Castle Northumbray
Castle Northumbray
The next day, Fergus took us on a long hike to the caves which led to the secret entrance to Lord Northumbray's castle. After telling us how labyrinthine the cave system was, and how easy it was to get lost, Fergus prepared to leave. We objected vehemently to this arrangement, and insisted that he guide us through the caves to the castle entrance, as per our agreement. He gave in, and we went walking through the cold, damp sea-caves. At some point in our hike through the caves, we were ambushed by a large group of troglodytes. We managed to defeat them without much injury to ourselves, although I believe that Billy Ray was injured somewhat badly.
Finally, after many hours of hiking, we arrived at the castle. We found ourselves in what appeared to be an underground stable(!?!?), where we hid our weapons, armor, and so forth. We then located the laundry, where we changed into servants' liverey. Fergus did not want to go back through the tunnels by himself, and said he would hide in the basement until we were finished with our business. To complete our disguise, we grabbed piles of linen to carry, and set out in search of the main area of the castle.
While looking for the stairs to the upper floors, we found several storage rooms, and one room which was locked shut with a very solid lock. We couldn't get in there, so we left it alone. (Erose wanted to break it down, but less physical minds prevailed...) We saw a man sitting down the end of a hallway, and so we went to ask directions. This was probably not the best move; it turned out he was guarding the dungeon. We pretended we were lost, and looking for the stairs. He seemed to be becoming suspicious, until Erose did something with her breasts which distracted him from our inherent suspiciousness. Elspeth flirted with him a bit, and he got into a better mood, and made some reference to something big which was about to happen, and something about humans wanting to be kings. He did direct us to the stairs, and told us not to come to the dungeon again, with the exceptions of Erose and Elspeth.
We walked up the stairs. The next floor up was almost deserted. There was a cloaked figure down one of the halls, and some of us noticed that it had inky-black skin, as it ducked into a doorway. Clearly, this was one of the vile hell-spawn Drow. There was definitely more going on here than met the eye. I found it hard to believe that even Archibald would stoop so low as to ally with the Drow, but then again, he has shown himself capable of other unthinkable depravities (if what Lively said about him can be believed at all). Vrba, the little nut, couldn't resist the urge to attack the Drow, and looked to be preparing to cast a spell at it. Fortunately, BRB and Erose interceded, and prevented him from setting it off.
Heh. Those three are actually quite similar in certain ways. I'd hate to be the one to tell any of them that, though.
The next floor up clearly held the servants' wing. We came out there, and split up, to avoid suspicious glances, and mingled. I talked to one of the servants on a break, told him I was new, and fed him a line about how I was from London (I could never pass for Scottish, that dialect & accent is beyond me), and I'd come to Scotland following a woman who ignored my advances. He shared some of his "wisdom" on Scottish women, telling me not to despair, that Scottish women were generally cold and unfriendly, until you got past their defences and then they were the best women in the world. I also managed to get some useful gossip out of him. In summary: 1) the lords who had been invited to the party were all the Elvish lords who were still loyal to Archie's government. No human lords but Lord Northumbray were present. 2) The lords were not staying in nice staterooms in the castle, but were all encamped in their own little enclaves. 3) Lord Northumbray had another group of mysterious guests who were staying on the floor below, where no servants ever went, except to bring food (raw meat!) down. The only people who saw the visitors were Lord N. and his military commanders; they held meetings in the locked room in the basement. I do wish I'd been able to get into that room. 4) There was a massive orgy going on in one of the rooms in the upper part of the castle; the guy assumed that that's where my pile of sheets was supposed to go.
While I was chatting with that fellow, somebody else manged to convince one of the higher-ups that we were a batch of newly-hired servants who needed rooms. We were assigned a not-so-nice room with some straw pallets. We agreed to meet back there when we had had chances to explore and find stuff out. I managed to get instructions to the orgy room, and set off to deliver bed linens. It was quite a hike, and I had a chance to mull over all the information I'd gathered and to piece some of it together. My idea was that Lord Northumbray had made a deal with the Drow to kill all of the Elf-lords supporting the government (and probably Archie as well). Having killed most of the elves who support the government, he could then set up a human-elf civil war, and somehow manage to grab the throne in the chaos. This would be bad on several fronts. For one thing, the Eldar would _have_ to intervene on the side of the rightful rulers of England. This would divert a good portion of our military from protecting the North, thus opening the door wide for a large-scale Drow invasion. I tried to think up some sort of plan. If nothing else, we needed to warn the lords of what was going to happen. While I was changing sheets (NOT my preference of activities in that room, I must say), I slipped a warning note into a likely-looking trouser pocket.
After changing the sheets, I tried to track down everybody else, and tried to convince them to meet me in our room at the earliest possible convenience.
I will now divert the narrative to what was going on elsewhere. Although I didn't hear about it until later on, it seems appropiate to write events in a somewhat chronological order.
Udo and the ranger we sent back arrived, and gave Dave the news of the secret ship construction. Keef took it into mind that he needed to find out who was building the ships and for what. Around the same time, Lord Mercury's retinue arived at Dave's. Mercury was on his way to the auction; he wanted the Amp for himself. (Mercury is something of a "moderate," in terms of English politics. His sympathies, according to Dave, lie with those who oppose Archibald and his policies, but he wants to avoid civil strife, and thus has not publicly shown opposition, and has nominally remained loyal to Archibald's government. He is a very famous and revered member of the College of Bards--since the Glimmers died, I'd guess he's the most influential English member.) Anyway, Keef managed to get Mercury to take him along; Mercury had received some intelligence about suspicious doings in Northumbria, and was bringing along some guys to investigate.
The retinue travelled down to Northumbria; Keef chain-smoking, and drinking, and acting paranoid the whole way. They stopped in Fergus' village, and Hal and Schnellmaken met up with Keef. According to Hal, Keef resisted talking to them; he believed that doing so would reattract Archie's attention to him. Poor Hal was trying to talk to Keef about what had happenned to him, and how he was doing, etc. but Keef just kept freaking out, and talking about the ships.
After stopping in the village, Mercury's retinue made its way up to Northumbray's castle. At this point, I will go back to what the rest of us were doing.
Loud cheers arose from the main courtyard of the castle, accompanied by some very loud rock music. Everybody else was running to see what the commotion was, so we did too (after all, we didn't want to seem conspicuous). A large train was pulling up into the yard, where throngs of people were gathered. At the center of this was a wagon with an elf standing on it, playing an electric guitar. This, apparently, was Lord Mercury, arriving with much fanfare. From our high vantage point, we could see that Mercury's playing was providing an excellent diversion from the strongly defensive positions his troops were taking up.
When Mercury finished his entrance piece, Lord Archibald approached him, and said something like "Ah, Freddie! I see you've finally gotten your licence!" and made an appearance of giving Mercury a warm greeting. After all the official tripe was taken care of, Mercury, Archie, and some others retired to Mercury's tent for refreshments. Our little group got split up in all the commotion, and I found myself on my own. I decided to make my way down to Mercury's encampment, and try to find a way to contact the lord. When I got down there, Mercury was still meeting with Archibald, and I didn't want to risk Archie seeing me, so I found a vantage point to watch the main tent without being conspicuous. After a bit, I met up with BRB, and I discussed my ideas of what we should do with him, i.e. basically, find trustworthy folks and warn them about the Drow. BRB agreed to do "Detect Good" to seek out honest men and warn them. I stayed to wait for my chance to get in to meet Mercury.
She left, and while walking around, she was spotted by Hal, who was sitting with Keef in a tent in Mercury's camp. He wanted to get her attention, but Keef, in his paranoid state, didn't want to be seen with any of his friends, and struggled with Hal, trying to stop him. He did manage to get out (or maybe Keef knocked him out of the tent) and get her attention, but then Keef wouldn't let them back into the tent. Since he's in such a weakened state, they were able to overcome him, and get back into the tent, after which Erose was inundated with Keef's ranting about the ships and being watched by invisible eyes. She left after a while, and went back to the kitchen.
He took me to the tent in question; it was sumptuously decorated, and there were already five blokes in there before me, waiting for "autographs." I was told that Mercury would be along in an hour or so. How boring. I tried to kill some time by chatting with my fellow "fans," but none of them were very talkative. I walked around the tent, looking at Mercury's stuff. I took a good look at his guitar, which was of a different make from the ones Keef and I have. It also had a really great-looking security stand, which held the guitar and kept it away from prying fingers.
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Finally, Mercury showed up. He waved his hand, and all the other "autograph-seekers" vanished, I guess they were illusions(?). I revealed my true purpose in coming to him, telling him about the Drow, and our suspicions about Northumbray. He said that his security bloke was investigating what Northumbray was up to, and that they were all on the watch for treachery. (This security guy, who I'd gotten a look at, is very good-looking, but, according to Mercury, is strictly heterosexual. He is apparently looking for some tough, strong woman. I thought that he should meet Elspeth.) They didn't think that whatever was going to occur would be a direct attack, since all the lords had so many guards around them. I wasn't so sure; after all, Northumbray has a fair number of guards and soldiers of his own, and who knew how many Drow were around. Still, I'd managed to give warning to somebody who I was reasonably sure could take action. He asked me what my name was, and I told him "Mick." Since that's a fairly common name for elves, especially in my generation, I didn't think that woud give me away. However, he'd apparently heard of me before, or was expecting me to be around the castle (which he was), because he immediately asked, "Mick Jagger? David Bowie's friend?" I admitted to being that person, and he told me that he had some friends of mine in his camp, and that he'd take me to see them. |
| Lord Mercury |
We went to another tent, and in there was Hal, and Keef! Keef was conscious and mobile! I was so happy to see him in a (somewhat) recovered state that I moved forward to embrace him, but when I stepped towards him, he cringed backwards, like he was horrified to see me. I felt so dejected. I asked him what was wrong, didn't he recognise me? He replied by muttering something about being watched, and that "he" could see us, and so forth. At this point, Mercury moved forward, and touched Keef. All of a sudden, Keef became relaxed, and said something like "ahh, he's gone." I asked Keef if he was okay, and he replied in the affirmative. Then I DID grab hold of him; I couldn't stop myself, I was so happy to see that I hadn't lost him. Mercury produced some food, and Keef tucked in. This made Hal happy; apparently, Keef hadn't eaten since he met up with him.
Anyway, he and Hal told me what they were doing here (Keef wanted to find out about the ships, and he thought we might be in trouble--not a hard guess, that last one). We didn't have too much time to catch up, because it became time for the banquet. Mercury produced some magical disguises for Hal and Keef. I expressed concern that taking keef to a banquet where Archie was going to be, and which was likely going to be invaded by Drow, was not in his best interest. Mercury insisted that it was the safest place for him, under they eye of all the guards there. Keef wanted to go, and I couldn't convince him otherwise. So, I went back to the castle to take up my supper assignment. BRB, Vrba, Sanjay, and I were all assigned to wine-pouring duty. This allowed us to move about the banquet hall and keep an eye on things. Erose stayed in the kitchen. Keef and Hal were attending the banquet as part of Mercury's company. There was no sign of Elspeth anywhere. A few other notes on Keef--he's been feeling psychic; I guess he actually channelled BRB at one point. Also, he's been having chest pains. Hopefully this is all just an aftereffect of the drug they used on him, and they will clear up.
It was all rather boring; the affair dragged on for several hours. Finally, near the end of the banquet, Vrba came up to me and told me that Erose had told him that the desert had been poisoned, and ran off to warn Keef, &c.
This brings us to what Erose was up to all this time.
The main meat course required just about all of the kitchen staff to bring out, and François gave Erose her big chance to make it big in the cooking world. He set her to doing the final decoration on the desserts, while he and most of the staff brought out the main course.
When she had finished with the desserts, a coulple of elves came in, and chatted with her. She heard a noise behind her, and she turned to look. There was a Drow, sticking half out of the wall, dropping something into the tarts! She turned back around, and the other two guys had turned into Drow, too! She kept her cool, and played Idiot Servant Girl, and acted like she believed them when they said they were following François' instructions. They clearly bought the act, because they didn't try to kill her. She surreptitiously broke the vial that "The Son of the Light" had given her. Our best guess is that this released some spell, and the Drow detected it, because they ran out the door, and took off down the hall. Erose stayed with the desert.
François returned from the banquet hall, and congratulated her on a job well done with decorating the desserts. She accepted the praise, and then told him about the poison. The poor guy was quite distraught. She went out into the banquet, and found Vrba, and told him to tell us about the poison. While walking between the banquet hall and the kitchen, she heard the sound of armed conflict coming from down the hall. Being a good Norsewoman, she ran off towards the fight, grabbing up a long bread spatula on the way, to use as a weapon.
Back at the banquet, we all made our ways to the kitchen, each with our own plans for dealing with the evil dessert. BRB tried to comfort the chef, and offerred to make some pecan pie, although he'd never be able to make enough for 500 people. I decided that the dessert couldn't be served if it was trashed, so I took it upon myself to knock the tainted tarts off the tables and onto the floors. Vrba was also destroying tarts. Sanjay, on the other hand, grabbed a tray, and started walking towards the banquet hall. We all yelled, "Sanjay, what are you doing?" He explained that he had a plan to bring out a tray, and then have Dingus pretend to jump out, eat some, and fall over dead. I thought that was a pretty good plan, so we stopped throwing tarts on the floor. However, François did not like this idea, because it would ruin the banquet.
He managed to pull himself together, and went over to the cold-storage thing. He brought out a tub of frozen stuff, and said something about it being something he'd been saving for an emergency. He set us to scooping the frozen confection, called "sorbet," into bowls. I had the honor of serving Lord Northumbray himself. He seemed very unpleased, and sent me to fetch the chef out to him.
I came back to the kitchen and told F. that the Lord wanted to talk to him. F. carried on about how he was ruined, etc. Vrba said he wanted to shake F's hand to wish him good luck. When he did so, he cast Shocking Grasp on the poor guy, in an attempt to kill him! I couldn't believe it. I mean, I've always thought Vrba was a bit of a loon, but I believed he was, at the heart of it all, a good person. I never thought he was so evil as to murder, in cold blood, a person who had never done any harm to him! He tried to explain that he thought that F. was going to somehow give us away, and tried to kill him so that he wouldn't talk, as if that made it okay to murder somebody. I know now that I had better watch my back around that treacherous snake.
Fortunately, dwarves are tough, and F. survived the attempt. Also fortunately, F. was in such a state that he didn't seem to notice that he'd almost been killd, and went out to face the Lord. Northumbray expressed his displeasure at not having his desired dessert. F. became very snooty, and explained that the tarts were not right for the meal, and that he had made this very expensive, high-class dwarven treat to finish off the meal, instead. Northumbray tried it, and decided it was tastey, and let F. off the hook.
Later, we talked to Mercury about the Amp. He agreed that it should eventually go to the College, and said that he would bring it there when he was through with it. Keef, I think, is going to stay with Mercury and the Amp for a while, to keep an eye on it (and Mercury can take care of keef, who really isn't up to running around adventuring). This would also give Keef a chance to see Imryrr and the College, and possibly other parts of Eldamar, which I think is important for him to do, if he does indeed have an Elven soul.
There was some concern that we were putting the cart before the donkey, since we didn't actually HAVE the amp yet. Mercury assured us that he would get it; he said he knew certain things about Archie that Archie did not want publicly known, and that he could blackmail Archie into giving him the Amp.
Keef, Mercury, and I stayed up late playing music together. It was great to play with Keef again.
Keef and Mick Jam