SGT809-4

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Editorial Room for the Spring 809 Edition

Quotable Quotes

Mario: If Vapour stops that can only mean one thing

Aposta: He found a mirror?

Darien: So, before we do the day-long ritual to save the continent, we could experiment with the short version.

Mortimer: No.

Darien: Why not?

Mortimer: We could find out something we don't want to know.

Clarissa: I'm flattered that you're concerned for my existence, but I have been flirting with oblivion most of my life.

Insidious Rumours

Love or Just Cold?

Mario and Valery both have histories of using and callously discarding the opposite sex, so when they hooked up this winter we all knew it wouldn't last. But night after night they spurned other floozies and himbos to almost exclusively warm each others beds. Then when Mario dared to spend an evening with the lads, Valery tried to kill them in a fit of jealous violence.

Could these two players be off the market? Are the Seagate pubs marginally safer for single men and women? Is it love or just that the nights were very cold this winter.

Pining in the Air

Walk gently around the girls of the air college, they are wearing those black armbands for a good reason. Vapour, Air College Man of the Year, is engaged! The hussy that stole their Vapour is a perky little blonde from Borderlay, Collette Beaumont is reputedly a master healer and obviously misused her skills to entrap noble Vapour.

The Air College officially denies rumours of a 10,000sp bounty for anyone who can release Vapour from the clutches of this wench.

More Ill Wind

On top of the disastrous loss of Vapour's flexing prowess, the Air College is also bereft of it's leading political and society starlet, Clarissa D'Ornay.

In an apparent attempt to be acknowledged for more than "giggling, stabbing people, and being able to put her ankles behind her ears" she selflessly attempted to hold together a nation of tens of millions of beings several hundreds of thousands miles in size for a duration of somewhere between twenty-four hours and 25,920 years. With her mind.

While we don't like to use the term "vegetative", we've been assured that she's been found a shady, north facing spot out of the wind, and is being watered regularly.

What's Hot, What's Not

Hot

• Shallow Sexual Escapades
• Continents dodging Cataclysms
• Killing Undead
• Horses that can walk up walls
• Travelling submerged up river using Mage Current and Water Breathing
• Raising creatures to sentience.

Not

• Demon Summoning Bunnies
• Sacrificing your fellow Rituallers
• Undead with over 100 WP
• Travelling over 50,000 years just for Cake
• Exchanging sentience for cake.

Recent Adventures / News in Brief

Mad Lass Lands Lost Landmass in Demon Dharma Farmer Drama

Recent reports from traders leaving Rokar that a substantial island appeared (or reappeared) South of Hindia have been confirmed by a returning party, who say this is the lost subcontinent of Dakhini, arriving after travelling through time from a previous age. Stories of merchant and fishing vessels crewed by monkey- and goat-headed creatures of myth, and tales of coastal villages coming under attack from Orcs in long-ships, dressed in colourful garb, wielding bronze weapons, and playing frightening music have also been spreading about the region.

The most remarkable tale is that of the captain of the trading vessel The Viceroy, Charles Canning, which was traversing the Bight of Hindia when Dakhini reappeared and they found themselves suddenly beached in the mouth of a river delta.

"We were surprised to see the trees and sand-bars fade into view, but when a small group of brilliantly coloured and dressed Elves flew up and tried to address us in horribly broken Elvish we were amazed. Some had multiple sets of arms, extra faces, blue or red skin, and were generally excited and interested to see us but didn't seem to understand that humans were able to sail boats or much of what the rigging and sails were for. They quickly become bored, but before they left two of them picked us up from the sandbar we'd hit and carried us out to open water. We stayed away from the coast from then on, but could see villages of beast-men; monkeys, snakes, crocodiles and such along the shore."

Appearing as only a footnote in a few Elven histories, the peninsula was thought destroyed in a fiery cataclysm over 25 thousand years ago during which the skies across Alusia were tinged red and the once-pristine moon was pitted with scars from debris apparently ejected from the site of the tumult. The favoured speculation was that the ruling Maryn Consociation had sided with (or offended) the Drow and been struck from the face of the world in one of the final acts of aggression following the War of Tears. Others speculated that they has transgressed against their own Elvish natures by cooperating with lesser races and thus fell into chaos.

Dispatched into the past by the Demon Orias, who was at the time calling himself the Drow moon goddess Inanna, Clarissa D'Ornay (guild member, air mage, and Orias' psychologically suspect agent) was hoping to reconcile her parents' feuding families, riven by a dispute that stretched back until the world-shaking event. Mortimer Graves, Amelia "World-Breaker", Darien, and Glass aided her in making sense of the Consociation's caste system, myriad of beastman species, and the structure by which they supported their Elven patrons to the degree that they were practically demigods. The rules of Dharma laid down strictures for each species, with those adhering to them gaining energy from their peers and neighbours and those who broke the rules sacrificing their share to those in the hierarchy above them. Since most of the rules were complex, enforced by a huge Human-run bureaucracy, and at times seeking to guide the hybrids' natures from their origins, the Elves largely lived a life of cantrip-quick gratification, properly separated (according to Dharma) from the suffering of the "mortal races".

Seeking to avoid the prophesied (and historically documented) destruction and the ensuing exchanges of blame that may have fuelled a feud, the party decided -- following a possibly "divinely" inspired notion of Clarissa -- to skip the land's recorded absence entirely and push it into the future to a time after they had left. Using an obscure ritual recalled by Mortimer, which was designed to protect a garden from frost by sending it through winter into spring, they scaled the magic so that a power source based on millions of sentients keeping and breaking the Dharmic laws could potentially move the lands of the Consociation to the present day.

After no small amount of deal-brokering, diplomacy, and pointing out of omens of impending doom, the Court's agreement was gained. While the most Dharmically invested members of the Maryn Court formed a "power pyramid" and channeled their energy up to Queen Aistaraina, a subsection of the court who represented the seven of the eight Celestial Elements (some have since been lost and rediscovered), along with Darien, guided the peninsula's journey, and a very "special" individual acted as the fulcrum and focus for the energy.

Clarissa was given this agonising task and had to maintain a mental grip on the land as the power of the Consociation was forced through her to stop time from advancing over the entire landmass while Alusia advanced one Elven Great Year into the future. Despite being gifted with an "unbending will" for the duration, the effort has reportedly all but destroyed her mind and left the Guild Healers in amazement that someone could survive that level of magical burn-out. There has been speculation that her Courtier training has replaced her higher faculites almost entirely, but no other Master Rank courtiers have elected to comment.

"She was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, but we're talking about another sort of utensil entirely now. Maybe some sort of whisk?"

"We always learn something incredible about extremes of mental and pharmaceutical damage each time she returns from adventure, but we really can't let her out of our sight this time. It wouldn't be right."

The ritual succeeded, and might have gone without a hitch but for two demonic interferences. Earlier incarnations of Orias (Surya, the Lord the Sun) and Aim (Agni, the Master of Fire) were members of the court, tolerated for the wisdom and insight, and performed vital roles in organising and running the ritual. However, once everyone was committed to the 24 hour long process, they quietly harvested the Dharmic and magical energy of the Elves that had been overcome from exhaustion. The party suspected that had been their long-term goal, but was too busy keeping the continent from disintegrating "mid-flight" to hinder the Fallen Ones greatly. One of the court's younger members, Indra, had been maintaining a link to the lands outside of the immediate effect of the ritual, where time moving at slightly faster pace, and managed to rescue some of the court. He'd also organised some of the children of the court to take care of their elders' duties during their absence. During this time the nature of Dharma appears to have changed radically, and these youngsters are likely to be the colourful godlings that assisted the Viceroy.

Was the mission a success? Orias apparently seemed happy (and rather less mad) and several million lives and maybe a dozen species were preserved, and everyone had cake. Clarissa's family is no longer fighting and she is no longer a disappointment to her parents, who have no idea she ever existed. She smiles more these days, but who knows why?

Columns and Articles

Temple Reopens

Tensions are again high in Old Seagate as the Temple opposite the Church of the One-Horned God is reopened. The Reformed Spiteful Sisters of Perpetual Dissonance are rededicating the old temple of the Demon Sier to the Devourer of Souls or 'Lissael, The Devourer of Souls (bad ones only), special rates for old beaus and deserving guild members' to give the new goddess' full name. The priests of Temple of the One-Horned God are upset due to the constant unsettling noises now emanating from the temple. "It's almost as if the sounds are being directed at us, we just cannot get anything done". When questioned about the disruption to nearby temples and the Nobblers in particular the Anchoress replied that the sounds are to 'befuddle and confound' wickedness and wicked thoughts, that they are receiving divine and therefore sacred instructions as to the acoustics and did we have trouble reading the name of their order? Complaints to the Duke and civic authorities have fallen on deaf and indeed several blocks away ears. The Mayor is however reportedly happy with the new temple. "The Lady spent some time hunting down demons and other monsters in town and it's nice to have her, um, back." The Sister's intend to hold the opening service on 2nd Thaw. Theme "Proper arm technique when throwing holy water vials", readings to be from the Book of Utter Bastards.

Deploring the standard of Guild Scribe notes

Guild members, as head librarian in the guild I have seen all manner of scribe notes dropped off for archiving and referencing over my years of service, from illegible lines of scrawl on the back of some outhouse paper through to huge well written volumes of information in bound files and we have worked as much as we can with the verbiage provided to provide logical, consistent and useful information to others.

However I am increasingly being asked to interpret information detailed in these notes and frankly I can't comprehend some of the things written, described or detailed, never mind interpret them and frankly it's not my job. So my gripe is this - if you want your 'scribe notes' (I use this term very loosely as most are barely legible notes on getting drunk, fornicating or fighting with no real factual information for future people to follow should they be hired to do so) to be useful then index, reference, detail and complete them with useful information.

Where they are concerning the same areas travelled by other guild parties then establish the correct links, names, places and such like. I don't have any tolerance for any guild members who ask "what does this mean" so don't do it of you'll feel the sharp end of my quill. When you write your scribe notes make sure they make sense and are useful or else you may as well make stuff up like some of the 'scribe notes' you have dropped off in the past which have lead to deaths and worse.

Now I have tried to use small words here for those of you who have trouble with language in general, not just common and I hope you take my words to heart.

Cuong Chan - Head Librarian

I like the explicit content, I'll look after it for you, I have special shelves for the good bits, especially the illustrations, just file them in my special cubbyhole. I also do readings some evenings, in the corner under the red lamp, only 1sp each.

Dubie Scrymes - 3rd Assistant Librarian

Printed Copies Required

(Please put your name here if you require a printed copy at the Guild Meeting - Thank you)

• Helen Saggers
  
• Ian Wood