhaps not so resentful when she was.

But then was not the time for philosophical ramblings.  With Eliad more or less healed, though still unconscious, Diesa set to work on the door with a vengeance, hacking it to flinders with her pick.  Down a long, dark hallway, they could just make out a flash of red as the outlaw's leader darted toward freedom, dodging as Nystyra's arrow followed him.  They followed hot on the man's heels.

Only to be stopped in their tracks by a closed portcullis.  Gasping for breath, they stared at it in disappointment for a long while.  Or, at least, Nystyra did.  Diesa, driven mad by the thought that Ulfgar's murderer might escape, flew into a frothing rage.  With an indiscriminate shout of fury, she viciously attacked the door with her pick.

Whang! Whang! Clang! The clangor of steel on rusty steel reverbrated through the hallway.  But it was to no avail.  Although the portcullis was crusted with rust, it would not give, and Diesa only succeeded in dulling the point of her pick.  It was then that they heard the voice.

"Chasing him, are you?" the voice was the thin and reedy, as though with disuse.  "Well, no doubt you won't catch him.  He's far to clever for that..."  The voice trailed off miserably.

Diesa and Nystyra looked at each other, thunderstruck.  The voice was apparently emanating from a solid wall.

"Of course, I don't suppose you could find me, even if you did care whether I lived or died - which, naturally, you don't.  It doesn't help matters that once he's gone, no one will bring me food or water...but that's life, I suppose..." the voice went on, palpably gloomy.

"Are you...behind the wall?" Nystyra asked hesitantly.

"You could say that," the voice said.  "If you cared enough (which I don't expect you do...), you could get through the wall...there's no mortar between the stones..."

"Why don't we see if we can get to him?" Nystyra asked.

"And let that crimson murderer get away?" Diesa said, in a voice as close to an outraged squeal as Nystyra had ever heard her use.

Nystyra didn't say anything, merely shot a pointed glance at the portcullis.  Diesa seemed to wilt as she realized the import of that glance.

"If you do come in here," the voice continued, almost, but not quite, hopefully, "I can tell you how to get through the portcullis..."

In a few moments, Diesa and Nystyra had removed enough of the unmortared stones to squeeze into the gap.

A sea of gold met their eyes.  They both gasped in awe at the same time.  Apparently these particular bandits had been very successful, for the chamber, a fairly large room rough-hewn from the surrounding stone, was at least half-full of valuables of all sorts.   Gold coins, silver coins, copper coins, paintings, silverware, jewelry, silks and velvets and samite, swords, armor, crystal goblets, and even casks of rare wine greeted their eyes.  Eliad would have loved to see this, Nystyra thought with a pang.  But what drew their attention the most was a man who was mortared to the wall.

He hung about five feet from the ground.  Both his hands and his feet were solidly anchored into the mortar that held the rough-hewn walls together.  He was wearing the rotted remnants of what had once been rich clothes.  His hair was a cobwebby (in fact, he been held immobile for so long that cobwebs had grown on him) grey, his skin was a pallid, translucent grey, as though he had not seen the sun for decades, and his eyes were a dull, hopeless shade of grey.

"Hello," he croaked.

"Er...hello..." Nystyra mumbled, staring with a sort of morbid curiousity at this miserable creature.

"If you want to open the portcullis, the key, or one of them, is right there.  Red Allen - that's the man you were chasing - liked to torment me by hanging it there, just out of reach..."

Diesa took the key, and made as if to run for the portcullis.

"No, wait," Nystyra said, grasping her by the arm.  "Let's free this poor man first.  We can leave him mortared up in a wall for the rest of his life."

Diesa grumbled, torn between chasing Red Allen and showing some mercy to the wretch stuck in the wall.  Eventually, however, she raised her pick, and, in five swings, had freed the man's hands and feet from the wall.  He fell to the ground, to weak to support himself.  His muscles must have atrophied from decades of immobility, Diesa thought.  There was nothing more she could do for the poor wretch, so, holding the key to the portcullis, she ran out.

Nystyra, however, lingered.

"What is your name?" she asked the grey man.

"It matters not," he said.  "But I was the rightful heir to the castle when Red Allen seized it.  He mortared me into the wall when I was all of 12 years old.  For fifty long years, I had been stuck here.  He gave me food and water (such as it was), and kept me alive for his own cruel amusement.  If you do capture him, do me this one favor."

"What is that?" Nystyra asked.

"Bring me his head, so that I may have the last laugh," the grey man said, with a vicious, feral grin.  "And you shall have all the treasure in this vault."

"I will be back, do not worry," Nystyra said, then, after a pause, "With his head."

The grey man nodded weakly, and Nystyra left the room.

Diesa was waiting just outside the vault, tapping her pick in her palm impatiently.

"He has probably already escaped, thanks to your dawdling," she said, with a baleful glare.

Just as Nystyra was about to reply, she heard a shout and a rattling of prison bars just across the hallway, from a cell she had supposed to be empty.

"And you'll want to rescue this one two, I suppose," Diesa snapped harshly.  "Go on, then, but I'll not wait for you."

Diesa darted off through the newly opened portcullis and down the set of stairs beyond it, and Nystyra ran to the cell, quickly opening it with the skeleton key from the treasure vault.  

The occupant was a fierce-looking woman, short but with the look of a warrioress about her.  Her hair was black, as were her eyes, and her skin was tanned.  She wore a tattered, sand-colored tunic.

"I am Damara Khaz'aar, and I thank you for freeing me.  Now give me my sword.  I have vengeance to wreak," she said in a rush.  When Nystyra looked bemused, she lept out of her cell, scooped up a bundle on the ground near her cell, and ran off down the hall, with Nystyra close behind.  As she ran, she untied the bundle, which consisted of a tan surcoat with a black falcon on the front, a shirt of glittering guilded chainmail, and a long, curved blade with a wickedly sharp edge.  These she hurriedly shrugged on as she ran.  Now Nystyra realized, from her name, the hawk sigil on her surcoat, and her suit of guilded chainmail, that she must be a Sandrider, a woman warrior from the deserts of Allamid.

They found Diesa battering at yet another small, wooden door at the end of the tunnel.  As they watched Diesa batter, muttering Dwarven curses with every breath, Nystyra felt a drop of water on her nose.  For the first time, she took note of her surroundings.

The arched ceiling was glistening and very, very wet.  Above, she could hear the sound of slow-moving water.  We must be underneath the moat, she thought.  It was a discomforting thought, especially since the ceiling appeared to be held up by nothing more than a few slime covered, flimsy looking wooden pillars.  As Diesa continued to batter, Nystyra heard a familiar creak.  A small slot opened in the wooden door.  Nystyra held her breath, fearing Diesa was to fall victim to the same fate that Eliad had.  But she didn't.

Instead, the entire door opened, stopping Diesa in mid-batter.  Framed inside was Red Allen, with a mocking grin on his face.  As one, all three women sprang for him, but the leader of the outlaws was quicker.  Hurling a large clay bottle over their heads, he waved goodbye to them and disappeared up the stairs.

All three women stared dumbly at the clay bottle, which had cracked open.  A small puddle of clear liquid was oozing out of it, forming a pool of sticky, clear substance, like honey, encircling the wooden pillars that held the moat out.

With a soft roar, the liquid burst into flame, eating through the pillars like a mad dog through a bone.  The pillars soon fell away in columns of charcoal.  The now unsupported ceiling creaked and groaned.  Cracks formed and water  began seeping in steadily.  With a crack and a groan, the ceiling collapsed.

And the entire moat, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, poured into the tunnel with a bestial roar.

*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

All three dashed for the steps, but the water got there first.  Diesa clenched her pick in her teeth and was treading water clumsily.

Nystyra was no great swimmer, having swum onlyh one or two times in her life (Adrin was aquaphobic), but her natural grace aided her as she struck out for the safety of the stairwell.  It was only when she and Diesa reached the stairs that they realized Damara was nowhere to be seen.  

Nystyra remembered then that Damara said she had been from the desert.

Taking a deep breath, she plunged back into the foaming maelstrom of the rapidly filling tunnel.

The water was dark and very dirty.  She swam deeper and deeper, her ears ringing with the pressure and her lungs aching.  Just when she thought Damara was certainly dead, her hand closed around a handful of rough wool cloth.  A surcoat.  Damara Khaz'aar, having come from the desert, could not swim in any case, and the weight of her chainmail had all but pinned her to floor of the flooded tunnel.

Grabbing her under the arms, Nystyra struggled to rise to the surface.  Spots danced before her eyes as she slowly rose.  Her lungs felt like wrung-out cloths.  So close to the surface, and safety!  She tried to breath; she sucked in lungfuls of water, and, coughing and spitting, broke the surface.  Towing Damara behind her, she swam to the stairs, and not a moment too soon; the water, still rising, had by then swallowed the tunnel and was creeping up the stairs.

Damara lay there, sodden and unmoving.  For a moment, Nystyra feared that the Allamidian was dead,  but then the warrioress convulsed; her chest spasmed, her eyes opened, and she began vomiting up great quantities of water.  Nystyra was thinking that she must have drunk the entire moat, when coughing and  retching, she sat up.

"I will kill him," she said, a demon's glint in her eye.  She brushed her wet hair out of her face, and started up the stairs.  Or she tried to, at least.  Her near drowning had left her legs as weak as a baby's, and she stumbled until Nystyra caught her by the arm.

With one hand, she supported herself on Nystyra's shoulder, and with the other, loosened her falchion in its sheath.  With Diesa in the lead, the dampened and sadly reduced Elfblood Wanderers started up the stairs.

With a gentle tap of Diesa's pick, the rotten wooden trapdoor fell apart, and the remnant of the Wanderers burst out of the ground in a shower of splinters, earth, water droplets, and deadly intent.

Red Allen had already mounted a horse and was riding away in a hurry, amazed that these three women had escaped the tunnel.  Diesa and Damara saw his escape with a mixture of fury and dismay, but Nystyra said nothing.  She was concentrating deeply, her eyes glinting with Otherwordly power.

Red Allen's horse suddenly reared up, whinnying in terror as it saw its worst fears right in fron t of its eyes.  Red Allen swore and tried to calm the panicked horse, but the horse would have none.  Bucking and plunging, it screamed its terror and lashed out in all directions with its hooves.  It was all Red Allen could do to hold on.  In a few moments, he could do even that.

The three women watched him get thrown off his horse, perform three or four revolutions, and descend to the ground in a lazy arc.  He landed hard, and they heard the snap of bone breaking.  Diesa, Nystyra, and Damara ran toward the prone outlaw, drawing their weapons as they went.

"You are an outlaw and a murderer," Diesa said.  "For the death of Ulfgar and the theft of Smedir, our Clan's mightiest relic, you die."  She raised her pick.

Damara raised her falchion wordlessly.  The outlaw, seeing the two grim faced warriors standing over him, began to whine and plead.

"No please, don't kill me, it wasn't my fault, I..."  

Nystyra turned away as Dwarf-pick and desert sword made an end of Red Allen, outlaw, highwayman, and murderer.  When it was over, Damara brought Nystyra a present - the dripping, bloody head of Red Allen.  He wore an expression of sheer terror permanently branded on his face.

"I believe your friend in the treasure vault wanted this," she said with a grim smile.

Nystyra didn't really want to carry the gruesome thing back to the castle, but she hardened her heart, reminding herself of the treasure that the wretch would trade for the death of Red Allen.

And trade he did.  When he saw the head, the previously gloomy prisoner began laughing.  And laughing.  And laughing.  There was madness in his laughter, Nystyra could hear it.  Unnerved by his insane laughter, and the way he fondled the severed head, she quickly began gathering all the treasures she could lay her hands on.  She piled gold and jewels into her cloak, tied it into a bundle, did the same with Damara's and Diesa's cloaks, and left quickly, with the mad laughter of the grey man echoing through the empty tunnels behind her.  In the Great Hall, she met up with Mathonwy, trying to drag his huge, unconscious brother out of the castle, and Eliad, who was barely conscious.

Despite his reduced state, however, as soon as he heard of the treasure, he bolted for the vault.  Or rather, he was carried to vault by Diesa.  He came back staggering under the weight of all that he had looted.  Diesawho had been seemingly looking for something very important, was carrying a great, shining warhammer in her hand and an expression of awe in her eyes.

"Smedir, our Clan's most sacred relic," she declared, holding it high.  

Behind them crawled the grey man, too weak to stand and still clutching the severed head under one arm.

"Don't leave me!" he cried, dragging himself to where Nystyra was trying to help the semiconscious Gnome carry his plunder.

In the end, Damara rooted around in the stables until they found an old cart.  Damara also discovered her pony, a shaggy tan thing of Allamidian extraction named Sandstorm.

Because they couldn't find any pack animals, Sandstorm ended up pulling the cart, and he wasn't happy about it.  Neither, for that matter, was Damara, who insisted that it was below such a noble animal to pull a cart.

We must look an odd procession, Nystyra thought as the cart rumbled back toward Urglath, with Damara, their newfound Wanderer, driving.  Their cart, an old and battered one, held a gravely wounded man in the robes of a Druid, another Druid tending to him, a battered, semiconscious Gnome and a Dwarf tending to him, a woman in guilded chainmail and a drenched surcoat with the look of the desert about her, a shrivelled-looking grey man clutching a severed head and giggling hysterically, Nystyra, and a large bundle made from several cloaks, containing 125,000 gold crowns.  The Wanderer's fund.

Nystyra counted the coins again and again.  She already knew what she was going to buy with her share.  She was tired of trekking all around Avalon for days on end, sleeping on hard ground, eating little, nursing sore feet, and rarely bathing.  She was going to buy herself a keep.  The future, anyway, looked bright.

****************************************************

So, you see, Eliad possesses an annoying knack for surviving - not that I would want to kill him anyway, he's too cool 

But let the dice fall where they may...

In the next installments, life takes na interesting turn for the Wanderers, who seem to want to settle down early...

they still live up to their name though, don't worry..


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## Horacio (Aug 2, 2002)

Great update!
Eliad is alive! Elias is alive!

_Horacio is happy!_

BTW, I've just begun my own Story Hour, using the new superheroes supplement from Natural 20, Four Color to Fantasy:
Golden Apple Rescue Squad 

If you have time, visit it, and drop a comment...


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 2, 2002)

thankyouverymuch Horacio

Next update coming soon


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## Taboo (Aug 2, 2002)

Excellent update! I can't wait for the next one.


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## Aurora (Aug 3, 2002)

Great story, looking forward to your next post.


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 7, 2002)

Thank you, Aurora, and here it is:After two days of beaurocratic wrangling, Nystyra was beginning to realize why there weren't more castles in Avalon.

It had taken her two days just to get an audience with the Mayor of the Free Township of Urglath.  Now, the fifteen minute audience was nearly at an end, and almost nothing had been resolved.

"I would like to obtain a charter for the construction of a keep on the hill known as Greytop Knoll," Nystyra had said, after cordial formalities had been exchanged.

"Miss, look around you," the mayor said, almost pleadingly.  "the Free Township is about to go to war.  We can't afford to go building more castles.  Besides, we are a Free Township.  We have no nobles and we want none."

"I will provide the labor for the building," Nystyra said patiently.  "And I am no noble.  My mother was a woodcutter's daughter."

"Be that as it may, a License to Crenellate may only be sponsored by the reigning king," the mayor said.  "And, as you know, Avalon hasn't had a king for over a century."

"The Council of Lords acts as Regent, as you surely know," Nystyra said.  She had read a good deal on the law of the realm, suspecting this was going to be a hard fight.  She had been right.  It was.

"Then go to the Council of Lords, for all I care," the mayor said.  Thinking he had won, he returned to ruffling his papers.

"I notice you seem to be making ready for war," Nystyra commented casually.

"Yes, yes," the mayor said distractedly.  "Our neighbor to the north, Lord Meiron ap Dwllynm, is making incursion on our borders."

"I could be a valuable ally," Nystyra said.  "Greytop Knoll would stand between you and any invading army."

"That...that is true..." the mayor said.  He looked up from his papers, peering at her intently.

"I have many connections within the Sor...the Brotherhood of Merlin, you know," Nystyra said.  The mayor looked interested.  He didn't know that the Brotherhood, or the Sorceror's Guild, as it was more often called, never involved itself in any events not directly related to the good of Avalon, and a petty border dispute was certainly not such a matter.

"All you have to do is sign a License," Nystyra said confidentially.

"Well...I..." but even as the mayor spoke, he was already signing a large, official-looking document.  "You will have to swear an oath of alliance to the Free Township of Urglath, you know."

"I do not mind," Nystyra said, reaching eagerly for the License.  The mayor drew back, holding the coveted parchment just out of Nystyra's reach.

"But you'll have to do a small service for me first," he said, with a satisfied grin.

Another Quest, Nystyra thought with a weary sigh.

"As I said, our neighbor to the north, Lord Meiron, has been raising an army and making incursions on our borders.  In the good old days, when there was a strong King, this sort of thing would never have been stood for, but the Council of Lords is weak and divided.  I have a friend in the Captain of the Dwllyn Guard.  If you should meet him, he will ask about my health.  Tell him, Never better, where the air is Free.  He will know you for a friend, and he will protect you.  It is up to you, however, to find out what Lord Mieron intends to do, whatever methods you use.  He is a very crafty gentleman, Lord Meiron, and he is always up to some plot or another.  I suspect it is rather a hobby of his, making up these plots.  Tell me about his plans, and you will get your License," he said.  He seemed very smug that he had managed to turn an annoying and unwanted visitor into a useful spy.

So it was that Nystyra went back to the Leaky Keg, where the Wanderers were staying, and told them of what had transpired.  The reactions were mixed.  Math and Mathonwy clearly wanted nothing, or at least very little, to do with adventure, after Math's near death experience.  Eliad was happy to have something to do, as was his Tankard, which he was amusing himself with by using Gnomic magic to make it talk, often scaring random passersby half to death.  Damara was disappointed that it would involve little fighting, and while Diesa said she would go, she also warned them that she had to return to the home of Clan Swifthammer, for news had to be brought of Ulfgar's death and Smedir, their Clan's oldest relic, had to be presented to a new Clan Champion.

But Nystyra managed to cajole, plead, and otherwise entice all the Wanderers to join her on her mission of espionage.  Thus it was that, after putting the grey man in care of the Church, they found themselves once more trudging down a long, rocky road.  This time, in the rain.

"So, tell me again," Diesa grumbled, "Why we are running errands for a petty official in a backwater town."

"You said you'd come along," Nystyra said, somewhat more sharply than she had intended.

"I don't know why I did," Diesa said.  "Here I am, trudging in the rain, to some place that I care not a whit about, to spy for the mayor of another place I care not a whit about, so that you can get your little piece of paper and use Dwarven labor to build yourself a castle.  Huzzah for you."

Diesa had been in a foul mood ever since the rain had started.  Having lived her life underground, she didn't even know what it was, and Nystyra suspected that this whole business was an unpleasant irritant to the dwarf woman.

Soon enough, however, they reached the gates of Dwllyn.  It was a small, cramped-looking town, crammed into a tiny space between a crescent of walls and a huge castle, which seemed to speak of Lord Meiron's delusions of grandeur.  In front of the gate was an armed camp.  A sprawling tent city had been set up, and it was teeming with soldiers, weaponsmiths, and camp followers.  Nystyra was reminded of the state of Urglath, but on a larger scale. 

Like in Urglath, a seemingly endless chain of wagons brimming with all sorts of supplies; iron ore, leather, cloth, dry goods, medecines, and foodstuffs,  was rumbling through the village gates, straight into a scene of chaos.

People were everywhere.  Hawkers hawking their wares, peasants in carts full of provisions, children laughing and yelling, soldiers arguing, and the occasional brawl made for a din almost too much to bear.  As they reached the front gates, they were stopped by a squad of scruffy-looking soldiers.  They were all dirty, unkempt, and wearing poorly maintained armor, all except for one.

Tall and handsome, he wore a halfhelm and a brightly burnished breastplate over shining chainmail.  a spear was in his hand and a sword hung at his side.  His eyes were keen and piercing.

"Who are you and where do you hail from?" he demanded imperiously.

"We...we hail from Urglath," Nystyra said, a bit timidly, to the imposing figure before her.

"Ah, Urglath.  I used to know the mayor there.  How is his health?  I trust he is well," the captain said, although he didn't alter the frigid tone of his voice any.

"Never...Never," Nystyra started to say.  She could feel a cold lump in her chest.  If she had been led false, this keen-eyed swordsman could have her hung as a spy.  What if he had changed allegiances?  "Never better...where the air is Free."

The man looked at her sternly, and Nystyra almost quailed at his stony gaze.  But then she hardened her heart.  She had faced outlaws and even a demon on her travels.  She was a hardened adventurer, and Elf-friend, a former apprentice of an Adept of the Sor - the Brotherhood of Merlin, and soon-to-be noble.  What did she have to fear?

"You may pass," the Captain of the Guard said, waving her on with his spear.  Nystyra breathed an inward sigh of relief.  She had passed the first test of her career as a spy.

Some hours later, when the Wanderers were in the common room of an inn (oddly enough, it was named 'The Leaky Keg' as well), the Captain of the Guard came in.  He wasn't wearing his armor or his uniform, but Nystyra could tell him by the piercing gaze of his eyes and the disgust evident in his face at the den of thievery, murder, and assorted other crimes the Wanderers were sitting in.  It was an unsettling thought.  If I can recognize him, Nystyra thought, then what about the learned and experienced rogues and spies in evidence?

Regardless, the Captain meandered furtively over to where the Wanderers were sitting, and struck up a conversation.

"So," he said, "You are the spies of Urglath that the mayor has sent."

"Thats r - " Nystyra started to say, but the Captain cut her off.

"I don't have much time here before I'm recognized.  I'm already under suspicion.  But, here is what I can do: for a start, I can get your dangerous-looking friend here -" he gestured at Damara.  "- a position in the Watch.  As for yourself, you look to be a mystical type.  Lord Meiron is quite superstitious.   He would appreciate the support of a Witch like yourself.  But be warned.  He is very dangerous.  He is wise, clever, and ruthless, and, more importantly, he trusts no one.  So watch yourself.  I can send word to him that a..."

"A fortuen-teller," Nystyra said.  She was beginning to get the germ of an idea.

"...right, a Witch and a Seeress named..."

"Sindell the Portent," Nystyra said, without missing a beat.

"...name Sindell the Portent seeks him out and would favor him with her services.  Does that sound to your liking?"

Nystyra said that it was, and the Captain rose to leave.

"One more thing," he said.  "Be very careful.  If you get caught, not only will you be hung, but they will torture you and then I and my fellow spies will be hung as well.  If ever again you want to meet, ask the bartender for the 'Royal Room.'  It is a safe room, and the bartender is very trusty, as true as steel.  Good luck, Miss...no, don't tell, me, it's better that I do not know your name.  Safer that way." 


****************************************************

Thus began Nystyra's career as a spy.  Hopefully, I'll be caught up to where the campaign is at in another 4 or 5 updates...


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## Horacio (Aug 7, 2002)

A sharp turn in the your wizard's life...

Great update, as usual!


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 8, 2002)

Wednesday Night *BUMP *

[edit] And I'm glad you like it, Horacio


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## Horacio (Aug 8, 2002)

It's not polite to bump your own story hour, you should leave that work to me


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 8, 2002)

Oh...

An apology to my readers....


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## Horacio (Aug 8, 2002)

As penitence, you could go to my story hour, read the last updates and drop a comment


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 9, 2002)

alright...

check your Storyhour in about 4 hours...I am going away right now and cannot post yet...


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## Horacio (Aug 10, 2002)

You've done it again...
Will you never learn?


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 13, 2002)

Nope, never 

I was gonna post an update now, but I got lazy and didn't write it...

So instead, I post this:

I will be on vacation for the next week or so.  All you friendly readers (I know you're out there somewhere ) I trust you to keep this beloved storyhour on the first page...


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## Horacio (Aug 13, 2002)

And once more!
The same penance, then...


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 19, 2002)

DISCLAIMER:

This is not a *BUMP*

This is an update.

So rest easy, Horacio 

Early the next morning, the clamor of the common room during breakfast time was silenced when a full contingent of Soldiers of the Watch, Lord Meiron's own trusted bodyguard, marched in, armor polished and weapons gleaming.  More than one shady or disreputable person drew an anxious breath, fearing the grim-faced soldiers had learned of their own dark deeds, and that they were bound for the gallows.  More than one bold, drunken ruffian reached for a hidden blade, thinking a fight was nigh.  More than one honest man in the early morning crowd breathed easier, now that The Law was here to protect them from the rogues and knaves readily apparent.  

But the men-at-arms strode right through the tense atmosphere of the common room and up to the bar.

"Wench!" the head man-at-arms called rudely, rapping the end of his spear against the tavern floor.

"Here, now! I'm no wench," the barkeep said, drawing herself up indignantly.  "I'm good an' honest woman, an' the owner of this fine inn to boot!  You would do well to be a little more polite, you would." 

"Do not be impudent with me, woman," the soldier warned.  "I am Ellis Millworth, an Officer of the Watch, and I can have that saucy tongue cut from your mouth like that!" He rapped his spear haft against the floor again.  

The barkeep was not intimidated.

"I don't care what you are, y'can't go threatening an honest woman.  I've done no wrong, an' every man in this common room'll stand with me," she said stoutly.

The tension in the air increased a hundredfold.  Neither the barkeep nor the man-at-arms would back down.  Many a piece of tavern scum clenched his ale-mug a little tighter, or reached for a blade or cudgel.  It appeared that there would be blood shed soon if the tension was not broken.

The tension was broken by a woman descending the stairs.  Not just any woman, though.  She was tall and graceful, descending the stairs with an ethereal grace.  She wore a long black robe studded with gold stars and crescent moons.  Her auburn hair, contrasting with the black of her garments like a long river of flame, was swept back to show   pointed ears.  Her eyes were those of a Fey: ever-changing, measureless, and knowing.  In the cupped palm of one hand she held a luminous crystal ball.  And around her neck hung a live Coal on a golden string.  Flanking her were two tall men in green robes, one tall and slender, the other tall and burly.  The sleeves of their robes were rolled up to the elbow, showing clearly the blue serpent tattoos that coiled up their forearms.  

"I am Sindell the Portent, a Seeress of great power.  I believe you are looking for me?" she said, in calm, measured tones.

"Yes," the officer said shortly.

"Yes...what?" Nystyra/Sindell asked archly.  She cupped one hand around the live Coal at her throat and muttered a word under her breath.

Suddenly, in the previously still air of the common room, the air began to stir.  Candles flickered and dust motes spun dizzily.  The common room fell more silent, if it was possible, than it had when the soldiers had first walked in.  There was then a steady breeze in the room, still building stronger.  Nystyra's hair and flowing robes swirled about her, and her eyes flashed commandingly.  She drew herself up and looked threateningly at the poor Officer, who was by then quaking in his boots.

"Yes...m'lady," he quavered.  The powerful looking Witch before him calmed visibly, and the breeze died.  The air returned to its previous stillness, and the common room resumed its previous chatter.  

In a dark corner of the common room, a tall, red-haired man watched the scene with interest, fingering a wicked-looking dagger.  When the Witch was escorted out of the inn, he waited until a prudent length of time had passed, then got up and followed.

If Nystyra had been confident after her encounter with the officer in the inn, her confidence dissipated soon after she was taken to see Lord Meiron.

He did not look imposing at all.  A short, thin man, whose appearance conjured up images of weasels and rats and other crawling vermin, he was dressed foppishly, almost effeminately.

His long wine colored overcoat hung down so far that it might have been considered a dress.  It was trimmed with ermine and black lace.  His hose was also made of black lace, and hugged his legs scandalously tightly.  His breeches were so short as to be almost invisible.  He wore a huge, curling, pink-tinted wig, and far too much makeup.  His face was powdered and his lips rouged, like a woman's.  He had an enormous false beauty-spot glued to his cheek.  He was enveloped in a miasma of perfume.  He spoke with an effeminate lisp, and his voice was barely low enough to be considered an alto.

One wouldn't think, from looking at him, that this perfumed, feminine personage could possibly concieve to be threatenening.  Somehow, however, he managed it.

"You are the Witch, Sindell the Portent?" he asked, looking up from his desk.  "You should know that many other, ah, 'Witches' have passed through here.  They have all been charlatans, and end up on the gallows - or the rack.  I do so hope that you are a genuine Witch, Witch.  The gallows and rack are both...hmm...wearing out from overuse."

Nystyra decided to try to bluff.  Clutching her Coal, she invoked a minor prestidigitation, a category of spells used for countless small tricks and tasks.  Just as back in the inn, the air began to swirl.  She drew herself up commandingly, calling on her Fey blood to show its power.

Lord Meiron merely laughed.

"When you are done with the child's tricks, 'Witch,' perhaps we may, ah, return to more serious business, hmm?" he said, sniffing delicately into a huge silk handkerchief. 

Nystyra merely sat their for a second, trying to compose herself.  She considered herself a fairly accomplished liar, having for years lied to Adrin about why she had not done this little task, or that bit of research, or why exactly was she robbing the pantry at midnight?  Adrin had not often seen through her lies, and Nystyra gave her Fey blood some credit for that.  Lord Meiron was going to be very dangerous indeed.

****************************************************

The update was going to be longer, but my storyhour was slipping, and I can't bump my own storyhour  

Anyway, enjoy...


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## Enkhidu (Aug 19, 2002)

Wow, this is some good stuff.

One of the players in my story hour pointed me in this direction, and I finally got a chance to catch up with it.

Good writing, interesting characters, great background - good stuff all around.

Keep up the good work!

PS: I'm hoping to send you some more traffic from the Small Beginnings story hour readership too, more people should be reading this!


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 19, 2002)

Thanks, Enkhidu, glad you like it..

I like to know that I have a fanbase somewhere out there 

Or at least some casual readers...

I'm glad that you're helping promote my storyhour.  I believe I'l return the favor.

NOTE TO READERS: Read Enkhidu's storyhour.  It rocks.


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## Taboo (Aug 21, 2002)

Great post!  I think you even outdid yourself this time, I can't wait for the next one!  

I'm definitely recommending this to my fellow gamers, they'll love it.


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 25, 2002)

"Before you do your bit of, ah, fortune-telling, Witch," Lord Meiron said, patting his wig (which raised a huge dust cloud of pink powder).  "I find it...hmm...only fair to tell you that I will not, sadly, entrust you with any secrets of state, if that was your...ah...aim?"

Secrets of state, Nystyra thought, echoing the 'man's' word in her mind.  Not only was this person a foppish creature with a fondness for perfume and cosmetics, but he was also apparently, a bit of a meglomaniac who like to think of his little fief as a 'state.'

"It was not my aim, Lord Meiron," 'Sindell' said, seemingly affronted.  "I am Sindell the Portent, who sees past, present, and future.  I hold more power than you will ever dream of.  Tell me, why would I concern myself with petty temporal affairs.  I tell you, such matters are fleeting, and even as we speak the present becomes past and the past becomes forgotten.  Your secrets are safer with me than even with yourself, for I have no interest in them.  They are below me."

Lord Meiron digested this for a minute, then reached into a drawer of his desk.  He drew out another handkerchief, this one of a delicate-hued rosy color.  He threw his present handkerchief into the fire with an expression of deep distaste, and coughed into this new handkerchief.  He took a sip of wine from a tiny crystal glass, then regarded 'Sindell' again.

"Very well then, Wi - ah, Lady Sindell, tell me of my...hah...my fortunes," he said, sniffing at his glass of wine.

Nystyra knew this part of the deception by heart, having practiced it for half a night in her room at the Sign of the Leaky Keg.  Grasping her Coal, she envisioned a minor prestidigitationtaking place.  A gust of cold wind swirled around her, setting her black silk robes into motion and blowing her hair about her head in a halo of auburn.  Then, she began to chant the words to a slightly more powerful illusion.  Suddenly, flames sprugn up around her, encircling her and the table.  Lord Meiron threw himself backwards with a high, feminine scream, landing in a tangle of silk handkerchiefs, long waistcoat, and curly pink wig.

The third spell that Nystyra cast was an auditory version of the illusory flames now dancing merrily around on her head.  Her voice suddenly echoed unnaturally, even gratingly, deep.  Her real voice, however, continued in its ordinary alto, giving an eery impression of two voices speaking through the same mouth.  

"O Happy are you, Lord Meiron!  For puppets may fight and puppets may die, but the puppet-master is the one that truly wins the day.  Be not as a puppet, dumb and deaf and slavish, bound all about with cords.  Be as the puppet-master, who holds all strings and is bound by nought, who hears all and says what he pleases.  It is the one who holds the cord, the chains, that is successful, and not the one bound by them.  Be wary! Your enemies seek to bind you!  Bind them instead! Leash them like dogs!  The collar irks always those who knew freedom before.  You know of whom I speak.  You have few friends.  Do not alienate a powerful potential ally!  The Rowan stands with the Oak, and in them you should trust.  For trees have neither ears to hear secrets, nor mouths to speak them."

With that, Nystyra cancelled the various illusions she had been holding.  The wind died, the flames disappeared, and so did the eery second voice.   

Lord Meiron picked himself up, dusted himself off, and adjusted his wig, causing another cloud of pink wig-powder to fill the room.

"That was...ah...interesting, Wi - Lady Sindell.  Er...you...you may go now..."

Sindell and her two Druid attendants swept out of the room silently, leaving Lord Meiron to ponder the "prophecy."  Nystyra was quite pleased with herself.  To any skeptic, what she said in her 'trance' may have seemed like mindless doggerel, but everything she said, she said for a reason.  Now she only hoped Lord Meiron took the meaning she had meant him to from her cryptic words.

Back at the Leaky Keg, Damara was nowhere to be seen.  Diesa was in a corner, sipping some sort of drink, but Nystyra decided to preserve her mysterious disguise and speak to no one.  She merely strode through the common room without a word, wrinkling her nose at the smells of sweat, beer, smoke and vomit that were a revolting change from the stuffy perfumed atmosphere of Lord Meiron's audience room.  The Druids went to their own room, and Nystyra entered her own.

She immediately regretted it.  Although the room was dark, she could sense that something was not right.  She reached up her sleeve for a small knife she had hidden there, which she had intended to use to defend her virtue if any man in the towns of Dwllyn or Urglath made any attempts on it.  She could hear her own heart pounding as she walked cautiously into the room.

"Evening, my lady Sindell," a voice said, close by.  Nystyra jumped, and spun around, holding her little knife out in front of her.  Seated on a stool in the corner of the room, near the dark and empty fireplace, was a tall, red haired man, who was fingering a wicked-looking dagger.  "Or should I say, my lady Nystyra?  Do you know what happens to spies around here?"

****************************************************

Kinda short, I know, but I wanted to leave a good cliffhanger.  Plus, the Storyhour was falling to far off the first page.  

I will update again soon, but not until I get at least one comment not of my own posting


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## Enkhidu (Aug 25, 2002)

Hey Bob,

Noticed in a different thread that you needed to figure out how to create a link in a sig.

Well, here's a link...

ElfBlood Wanderers 

Now all you have to do is Quote this post, and then Copy and Paste the code for the link (it's the stuff in brackets). Presto, chago - you've got the UBB code for you sig.

Don't say I never gave you anything!


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 25, 2002)

Why thanks, Enkhidu.

now if I could figure how to modify my sig...


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## Horacio (Aug 25, 2002)

Go to "User CP" and then to "Edit Profile"


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 26, 2002)

Thanks...but what do you think of the update?


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## Taboo (Aug 26, 2002)

The update was fantastic! BUT the ending is killing me.... when's the next update? Soon?? Please?????


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## Bob Aberton (Aug 26, 2002)

"Who...who are you?" Nystyra asked tremulously, with images of the gallows dancing through her head.

"Now, there's an interesting question, Miss Nystyra," the man said.  He reached up an ran his fingers through his hair, and Nystyra noticed for the first time that his voice was high and squeaky for his tall frame.  His voice, as a matter of fact, was a bit like..."You can call me..." the man tugged at his hair, and it came off in his hands.  Suddenly, standing before, was familiar figure.  "You can call me Eliad," Eliad said, beaming up at her.k

Relief hit Nystyra like a club.  She let out her breath in a loud sigh of relief and collapsed into a nearby chair.  Then sprang at him with a demon's glint in her eye and seized him around the neck, shaking him vigorously.

"Never...do that again, d'you hear?" she said through clenched teeth at the Gnome she was strangling.

"Y-yes...O-of course, M-m-miss Nys-Nystyra," Eliad gasped, through chattering teeth.  Nystyra, satisfied, let him drop to the floor.  Then, she had another thought, and hoisted him up again by his shirt front.

"How did you do that...bit of disguise?" she asked curiously.

Eliad held up a huge, velvet hat with a ratty blue feather stuck in it.

"It's all in the hat," he said solemnly.  "Y'll never guess the things that people told me, out around town.  Things that ye might want t'know."  He grinned in a self-satisfied sort of way.

****************************************************

I know it's really short, but I'll be posting a big update soon.  I just couldn't keep up the suspense any longer


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## Horacio (Aug 26, 2002)

Bob Aberton said:
			
		

> *Thanks...but what do you think of the update?  *




Well, it rocks, at usual 

But you should have kept the suspense some time more


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## Taboo (Aug 26, 2002)

It was perfect.  Nothing short of awesome!


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## Bob Aberton (Sep 22, 2002)

About an hour later, Nystyra was putting on her Sindell costume and sorting through what Eliad had found out.  There had been a good many unfounded rumors and random bits of information about which she didn't care.  Using his hat, which he had dubbed "Cnorrec," roughly the Gnomic equivalent of the name "Bob," he had disguised himself as a wandering tinker, a barmaid, a warrior of Dwllyn, and a tall, red-haired man.  He had learned several interesting things about Lord Meiron.

Item 1:  Lord Meiron was rumored to have a lover in among the warriors of the Watch, who were all men.

Item 2:  Two days past, a chambermaid was hung in the town square for "prying among Lord Meiron's personal things."  A man who had known the chambermaid had confided to a tall, red-haired man in the town square that the maid had never committed any crime, and that all she was doing was cleaning Lord Meiron's chamber.  Apparently, a different maid had been hung two weeks ago for the same thing.

Item 3:  Strange folk of late had often come at all hours, asking audience with Lord Meiron.  Scruffy-looking mercenaries, bandits who all wore red armbands, short bearded folk with strange eyes, and even a man so tall he "almost had to stoop to get in the town gate" clad in skins and chainmail.

As expected, not long after, the Captain of the Guard and Lord Meiron's Bodyguard marched smartly into the Sign of the Leaky Keg, parting the early-morning tavern scum like the prow of a ship parting the sea.  This time, there was no open confrontation with the innkeeper, although she and Ellis Millworth did exchange poisonous glares.

"So...ah...Lady Sindell," Lord Meiron lisped in way of greeting.  Nystyra was struck by the stuffy, perfumed atmosphere of the chamber and the almost visible miasma of pinkish wig powder floating around the room.

"Lord Meiron," Sindell said distantly.

"Or should I call you, hmm...the, ah, Rowan, perhaps, hmm?  Here with your friends, the, hmm...the Oaks.  I should certainly hope that trees have not ears for secrets, or they shall soon find them lacking, if you...ah...understand me, hmm?" he lisped, with an air of immense cleverness at having deciphered Nystyra's "prophecy."

"You are cleverer than I thought, Lord Meiron," Sindell replied.  "Many men less wise do not understand my prophecies, and are vexed when they come true."  Nystyra sed to herself, though she did not let it show.  This man may be clever, she thought, but I have won the first battle.  He had fallen for her "prophecy" hook, line, and sinker.

 "So, ah...Lady Sindell," Lord Meiron said, leaning closer enthusiastically, "What do the fates hold in store for me today?"

"My Second Sight does not do your bidding, Lord Meiron," Nystyra/Sindell said sternly.

"Hmm..." he said, vacillating between frustration at being so rebuked and respect for the Seeress.

"Red is the color of blood, Lord Meiron," Sindell said suddenly.

"But of course," he said, evidencing some slight irritation at this odd remark.  The room returned to its normal perfumed stillness for many a long moment.  Suddenly, her eyes, apparently staring at things mere mortals could not see, widened in apparent shock.

"Red is YOUR blood, Lord Meiron, and red the hair of your killer!  O beware, thy days are numbered!" She cried wildly.

Lord Meiron rocked back, visibly shaken.

"What is this?  Is my death indeed so near?  How may I escape it?" he asked wildly.  His wig fell askew and his handkerchief dropped from his hand as he stared at "Sindell" intently, fearfully.

"Blind!" Nystyra/Sindell wailed loudly, clenching her hands and then covering her eyes.  "I am blind!  O sweet Sight, but it will not come!  Nor more may I say, the Fates are veiled from my eyes!"

"Tell me!  You must tell me how to escape my fate!"  Lord Meiron shouted.  He leapt up, upsetting his chair, which fell with a crash.  He looked about in a panic.

"O you are a dead man, Lord Meiron," Sindell cried, in a high, shrill voice not at all like her own.  "You are dead, and I am blind!  The shears!  The shears of Fate!"  And with that, she collapsed.

"Vile Hag!" Lord Meiron cried.  Tears streamed down his face, and he seized Sindell about the neck in a rage.  "I cannot die!  I do not want to die!  How may I live?  Tell me, tell me!"

But Sindell, despite his shaking of her, did not wake, and suddenly he was quiet.  The whole roomed seemed quiet.  He stood there, breathing heavily, and staring about with bloodshot, fearful eyes.  A thin scream escaped his lips.

"I am a dead man!" he wailed, and, suddenly frightened by the stillness of the room, opened the door and ran out down the hallway.  


****************************************************
And Nystyra unveils her devious side.  I tried for just a bit of Poe-ishness at the end there...did I get the atmosphere right?

Sorry I took so long between updates, but school has reared its ugly head.  I will try to update once a week, but this may not be possible, so I trust my faithful readers will keep my Storyhour well and thoroughly *BUMPED*


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## Bob Aberton (Sep 24, 2002)

Sindell was later seen to be escorted out of Lord Meiron's castle by a double squad of soldiers, looking wan and pale.

She reeled into the Leaky Keg, stumbled up the stairs and into her room, and immediately her haggardness left her.  She burst out laughing.  Then she swooped down on the Gnome sitting near the fireplace and whirled him around the floor in a "happy dance."

"We've done it!" She said joyfully.  "He swallowed it, hook, line and sinker!"

"Er...that's wonderful, Miss Nystyra," Eliad said cautiously.  "But what did I have t' do wi' it?"

"Oh, you haven't played your part yet," she said confidentially.  "But you will soon."


Meanwhile, back in his room, Lord Meiron was nervous.  Very nervous.  In fact, he had long ago shredded his pink lace handkerchief, and his nails were down to nothing.  He paced back and forth, back and forth again, thinking and chewing his nails.

What have I done to deserve this?  he thought.  I have been a good man...as good as the next man anyway.  I only sought to make myself comfortable in life...why me?

But this strain of philosophical thinking did not last long, and soon he was thinking of the more practical details.

I must appear at the Commendation, he thought.  I simply must.  No doubt the people will be terribly dissapointed if I do not come...and a bit of adulation would do me well, in the state I am in...

"Guard!" he called sharply.  A bored-looking Bodyguard poked his head in the room.

"You called, Lordship?"

"Yes.  Bring me...ah...bring me some more of this...hmm...excellent wine.  And summon my favorite...ah, you know who I mean..."

"Yes, m'lord." the Bodyguard replied, rolling his eyes.  It was not fetching the wine that he objected to so much, but he couldn't fathom why his Lord always wanted to be alone with that particular Bodyguard.  Some details of his Lord's personal life were best left unquestioned...


The Commendation was a grand ceremony.  A celebration particular to the town of Dwllyn, it was held every year on the first day of fall, to commemorate the hard toiling of the farmers that produced the crop that would keep Dwllyn's citizens alive through the winter.  Lord Meiron's father had started it, and Lord Meiron had found that it endeared the people to him to have their efforts commemorated.  

But, standing at his gaily beribboned lectern, delivering a long flowery oration to The Common Man, he let his mind wander.  Despite what the Seeress had said, he couldn't stay inside all his life...and he had plenty of men guarding him, he had nothing to worry about...

Or had he?  Crouching on a rooftop nearby was a tall, red-haired man, staring intently at Lord Meiron and fingering a dagger.

Lord Meiron had no time to react.  He had the crowd give an audible gasp, but thinking it was merely due to the dashing figure he cut in his newly tailored plum-colored overcoat and curly pink wig, he continued speaking.

"...thus it is that the Common Man's toils are commendable, nay, laudible, for it is his back upon which rests our livelyhoods.  Indeed...err...indeed..."  Tired of the crowd's pointing above his head, he turned to look at the rooftop above his podium.  He speech faltered as he realized that the tall, red-haired man perched on the rooftop was holding a flashing knife.

"Sic Semper Tyrannis!" the man yelled, and lept off the rooftop, brandishing his knife.

A heavy weight hit Lord Meiron in the chest and he fell to the ground.  His vision was suddenly full of flashing knives and red-haired assassins.  As the red-haired man leaned toward him with that wicked knife, Lord Meiron heard  Sindell's words echoing in his mind; "Red is your blood, Lord Meiron, and Red the hair of thy killer...!"

Incredible, Lord Meiron thought,  she is a genuine Seeress.  Then his vision turned black and he knew no more. 

****************************************************

In lieu of a *BUMP*, I updated again.  Happy, O invisible readers?


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## Horacio (Sep 24, 2002)

Yes, very happy!

I like updates


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## maddman75 (Sep 24, 2002)

Great Bob!  Love the setting and the interactions between the characters.  I'm glad you pointed me over here


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## Taboo (Sep 25, 2002)

Still a regular reader and enjoying every minute. I can't wait for the next update as usual!


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## Corwyn (Sep 26, 2002)

Don't worry Bob you probably have more readers than you think.

And if you just keep posting updates more of them will start posting until you will wish that there weren't that many of them.

About the story ....   Excellent!!!  

Very good show by the pc's or is it due more to your artistic abilities ?


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## Bob Aberton (Sep 27, 2002)

Well, Corwyn, I _do_ flatter myself that I'm a good writer 

But my PCs (PC singular, actually), are nothing short of brilliant.

When I thought up the "Lord Meiron plot," I had basically thought that she would be a typical PC and loaf around Dwllyn, making Gather Info checks.

When she said that she was going to disguise herself as a fortune-teller and go right to the top, so to speak, I was completely blindsided.    But blindsided in a good way.

Building on her previous brilliance, once she had gotten the trust of Lord Meiron, she then 'persuaded' Eliad, in his Tall Red-haired Man disguise (tm), to attack him, after she had predicted such an attack.

You'll see the end result soon, don't worry.

Yes, my PC does often make a good show.  Amazingly enough, the very different personalities of Diesa, Damara, and Nystyra were all roleplayed by her (applause).


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## the Jester (Sep 27, 2002)

Hey Bob!

Nice story hour you've got going on here... I hope to read some more of it later on!  I just read everything you've posted so far; good show!  

As for the one-player mult-character campaign, I've had a lot of fun with that kind of thing in the past.  Good stuff, if they can rp well enough that the different characters aren't just different heads of the hydra, and in this case it looks like the player is doing a fine job!

Well, I'll check your next update when it happens- you might drop in on my story hour if you get bored...


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## Corwyn (Sep 30, 2002)

A friendly 
*Bump*


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## Bob Aberton (Oct 5, 2002)

Thanks for the Bump, Corwyn.  And now, without further ado:You didn't kill him, Eliad, did you?" Nystyra asked anxiously.  The Gnome was propped up on the bed in his room, fairly swaddled with bandages.  Lord Meiron's Bodyguard, once the surprise had worn off, had not been lenient with him.  Only the sudden, puzzling incompetence of the Captain of the Guard had saved him.
"I told ye, Miss Nysytra, I didn' kill him.  I scratched him up a fair bit, but..." The normally cheerful Gnome gestured at the bandages.  Mathonwy had given his aid to the Gnome, but he had to do it discreetly, and without magic.  It would have been far too suspicious for this mysterious figure, wounded by Guardsmen's sword, to be healed in the space of hours by the Seeress's own companion.  His disguise had been still with him when they had found him, for he had not been coherent enough to cancel it, so he would have been recognized.  It was only now that Nystyra realized just how thin the ice she was treading was.

Not long after their conversation, Nystyra was called upon once more.

"Seeress, your vision is not so clear.  I have survived when you said I would have died," Lord Meiron said, almost gloating, but prevented from making any sort of facial expression by the bandage around his brow.

"Question not my vision, Lord Meiron!" Sindell said sharply.  "You have survived this once.  Thank the Fates for they will surely not be so merciful the next time!"
Lord Meiron sat back, subdued, but Nystyra thought she detected the blossoming of suspicion in his eyes.  Quickly, she broke the silence.

"Shall I prophecy for you, my Lord?" she asked innocently

"No prophesy for today, Seeress," Lord Meiron said.  "I have questions of state that need answering...questions of...ah...security."

"The more a spider spins his webs, the more he worries for them," Sindell reflected thoughtfully.  "You ask, I doubt not, about that one particular item among your personal effects, the one which was paid for in six feet of rope."  That last was purely a guess, as Nystyra, searching quickly through her mind, came up with that bit of information Eliad had gleaned from a disgruntled servant.

"I, ah, see that your vision is..hmm...improved, Seeress," Lord Meiron said, intrigued.

"Doubt not, O Lord Meiron, that that which was paid for in rope shall be paid yet again, an you be not wary.  Only the Keeper of Lover's Secrets shall this one conceal, and only the new moon hide the gallows-debt."

"I do not like to...ah, perforate my gardens, Seeress, yet your advice is good," Lord Meiron said.  Whatever could be said of his personal habits, or his manner of dressing, he had a sharp mind.  Nystyra was suddenly struck by a brilliant idea, one of a series which had led her to this point.

"Lord Meiron, a Seeress has eyes only, not ears to hear secrets nor a voice to speak them.  On the night of the new moon, I shall lay such a spell upon your gallows-debt that mortal tongues shall never again speak of it, unless you yourself reveal it.  Scorn not my aid, Lord Meiron, for wise men never spurn powerful allies," she said, crossing her fingers and hoping Lord Meiron agreed.

"I shall...consider it," Lord Meiron said, a crafty glint coming into his eyes.


Later that night, the night of the new moon, Nystyra and Eliad were concealed in some bushes in Lord Meiron's gardens.  A life-size statue of a naked woman - the Keeper of Lover's Secrets, as some called the sculpture that had stood mute witness to so many trysts and romances - gazed down at them with lidded eyes.  It was almost completely dark, but the Fey blood that ran in the veins of both Nystyra and Eliad allowed them to see fairly well regardless.  

They waited an hour, then two, then three.  Nystyra stretched her legs, trying to banish a sharp cramp.  As she shifted uncomfortably, there was a sudden noise and a gleam of light.  Lord Meiron, dressed in dark purple overcoat and breeches, came into view, holding a candle and arguing with a Bodyguard.

"What do you mean, you couldn't find her?  My Seeress has not betrayed me, I trust?" he said, in an outraged squeal.

"Your Grace, I could not..." the Bodyguard began, but Lord Meiron cut him off.

"Ooh, just shut up!  I have such a headache...you did let my messenger through the front gate, did you not?  Good.  You are dismissed...I said - "

"He said you are dismissed, soldier," said a woman's voice from right behind Lord Meiron's shoulder.  He turned around with a start.

"My lady Sindell!  What an...ah, pleasant surprise," he said, his voice courteous, but strained.     
As he had been speaking to the hapless Bodyguard, Nystyra had slipped noiselessly out of the bush (a trick the Gnome had taught her), and crept up behind Lord Meiron silently.  In her black robes, she appeared almost sepulchural, enough to make Lord Meiron shiver.

When she made no reply, Lord Meiron turned around and applied his shovel to the ground under the feet of the Keeper of Lover's Secrets.  When he had a sufficient hole, he drew a small ironbound cask from his wig, and placed it in the hole.  Shovelling dirt over it, he turned around and squinted impatiently at Sindell.

"Well?  Are you going to...ah, cast your spell," he asked.  Sindell said nothing, but nodded her head.

"Well goo - "

He got no further than that.  Something heavy collided with his skull, and he fell to the ground, his wig falling from his unmoving head.

The Bodyguard that Lord Meiron had been berating earlier came into view again.  He looked sternly at the fallen Lord for a minute, then reached up and removed his helmet with a beatific grin.  Suddenly, Eliad stood where the Bodyguard had been, holding a suddenly too-large sword with a dented pommel (Lord Meiron had a hard head).

"Oo, Miss Nystyra, but tha' was clever, weren't it?  Oo, but I wish I could've seen th' look on his face if he'd seen me!  The stupid poof told me everything, thinkin' I was one o' his precious Bodyguard.  It's all thanks to Cnorrec, too," he said, stroking the hat Cnorrec fondly.

Nystyra looked at the unconscious form of Lord Meiron.  Much to her surprise, he was as bald as an egg under his curly pink wig.  Eliad had already retrieved the iron strongbox.  For several tense minutes, he worked it with his lockpicks, first whistling happily, then humming perplexedly, then staring angrily, then finally shouting angrily as one of his lockpicks snapped off in the lock, ruining any chance of opening it by the conventional means.

"Iwn Gneauh Cnirri! Oh, Toadstools!" he screamed in rage, using the very worst of Gnmic curses and smashing the strongbox with his Bodyguard's sword.  Then, realizing how much noise he was making, and seeing the poisonous glare Nystyra shot him, he covered his mouth, looked horrified, and picked up the strongbox.  To his surprise, it fell open, one of its hinges broken, and a sheaf of papers fluttered out.  He snatched up all of the them, and was starting to read them, when they heard shouting and the sound of running feet.  The Bodyguard had arrived.  Clutching the papers, he and Nystyra ran off into the night.  

****************************************************

Well, what do you think?  Next update probably tomorrow or Sunday.


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## Corwyn (Oct 5, 2002)

Excellent as always  

Crafty plots, good roleplaying and superb writing. The reason why this story houre should be in the top ten.


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## Bob Aberton (Oct 6, 2002)

They were over the garden wall barely a step ahead of the Bodyguard, and as they fled down the dark street, they heard a shout of fury, soon taken up by the other Bodyguards: "Dead!  Lord Meiron is Dead!!"

They hurried down the streets to the Leaky Keg, entering through the back door, and hurrying swiftly to their room.  They knocked on the door, and, finding no answer, walked in.

It was completely dark, and the first thing Nystyra felt was the edge of a scimitar brushing her neck.

"Who are you?" asked a familiar voice.

"It is us," Nystyra said calmly.  "Eliad and Nystyra."

There was a muttering in the corner of the room, and a light was struck.  Diesa, Math, and Mathonwy sat around a table.  Diesa's hand, the hand not holding the lantern, was on the haft of her pick.  Silvercoat and Quickfeather glared at the newcomers with barely concealed threat.  Damara Khaza'ar stood behind Nystyra and Eliad, scimitar drawn.  When the light illuminated the two familiar figure, everyone relaxed.

"Do you have...whatever it is you were after?" Diesa inquired.

"Nothing," said Eliad.  He whipped Cnorrec off his head, upended the hat, and dumped out veritable blizzard of papers.  "Just a lot o' letters."

Nystyra just sighed in annoyance and collected the papers, putting them on her desk.  Most of them were simple bills of accounts, troop lists, and the like.  However, some were more interesting.  One was titled "The Treaty of 124*ARD, Being an Account of Friendship and Alliances with the clan of Dwarves calling themselves Longbeards."  Diesa snatched it up, her eyes narrowing angrily as she scanned the paper.

"Scum!" she burst out suddenly, flinging the paper down to the table.  "That coalgrubbing son of a..."  she grabbed up her pick, and brought it down of the paper, pinning the treaty to the table.

The others looked at her, astonished at her outburst.

"He is making an alliance with the...their name tastes foul on my tongue...the Longbeards, may their mines collapse on them.  They provide him with gold to pay his army, and he pledges to help them against my own clan, the Swifthammers," she explained bitingly.

"And here is a letter to a rival of the mayor of Urglath - Lord Meiron is trying to get his own man as mayor," Mathonwy commented.

"Here is a letter to the Red Band, whoever they are...he needs them to burn and despoil Urglath's outlying fields," Eliad commented.

Nystyra said nothing.  In her hands, she held a set of instructions to somebody named Orm, who Lord Meiron called his "emissary to the giants."  

"You should know, I suppose, that Lord Meiron sent out a message rider this very night," Damara said conversationally.  "I know this because I enlisted myself in the Watch, and I was guarding the gate when orders came to let the rider through.  He was headed for Pillars of the Sky."  

Everyone looked at Damara with a mixture of amazment and concern.  Concern, because they knew they needed to catch the message rider, and amazement because they ahd never known Damara to say more than a dozen words at a time.  The next instant, their was a bustle at the table as they all rose to fetch their gear.  They knew they could never return here again, not without different names and good disguises.

They were moving toward the door when a loud knock was heard.

"Open up, in the name of His Grace!" said a commanding voice from the other side of the door.

The Wanderers looked at each other.  Silvercoat growled softly and Quickfeather glared at the door with his razor edged glance.  Eliad flung himself out of the window.  The Wanderers, however, had no time to be shocked at this sudden action before Eliad's voice was heard.

"Coom on down," he said cheerily. "It's not too far down...I think I'm on the stable roof.  In fact, I'll get us som horses..." his voice trailed off.

"Go," said Damara, drawing her scimitar.  "I will face them myself."

Nystyra realized she had a lump in her throat.  It was all her fault, she was no leader.  I she hadn't come here, they wouldn't be in this situation.  Now Damara's blood was on her hands, and...

Damara had pushed her out the window.  She landed on the stable roof, as Eliad had said, and Math, Mathonwy, Diesa, and Silvercoat fell on top of her.  Quickfeather, soaring out of the window, perched himself on the inn's weathervane and let out a piercing shriek.

The Wanderers sorted themselves out just in time to hear the sound of splintering wood, then there was the distinct noise of clashing steel.  They heard a wordless warcry that sounded exactly like Quickfeather's shriek, and then the shout of a wounded man.

"Psst!  Miss Nystyra!" it was Eliad, leading five horses and Damara's pony by the bridles.  The Wanderers mounted up and rode away into the night, leaving the noise of clashing steel and wounded men back at the inn.  As the sounds of fighting died away into the distance, Nystyra realized her eyes were moist with tears.

****************************************************

Short and sweet.  There'll be another update soon, I promise.  The "Lord Meiron" adventure is almost done with.


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## Corwyn (Oct 9, 2002)

Like I said, it belongs at the top.

Now stay there.


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## Corwyn (Oct 12, 2002)

I hope other people are noticing this story becouse it is getting hard to keep it on page one on my own.

Nystyra looks better in a page 1


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## saFire (Oct 13, 2002)

Corwyn: On behalf of Bob, who is on a short vacation, (he'll be back tomorrow) I'd like to thank you for being so supportive of our story hour 



- saFire


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## Bob Aberton (Oct 14, 2002)

I'm back!!

In lieu of an update, would any of my faithful readers be interested in such things as stats and Character Histories for the various PCs and NPCs?


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## Corwyn (Oct 15, 2002)

Yes of course we would like those stats.  

And ... Updates  lots of updates!!


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## Bob Aberton (Oct 16, 2002)

It was dark on the road, and Pillars of the Sky loomed up ahead, dark and purple and almost threatening.

Down the long, dark road, a rider was riding.  He was clad in a black cloak and seated on a black horse, and as he flashed past the midnight landscape, he shivered and took a tighter grip on his sword.

He was a message rider of Dwllyn, and though he did his duty, and did it better than any others, that didn't mean he had to like it.  He peered ahead into the pitch blackness, though he could see nothing.  There were dangers on the road, he knew, not the least of them being breaking his horse's leg in a hole in the ground.  

After a few hours of steady galloping, he became aware that there was someone else on the road with him.  Far, far back, the road went over the lip of a small hollow, and, glancing over his shoulder, he could see a faint speck on the rocky path, coming up fast.  Then his horse stumbled over some hidden stone, and he barely kept his seat - or his silence, though no doubt the rider behind him was already aware of his presence.

That was when he heard the howling.  A lone wolf wailed its sorrows to the moon, and, closer to him, more wolves picked up the cry.  A nervous sweat broke out on his forehead and he realized they were all around him.  Closing in for the kill, he thought, urging his horse on to greater speed.  His horse, too, had pricked up its ears at the sound of howling, and its eyes rolled fearfully in its head as the poor brute realized that the threatening scent was drawing closer.  He adjusted his grip on his still-sheathed sword, though he knew it would do no good against wolves.  He barely knew how to use the thing; after all, he was a message rider, not a warrior.

Now he could even see the wolves; dark, sleek shapes keeping pace with him on either side of him, flowing over the ground and leaping over tree stumps and boulders.  His horse tossed its head from side to side, seeking to bolt.  He wanted to spin his horse around and make for Dwllyn, but something held him back - loyalty, and love for his liege lord.  He was a message rider of Dwllyn, handpicked by his beloved lord for this perilous task.  He knew his duty.

Now he was cresting a slight rise.  On either side of the road, the wolves were still keeping pace with him.  Now, up ahead, he saw something to give him pause.  Four people were standing in the road, two holding loaded bows, and the other two standing impassive in the robes of Druids.  

"Halt!" cried one of them in a commanding voice, a feminine voice at that, as the rider noted.   
"Stand and Deliver!"

The rider snorted silently in derision.  Not bloody likely.  He was a message rider of Dwllyn, and he knew his duty.  He did yield slightly at the top of the rise, and suddenly the wolves were all about him, milling around and snarling threateningly.  He gathered his nerve for what he had to do.  A message rider knows his duty, he reminded himself, and with that, he clapped his spurs into his horse and, drawing his sword with a sudden shout, his sent his horse surging forward with a patriotic cry.  

"For Dwllyn!"

His horse panicked for a second at being forced into the midst of the mass of slavering jaws and gleaming teeth, then obeyed its master.  Like its rider, the horse, too, knew its duty.

The wolves were surprised at this sudden move, and the furry mass melted aside like the Red Sea before Moses.  Those few wolves that did not move were bowled aside, or trampled.  The message rider paid them no heed, for the archers ahead on the road, who were noe raising their bows and taking aim, were more of a threat.  

He was closing with them.  Two hundred yards...then one hundred...he was thundering down the road, his horse's hoofs beating out a frenzied rhythm on the turf.  He fancied himself an awe-inspiring sight.  The manic tempo of hoof-beats grew more and more frenzied - he was closing with the two white-faced archers, barely more than fifty yards now, he was almost - 

Suddenly, the branches of an oak tree loomed up in front of his face.  Dropping his sword, he ducked, but he was not quick enough.  As the branches struck him in the face and chest, he was shot backwards out of the saddle like an arrow from a bow.  As he performed several lazy revolutions in the air, his last though was, Strange...why didn't I notice that tree before now?

****************************************************

There you have it - a nice, short update, and another one on the way in a few days.

saFire will be starting a thread in the Rogues Gallery detailing the stats and character histories/descriptions of the PCs and certain select NPCs.

As an aside, which, as readers, do you prefer - short, frequent updates (like the last few updates), or long, detailed updates every few weeks (like many other story hours, and like the original updates on Page 1 of this story hour)?

In other words, which should I do:

Short updates every few days?

or,

Long updates every few weeks?


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## saFire (Oct 16, 2002)

*Rogue's Gallery thread*

Just to let everyone know:

I'll probably be starting the Rogue's Gallery thread this weekend, maybe sooner. Here are some things I'll be detailing:

Stats of Nystyra, Eliad, Math, Mathonwy, Diesa,and Damara

NPC Stats like Lord Meiron, maybe Adrin Emberlord

and stats for Smeidir, artifact-weapon of Clan Swifthammer.

As the story hour progresses, I'll add stats and character histories for PC's and NPC's that have yet to arrive.


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## Corwyn (Oct 19, 2002)

I think I would like the short updates every few days rather then having to wait a long time between updates.


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## saFire (Oct 19, 2002)

Thr Rogue's Gallery thread has officially started! It's called "The Elfblood Wanderers Dramatis Personae" 

Feel free to visit and post comments, questions, etc.

Thanks!


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## Bob Aberton (Oct 21, 2002)

While Eliad and Nystyra rifled through the message rider's pockets, Diesa checked his pulse, finding he was still alive.  Eliad broke the wax seal on the solitary letter gracing the rider's saddlebags, and Mathonwy walked over to the great oak, whose branches still flailed about menacingly.  

"Grace of the Gods to you, Brother Oak, and our thanks for aiding us," he said.  He knelt among the hoary old tree's tangled roots and pulling out a flask of wine, poured on the ground at the foot of the oak.  The leaves in the tree's branches fluttered, seeming to sigh in a satisfied way, though there was no wind.

"May Herne shield you from the huntsman's arrows, Brothers and Sisters," Math said, addressing this speech to the pack of wolves surrounding him.  "And our thanks for aiding us."  He pulled a joint of meat from the supplies and tossed to the wolves, who growled their thanks and padded off into the night, dragging the haunch of venison with them.

To Garr Longbeard, most Magnificent Patron of Clan Longbeard:

Greetings and Salutations!  I hope and trust that this correspondance finds you well.
Alas, this is no mere trifle of personal friendship that this letter contains.  I must be brief
so that our enemies learn little should this missive fall into the wrong hands.  I am forced once more to invoke the terms of our treaty; in other words, my finances run low, and ere I
can be of benefit service to you, I require more money.  My vast armies clamor for payment, and I fear they are close to mutiny.  I shudder to make such a demand of your most Formidable personage, but I must have no less than 1500 pounds in gold bar at the earliest convenience (that is to say, no later than one month from now) if my armies are to be maintained.  Lest you think I demand too much and give too little, I give you my assurance that as soon as the detestable Free Townships have been dealt with, I shall honor my alliance with you, and assist you in every way, martially and materially, against your foes of Clan Swifthammer.

-Dyved Meiron, Lord of Dwllyn

They had just finished perusing the letter, when they heard hoofbeats fast approaching.  They were frozen with shock for a moment, fearing that the message rider had had an escort and that "the jig was up," as Eliad put it.  Then, in a sudden scramble, they all grabbed for weapons dropped here and there on the ground after dealing with the message rider.  They stood ready, ready to sell their lives dearly, when the rider - it was only one - burst into the roadside copse.  Moonlight illuminated the rider's face.  A woman, clad in guilded chainmail, and riding on a shaggy desert pony.

"Damara!" cried Nystyra joyfully, recognizing the familiar face.  The Allamidian woman looked around at the other Wanderers.  They saw that her scimitar, unsheathed and ready in her hand, was blooded to the hilt.  Damara's surcoat, emblazoned with the hawk-and-sun emblem of the Allamidian Tribes, was ripped to shreds and bloodied, and her chainmail was scratched and nicked.  Her face was haggard and sweaty, covered in a mask of blood and dust.  But she was alive.  Nystyra's faith in her own leadership suddenly returned.

"It is I," the warrioress said shortly, dismounting from Sandstorm and looking at the prone figure of the unconscious message rider.  "Not a few of Meiron's soldiery will have cause to remember me - and my blade as well.  I see you have caught the rider of whom I spoke."

They all looked to the rider in question.  As a matter of fact, he seemed to be coming to, so Eliad walked over and struck him over the head with a tree branch until the rider lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Moments later, the Wanderers were back on horseback and riding hard for Urglath with the rider tied to Damara's saddle and the dawn at their backs.  All save Eliad, that is.  When the Wanderers realized that someone needed to deliver at least a copy of Lord Meiron's letter or it would be missed, Eliad squared his shoulders, donned Cnorrec, and, looking exactly like the message rider now tied to Damara's saddle, rode off for the Pillars of the Sky, bearing a skillful forgery of Lord Meiron's letter.

The rest of the Wanderers arrived in Urglath hours later and handed the mayor the original copy of the letter.  Soon, Nystyra walked out of the Mayor's office bearing the License to Crenellate she had worked so hard to gain.    

****************************************************

Short, I know, but another update's coming soon.  Would anyone else besides Corwyn like to leave a comment/bump?  Taboo?  Horacio?  Enkhidu?  Anyone?  Note that I mean no offense to Corwyn, just that I'd also like other readers to reply as well.

And, I urge to to visit the "Elfblood Wanderers Dramatis Personae" in the Rogues Gallery.  It's in need of a bump and a kind comment or two.


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## Taboo (Oct 21, 2002)

Never fear, I'm still an avid fan! I'm enjoying your story hour immensely, but haven't been able to be on the boards quite as much as I'd like to lately.  

My story hour is catching up to where we are in our game, so I'll be able to spend more time reading and keeping up with my favorite stories, which certainly includes yours!  

I like the stories and characters I can really picture in my mind, and don't just sound like a blow by blow recount of a game and that's one of the things I really like with your story.

I'll be sure to throw in a bump when you need it! As far as story length, I like regular updates even if they're short rather than sporadic updates that take weeks in between (then I forget what I've already read). But if the author is busy, real life intrudes, etc.. it's totally understandable when there are delays.

And before I forget, I love the way you've handled Eliad.


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## Bob Aberton (Oct 26, 2002)

"Now what?" Diesa asked grumpily, a hood pulled low over her eyes.  She, Nystyra, and another Dwarf, named Fjal, were standing on the crest of the hill known as Greytop Knoll.  Like most of the other mornings Nystyra had encountered in the region, it was drizzly and bleak.  Below them, the stony, hard road that they knew so well snaked away, toward Urglath and Dwllyn and Greattree to the south and west, and slithering northward across bleak moors and stony harshlands to the Pillars of the Sky.  It was early fall, and there was a bite in the air, a little edge to the breezes swirling emptily across heather and bog, boulder and hemlock tree.

Nystyra suddenly remembered a lesson she had learned from Adrin Emberlord on the history of the region.  It had once been a profitable area for raising sheep, and it was dotted with thoroughfares and small landholdings, of which Urglath, Dwllyn, and Greattree were the last remnants.

That was before the Ruinous Wars.  When Nerwyn Nherianthir, High King of Avalon, and the only living descendent related even indirectly to the fabled Pendragon bloodline, had rode through here and in the shadow of the Pillars of the Sky done battle with the Grey Hordes of the Wizard, a southern warlord and the only living descendent of Mordred Pendragon the Slayer of Arthur, the land had been wounded beyond repair.  Towns and freeholds were burned.  It was said that King Nerwyn had razed half the castles in the land, and the Wizard had razed the other half.  Now only one other building, and that ruined, remained that Nystyra could see.  It was and old tower a mile away, rearing its shattered crenellations to the sky like a broken middle finger, in defiance to fire, sword, and wind.

"Empty monuments in an empty land," Nystyra whispered.  What kind of a leader could callously do this to his own land, his own people?  Though he was still sung of by the bards as a hero, Nystyra in that instant knew better than that.  No hero-king would have turned his realm into a battleground and let his people be trampled under his own armies.  "I will lead better than he," Nystyra vowed to herself, and she meant it with all her heart.    

"Scacth," Diesa said to her companion, and they both laughed.  "Scacth" meant "moonstruck, crazy, or stunned" in Swifthammer Dwarven.

Nystyra didn't understand what they meant, however, but she was jolted out of her musings by the rumbling of...mine carts?  At the foot of Greytop Knoll, a shower of dirt-clods and small rocks flew into the air, and then a great hole appeared in the ground.  Then, Dwarves began climbing out of the hole.  There was half a hundred of them, dressed in plain miner's clothes and carrying chisels, axes, picks, hammers, plumb lines, quadrants, surveyor's tools, forge tools, woodworking tools, seemingly every kind of tool know to man, and some that weren't.  After the Dwarves finished climbing out of the hole came mine carts after mine carts after mine carts.  Pulled by straining, sweating dwarves while other dwarves laid out rails in front of them and other dwarves collected the rails they had already rolled over, which were them laid out in front of them again, the carts were loaded with all manner of supplies.  Some had blocks of cut stone.  Others seemed to carry tents made of the skin of mountain-goats.  Others were piled high with coal, and yet others with iron ore to be smelted.  One appeared to be a wheeled forge (probably a rolling repair kit for mining tools), and another, a wheeled kitchen.  Still more were piled high with kegs and kegs marked: 'Haelu,' seemingly a Dwarven word for "liquor."

"Who are these?" Nystyra asked, bewildered at this sudden rush of activity.

"Min eaxlgestall," Fjal replied proudly.

" 'My comrades in labor; my workforce,' he says," Diesa translated.  "You wanted a castle, did you not?  My clan brothers can build you one.  For the right price, of course (but my interest is in spiritual matters; I know little of such things)."

****************************************************

Sure it's a little short, but just think of it as an overly long BUMP.

Thanks for the reply, Taboo.  I'm glad you like the way I handle Eliad.  The game occassionally gets a little grim, and Eliad is the humor that brightens everything up.  Speaking of which, his Character History has been posted to the "Elfblood Wanderers Dramatis Personae" thread in the Rogue's Gallery forum, if you're interested.


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## Bob Aberton (Oct 29, 2002)

Y'know, I don't mean to be rude or anything, dear readers, bu this storyhour is in sad need of a well-meaning bump or two...

A comment or criticism would be even more appreciated...

Update soming soon.

Where, O where have the readers gone/where, O where could they be...?


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## Taboo (Oct 30, 2002)

I KNOW I'm not your only faithful reader, but I just had to reply to this one! 

I love the way you brought the dwarves in! It's very creative, and I just had to tell you so!  I've had my share of interesting times with dwarves, but it's in my alternate game, not Slaves to Heroes. I can't wait to see how this goes.  

If you get a chance, visit my webpage, there's a gallery there of figures from my story hour and let me know what you think (Be kind, I'm still setting the webpage up)! (Link's in my sig.)

Great job! I can't wait for the next post.


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## Corwyn (Oct 31, 2002)

Indeed, love the dwarves.

Especially the war between the two clans, don't see that every day. Actually haven't seen that, ever.

Very good idea, and stolen.


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## Bob Aberton (Nov 15, 2002)

Thanks! I'm glad you like it.  

Though Diesa claimed to know little of business matters, being a priestess of the Clan, she did turn out to be a shrewd bargainer.  Talking first in Dwarven and then in King's Anglish, she finally managed to get Fjal and Nystyra to agree to a price of 80,000 gold crowns (but only after Nystyra reminded her that she never would have completed her quest had it not been for her help.  Even then, she was unwilling to take Nystyra's side in the bargaining.), with 15,000 crowns to be paid in full before the construction began.

But however hard-bargaining the Dwarves may have been, once they got started, they set to working with a will.  By the second day, a veritable tent city had been set up, and new mining carts arrived every day, full of supplies.  Nystyra was sitting in the door of her own tent, watching the dwarves scurry about like busy, bearded ants, yelling and shouting and singing in Dwarven, a language that was utterly beyond her. 

As soon as the Dwarves had erected their work-camp, Fjal and Diesa approached Nystyra, bearing great sheets of parchment with them. Trailing along behind them was the oddest creature Nystyra had ever seen.  He resembled a scaly salamander about six inches taller than Eliad, walking on his hind legs.  His little beady eyes darted around, taking in everything.   
In one hand, he held a dirty little quill and another roll of parchment.  Clutched in the other claw, he held what appeared to be a dead rat.  Fjal was barking at him in Dwarven, and the lizard seemed to be listening intently, taking down a series of numbers, arithmetic, and runes on his parchment (which he balanced on his tail to write on).  Occasionally, it chattered something back at Fjal.  

"What is that?" Nystyra asked curiously, gesturing toward the lizard thing.

"Glink," replied the creature.

"What?" Nystyra asked, thinking it was speaking in some strange language.

"Name...Glink," it replied.  Then it took the dead rat, lying in its hand, and thrust it into its mouth.  Nystyra barely repressed an urge to gag.

"Err...That's..nice," she replied vaguely, turning away.

Meanwhile, Fjal and Diesa presented their own parchments to her. 

"What are these?" Nystyra asked.

"Maen beon hicgan...seo hicgan scieldhal," he replied matter of factly

"Er...right," Nystyra said, unsure of what the dwarf meant.

It turned out that "hicgan scieldhal" meant "plan shieldhall," or, in other words, blueprints for Nystyra's castle.  It was a small, twenty-roomed affair.  By no means impressive, its walls were only four feet thick, its towers a mere fifty feet high, it was none the less packed with such homey touches as an extensive dungeon, a dank treasure-vault full of traps for the unwary, and all the standard features - murder holes in the gates, secret passages in the great hall, hidden arrow slits in the walls - that a feudal noble could possibly need.  There were also some things that most ordinary nobles wouldn't need, such as a spellcasting chamber built all out of obsidian and a library full of occult books and tomes.

Nystyra smiled to herself.  Things were shaping up well. 


About noon, there was a commotion in the work-camp.  A rider in a black cloak, to all appearances a message-rider of Dwllyn, galloped right up to Nystyra's door.  
Following him was a mob of people.

Seeing the message rider, Nystyra almost reached for her bow and quiver, but all for nought.  The message-rider turned out to be Eliad Pelgrin, having survived his delivery of Lord Meiron's letter.

"Eliad!" Nystyra cried joyfully, when she saw him.  Then, her face fell.  "Who are these people?" she asked, seeing the mob.  Most were on foot, and ragged-looking.  About fivescore were mounted, however, and they looked hard-faced and dangerous indeed.

"Oo, well y'see, it's sort of...sort of a gift," Eliad said, beaming at her.

"A gift?" Nystyra asked.  How could this mob of criminals be a gift? she wondered.

"Well, y'see, when I was on me way back, I met these folks," Eliad said, gesturing to the mounted men.  "They were bandits, y'see, an' they wanted to kill me.  But I told them that ye could use a few good warriors in yer service, so..."

"We'll kill for you," one of them, seemingly their leader, said, urging his horse forward.  "for pay, of course."

Oh joy, thought Nystyra, What have I gotten myself into now?

****************************************************

Sorry it took so long for me to post that update, but I've recently gotten involved in a Play by Post game that takes up a lot of time (I'm DM).  I hope I'll be able to update at least once a week, but that may not be possible anymore...

Readers (I know you're out there somewhere), I leave it too you to keep my storyhour well bumped.


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## Taboo (Nov 20, 2002)

Very good! I can't wait to see how Nystyra handles this one!

Don't worry, your loyal readers will take care of you! 

Tab


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## Corwyn (Nov 23, 2002)

Indeed, we will take care to keep the story there where everybody can see it.


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## Taboo (Dec 2, 2002)

Hey Bob, told ya I'd take care of you!

Just post soon, please? I'm going through withdrawals here! 

Tab


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## Corwyn (Dec 10, 2002)

Hmm seems it wanderd from it's path.

Bumping it back on track.


(spelling... sigh)


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## Corwyn (Dec 30, 2002)

And again! 
Bump....

It's  just like gravity what goes up must come down.
Unles that something hits critical mass.


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## Corwyn (Jan 15, 2003)

Hmmm
This story needs a bump.
It has fallen down to page 2... the horror!!

Please people read and post your opinions we need to get Bob back to writing


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## Taboo (Jan 18, 2003)

Oh, Bob....

Please, oh please come back soon!!!!


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