The Truth about the Hunter and the Laughing One

Elemmhir Lanatrae
The Harlequins and Death Jesters graciously offered the Eye of the Laughing One in order that Excalibur may be found. This was at the Gathering of 1096.
What was not known, by any, was that the Hunter himself would deliver that most precious of Swords. Nor was it known that he would once more disappear back to his realm with the Eye. A mission, consisting mainly of Hunters and Death Jesters was mounted in order to retrieve the Eye. They were in fact led there by one Connall Evanson who was at that time chosen of the Hunter. This was during the Moots of 1097. The Laughing One’s Eye was being used to hold closed a rift that the summoning of Excalibur had left open. Even on his own realm the Hunter was not powerful enough to hold back the forces of terror and chaos that were attempting to come through.
The Eye would need to be replaced by one freely sacrificed, as this would have even greater power than that of an Ancestor. One who was neither Hunter nor Death Jester, he in fact counted himself unaligned with any Faction was with the mission. He was a healer and when the Hunter demanded an eye, he saw his fellows arguing over who should have the honour of making the sacrifice. So rather than delay he plucked out his own eye and gave it to the Hunter. And so they returned, almost without Connall, but that is another issue.
Unfortunately this healer did not understand what he was doing when he asked Master Healer Telfalcon, one of the Hunters, to regenerate his eye. With an eye regrown the power of the sacrifice was lost. And so the eye, which held closed the rift, lost its power.
Most of us were unaware of this occurrence until the Hunter arrived and decided to tell us. This was at the beginning of 1098, at Connall’s wake I think. He berated those there for not making a true sacrifice. When the Death Jesters present argued he turned on them and berated them in particular.
Another mission was sent to Chapel Perilous, the Hunters realm and this time a true sacrifice was made. General Tarn, chosen of the Hunter sacrificed his eye to give the power to plug the rift.
But the Death Jesters were nowhere to be seen. They apparently could not accept that they had erred in any way. They blamed the Hunter for taking the power from the Eye but this was not done. If a true sacrifice of an Eye had been made the Hunter would not have needed so much of the power of the Eye. But it was not, so the Hunter used the power as he needed and caused the Eye’s powers to weaken more than would otherwise have been necessary. The mistake of the original group could have cost us all dear. The horde would not have remained in Chapel Perilous for long; they would have come through to Albion, then Avalon and eventually all of the Heartlands.
Elemmhir Lanatrae,

Scribe and Archivist to Queen Elspeth

And a Hunter!