king_pellinor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
king_pellinor) wrote2012-05-20 09:23 pm
king_pellinor) wrote2012-05-20 09:23 pm
Springfest 2012
At the May bank holiday I went up to Leicestershire for a Fools and Heroes Fest. Springfest is the second-biggest fest of the year, after Summerfest, and as Summerfest is hard work rather than pure play I've been wanting to go for a while. Unfortunately May Day has been the same weekend for a few years, so I haven't been able to make it; but now I have.
So here's a write-up, mostly for my benefit when I'm re-reading all this stuff in a few years' time.
I took the Friday off and drove up, stopping at Boar's Hill Scout Activity Centre to recce it to see if it might be suitable for an Arthurian banquet (it might). I got to the site about 3pm, and unloaded into a bunk room. I had been going to camp, but I don't sleep at lot at these things and the weather looked dodgy, so although I took a small tent I didn't use it.
The story of the fest was that Baron Cedric McRory (the locals are immigrants from the FnH equivalent of Scotland - no, I don't know why) had decided to revive the ancient Middvale Games, a celebration which used to be held every seven years to allow competition in various forms to promote peace and good fellowship, and the adventurers were there to compete and watch and be generally good fellows.
In the background, the Baron's cousin Callum McRory was massing his clans to attack, aided by the mysterious and unnatural Fomori, powerful Faerie creatures led by the evil Balor the One-Eyed. But I didn't know that, to start with.
I'm only mentioning things I was involved in, though a lot of other stuff happened that I'm only dimly aware of.
The opening event of the games was a race - to a marshal and back, avoiding beaters with sticks. Reverence de la Coeur (Fragile Peat) and I led the way, though I had the advantage of him as I wore no armour (it being a social occasion). We were in time to see the marshal beaten down by armed men and dragged off before these men attacked us - I was cut down, but rescued by those who came after us. Reverence was taken too, so a party was assembled from those nearby to go off and rescue him and the marshal.
What I ddn't realise was that this was the first of four planned missions, not just a little bit of opening froth, and so (a) I should have been properly equipped before going out, and (b) I shouldn't have been on the party at all. Ahem.
We had a bit of a merry dance following random parties of clansmen and milling around. We found Reverence after a while but in looking for the marshal and killing Lirronese clansmen we ended up in the Fae realms and lost track of her. We did however find a load of Fomorians, which turned out to rather tougher than I'd like - the first really tough one I thought must be an extra-specially hard mid-level boss (as it were), but they started coming in packs a bit later...
So we found a chap tied to a tree with poisoned razor wire, then found our way blocked by a wall of freezing fog. Being a courageous knight who won't give up I plunged into it, but had to stagger back with a thin layer of ice all round me. Now here I have to note a curious thing: at Guildford Fest a couple of years ago, it was very hot and Sir Robin was very much exhausted, and I found myself genuinely suffering from heat exhaustion (including dizziness, lightheadedness, and tingly extremities and so on) until I stopped, took stock, at which point I realised all was well. This time I found myself shivering with cold and staggering, again until I took stock and realised actually I was quite comfortably warm.
Anyway, some fae chap nearby was able to provide little balls of heat for people whcih would fend off the cold, in exchange for... something. I didn't make such a deal, of course, so I have no idea what it was, but a couple of people did and they came in very handy.
Through the freezing fog we came across a Fae knight being overwhelmed by Fomorians. I was wounded during the battle (did I mention I had no armour on?), but after I was healed I was called to him, and with his dying breath he asked me to take his sword and save his Lady, taken to the Frostforge by Fomorians. I duly promised to do so, and swapped my sword Sorrow for his.
We tried to find the Frostforge, but were then almost overwhelmed by Fomorians (including three of the ones I thought were bosses). I very nearly died of a spear-thrust to the side (if only I'd had armour on...) - healing came just in time, but it was too late for my sword-arm which was useless for the rest of the fest. Several of our party were taken by the Formorians as prisoners, and one disappeared back to mortal realms (he'd been granted a boon to be able to do so, by licking a toad - I never found out what was going on there).
But we made it to the Frostforge, along a frozen river which started melting as we struggled along it. There we found the Fomorians had handed over our people and the Fae Princess Elandra to Domnall the Smith (Rob G, adventure ref), who intended to use their blood in his forging to imbue his creations with their power. Domnall invited us to accept his hospitality, so no-one would be hurt, and given that we were very weak I accepted.
The first thing was to try to rescue the party members, but although Domnall was happy to trade he was quite dismissive of anything we had to offer. He was vaguely interested in some valuable daggers (one was dragonbone, the other was mithril with some powdered things mixed in), but didn't seem keen in offers of help against his enemies, or anything like that. It turned out that he made weapons for Balor, but didn't really like him.
In the end, for our three companions I accepted his offer of the two daggers, something from Elias the Fae (James L) that they had agreed in secret, and some blood from my shield arm with which to forge something.
As our companions were freed I addressed the question of the Fae princess. Domnall the Smith claimed that her blood would help create his masterpiece, and was beyond price to him. He was quite an artistic chap, and didn't really like the way that Balor just wanted weapons rather than aesthetics.
Nothing I could offer seemed to come close to the value he placed on her - all I had that he had placed any value on was the blood of my shield arm. So I offered him my heart’s blood for her release. He said he could do something fantastic with the blood of such a knight, freely given, but it might be a greater price than should be paid; so I left it to him to decide a fair price, up to and including what I had offered. He seemed a fair man, if a bit unpleasant, and I thought that even if my blood gave him power it would be no more than he would have from the Lady Elandra, so no overall harm would be caused but whatever bad stuff happened would happen to me rather than her.
Now at this point I was expecting that this would kill Sir Robin, but that my body should at least be carried back and I might get resurrected. So I said goodbye to everyone, passed over some keepsakes for people, gave a few last messages, and sang "My Way", which I've always thought would be a good swan-song for Sir Robin though I couldn't work out how I was ever going to get a few minutes' warning of his death.
Anyway, the lady was released, Domnall laid a hand on my chest, and I passed away with pain. Then I awoke, seemingly unharmed, but the Smith held a small clear gem which he said was my life. He said he would use it to forge something, and when he did I would pass into the thing he forged. Until that day, which might be near or far, I would live - and then I would not. And so we left the Frostforge and went home.
When we got back to camp, the refs briefed me that what was going to happen was that I would gradually lose all joy in life, and turn into an emotionless rational being unable to summon up any enthusiasm for anything. This would happen gradually through the rest of the evening, and be complete by dawn. There would be a way for me to fix it, but it'd be very hard, and if I couldn't fix it by the end of the fest then Sir Robin would be proper dead. This seemed rather more than I'd bargained for: the Smith hadn't been fair with me.
There was a certain amount of milling about, and then I was told that a mission was going out for which ten people were needed to take on certain roles. One of these was the Martyr, and it was generally agreed that Sir Robin would fit the title perfectly, all things considered. I put my armour on this time, though.
The others included the Inspiring Leader, the Healer, the Fated Warrior (I clarified that this wasn't spelt Feted), the Overlooked Hero, the Sage, and a few more.
The purpose was to recover a chalice, which apparently was a powerful thing that Balor wanted. We went along, fought a number of Formorians, solved a couple of logical puzzles to open doors, dealt with some undead, and so on. My role, being one-armed, was to stand at the back and co-ordinate things, while Sir Harry, Head of the Griffin Order (Ollie B-C), led the actual fighting. As the night went on I did this in a gradually less and less enthusiastic way, saying matter-of-factly things like "there are three of them proceeding around our left flank", and holding back undead by reciting my god's name quietly:"Sidhe, Sidhe, Sidhe, Sidhe" instead of my usual declamatory "SIDHE!!! SIDHE!!!! SIDTHAY!!!!". I don't think people heard me, most of the time.
At one point we each had to answer a question reating to the role we had take up. Mine was something obvious about giving your life for other people, to which I naturally included in my reply "For the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. Or the one".
We finally met the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone. The Mother had the chalice now, and gave it to us; the Crone used to have a stone, but it had been destroyed so had to be sought in the past, and Maiden would have a sword someday and so it would have to be found in the future.
I asked about my future, and was told that I didn't really have one any more: whatever the Smith was making now had my future - but the situation could be undone.
And so home. There I met Cormac the Bard (Chris T, Senior Ref), with a very dense accent that made it very hard t tell what was going on. He had been cursed by the Fae, such that he couldn't die (this was proven when Mother Etainja (Susie) stabbed him) until he could tell the stories of a thousand heroes. He'd been going for a few hundred years and now had 453; I told him my story, to bring it to 454. He told me that, based on stories he'd heard, the Smith was forging a terrible sword with my blood-red life gem as the pommel-stone, and although it might take centuries to forge it would be used by Balor the One-Eyed in his attack on us soon. He suggested that going to a stone circle at dusk, dawn, or the witching hour after midnight might allow me to return to the Frostforge and try to recover my life.
I then had a chat with a scout called Rowan (Nicola), who had been on the mission with me and whose life had been saved by Elandra somehow. She told me her life story, and said she was starting to think that maybe she should follow Sidhe or Crowa. I told her what I felt about being Sidhean, and why I'd done what I did; she later joined Crowa.
Other odd things that night: the Great White Lich of the North turned up, but was mostly ignored. The King turned up, and had a chat to people. Lots of people said how sad and disturbed they were that I wasn't smiling all the time. I went to bed pretty late, but entirely sober (Vulcans don't drink).
The next day I went out on mission to rescue Robert, the son of one of the Baron's noblemen, who had been taken by clansmen loyal to Callum. I continued with the role of pointing out where the enemy were. We eventually found him in a cave, where he had been sacrificed to the dark goddess Bequifus. There was a lot of milling around, and I was outside guarding the cave from clansmen while people did stuff inside. I generally stayed out of heavy fighting, but at one stage an archer was being annoying so I went after him. When I walked he jogged, when I jogged he ran, when I ran he ran too slowly (despite not being armoured), and so I cut him down - after warning him that I was about to do so, of course. I do like hunting down archers :-)
So we brought Robert's body out and carried it home, lying across the shoulders of four knights and with me singing Non Nobis and Pie Sidhe.
The mid-afternoon I spent mostly just hanging around the camp not doing much (a mission to the past to recover the stone was out, but I wasn't involved), though I did collect a group of people to come with me to the Frostforge that night. Oh, and spent a happy hour or so with Kat Ely and her Emma, booby-trapping the door of the refs' hut with gaffer tape, string and an axe.
Then I got into monster kit to monster a mission. The ref (Evil Gary) asked me to bring some Sir Robin kit along, as he had an interesting finale planned for his mission. The mission was to the future, which it turned out was a post-apocalyptic wasteland where Longstor was dead, humanity scattered, and Ithron ruled by undead. The two big encounters I saw were firstly five Griffin death knights, including the king and three other heads of the order (who all happened to be monstering this mission), who pretty much butchered the party. Then the last mission was me, kitted out as Sir Robin with haggard white make-up. It seemed that in this future I had recovered my life from Balor, but still wasn't really living it (it was in the holy symbol round my neck), and so just persisted neither alive nor undead, though I had an army of fawning minor undead with me. I declaimed at the part a bit, got beaten up, revived, got beaten up, revived, stormed round shouting until they stole my holy symbol, stormed round shouting to get it back, and was finally laid to rest - in the nick of time, too, I was recovering from my latest beating and reaching for the throat of the priestess (Cara) when she finished the ritual.
And so back to camp to wash the make-up off. I got some funny looks as I went to get washing bag and towel, but didn't realise quite how odd I must have looked until I got to the shower block.
The rest of the night was spent milling about trying to hold a trial for some mercenaries who were accused of murdering people in the future (to get them out of the hellhole they were in). After what seemed like hours of people umming and ahhing about whether they thought it should go to trial and asking what had happened (surely this sort sort of thing should be discussed at the trial!) it went ahead, and straight away I asked "Were they Ithronians in Ithron?" No-one could demonstrate that they were, so it couldn't be shown to be murder, so no case to answer. I think some people weren't happy about that decision, but as any decision was going to lead to disagreement then we might as well have a quick one :-)
By the time the trial was over most of the people I'd asked to come with me to the Frostforge had gone to bed, so I found some better ones. I hadn't realised they were better, but in retrospect I think a ragtag band of misfits was a much better option than a gang of heroic knights.
I'd wanted seven people to come in total, as that's a good number. Dalon Berwick of the Grey Order, and Elias the Fae had already agreed to come, Dalon as he was a Grey and Elias because he's Fae and because I thing he wanted to get in my good books (he wants to be recognised as a full citizen of Ithron). I asked Rowan the scout to come because we'd shared something on our previous visit, and I felt there was some element of fate, or at least story, there. Forgemaster M (Penguin) came because he likes me, Father Jacob of Crowa (Jebbo) because he's an all-round good chap. We were about to head off with the messenger from Lady Elandra (who said she would open us a portal) when Father Cornway of Tralda (Myles) insisted on coming at the last minute. I'd never really thought much of him in character, but it was very lucky he came (funny, that).
We went through the portal to a bitterly cold place. Elias bit his thumb and put a drop of his blood (he's a cold Fae) on each of our heads, and this protected us against the cold. We made our way up the froxen river, which this time stayed frozen, and were attacked by icy statues and traps. At the end we made it through to the forge, and Domnall was just starting to rant against us when Elias started stabbing him with a cold iron blade. I joined in with the Grey Blade, which Father Jacob had blessed, and M with another cold iron sword. The Smith tried casting spells, but he cast Befriend at me and as I had no emotions left there was no effect. So we chopped him down, and the forge started to fall apart. I grabbed back the gem of my life and we headed out, but Elias also took two boxes of gems. As we left, the Smith's voice was heard warning us of doom if we took the gem from the forge: as I stepped out, the gem exploded and struck down myself, M and Jacob. The others healed us and we fled past more statues and traps, and then the ice started to melt.
The melting ice came at us from behind as fast as we could flee down the gorge, with some people frozen and having to be carried. Then we found that the ice ahead of us was melting too, and so we were trapped... as we huddled together in the last few feet of solid ice, thinking we were about to die, Father Cornway activated his boon - he too had licked a toad, and he was transported home to Newcroft. Luckily (that word again!) his going moved the rest of us a few yards to the edge of the river, and so we could stagger back to the portal. The effect of Elias's blood was fading fast, though, and as we staggered through we ended up frozen solid, in the middle of the banquet hall.
Prompt action (not as prompt as it could have been, I think, but welcome anyway) meant that we were warmed up and revived, though my feet weren't warmed up soon enough and they took wounds - which were soon discovered when people tried to lift me to my feet and I couldn't stand. But they got healed soon enough.
Ref briefing: we were all cursed by Domnall. The curse should have been 1 minute of deathcount lost for each gem stolen, but as Elias had taken 20 gems and we only had 5 minutes each, that was being mitigated to 4 minutes lost - to be recovered at 90 seconds per adventure. My life was back (the shattering of the gem had driven it back into me) and I was happy again.
So although the hall was rather empty, I went round grinning like a loon for a bit, drank a lot of mead and cherry brandy, sang "Wonderful life", and had a heartfelt talk with the General (of whom Robin is very fond) ending up with a big comforting hug because she was feeling very sad. Oh, and gave Rowan a big hug and forgot about my scale armour, which apparently prickled her face. Lots of milling around talking, and off to bed far too late.
The next morning I was monstering the first battle, so I was into monster kit fairly quickly and then milling about waiting for it to start. We were playing Callum's clansmen as the mercenaries etc went to challenge Callum himself, so I spent most of the time just running into battle getting slaughtered. I did manage to get myself shot in the face once, and then the throat, and then below the belt, but none of them hurt (just surprising, really).
I also managed to have a very prolonged duel: told to go and call out a PC from the battle line, I found that none would accept. I worked my way along until (the NPC) Baron McRory accepted; we squared off, and then the Huntsmaster (Mark P) hit me in the arm with his enchanted axe, and someone else stabbed me up. On realising that he'd interrupted a duel the Huntsmaster immediately (in order to save his Sidhean skin) healed me up, and we squared off again. This time someone else stabbed me in the back, so the Huntsmaster healed me up again and the Baron and I tried a third time: this time he won fair and square, thank goodness.
At the end of the battle we dispersed to be random clansmen pillaging villages ("pillaging" apparently means wiggling your fingers at Kat and saying "Pillage, pillage"), who were roundly trounced by parties of adventurers.
Then lunch and a very very cold shower and into kit for the main battle, which was to fight Balor One-eye. I had the Grey Blade blessed, and my fae sword, and scale armour, but that was it. With only a minute of deathcount - sorry, I mean in my chilled and weakened state - I thought it better to keep out of battle than to get stuck in, so kept my legs light.
The battle consisted of defending a stone circle that Balor wanted to do a ritual in, but was complicated by the fact that we weren't supposed to have blood spilt in the circle, nor to knock over any of the stones. I busied myself mostly in watching out and sending reinforcements around, and milling about on the fringes to distract the enemy and stop them charging in too recklessly. I was well looked after by the physicians, who were all too aware of my chilled and weakened state, and all my many wounds were healed up quickly - though I was very worried to get an enchanted swiftdeath at one point. During the battle a couple of the Griffins got to have extended duels with Fae knights, but none challenged me so I laid out my sherry and flapjacks and took to lifting the spirits of the troops. When Balor finally turned up I was all set to fight him with the Grey Blade, and in fact he challenged me, but immediately afterwards I was hit on the arm and had to retreat, which was a bit of a shame. I'd never have beaten him, but with a couple of knockbacks I could at least have had a bit of a go. In the end the Grey Blade was used by Sir Marcus (Will) to defeat him in single combat, so at least my being there did some good. Then I helped carry the fallen back to the camp, and got into banquet kit.
At the banquet I was sitting next to a one-eyed Crowan with a complicated backstory. I have an idea that I sympathised with him enormously, and said I'd do what I could to help him, but I can't actually remember what the problem was. Something about his girlfriend disappearing when the Llaminusian village she was in was over-run. I also sang "Bad news", to give some sort of indication of Robin's mental state over Saturday, and I won a bottle of brandy in the raffle and went round the hall sharing it with people. I think only about half of it got drunk, but I don't know what happened to the rest of it. I stayed up far too late chatting with people, and judging a competition between two of the serving-maids, and so on. I eventually got to bed as the light was coming into the sky, then woke up a little before midday. Packed up, said goodbye to people, and so home.
In post-fest online follow-up I found that the Lady Elandra's knight was called Sir Aurn Lightsherald, and she was quite happy for me to keep his sword as long as I used it for good and justice and so on in his memory. So I will :-)
So here's a write-up, mostly for my benefit when I'm re-reading all this stuff in a few years' time.
I took the Friday off and drove up, stopping at Boar's Hill Scout Activity Centre to recce it to see if it might be suitable for an Arthurian banquet (it might). I got to the site about 3pm, and unloaded into a bunk room. I had been going to camp, but I don't sleep at lot at these things and the weather looked dodgy, so although I took a small tent I didn't use it.
The story of the fest was that Baron Cedric McRory (the locals are immigrants from the FnH equivalent of Scotland - no, I don't know why) had decided to revive the ancient Middvale Games, a celebration which used to be held every seven years to allow competition in various forms to promote peace and good fellowship, and the adventurers were there to compete and watch and be generally good fellows.
In the background, the Baron's cousin Callum McRory was massing his clans to attack, aided by the mysterious and unnatural Fomori, powerful Faerie creatures led by the evil Balor the One-Eyed. But I didn't know that, to start with.
I'm only mentioning things I was involved in, though a lot of other stuff happened that I'm only dimly aware of.
The opening event of the games was a race - to a marshal and back, avoiding beaters with sticks. Reverence de la Coeur (Fragile Peat) and I led the way, though I had the advantage of him as I wore no armour (it being a social occasion). We were in time to see the marshal beaten down by armed men and dragged off before these men attacked us - I was cut down, but rescued by those who came after us. Reverence was taken too, so a party was assembled from those nearby to go off and rescue him and the marshal.
What I ddn't realise was that this was the first of four planned missions, not just a little bit of opening froth, and so (a) I should have been properly equipped before going out, and (b) I shouldn't have been on the party at all. Ahem.
We had a bit of a merry dance following random parties of clansmen and milling around. We found Reverence after a while but in looking for the marshal and killing Lirronese clansmen we ended up in the Fae realms and lost track of her. We did however find a load of Fomorians, which turned out to rather tougher than I'd like - the first really tough one I thought must be an extra-specially hard mid-level boss (as it were), but they started coming in packs a bit later...
So we found a chap tied to a tree with poisoned razor wire, then found our way blocked by a wall of freezing fog. Being a courageous knight who won't give up I plunged into it, but had to stagger back with a thin layer of ice all round me. Now here I have to note a curious thing: at Guildford Fest a couple of years ago, it was very hot and Sir Robin was very much exhausted, and I found myself genuinely suffering from heat exhaustion (including dizziness, lightheadedness, and tingly extremities and so on) until I stopped, took stock, at which point I realised all was well. This time I found myself shivering with cold and staggering, again until I took stock and realised actually I was quite comfortably warm.
Anyway, some fae chap nearby was able to provide little balls of heat for people whcih would fend off the cold, in exchange for... something. I didn't make such a deal, of course, so I have no idea what it was, but a couple of people did and they came in very handy.
Through the freezing fog we came across a Fae knight being overwhelmed by Fomorians. I was wounded during the battle (did I mention I had no armour on?), but after I was healed I was called to him, and with his dying breath he asked me to take his sword and save his Lady, taken to the Frostforge by Fomorians. I duly promised to do so, and swapped my sword Sorrow for his.
We tried to find the Frostforge, but were then almost overwhelmed by Fomorians (including three of the ones I thought were bosses). I very nearly died of a spear-thrust to the side (if only I'd had armour on...) - healing came just in time, but it was too late for my sword-arm which was useless for the rest of the fest. Several of our party were taken by the Formorians as prisoners, and one disappeared back to mortal realms (he'd been granted a boon to be able to do so, by licking a toad - I never found out what was going on there).
But we made it to the Frostforge, along a frozen river which started melting as we struggled along it. There we found the Fomorians had handed over our people and the Fae Princess Elandra to Domnall the Smith (Rob G, adventure ref), who intended to use their blood in his forging to imbue his creations with their power. Domnall invited us to accept his hospitality, so no-one would be hurt, and given that we were very weak I accepted.
The first thing was to try to rescue the party members, but although Domnall was happy to trade he was quite dismissive of anything we had to offer. He was vaguely interested in some valuable daggers (one was dragonbone, the other was mithril with some powdered things mixed in), but didn't seem keen in offers of help against his enemies, or anything like that. It turned out that he made weapons for Balor, but didn't really like him.
In the end, for our three companions I accepted his offer of the two daggers, something from Elias the Fae (James L) that they had agreed in secret, and some blood from my shield arm with which to forge something.
As our companions were freed I addressed the question of the Fae princess. Domnall the Smith claimed that her blood would help create his masterpiece, and was beyond price to him. He was quite an artistic chap, and didn't really like the way that Balor just wanted weapons rather than aesthetics.
Nothing I could offer seemed to come close to the value he placed on her - all I had that he had placed any value on was the blood of my shield arm. So I offered him my heart’s blood for her release. He said he could do something fantastic with the blood of such a knight, freely given, but it might be a greater price than should be paid; so I left it to him to decide a fair price, up to and including what I had offered. He seemed a fair man, if a bit unpleasant, and I thought that even if my blood gave him power it would be no more than he would have from the Lady Elandra, so no overall harm would be caused but whatever bad stuff happened would happen to me rather than her.
Now at this point I was expecting that this would kill Sir Robin, but that my body should at least be carried back and I might get resurrected. So I said goodbye to everyone, passed over some keepsakes for people, gave a few last messages, and sang "My Way", which I've always thought would be a good swan-song for Sir Robin though I couldn't work out how I was ever going to get a few minutes' warning of his death.
Anyway, the lady was released, Domnall laid a hand on my chest, and I passed away with pain. Then I awoke, seemingly unharmed, but the Smith held a small clear gem which he said was my life. He said he would use it to forge something, and when he did I would pass into the thing he forged. Until that day, which might be near or far, I would live - and then I would not. And so we left the Frostforge and went home.
When we got back to camp, the refs briefed me that what was going to happen was that I would gradually lose all joy in life, and turn into an emotionless rational being unable to summon up any enthusiasm for anything. This would happen gradually through the rest of the evening, and be complete by dawn. There would be a way for me to fix it, but it'd be very hard, and if I couldn't fix it by the end of the fest then Sir Robin would be proper dead. This seemed rather more than I'd bargained for: the Smith hadn't been fair with me.
There was a certain amount of milling about, and then I was told that a mission was going out for which ten people were needed to take on certain roles. One of these was the Martyr, and it was generally agreed that Sir Robin would fit the title perfectly, all things considered. I put my armour on this time, though.
The others included the Inspiring Leader, the Healer, the Fated Warrior (I clarified that this wasn't spelt Feted), the Overlooked Hero, the Sage, and a few more.
The purpose was to recover a chalice, which apparently was a powerful thing that Balor wanted. We went along, fought a number of Formorians, solved a couple of logical puzzles to open doors, dealt with some undead, and so on. My role, being one-armed, was to stand at the back and co-ordinate things, while Sir Harry, Head of the Griffin Order (Ollie B-C), led the actual fighting. As the night went on I did this in a gradually less and less enthusiastic way, saying matter-of-factly things like "there are three of them proceeding around our left flank", and holding back undead by reciting my god's name quietly:"Sidhe, Sidhe, Sidhe, Sidhe" instead of my usual declamatory "SIDHE!!! SIDHE!!!! SIDTHAY!!!!". I don't think people heard me, most of the time.
At one point we each had to answer a question reating to the role we had take up. Mine was something obvious about giving your life for other people, to which I naturally included in my reply "For the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. Or the one".
We finally met the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone. The Mother had the chalice now, and gave it to us; the Crone used to have a stone, but it had been destroyed so had to be sought in the past, and Maiden would have a sword someday and so it would have to be found in the future.
I asked about my future, and was told that I didn't really have one any more: whatever the Smith was making now had my future - but the situation could be undone.
And so home. There I met Cormac the Bard (Chris T, Senior Ref), with a very dense accent that made it very hard t tell what was going on. He had been cursed by the Fae, such that he couldn't die (this was proven when Mother Etainja (Susie) stabbed him) until he could tell the stories of a thousand heroes. He'd been going for a few hundred years and now had 453; I told him my story, to bring it to 454. He told me that, based on stories he'd heard, the Smith was forging a terrible sword with my blood-red life gem as the pommel-stone, and although it might take centuries to forge it would be used by Balor the One-Eyed in his attack on us soon. He suggested that going to a stone circle at dusk, dawn, or the witching hour after midnight might allow me to return to the Frostforge and try to recover my life.
I then had a chat with a scout called Rowan (Nicola), who had been on the mission with me and whose life had been saved by Elandra somehow. She told me her life story, and said she was starting to think that maybe she should follow Sidhe or Crowa. I told her what I felt about being Sidhean, and why I'd done what I did; she later joined Crowa.
Other odd things that night: the Great White Lich of the North turned up, but was mostly ignored. The King turned up, and had a chat to people. Lots of people said how sad and disturbed they were that I wasn't smiling all the time. I went to bed pretty late, but entirely sober (Vulcans don't drink).
The next day I went out on mission to rescue Robert, the son of one of the Baron's noblemen, who had been taken by clansmen loyal to Callum. I continued with the role of pointing out where the enemy were. We eventually found him in a cave, where he had been sacrificed to the dark goddess Bequifus. There was a lot of milling around, and I was outside guarding the cave from clansmen while people did stuff inside. I generally stayed out of heavy fighting, but at one stage an archer was being annoying so I went after him. When I walked he jogged, when I jogged he ran, when I ran he ran too slowly (despite not being armoured), and so I cut him down - after warning him that I was about to do so, of course. I do like hunting down archers :-)
So we brought Robert's body out and carried it home, lying across the shoulders of four knights and with me singing Non Nobis and Pie Sidhe.
The mid-afternoon I spent mostly just hanging around the camp not doing much (a mission to the past to recover the stone was out, but I wasn't involved), though I did collect a group of people to come with me to the Frostforge that night. Oh, and spent a happy hour or so with Kat Ely and her Emma, booby-trapping the door of the refs' hut with gaffer tape, string and an axe.
Then I got into monster kit to monster a mission. The ref (Evil Gary) asked me to bring some Sir Robin kit along, as he had an interesting finale planned for his mission. The mission was to the future, which it turned out was a post-apocalyptic wasteland where Longstor was dead, humanity scattered, and Ithron ruled by undead. The two big encounters I saw were firstly five Griffin death knights, including the king and three other heads of the order (who all happened to be monstering this mission), who pretty much butchered the party. Then the last mission was me, kitted out as Sir Robin with haggard white make-up. It seemed that in this future I had recovered my life from Balor, but still wasn't really living it (it was in the holy symbol round my neck), and so just persisted neither alive nor undead, though I had an army of fawning minor undead with me. I declaimed at the part a bit, got beaten up, revived, got beaten up, revived, stormed round shouting until they stole my holy symbol, stormed round shouting to get it back, and was finally laid to rest - in the nick of time, too, I was recovering from my latest beating and reaching for the throat of the priestess (Cara) when she finished the ritual.
And so back to camp to wash the make-up off. I got some funny looks as I went to get washing bag and towel, but didn't realise quite how odd I must have looked until I got to the shower block.
The rest of the night was spent milling about trying to hold a trial for some mercenaries who were accused of murdering people in the future (to get them out of the hellhole they were in). After what seemed like hours of people umming and ahhing about whether they thought it should go to trial and asking what had happened (surely this sort sort of thing should be discussed at the trial!) it went ahead, and straight away I asked "Were they Ithronians in Ithron?" No-one could demonstrate that they were, so it couldn't be shown to be murder, so no case to answer. I think some people weren't happy about that decision, but as any decision was going to lead to disagreement then we might as well have a quick one :-)
By the time the trial was over most of the people I'd asked to come with me to the Frostforge had gone to bed, so I found some better ones. I hadn't realised they were better, but in retrospect I think a ragtag band of misfits was a much better option than a gang of heroic knights.
I'd wanted seven people to come in total, as that's a good number. Dalon Berwick of the Grey Order, and Elias the Fae had already agreed to come, Dalon as he was a Grey and Elias because he's Fae and because I thing he wanted to get in my good books (he wants to be recognised as a full citizen of Ithron). I asked Rowan the scout to come because we'd shared something on our previous visit, and I felt there was some element of fate, or at least story, there. Forgemaster M (Penguin) came because he likes me, Father Jacob of Crowa (Jebbo) because he's an all-round good chap. We were about to head off with the messenger from Lady Elandra (who said she would open us a portal) when Father Cornway of Tralda (Myles) insisted on coming at the last minute. I'd never really thought much of him in character, but it was very lucky he came (funny, that).
We went through the portal to a bitterly cold place. Elias bit his thumb and put a drop of his blood (he's a cold Fae) on each of our heads, and this protected us against the cold. We made our way up the froxen river, which this time stayed frozen, and were attacked by icy statues and traps. At the end we made it through to the forge, and Domnall was just starting to rant against us when Elias started stabbing him with a cold iron blade. I joined in with the Grey Blade, which Father Jacob had blessed, and M with another cold iron sword. The Smith tried casting spells, but he cast Befriend at me and as I had no emotions left there was no effect. So we chopped him down, and the forge started to fall apart. I grabbed back the gem of my life and we headed out, but Elias also took two boxes of gems. As we left, the Smith's voice was heard warning us of doom if we took the gem from the forge: as I stepped out, the gem exploded and struck down myself, M and Jacob. The others healed us and we fled past more statues and traps, and then the ice started to melt.
The melting ice came at us from behind as fast as we could flee down the gorge, with some people frozen and having to be carried. Then we found that the ice ahead of us was melting too, and so we were trapped... as we huddled together in the last few feet of solid ice, thinking we were about to die, Father Cornway activated his boon - he too had licked a toad, and he was transported home to Newcroft. Luckily (that word again!) his going moved the rest of us a few yards to the edge of the river, and so we could stagger back to the portal. The effect of Elias's blood was fading fast, though, and as we staggered through we ended up frozen solid, in the middle of the banquet hall.
Prompt action (not as prompt as it could have been, I think, but welcome anyway) meant that we were warmed up and revived, though my feet weren't warmed up soon enough and they took wounds - which were soon discovered when people tried to lift me to my feet and I couldn't stand. But they got healed soon enough.
Ref briefing: we were all cursed by Domnall. The curse should have been 1 minute of deathcount lost for each gem stolen, but as Elias had taken 20 gems and we only had 5 minutes each, that was being mitigated to 4 minutes lost - to be recovered at 90 seconds per adventure. My life was back (the shattering of the gem had driven it back into me) and I was happy again.
So although the hall was rather empty, I went round grinning like a loon for a bit, drank a lot of mead and cherry brandy, sang "Wonderful life", and had a heartfelt talk with the General (of whom Robin is very fond) ending up with a big comforting hug because she was feeling very sad. Oh, and gave Rowan a big hug and forgot about my scale armour, which apparently prickled her face. Lots of milling around talking, and off to bed far too late.
The next morning I was monstering the first battle, so I was into monster kit fairly quickly and then milling about waiting for it to start. We were playing Callum's clansmen as the mercenaries etc went to challenge Callum himself, so I spent most of the time just running into battle getting slaughtered. I did manage to get myself shot in the face once, and then the throat, and then below the belt, but none of them hurt (just surprising, really).
I also managed to have a very prolonged duel: told to go and call out a PC from the battle line, I found that none would accept. I worked my way along until (the NPC) Baron McRory accepted; we squared off, and then the Huntsmaster (Mark P) hit me in the arm with his enchanted axe, and someone else stabbed me up. On realising that he'd interrupted a duel the Huntsmaster immediately (in order to save his Sidhean skin) healed me up, and we squared off again. This time someone else stabbed me in the back, so the Huntsmaster healed me up again and the Baron and I tried a third time: this time he won fair and square, thank goodness.
At the end of the battle we dispersed to be random clansmen pillaging villages ("pillaging" apparently means wiggling your fingers at Kat and saying "Pillage, pillage"), who were roundly trounced by parties of adventurers.
Then lunch and a very very cold shower and into kit for the main battle, which was to fight Balor One-eye. I had the Grey Blade blessed, and my fae sword, and scale armour, but that was it. With only a minute of deathcount - sorry, I mean in my chilled and weakened state - I thought it better to keep out of battle than to get stuck in, so kept my legs light.
The battle consisted of defending a stone circle that Balor wanted to do a ritual in, but was complicated by the fact that we weren't supposed to have blood spilt in the circle, nor to knock over any of the stones. I busied myself mostly in watching out and sending reinforcements around, and milling about on the fringes to distract the enemy and stop them charging in too recklessly. I was well looked after by the physicians, who were all too aware of my chilled and weakened state, and all my many wounds were healed up quickly - though I was very worried to get an enchanted swiftdeath at one point. During the battle a couple of the Griffins got to have extended duels with Fae knights, but none challenged me so I laid out my sherry and flapjacks and took to lifting the spirits of the troops. When Balor finally turned up I was all set to fight him with the Grey Blade, and in fact he challenged me, but immediately afterwards I was hit on the arm and had to retreat, which was a bit of a shame. I'd never have beaten him, but with a couple of knockbacks I could at least have had a bit of a go. In the end the Grey Blade was used by Sir Marcus (Will) to defeat him in single combat, so at least my being there did some good. Then I helped carry the fallen back to the camp, and got into banquet kit.
At the banquet I was sitting next to a one-eyed Crowan with a complicated backstory. I have an idea that I sympathised with him enormously, and said I'd do what I could to help him, but I can't actually remember what the problem was. Something about his girlfriend disappearing when the Llaminusian village she was in was over-run. I also sang "Bad news", to give some sort of indication of Robin's mental state over Saturday, and I won a bottle of brandy in the raffle and went round the hall sharing it with people. I think only about half of it got drunk, but I don't know what happened to the rest of it. I stayed up far too late chatting with people, and judging a competition between two of the serving-maids, and so on. I eventually got to bed as the light was coming into the sky, then woke up a little before midday. Packed up, said goodbye to people, and so home.
In post-fest online follow-up I found that the Lady Elandra's knight was called Sir Aurn Lightsherald, and she was quite happy for me to keep his sword as long as I used it for good and justice and so on in his memory. So I will :-)
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Just off J2X of the M1 - Markfield? The site is called John's Lee Wood, and has no mobile reception because of (alleged) secret stuff nearby that jams it.
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