The Open Grand Council
of 1096 AF.
By Jax-Ur of Dan'nathur
This event was held on the 26th day of the 10th moon at the same place as last year, at the Tower of the Violet Master Mage by Loch Tay in Caledonia. And a very place it is too.
The guild related guests included; Grand Master Floris Brand, Master Violet (of course), Master Indigo, Master White and his two green haired Apprentices, Tel Falcon, Wolfgar Stone-Dreamer, Sordelan for the Scouts and Agnes for the Weaponsmith & Armourers Guild.
All the Factions had one or more senior members of their command groups. These included, Aleda, Gunnar, Tim de Wilfsbane, Jerimiah Lovelock, Mathias de Blundell, Arcane, Seduraed, Adelena, a Queenie, some Drowe, etc. The recently rescued Katrina de Venoir was there also.
Master Violet opened the proceedings and welcomed us all. He announced that in honour of this day being the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great Goblin Wars Of Caledonia, a number of conundrums were available for our entertainment. The Scouts Guild set what I believe was the test they gave prospects at The Gathering and the prize for this was "a bag of gold". Floris set a lengthy quiz of items covering the history of the 5 Gatherings. The prize for this was that Floris would enchant any one item of your choice. I believe this was Connall of the Harts. Master Violet set a puzzle that I couldn't even understand, and the prize for this, if I remember correctly was "Master Violet will owe you a favour". Heady stuff indeed.
One of the early focal events of the evening was a ritual performed in the hall of the Tower itself, by the Wolf Faction's ritual group led by Lord Enoch. The ritual circle at the recent Gathering had being over committed by the Mages Guild at the time when this ritual had first been booked but the Mages Guild pay great attention to ensuring that all the Factions have equal access to the ritual circles. This is part of the Guild's affirmation of neutrality. Master Violet produced the Tome Of Earth and used its power to connect the ritual group present to his nearby ritual circle (or something like that in practical terms, but I think it was perhaps much more technical!)
Enoch had great confidence in the ritual he had designed and had rehearsed his group at some length. He announced to all that the purpose of the ritual was to take the ashes of a book that had been destroyed and write the contents of that into a new book (currently blank). The ritual went well and at the end he held high the newly written copy of the Book Of Power.
After the circle was opened, Floris Brand indicated to Master Violet that he should hold forth the Tome Of Earth to Enoch. He instructed Enoch to touch the Tome. Although this is a great honour. Enoch was naturally wary and was in fact temporarily struck down by the power of the Tome. Floris seemed satisfied with the situation. We hear that his comment was something to the effect; "well, he's still alive isn't he".
Among the various guests were a number of ladies who were described as being Priests Of Poseidon. Their dress was very concerned with the colour blue and they wore sea-horse insignia. They seemed to be inquiring about a flute, or similar, which had belonged to them and which they believed had been split into a number of parts and then lost.
The various faction representatives were invited to address us all. Hugo Chareton, brother of Elspeth Tarragon, spoke for the Harts Seduraed spoke for the Unicorns. Arcane spoke for the Dragons and claimed that because the Battle was an honour fight, they had won as much as anyone. [ Except perhaps King Gustav had to run more than some of the other Lord Generals, of course... ? ] The Queenie spoke for the Bears, but that Wraith Buchannon 'person' stood up and deluged us with inane witters as well. Apparently he knew about beer. [ Been to Orkneyjar recently Wraith, hmmm, no? and why is that then ??? ]
A couple of creatures which appeared to be goblins had crept in and were eradicated by the Mages Guild Guards after a short time. More goblins appeared at the gates of the Tower and attacked the guards there. They bore down the guard captain for a time, which will become more significant later. A number of waves of goblins attacked but they were repulsed by a number of the guests, some of whom, frankly, were by now a bit tipsy and spoiling for a fight. Especially Jezza "wanna hit sumfin" Lovelock.
During this, a creature later described to me by Floris as "some minion of Mordred" (certainly it looked as if its fashion sense was influenced by the Chaos Knight gang) appeared in the middle of the Drow up on the balcony and attacked them. It then ran out through the milling attendees. It returned later and hung about and then went outside to pick a fight with some of those watching out for goblins. This was not a great move by it, as it had effectively challenged the entire Enchanted Weapons Owners Club and was shredded by the time it had said. "come on, if you think you're har....!!". Its destruction left behind a small bell. No-one could make out that it had any worth, magically or otherwise, however some enterprising individual is alleged to have sold it to the Weaponsmith Guild for a number of gold. They are apparently buying almost any know Chaos related substance in order to manufacture some anti-chaos weapon.
Perhaps somehow detecting a distraction, some goblins emerged from an _inside_ door to the main hall of the Tower, attacked a few people and kidnapped Thomas Finn (the Bears ambassador to the Wolves). They then closed and locked the door behind them. Master Violet quickly concluded that the goblins had somehow got hold of a key to his Tower and was understandably a bit miffed by this. They goblins had guessed without the wiley Clan McYokel who has decided that if the couldn't get through the locked door they would run outside and catch the goblins there, calling out to they the traditional "see you Jimmy Goblin, can yer mother sew (heads back on!)". Thomas Finn was recovered intact. The bodies of the goblins yielded the key to the Tower (which they had stolen from the Guard Captain in the earlier attacks) and also a set of written orders which said something to the effect that "we want our tower back, get them all to come out and be slain by our army". This document also indicated that they were called the Green Wolf Tribe.
(Later gossip alleged that the Violet Mage did not build this Tower himself but that it was raised by a Goblin King hundreds of years ago. When he was vanquished, Master McTay merely moved in an redecorated.)
And a veritable army of goblins did then attack, wave upon wave of little green warriors. Also little green mages, little green incantors and even little green healers. Also some large and even quite big green persons, claimed to be orcs and trolls. Unfortunately for this army, most of the attendees had turned up to show off their various magical items and were curious to find out just how "cack hard" some of them actually were. Apart from a few who *knew* they were Seriously Hard, such as the two Fellowship Of The Full Moon werewolves who were basking in the light of that night's very full moon.
A little earlier, one of these werewolves, Vlad, (who was alleged to be in fact absolutely plastered, but hey, no one complained to him, did they!) had met what appeared to be a third werewolf inside the tower. They circled each other for a while and sniffed at each other. This werewolf was frankly quite scruffy, but they seemed to get on. Later on, in the battle outside Vlad was seen in the middle of a furious combat with a fourth werecreature, a great black furred monster, neither actually able to be harmed by the other, despite handing out otherwise devastating damage. This creature departed after the impasse was plain. The scruffy werewolf joined in the main battle on the goblins' side. He was slain by magic weapons and on later examination was found to have green skin under his fur. He was pronounced to have been a _goblin_ werewolf.
Some of the goblins struck down the defenders with great magical harm. Some used scrolls were recovered which were analysed as being Incantor Scrolls which cast some Fatal Wounds effect. Tel Falcon declared that these were "dark incantations" and took charge of all the scrolls.
