I appear to have become an adventurer, which will please my parents no end. The same caravan that brought me in a few years ago is doing the rounds again, and so I’ve hopped on it – alongside some friends – to be guard duty for it. Possibly not the best idea we’ve ever had, given that the second day we got jumped by about twenty goblin things. Managed to fight them off without a scratch, though it’s beginining to worry me how I seem to be unable to use the bow outside the practice range.

Anyway, I got to bash off a few of them, though Stephanie – a halfling – managed to do a somersault off a wagon to – I’m told – drive her sword though a goblin’s head. Impressive, and I’m glad she appears to be on our side.

Stephanie sets upon a goblin

Otherwise, we’ve got a personable Dragon warrior in the form of “Call me Dave”, a somewhat boundary-stalking mage, and a quiet but effective dwarf. We’ve been asked to deliver some letters on the way, but in a record-breaking start, no bugger’s heard of the guy we’re supposed to be delivering the first to, this despite that he used to be in charge, which is a bit on the outside edge of believability to be honest. However, we leave in the morning, so no chance to investigate it more tonight. I’m going to try to get some sleep so if we get jumped tomorrow I’ve got more of a chance of getting out scratch-less again.

Pretty much everything is, in the end. Fighting, drinking, loving, worshiping, eating, drinking, toasting, boasting, drinking. Any one is a Malathian Activity. Any two are a a Malathian Tradition. Any three are Malatian Cultural Values.

Especially Drinking, Drinking and Drinking.

I’m not drinking, not right now. Not for almost three months, and I’m pretty sure that the last drink I had was at New Years, when I was wedding people, and that’s so very far from a Malathian tradition that my friends back home would pour whiskey down my throat until I repented. Repented and threw up, at least. Traditions are important.

Everything’s a Malathian Tradition, and no thing in any world has as many Malathian Traditions around it than a Traditional Malathian Wedding, combining every single element of the list I began with, and every single element combined with every single element. Tradition upon tradition upon tradition. This isn’t a Traditional Malathian Wedding, because I avoid being Traditional when it will make my life more complicated, but there’s one tradition I’ll keep.

(Several, actually, but this one today)

Everyone near where we grew up is either a shepard, or knows one. Most have shepards in the family somewhere. The entire family is expected to muck in and help, someone has to be up on the hill at every hour to make sure everything’s fine. This means that someone in the family must be watching the sheep while the wedding’s going on, and miss out on the party. To atone for this, the people actually getting married will, shortly before the wedding, do a complete day’s shift. It’s called the Vigil, or Watching the Flock.

Some folks do it as a family event, the entire clan up on the hillside for a (sober) pre-party family get together, but we’ve always done it on our own.

I find a spot atop a hill sometime early afternoon, lay down a blanket, and watch.

I don’t keep sheep. Nobody in this new world does, as they don’t survive the crossing. My flock these days is a little less literal, the people whom I brought into our faith, or for who I am their adviser on theological stuff. I can’t watch them from my hill, not personally, and I’d not expect them to all be in one place. Some of them – too many – can’t, being beyond my flock and within the green fields of my Lady, but I think of them, and I pray for them.

My Vigil is different from anyone elses, I think. I’ve spent two months working on blighted land, blessing it over and over again to remove the oppressive taint, and now I wander the lands of Amun-Sa Over Ocean as a favour for a scary bastard I regard as a friend, watching over his land, looking for traces of an evil we hope banished.

There are specs on the fields, tilling the land, preparing it for a good years crop, and I watch them for hours until the sun goes down.

The land is still ravaged. Recovering from the terrors that were leashed upon it will take time and work, and there are still many lands left to go.

My small fire will last the night if I feed it carefully, giving me light to think by, and keeping away anything that’s frightened by it. Anything else may have to be introduced to my sword or my gun, as I protect my life and what I need to.

I watch over all of it, thinking of everything. My family, my friends, my soon to be wife, and this entire new world.

Tomorrow, we head for the festival, and there will be more action and less sitting and watching the world.

For tonight, I stand vigil.

I ask you to cast your eye on this small patch of land.

Or your ear.

Or your nose.

Frankly, if you wanted to cast your elbow on it, that could certainly do no harm. Your eyebrow, arched above, would be a rainbow to it.

Mostly what this land needs is your love. Not a lot, really. The people who lived here love it dearly already. They tilled it, they built upon it, they found their way though the land. Not just literally – we have maps for that now – but what the land stood for, how the crops grew best and where.

They worked upon this land, finding the best ways to make this new world soil work for the old world farming style. Finding new ways, building new traditions for younger men to destroy in the search for something new.

Upon this land was love, hope, joy and – most importantly to them – food.

Look at it now.

Initially, that might look like a contradiction, since I mentioned above I’d be happy with the presence of your elbow, but you can look at it with whatever sense you like, and it’s still wrong. The love that was fed to this land has been bled out, corrupted into hatred and blight. The soil is brittle and black, the air is thick and sour. Frankly, I’ve spent the last month swimming though this soup in Dale and here, and if nothing else can convince people what terrible things unlife can do to the world, it is this. You don’t need your eyes to see this mess.

The farmers can love it again, but to get rid of the horror that has been unleashed here, I must request your help.

In the name of the Storyteller, I bring the tale of this land to a happier chapter.

In the name of the Midwife, I bless this land to bring it new life.

In the name of the Builder, I strengthen this land that it may support those who work it.

In the name of the Lover, I infuse this land with my love, reinforced by that of my lady.

In the name of the Weaver, I consecrate this land.

Right. You’re from Millen, I know you are, because you told me. So, do I know Lady Blackthorne? Bah, who am I kidding. The number of Millenese noblewomen I know I could fit on the fingers of my head. Fiona’s taking it a bit hard, but she’s always had more connections with Millen than I have. Blackthorne … Blackthorn?… I’m sure I don’t know. It’ll bug me for a while, though. However, things to do, people to see. For a start, Dreamer’s been telling me to visit the Golden Dragon since the new year, I should do that…

And the evening passed, and with it the daylight, and W. Detail Marshall wanderered up and down the event site, talking to people, collecting information, spreading information, checking in on people he needed to speak to, and eventually:

“Millen is a bit fraught at the moment, with the Comte being away and Ansellina’s death…”

Someone more tactful than I would not describe the following silence as pregnant.

“Ansellina’s… dead?”

“I assumed you’d heard, she died in childbirth a fe” and at this point he might have well have ceased to exist. I nodded, and I smiled, and I breezed though until he went away, and when he did…

Lady Blackthorne. Ansellina. Oh my lady, I’m sorry.

Oh, Fiona, I’m so very sorry. The news of a close friend treated as a random aquaintance.

Ansellina was dead. There were five people in the new world who put me down the path I follow today, and none of them will ever know it. Toramaline, Erin, Amlie and now Ansillina are all gone, and not only did I not even realise, I’m going to be too busy to go to her wake. Or Mechna’s. Or Jig’s.

Right. This isn’t working. Time to get something… done.

I’ve asked this captain to deliver this message to you, and he’s thankfully obliged. I am “Det Marshall”, who you so helpfully put up for some nights just under two years ago (Possibly just over by now, mail delivery by ship isn’t exactly speedy). I’d like to thank you for your hospitality. I would offer to return it in kind, should you visit our new world, but I fear that my current nomadic lifestyle makes that difficult. You can contact me though the Sacuza trading house – via Stuart Marshall’s Marshall Enterprises – if you wish to. If you could find your way to passing the enclosed to people heading in the right direction, or keep it until he visits you again, I’d appreciate it.

—-

Speaker McLintock of the Woven Braid.
c/o Which ever path guides this to you.

I speak to you from the past.

I have no idea how long this will take to get to you, so by the time you do this will probably already have happened. I’m hoping you’re back from Kamacuria by now. Well, you’ll have to be, otherwise this letter will be sitting on a shelf in Speaker Dervish’s study forever, a saddening thought.

You were, of course, right. The New World didn’t solve all my problems, whilst I am no longer a third rate blacksmith in a family of blacksmiths, I am now a third rate trader in a family of those. Cousin Stuart’s new enterprise is really taking off. To counterbalance this, I’ve worked hard, and have become a third rate pistol maker (Never fired the things in anger, thankfully) and a third rate practice of one of these new magical arts I’m sure you’ve heard about: Talismancy. Bored of being third rate of practical things, I also became a third rate policition, and managed to misjudge a group of people, mostly by tarring them with the brush loaded for their loudest voice. From this, I learn that a cloth is made of many threads, and the colour of the coat is not necessarily reflective of any one thread within it. Also, that I most strongly empathise with our shared Lady in her form as the fool. Unfortunately, as instrumental in this breakage, it falls to me to attempt to fix the damage – or at least fill their void in part.

I’m being imprecise and vague, but this is because the pattern of my story is still being shaped, and I don’t know how much I need to shield from the light just yet. I am hoping that this new path I follow brings me to my calling, and I do not take on another third rate role.

I may have consorted with demons. You will, of course, have heard of the blight of the Fallen upon the new world, and perhaps even the old world’s attempts to banish them; but instead I talk of the gods that appear only to exist in this new world. I call them “gods”, and perhaps I blaspheme, but those who worship them see no doubt that they are as our Weaver is. Many of our “old world” religions seem to view them as false gods, or unknown aspects of the gods we follow (The ‘Jaguar’ being associated with our own Lady), but I am unsure that can be the case. Brighter lights than my own have watched and researched these new deities, and their published results (I enclose with this letter a copy of G. Tang’s pamphlet on the subject, whose objective analysis – though buried beneath layers of flowered language the like of which would baffle the Millen court – should be interesting to you) and it appears that those who attempt to approach the subject clear of mind find the “new gods” to be as they style themselves, whereas those who enter with theological bias – of the ‘there can only be five true gods’ method – find in their own favour. You are aware of my distrust of the purity of large organisations – even churches – and so this may be my own bias fogging my view.

I have consorted with angels. Some of whom may be the demons mentioned above. It amazes me that in two trade fairs – quarterly politic-economic events, effectively – I have spoken to four Eidolons of three religions (Two from our own). A discussion with a representative of the “Jaguar” (New world god – I don’t believe I mentioned – of free will and (especially) doing what is the most fun at the time. I’m not entirely sure how that matches up with the blessing he gave one of this flock to make them explode like a barrel of dark powder when the were caught and executed for criminal acts.) has lead to a happy ending of a potential situation for a Rukh colony I have visited from time to time, and our own Eidolons helping another of our little trading group become more worthy in the eyes of our Lady. Some say the New World must be blessed that it has so many godly creatures in it, but with the Fallen-blight and some of the other things rumoured to be roaming the land (and oceans, for that matter) it would appear to be entirely in balance.

Now, however, I need to prepare, and search for some inspiration. There is to be a fair in three months, and I intend to… well, lets see what happens, shall we? I will write to you with the results when I know them.

I feel like I’m throwing this into the maelstrom in a bottle, that the chances of you ever receiving and reading this are impossible, yet I shout into this void so that someone may hear what I say. even if it’s only me.

The weaver guide this letter, this day, and your fate.

Your most humble student,

S. Detail Marshall.

I came here with nothing. I learnt to make Pistols, because it looked interesting. So I made the pistols, and now I know what they do first hand.

So I became a Talismancer, because it’s a new world full of things to explore and new things to learn that nobody else knows, and I can do something that makes me unique. But the New World advances fast, and by the time I know where I’m going someone’s already been there. I was not quick enough to explore.

So I need to find my path, my lady, and I’m hoping its as your servant. The weaver church here seems almost Teacherish, stuck in a grove like badly tilled soil, maybe I’m the one to break it up.

Or until I find a new path that looks more fun.

I’d have said goodbye.

I didn’t get to say goodbye last time, I don’t think. I suspect I just went. It was a game, and I like games. Yes. Games.

I’m fine. by the way. I am far away, for a purpose. I haven’t had a purpose for a long time, and then three come along at once, one to find what happened to Folly, one to help Tabitha get to grips with a block of your head not being there, and then this new quest, and I don’t really know what will happen to that yet.

I am away. I will not be back soon, although time works differently here, so I may be back soon for you. I wonder who will miss me, and who will look. You don’t need to look, really. I’m not where you’re looking. I’m not a big part of the bar, I don’t have the encyclopedic knowledge of the bar’s history of Ariane or Matt, and nobody’s going to erect a statue in the square to a confused – and confusing – fire mage who you’ve never seen cast a single fire spell.

You can’t read this letter, because I cannot write it, but the impossible’s never stopped anyone here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got people to see.

Games to play.

Faithfully yours,

Panama, Phillip.

His room was on the top floor of a barely standing house far from the centre of town, it had been the only thing he could afford when he arrived almost three months ago, and it was the only thing he could afford now, really.

It was probably not going to be his much longer. With one thing or another.

An ace, a five, a four, a queen. Queen and Ace, exposing a five and a nine.

Four months ago he had woken up (New Years Day, he realised a lot later) in a ditch somewhere to the north. Advice, luck and a bit of magic had brought him to Grantbrugge, a place of knowledge. Knowledge was the key, and worth far more than the paper shillings his employers handed out on occasion. Knowledge absent (How had he lost his memory? When had he fallen in the ditch? Why?), Knowledge gained (Creatures of the dreaming. Facinating, but could now wait for futher study until after they stopped being able to almost kill him), Knowledge that was just _there_ (The dreaming. That was the key to the curse).

Knowledge of the curse.

The four and the nine left, exposing the the first overturned card, which was a… Three – damn – and a Jack.

The thing that had scrambled his brain, leaving him mangling every sentance he tried to speak, had been traced. The way to bring it back was geomancy – an art he knew a little of – but that would require a lot of research, an agreement with a couple of high powers in the city, and a litle luck. It would also require the uninturrupted use of the Nexus for a little while, which was a considerable thing to ask since…

Five, five, three, jack. Nothing. Another level and ace, seven, six, seven. Which seven?. What had been under there? Damnit. Six, Seven. Right. Ace five three seven. Nothing.

He’d seen it coming. If you form an army, you get a war. And a war they now had, he had seen them, his friends – or the closest thing he had to them in this twisted city – against what was percieved as the law-keepers of the city.

They had defeated the Children of the Light, eventually. Then they had patched them up, and those of the bar who had needed healing. And then…

…and then those damned creatures had started taking bandages *off* the Children, and people had started *squabbling* whilst others bled to death. He had helped – after the fight was over. He picked up what had turned out to be the leader – she was closest to the door – and as they were deciding who would take which bodies had carried her to the Ishmundi.

And now he had the wonderful oppertunity to find out what happens to a person when someone dies in his arms.

Nine, Seven, King, Ten, Take king, so Three. Three and ten, so Overturn, and six. Six and seven, leaving a gap, and another six, so Six and seven again, leaving another gap, and that’s eight. So two and jack. leaving two gaps.

They had taken his name and, after a while of him trying to explain, his address. He hadn’t done anything, hadn’t participated in the fight, but he had carried a dead child of the light though the streets. If he had waited, maybe one of the Johnites could have applied more bandages.

Four and queen, taking both the nine and the ace behind it, nice. The upturned card is an eight, three cards left in hand.

But if he’d waited, she might have died anyway. No way to change the past.

Or know it.

Eight and five cancels. One overturn and a clear board.

What was the right thing to do? Stay angry at Zak for casting the first stone? Lucie didn’t deserve to be arrested. Though staying angry at Zak for taking bandages off the CotL – they were misguided, not evil – seems fair. On top of that… display of impatience at the bridge with the bandits.

Ace, Queen, King. King out, Ace and Queen cancels.

Like it or not, he was was involved now, and in his current state was almost entirely defenseless. What could he do? Trip people to death?

No. Something more… dramatic. They want light? Light they will get.

Overturned was the last king, obviously.

Panama packed up his deck and decided to go to the Wessex.