A report on the Conclave of Mages by Dargon 1105
I arrived after dark on the Friday of the conclave, it was a short walk from the circle up to the stables where I was directed. It appears that one of aben’s experiments had gone slightly awry and he felt it would be safer for all if we were put up in the stables.
There was one large problem with this and that was the lack of a fireplace, which meant that it
was fairly cold.
The guests to the guild were 2 Calebi mages, an unknown creature from the isle of dreams near lantia, an exceptionally old and powerful vampire, a nice gent from arabija and a couple of sylvan elves, the bloodline with the red headbands(Yarinril i think).
During the early hours of the evening we were attacked by chaos guild members that apparently took exception to the mages guild, these creature demonstrated the power to corrupt the very patterns of those they struck. Now this being a gathering of mages and not a gathering of healers we didn’t have that many present and Dr Kennith McCormac and Catholicon both ran out of healing in under 5 mins, aben took it upon himself after a heated discussion with splinterclaw, to do something about this and decided to activate one of his experiments that enabled him to rip us out of edreja and into the void, suspended within a protective bubble. Shortly after entering the void we were attacked by a couple of illithids that obviously saw the guild
as a quick snack. But didn’t reckon on the power of the sword of shssana(master waters sword) which froze them solid.
The evening progressed with speculation over our current predicament and numerous seminars discussing the happenings across edreja.
I’m afraid I slept heavily in the evening and didn’t rise until after what my timepiece claimed was midday. At some point before the next morning one of the sylvan elves met with an untimely death, and it is rumoured that the other used a scroll of dark incantation to dedicate the pattern of the dead elf. I am unable to confirm this as I did not witness the act. And as it seems ridiculously out of character for a sylvan I’m prepared to dismiss this as unlikely.
The Saturday lead us into greater problems one of abens guests, a fellow missing one of his arms, I’m afraid I forget his name decided to perform some experimentation with warpstone, this lead to him contracting warpstone poisoning of some fashion which although eventually cured, indirectly lead to his ultimate death, by an unknown assailant, as he had attacked a few people at random and decided he wanted to change faction from the tarantulas to the griffons.
In the light of the day a few people whom were practised or learning the arts of herb lore found some ingredients that had some healing properties, and they were passed to Bards Guild Master of Research and part time alchemist,(and faction deputy high bard for that matter)
Lavernius who eventually brewed a few potions of cure fatal wound from them.
A revenant (I believe she was a druid in life) appeared and was apparently looking for her home, and proceeded to wander around and generally have a go at anyone holding holocaust, anyone with an alien life pattern or anyone who was carelessly ripping up plants on the
grounds that they may be useful. By having a go I don’t mean anything aggressive other than growling and taking plants and replanting them.
Master darks sister Rage turned up looking for him and was angered by the presence on unliving within the guild, she apparently took care of the revenant, and it wasn’t seen again, there were however a couple of vampires in the meeting hall and a sylvan elf, who was told by
Jeremiah Carmichael that rage was a necromancer, and as such he proceeded to attack her, in all his futility. The vampires within the guild were of course high mage Heather Sparrow(who made herself extreamly scarce), and one of the guests, unfortunately the guest was extremely powerful and proved too much for even for rage. She lacked the ability to understand the intricacies of guild policies and the fact that Grandmaster Floris Brand had decreed that unliving should have equal status within the guild did not endear us to her, and she eventually left.
Adept Teemo was also discover to be an illithid, though as he was a guild member and was working in the interests of magic, and had done nothing wrong, it was decided that no actions would be taken. The two calebi mages (I had already deduced that they were unlikely to be Calebi as calebi mages are rare, magic being illegal within 7 miles of any town, if they were calebi mages they would not have turned up without at least a couple of guards) that were visiting also appeared to be illithids as an illithid hunter turned up and announced publicly that he was here to kill some things, An hourglass that had the ability to freeze time for all but the holder was discovered, though
this later left again, also discovered was an invisible cloak and a hat of Eryl Flynn. And a cup that prevented those near it receiving pattern corrupting damage
I suspect this hourglass was used to kill the calebi illithids as they suddenly fell over dead for no apparent reason, though at the time there were only a few possible people near to the hourglass, these being Dr Kennith McCormac and Splinterclaw, I would find it hard to believe that Kenny would perform such an act, but as I have absolutely no evidence to support my speculation no accusations were made, I also believe that the illithids had drained some of the power of a few of those mages that were present, so they weren’t entirely without blame.
If spliterclaw did anything then I am certain that it was within the best interests of the guild, and probably not without permission from at least one master air mage.
The void bubble we were in became stuck in the void we ran into something that coated our void bubble in a thick webby type substance, shortly after we became stuck magical energies began to weaken and spellcasting of high magic’s became impossible, holocaust stopped flaming and anything that used high magic like powers stopped working. With the exception to the high magic’s gained from drinking one of the rouge alchemists potions that granted the drinker the ability to cast more spells, including high magic’s, I believed the potions to be dangerous and didn’t have enough money with me to purchase one. For experimentation, I believe Amryel drank one so if you need any further information about this I would suggest contacting her.
After magic’s started becoming harder a couple of True magic wielding women turned up dressed in creamy white with multicoloured patterns on their faces and small golden symbols all over them, they carried small books which I believe one of them gave to Jeremiah and offered to help
us if we would help them, the exact details of this I am not sure but numerous people agreed to aid them in to future for their aid in getting us out of out situation, the help they offered was to shoo away (literally) with the use of that word the void entity that was causing us problems, this led to confirmation in my mind that they were controlling the creature and had trapped us to enlist our aid with their problems.
Meanwhile a couple of our healers discovered that they could burn away the webbing that was holding us by channelling energy into it, this they did and freed us from our predicament, it was just at this point that the ladies in white shooed away the void beast.
Just prior to our release from the webbing spellcasting of any kind had become impossible and healing was severally restricted.
After freeing ourselves from the webbing we proceeded to experiment with the control system that we had deciphered and soon we were back within edreja just before midnight. It was about this time that one of the half ogres annoyed Stephan Lewis by refusing to do guild service in exchange for the healing of numerous fatal wounds, shortly after that he fell over dead of warpstone poisoning coupled with a magical pulse, the warpstone had apparently been crushed and snorted. It was at this time that the second sylvan elf collapsed, we assumed it was
because of the pulse, but by the time a healer got to him he was dead by numerous wounds to every part of his body
At about 1 o’clock we crashed through the sylvan elf barrier and landed back on edreja once more. Unfortunately diplomatic relations were hindered because we landed on a few of their flesh golems and not knowing were we were and wanting to protect those caught in their path
we beat them up. We did heal most of them but I think one of them might have died. We spoke to a few local elves (brown headbands) and let them wander off to fetch their leaders, who they said would return in the morning.
We had a nice chat with the ambassadors in the morning and agreed to leave them the building and its contents in exchange for an escort off sylvan lands. It was apparently a 12 hour journey to the boarder. As we were packing up to leave, and performing some basic combat training, some brown headbanded sylvan elves arrived with a couple of golems a magical pulse occurs resetting his golems and causing master earths golem to go on a rampage killing anything wearing green. Until brought under control. The elf collapsed due to his affinity with magic and wasn’t too happy when he realised that we had brought the magical pulses to the land and wasn’t happy with our initial explanation of what they were.
Later in the day some red banded sylvans turned up and insisted that our arrival was a declaration of war as we apparently had destroyed their barrier. They teleported off with the ambassador of the brown headbanded elves and ordered their golems to kill all who were not
sylvan. At first their golems seemed impervious to all damage even from enchanted weapons, I however noticed with a little experimentation that they could be damaged from the rear, it was
only the front that was impervious to harm, a couple of freezes later the golems were taken care of and the sylvans were captured and tied up to be left for the brown headbanded elves to deal with. Other groups of sylvans circled around us and tried to come at us from different directions but the guild guard any myself had eyes in all directions and spotted them coming early every time. The came at us with weapons of flame and used the golems to form a wall to hide behind. This tactic worked well until all of them were muted and we then dealt with them in quick succession. The attacks continued we attempted to capture as many as possible and even captured a handful of golems. Realising our tactic the sylvans sent a man inside to reactivate the golem, but fortunately I spotted him and muted him before he could do anything, he grabbed weapons and seemed impervious to any form of attack so he went for a snooze as well and was
tied up and later interrogated.
Over the course of the weekend various seminars were held and numerous decisions with regards to guild policies were decided, here are some notable decisions that I overheard
Non mage ritualists will be permitted to join the guild as full members subject to a witness of a successful ritual.
Arch mages have more authority within the guild and are now responsible for signing people onto guild duty, which can now not be done without authorisation from an arch mage. They also have
to right to sign anyone off guild service if they believe they are not acting sufficiently in the interests of the guild.
It is now impossible to gain promotion to the higher levels within the guild by hours and time alone, notable guild duties must be included. Arch mages have the right to delegate any of their responsibilities to lower ranked members and assume responsibility for that person
performing the role. A concerted effort should be made to take lower ranked guild members with you when performing any activities in the name of the guild, this is for two reasons, 1) to give newer guild members something to do, 2) to make sure newer members understand how the guild works. A list of acceptable duties that can be asked of new guild members should be drawn up but the lower chambers and presented at the heartland games. Guild guards have the right to use reasonable force to prevent actions against the interests of the guild and are responsible to the guard captain and the speaker of the lower chambers, and ultimately to the guild council. This means that if a master mage magebolts a guild member we have full authority to beat him up and then ask the guild council to judge his actions later
There were many more but I wasn’t scribing the meetings, Terwin and Teemo should have more details I hope.
results of the questioning of a captured sylvan called anri
Essentially, Anri was a random warrior. When we landed the Yarinril were cautious about this being an attack so they dispatched 4 squads to come and investigate/deal with this problem. They then had the mid-day experience which they’d not had before. They naturally assumed that this huge magical pulse must have been some sort of massive effect weapon which symbolised the start of an attack.
They’re also narked off at us for killing a ‘pure one’ as one of the five that we killed at the moot. Sylvan elves live for around 500 years, during which time they study different subjects for 40 years or so at a time. Some dedicate their lives to one particular
path and these are held in higher regard than the rest of them. They’re known as Swordsingers (warriors), Clave Mages (wizzies), Pure Ones (healers) and Masters (others).
They’re also upset with the incantors because of the incanting device which made them all age really quickly a while ago. They’re also upset with the Ancestors as the incanting device wouldn’t have worked at all if the Ancestors didn’t power it! Therefore, the Ancestors must have wanted to kill off the Elder races at one point.