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Book with iron covers, smelling slightly of blood.

Very secret diary of Ferrarius filius Ardescus de Tytali


Beginning of October (08.10.)

Finally! Tonight, I caught up with the rest of my new covenant...But maybe it is better if I told the story from the beginning.

After almost two weeks of running around Pyrenees, I managed to find Ardescus and get the promised 10 pawns of Vim. He seems to be a little bit preocupied with some businesses of his, but I did manage to extract a promise that all of our queen of vis is going to be returned by spring. In the meantime, I shall receive the rest of the payment for this loan - another 5 pawns of Vim. So far, it seems like a risk worth taking...

I traveled back as quickly as I could, and hired three Norman mercenaries in Fois; I thought I might need some muscle, and anyway, as Ardescus used to say, never underestimate the influence of a notched crossbow on somebody else's opinnion.
We traveled to Aix-en-Thermes only to find that our sodales have already left. The inhabitants of Aix seemed to think that we are all a bit stupid and quite funny, and after reflecting a bit on the whole situation, I must admit that I agree with them. The sheep incidents were definitely not in our favor. Somehow, when one gets more then two Magi together, the solemnity flees in abject terror, intelligent discusion and logical reasoning gets replaced by overblown egos and (not so random!) die rolls ; and I need not even mention what I think of the voting system as a tool for deciding on a course of action.
Ach, well...

The local shepherd boy showed us the old overgrown trail that was supposed to lead us to the abandoned village under the cliff ; after a little bit of effort (and a sighting of three humongous Giants throwing rocks at each other, while, for some baffling reason, singing a bawdy tavern song in Italian (one hears all sorts of stuff if one follows Ardescus on his travels, including a fair number of bawdy italian songs, unfortunately!) and I could swear that at least one of them was wearing the clothes in latest Parisian fashion! ), we arrived just at the end of the battle against some infernal creature captured in a Octacle full of Vis.
My mercenaries, already shaken by the vision of Giants, were not very keen on continuing against the infernal squid/frog, but when they saw one tiny little dwarf stand in front of it, all alone, and spray it with spears of flame, they took some heart and managed to fire their crossbows vaguely in the same direction.
Bravo.
Maybe I am paying them too much.

It seems that after that flame and/or iron bolts, the creature melted in some yellowish-green goo, still inside the Octacle. I thought it was a little bit of an anti-climax; I mean, giant frog/squids should, by their nature, be a little bit more on the gross and pulsating side of death, no?

Ah, I forgot to say that when I arrived, almost all the other members of the covenant were running away, so I was just a tiny weeny bit impressed by the dwarf. I do not believe that I could have defeated that frog without humongous amounts of vis.


Next day (09.10.)

I was right - he did use humongous amounts of vis!
Somehow, dirty little bastard got his grubby hands on 10 whole pawns of Ignem! And he spent them all! Argh, Flambeaus! And to make the whole thing even more painful, our lame Verditius demanded that I return our covenant's vis (one that I loaned to Ardescus!) immediately, and I couldn't make him stop demanding it, until I gave him my 10 pawns of Vim! It still should not matter in the long run, since I can take 10pws from our covenants cache, without anybody being any smarter. Greedy Italian bastard also demanded that I return him 3 pieces of silver that he spent at that Inn in Fois - I, of course, refused, hoping that I could goad him into Certamen ; that would be sweet, sweet revenge... unfortunately he seemed to detect something of my confidence and stopped annoying me.

After that, two old dirty men showed up, and started babbling something in Basque - I let Gerin translate, and pretended that I could not understand Basque. Being silent was a bit on the hard side, since they seemed to enjoy calling us fools, bumbling idiots, fat white people, and followers of the Hebrew God. I mean, I am not Christian at all, and anyway, what the hell makes them think that Christ was a Jew?! To cut the long story short, it seems that my bumbling sodales managed to become Lords of the Castle on the Cliff, and the village of Aix-en-Thermes; but in order to actually get in the aforementioned castle, we have to travel through some Halls under the Castle. In order to do that, they gave us Three Keys, and hints that it was all a giant regio. My suspicions were immediately aroused - it sounded a bit too much like one of the Ardescus's stories - just a perfect setup for a group of idiotic Magi. But what kind of setup?


A bit later, same day

Ah, yes, it seems that the melted frog/squid is not really dead. Who was it, who said: "It is not dead, that which eternally can lie; and with strange eons, even death may die."? Maybe Ardescus muttered something along this lines, that one time when he was meeting with a bunch of really creepy people in Brest, in Bretagne. They were all wearing cloaks, but one got the feeling that their bodies were hideously misshapen, and their faces were not much better. Greenish skin, giant bulbous lips and protruding round eyes, skin glistening as if covered with slime...disgusting, really. But I digress!
Our orange Criamon did something pretty idiotic, namely, he flew over the Octacle, and for his troubles got immediately turned into an (orange) goo himself, and swirled into the yellowish goo faster then one could say "Idiotic Criamon Got Himself In Trouble Again!". We all watched with a sort of morbid curiosity as the yellow goo started to cover the orange one, but then, quitte suddenly and unexpecteddly, the orange goo flew out of the Octacle and turned itself into our Criamon. He seemed to be fine, although shaken by the experience; he also claimed that the beast was alive. I shall definitely have to watch him more carefuly in the future - that was a damned close encounter with Infernal! And we all know that when something stinks of The Old Oneye, all the Quesitors come looking for the nearest Tytalus...

Anyway! The two old guys told us that this Octacle and other such beasts were the responsibility of the Lords of the Castle on the Cliff; so I guess, in exchange for our location, we have to do the annoying job of guarding against the monsters. Great. And one can't even seem to kill them - the old guys said that they were trying to do this for a long long time.
Perfect. Then again, they *were* just some hedge wizards.


That night

I am writing this in the catacombs under the Castle, illuminated by the highly annoying lila light that our Merinita thought was appropriate, and gay. Yeey. Today was an..interesting day. The old geezers gave us three weird bones, covered with pink, green, yellow and orange triangles, hexagrams and octogons, claiming that these were three keys to the Castle. They shoved us in the general direction of the cliff and after a little bit of fiddling around, we found the door. Of course, it was a door to a regio, and only those with keys (and those touching them) could pass. Since I am just slightly smarter (and faster!) then almost everybody else, I ended up with a key myself, so I opened the door and entered the halls below the Castle. After producing a torch, some annoying thing smothered it, and us, into darkness...I must say I really dislike faeries. Our orange nut created some protection for the next torch that I produced, and so we went exploring the halls. Of course, the first thing that happened was that 2 statues attacked us with lightning bolts. All of my companions run away, including my cowardly merceneries (I am definitely paying them too much - I mean, they both run away even though the lightning bolts missed them by quite a margin! gahhh..), except, of course, me. I got hit by a lightning or two, but it was some weak magic, completely unable to affect a real Tytali Magus. A bit later, the statues exploded, quite loudly and impressively, I have to admit, but I was again not harmed, mostly due to my skill in fastcasting. Unfortunatley, everybody else already run away, so the only one who could see what happened was our nutty orange Criamon; my grogs were, of course, already far away. I had to run all the way to the entrance to get them - so much for the fierceness of Normans!

We continued exploring, and a few traps later (hey, what does not kill you...) we actually found an interesting room. There is some sort of magical picture in that room, which seems to change whenever no one looks at it - it show some sort of battle between elves and men, and men seem to have lost quite badly. (Figures - not one of them seems to have had anything made of iron on themselves) There was also a golden throne in it, but the moment my cowardly mercenaries touched it, it changed colour, grew tentacles and grabbed Henrik! (What is it with all these tentacles these days?!) We all attacked the creature immediately, but sword blows did not seem to do much to it - fortunately, both me and our dwarf fired off some real magic in its direction, and it died a messy death. Our orange nut immediately glued itself to one of its tentacles (I presume, harvesting vis - otherwise, he is even weirder then I thought!). Since we all signed the charter, I know that part of any vis found is mine, so of course, I am letting the others worry about harvesting and carrying it.

We continued exploring the catacombs, which seem to have been built by someone really good at stonemasonry, and also gifted with a sick and twisted mind, since he filled it with truly annoying traps. I got stabbed in the back by an ancient spear, almost fell in numerous dark pits (thank Ardes..er, God, that I can fastcast well!), and was just fast enough to avoid a humongous block of falling stone.

It was fun!!! I mean, I always knew that I was good, really good, but it helps when the rest of the world agrees with you!
My unfortunate mercenaries also survived, though I can't say they did it through any fault of their own...

The annoying faeries kept trying to put our lights out, but somehow, my sodalii managed to keep at least one on at all times. Now I know exactly how many Magi does it take to make a light (5-An Ignem specialist, an Rego specialist, 2 Corpus specialists and a Lila Faerie specialist).. We also seem to have found at least two Sancti - one had a bunch of pigs in it, so we didnt really explore it, and the other could only be opened by our dwarf Flambeau (most curious, that..), and inside we found some books ("Church laws and how they apply to midgets"-even curiouser) and a room built for a dwarf, complete with wardrobes full of, well, dwarf robes..(really, really curious, that..).

Since it was kinda late, we all decided to sleep there, and I am going to do the same right this moment.

I hate lila lights.


Next morning (10.10.)

I am writing this in the courtyard of the Castle on the Cliff, while our not-so-useless-after-all faerie is flying in circles above us (which is kinda funny, since he tries to fly in a straight line all the time, and has this incredibly confused look every time he flies over us - guess he still doesn't get it, that we are in a Regio, heh heh heh... faeries..), which is good, actually, very very good - we seem to be in an Aura of Eighth (!!!) magnitude. But I digress-back to beginning!

Last night, we heard some curious knocking sounds, and after a bit of confusion, our Bonisagi sister managed to use some sort of clairvoyance, and showed us a picture of what was going on in the throne room - there was a bunch of fairies nailing us shut, with some wooden boards. I thought it hilarious, considering that our Criamon was doing the same from our side, only with Rego spells - I guess all the nuts actually *are* the same. Anyway, we were not worried, we slept well, woke up in the morning (more or less) and spent next half of an hour casting various spells at each other, and our grogs, before checking out the exits. Wooden boards are no obstacle for Magi, and our own faerie (Magus Violetus, to be correct) got us "pleasantly" surprised by turning them into (lila) grass and or flowers. We continued exploring, and in one of the halls I got shot by some sort of sticky tiny crossbow bolt, which also bounced of my Parma as a Mentem spell would. That kinda annoyed me, so I convinced our faerie to turn a part of the wall into something (lila violets, gahh!), and I passed through in order to Skewer the Petulant Faeries - unfortunately, I didn't find them until quite a bit later, when I already stopped being angry.

An hour of tromping through the catacombs later, we finaly managed to meet the annoying faeries who seem to live here - they barricaded one of the hallways and seemed to want a fight with us. I was all for it, but unfortunately, everybody else was against..I mean, there were only a few big ones, and maybe fifty, sixty small blue ones, I am sure we could've defeated them all!! But noo, they went and started talking and parleying with them..gah, so much vis walking away from us!! I really don't know why I didn't start a fight anyway - must be this aura, it's kinda affecting my judgement and making me happy and euphoric even though I have done nothing worthy of a Tytalus Magus lately..
Anyway, so our Violetus talked the fairies into showing us the way to the staircase that led upwards, all the way to the courtyard of our new Covenant-to-be, Castle-on-the-Cliff. All the way to the stairs, the small blue red-headed faerie insisted that he was protecting the bigger, uglier one, so I wanted to touch it with a certain Ignem spell of mine, but, alas, it was too quick for me. Next time though, one of these days...

Two days later (12.10.)

I really really hate faeries. Especially tiny superfast fight-is-about-kicking-in-the-balls kind. I still hurt, and can't walk properly - despite the tender ministrations of Violetus' blond grog. Damned blue SOBs proved to be far more deadly then I expected...Hmm, lets try to put the story in some sort of order: when we returned back to continue our negotiations with the annoying faeries, Violetus bungled the job, as expected, and I was forced to intervene with a few well placed words. For some reason, the small bastards didn't like me at all, and our negotiations turned into shows of force - which, unfortunately, I lost. Well, at least I know that next time I need to wear a protective. Gaah. Anyway, after my figurative fall (I didn't really bite the dust since I was floating untill the sunset), the faeries were mollified a bit by extensive concessions from my worthless and spineless band of relatives, and now we are forced to share the Halls with a band of faeries. I need to increase my Ignem, it seems...
After exploring the halls and finding nothing really interesting (OK, there was this picture that sometimes moves, with some funnily dressed humans, a weird looking dragon, half-size elves wearing something that appear to be dark eyeglasses, and a spotted rabbit with a knife in his hand-I must admit I keep checking it all the time, it seems to be telling some kind of a violent story, but I can't say that I understand it-weird!), we had a council session to decide what are we going to do next. Since I had exactly zero intent on staying here and doing all the dirty work of finding covenfolk, I volunteered to go and pick up Violetus' stuff left in Doissetep, and our vis from the "secret hiding place". Almea is supposed to accompany me to Foix and recruit some covenfolk, before continuing to Mistridge and discharging her vis obligation there-I am kinda proud of that little bit of manipulation, since I managed to talk the others into letting her take some vis from our reserves even though she hasn't contributed to our covenant at all so far. The idea is that if my vis-lending scheme fall through, I have at least one allied vote in council session, and precedent about taking vis for personal use with no obligation of return. I am really really good.
Oh yes, I also manipulated our tight-fisted smith into accepting the position of Principus - the fool! I can hardly wait to return and see how he bungles things...

One week later (20.10.)

And here we are, in Montsegur, losing valuable time and hobnobing with local nobility, just because my two Norman mercenaries decided to go hunting for a wild pig on foot. What is it with these Normans?! Hereditary lack of common sense, I suppose! Well, the above mentioned wild pig didn't agree with the idea of becoming our roast, and gored Henrik almost to death. Actually, it is a miracle that he is still alive. Really, it is - the first miracle I ever witnessed - kinda bothers me because this means that there maybe is some truth in gabbering of all those fat priests...Naah, it must've been some sort of hedge magic or inherent magical talent. Anyway, Henrik was lying there on the forest floor, bleeding to death, when Almea managed to partialy heal his wounds, but without vis. Knowing that he had only until sunrise to live, we searched for some civilized place that might have a chirurgeon-but the only nearby light was this castle on top of a !&!$# cliff! What is it with all these people building castles on top of cliffs?!So we brought him there, and some priest took our Henrik into his custody and stayed with him praying all night. Me and Almea expected the worst, but in the morning, Henrik seemed to be completely healed! Well, I'll be hecked to dang, but I won't admit superiority to any priest (ok, he claimed to be something called perfectii, one of those fool cathars I believe..), so I just ignored the whole deal and tried to get to know our host a bit more. He seemed to be one of that new nobility, prefering the book to the sword, and we got along just fine. I even arranged the copying of some of his books with some shady character who also happened to be hanging out at the castle. He tried to talk about philosophy with me, which turned out extremely funny since it seems that he knew about it as much as I - namely, none! Even though he is just a commoner, I must respect his pluck - bluffing like that is not easy...
Henrik started wearing cross around his neck.
And we ate the pig, too.

Foix (23.10.)

We seem to have recruited some hedge magician here, called Maurizio - practicaly by accident! Poor bugger was staying in the same inn as we did, and through sheer luck and some brilliant deduction on my part, Almea and me found out that he was not just a traveling Magister Philosophie, but also a practitioner of magic. At first I just wanted to blackmail him into working for us as a teacher, but lately, some other ideas have started to form in my head. The Fudarus gathering is not far off, and I just might play a funny trick there with our dear Maurizio - assuming he survives that long, of course..
Yesterday, the snow fell on the town. That would not be unusual by itself, if not for the fact that two feet of it fell in just a few heartbeats! I wonder if that has anything to do with Gerin and his story...
I am continuing my travels to Doissetep with Simon, but I shall not take the direct route. I need to find Ardescus and see what's up with the vis deal, and he is notoriously difficult to find - I need to check a few of the places where he hangs out first...
I am starting to have a bad feeling about that whole vis thingie...a queen of vis takes a long long time to distill...
I hate snow.

Doissetep (26.11.)

Why oh why am I cursed with grogs like these!!!!! Now I owe 8 pawns of Corpus to Doissetep, and all of that because I have cretins for grogs!!!! I told them, first thing when we saw Doissetep, be careful how you behave there, be nice, don't cause trouble!!! But nooo!! Guess what do they do, first day that we are there? They go to "practice" with a local champion, and when he admits defeat, they beat the heck out of him!! Of course, a band of that guy's friends beats the sweet Jesus out of Simon and Felipe, and now I am stuck here with them for the next 3 months while they heal! Aargh!
On the good side, Ardescus is here. On the bad side, he distributed my queen of vis throughout the tribunal, but has "other pressing concerns" and can't collect them up this spring! So now I have to go and do that myself. Not only that, but I also have to go and deal with some fearie Prince in order to gain back my Imaginem and Aquam vis.
I hate faeries.
Ardescus said that he needs to "give a bow" to that Prince, but as he can't possibly make it this year, I should go and do it instead. Knowing full well how is that likelly to go, I suggested that it might be easier if he just made an effigy of himself bowing, and I just deliver it there. Surprisingly enough, he agreed - wow, my old man actually thought that I had a good idea! Well, that's a first, for sure...
Now I have to go and gather a queen of vis scattered around Provencal Tribunal. Sometimes I really hate Ardescus.
I hedged my bets, though. Since I know what Ardescus is like, I strongly suspect that I shall have great difficulty in gathering all the vis promised, plus interest. So I whined and argued that he hasn't respected the deal we made last spring, where I am supposed to receive 15 pawns of vim vis as interest, and he finaly relented and agreed to exchange all the extra vis that we gather over one queen, for 15 pawns of vim. I am sure he thinks that I made a bad deal, but from my side, it is a win-win situation. If I don't gather the whole queen, I get my promised 15 pawns which shall surely help me rectify the loss. If I gather more then a queen, I can exchange some other form for vim, and give that vim in exchange for my 15, thus still realising some profit. And what is even more important, it is now in his interest not to make it very difficult form me to gather the vis in the first place, since then he would have to pay 15 pawns out of his own pocket.
I am really really good at this.