RQ Meeting Summary #10 – August of 2009


Our group consisted of:

Baclane - Mark's master of horses
Arre, Thad's Melnibonean alchemist archer
Aurelius, Rich O's graeco-egyptian sorceror charioteer
Grumfar, Rich F's minotaur, who is sworn to the service of the Morrigan
Palanar - Leon's Maat/Humakti arkati sorceror
Nicholas Papapadapapolous (whatever)  –Scott’s Byzantine catacphract (disciplined, well armored horse archer)
****unfortunately for your cataphract, Scott, his last name sounds exactly the same as some horribly obscene swear words in each of the following languages: Frankish, Norse, all the Celtic languages, Saxon, Frisian, and both High and Low Wendish.  To avoid further social problems, your cataphract is henceforth known as Nic the Greek.  If your character’s true last name is ever again spoken during play, I will kill not only your character, but 2 other characters chosen at random from the party.
Keith’s Argan Argar Troll, who is minding the store in Constantinople
Dave’s hunter sidhe, Felcia Shadowclaw, from the Unseelie Court, who follows Fladais the Huntress
Dwayne’s Norse ship captain, Thorgrim Seastrider, follower of Thor, son of Odin, Wielder of the hammer Mjolnir, Slayer of Giants and Lord of the Thunderstorm (Thor that is, not Dwayne)
Bob’s sidhe from the Unseelie courts, Lysteria, who follows Sholto, the sidhe Lord of the High Hunt
Tony’s sidhe from the Unseelie courts, Namon Pferd, who follows Essus the Just, Prince of Flesh and Flame (brother to Andais, The Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie Courts.)
Please note that everyone from the Unseelie Courts takes double damage from iron.
NPCs of Note:
The Emperor Michael Rangabe, ruler of the Byzantine Empire and the party’s patron, buddy and front man.
The Emperor Carolus Magnus, Charlemagne, Leader of the Frankish Empire, Lord of the West, Father of Europe and Uncle to
Roland, wielder of the black sword Durandal, greatest of the Paladins of Charlemagne’s Court.
Ra – Lord of Sun Light, Last of the Greater Egyptian Deities.



It is now October,  811 AD, and the party needs to get out of Constantinople in order to keep faith with the promise made to the ghost of the Emperor Heraclius.  They enlist the aid of Thorgrim, one of the varangians who have come south to seek their fortunes in Miklagard.  Thorgrim has a ship and the party needs a ship: their goal is the ruins of the Pharos, the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the ancient world.  The party’s inquiries into the Imperial Records have borne fruit: an obscure reference to the Last Refuge of Ra is found, and this reference leads to the Muslim seaport of Alexandria in Egypt.  (Although Egypt was claimed by Assurbanipal after the mysterious death of Haran el Rashid, he had a great deal of trouble exerting his magical power into what once was the land of the Pharaohs, and Egypt has accepted the rule of the Emir of North Africa.)  This may be a link to the knowledge that Aurelius has sought since…since, well since Rich O rolled up the character.
After dealing with some last minute preparations, the party leaves Constantinople under cover of the games celebrating the Autumnal Equinox.  While still within sight of the great city, the party spies what appear to be two trading vessels from Tyre (within the Caliphate) tied up at a wharf in a commercial district on the Asian side of the waterway.  The crews are acting suspiciously, and when the party hails them, apparently panic and attempt to flee while opening fire on the party.  The members of the party return fire and strafe both ships in passing at the same time that Thorgrim oar rakes both ships.  One ship catches fire and burns to the waterline; the other ship blows up, setting a warehouse on fire.  And the party is off, sailing across the sunny Aegean Sea, leaving a scene of bloody devastation and smoking ruin behind them.


Following the directions found by Arre and the Argan Argar merchant in their researches into the wealth of historical records in Constantinople, the party is seeking entrance to a tunnel or passage on the island that supported the old Lighthouse.  Thorgrim’s impressive ability to navigate leads them to a landfall on the north side of the island, directly below a section of the Pharos’ foundation that contains huge stones that bear markings older than the time of the Ptolemaic dynasty that built the Great Lighthouse.   Aurelius spots a large block that bears a stylized representation of one of Ra’s forms and the party uses their own brute strength (with Grumfar in the lead) to loosen the block and slide it down into the shallow waters near Thorgrim’s ship.    Removal of the stone block reveals a ramp that leads steeply down into the bedrock beneath the ruins of the old lighthouse, ending in a corridor that leads due south.  This corridor is dry, shows no signs of passage in what must be centuries and also slants downward.  The party follows this tunnel uneventfully for what seems miles, until you are certain that you are directly underneath the old city of Alexandria, or even farther south, when the party comes to a square arch in the corridor, graven with figures of deities from ancient Egypt’s Land of the Dead: Anubis and Sokar.  Beyond the archway is a darkness that torch light cannot penetrate, and it moves.

When the party attempts to pass through the archway, they are attacked by an apep, a child of the old Hyksos gods of chaos and darkness, which takes the form of a giant snake enshrouded in a magical cloud of darkness.  It was placed here as a guardian ages ago so that not even light could enter or escape this archway.  The party pulled into a life and death struggle with the son of Set and it is the berserk Grumfar who bears the brunt of the damage.  Bitten by the demigod serpent, Grumfar sucks up incredible amounts of damage, has two limbs ripped off and is still able to dispatch the monster with the aid of the rest of the party, but the curse of the old gods is a potent one.  When the minotaur fails to resist the poison, he begins to take the form of an apep himself, to take the place of the guardian he slew.  Only a successful divine intervention saves him from having to choose between becoming a chaos-tainted demonic serpent or one of Arre’s experimental subjects.  The alchemically talented archer had a special potion prepared to stop the transformation, but lost the chance to use it.
“It’s all just theory until we do a live trial…”, he was heard to mutter.

After Grumfar pulls himself together, the party continues down the long sloping corridor, except everyone can feel that something is happening.  Everyone feels that time itself is changing, and the sidhe can actually feel themselves growing stronger. (The sidhe have been slowing losing power as a race for the last 2000 years, roughly since the beginning of the iron age).   After travelling for what appears to be an equal distance south of the archway, the party feels a light wind on their faces and can smell water and vegetation.  Up ahead is the end of the tunnel, which opens into a dark valley.  As the party leaves the tunnel mouth, the sky above the valley brightens as if the sun had just risen, but the source of the light is not the sun of the surface world, but Ra.  The party has found the Last Refuge of Ra, where the sun god of Ancient Egypt has been imprisoned for nearly 2000 years, since the reign of the last pharaoh of Egyptian blood.

Ra is overjoyed to encounter one of his (if not the last one) of his priests, and Aurelius goes into ecstatic communion with his lord, during the course of which he (Aurelius) is turned into a golden stature.  As you can imagine, this has a number of effects on Aurelius, and when he returns to human form, he has completed the transformation into High Priest of Ra.  While Aurelius communed with Ra, the rest of the party explored this small valley.  It is walled with high cliffs, with a sparkling river flowing through its center, and the banks are lined with lush vegetation, nothing more than waist high, that is heavily laden with berries and fruits.  The water of the river is obviously magical, and Ra bids each of you to bathe a weapon in its waters to gain his blessing against his enemies.  Everyone does so, and those weapons now do double damage versus undead.  When Arre does so, his bow of mallorn wood reacts immediately to the presence of pure water and magical sunlight, and begins to sprout roots and branches.  Arre places it on the bank of the river and it takes root and begins to grow.

Ra is very pleased at this gift of a living tree of light from another world, and in return he gifts Arre with a bow that had once been wielded by Apollo himself.   The party asks if there is another way out of this valley, one that would lead to the realm of Ma’at, and Ra directs the party to a tunnel on the far side of the valley, on the other side of the river.  The party decides to go back the tunnel and reseal it, while Thorgrim gives instructions to his crew.  After receiving permission from Ra to gather enough earth to summon a gnome, most of the party goes back up the tunnel, leaving Felcia and Lysteria behind.  These two sidhe didn’t want to risk losing the increase in power they gained by reaching the refuge, and they stay behind with Aurelius, who is still in communion with his deity.

The party returns back up the tunnel, and experiences the effects they felt before in reverse.  The party reaches the tunnel mouth without incident, and Thorgrim sends his ship and crew back to Constantinople while Namon summons a gnome and has it aid the party in resealing the tunnel, with the group on the inside.  The party then returns to the Refuge and finds their companions have…changed.

Lysteria and Felcia fell asleep while they waited for the party to return, and while asleep in the presence of the Egyptian god of the Sun, they were changed.  Lysteria feels different and Felcia GLOWS!    Aurelius is awake and looks…different somehow.  Oh well, no harm, no foul.  And the party notices that by the time they leave the Refuge, what was once Arre’s bow is now a mallorn tree more than 40 feet high, with a full crown of golden leaves.

The party says farewell to Ra and crosses the river and enters the tunnel: it leads to the Hero Plane and the party finds themselves on the edge of the realm governed by Ma’at, one of the Judges of the Dead.  She welcomes those of you who are her followers and says that she has heard of your deeds in the lands of the living.  The party gifts her with the Ball of Blood and Woe that was given to the party by the Pecheneg shamans.  Ma’at destroys the talisman and frees the spirits bound within it.  The party takes the opportunity to interact with one of their favorite deities, with current followers sacrificing to her for divine magic and at least one member of the party joining her cult.
From Ma’at’s realm in the underworld, the party seeks passage to the surface of Glorantha, but is told that it is not possible at this time.  The party gains the impression that passage directly to the surface world is impossible due to the presence of the Ring of the Green King of Alkoth, or a barrier has been put in place to prevent your passage.  The party requests permission to exit Ma’at’s realm into the Underworld of Glorantha; this permission is given, but the party is warned to be careful.    The party is given access to a portal that leads into the Gloranthan Underworld, where each of Glorantha’s gods has their own domain.  Palanar’s goal is to reach the City of Alkoth from the underworld side, since that city exists in both the mundane world and the Land of the Dead at the same time.  Failing that, (or instead of that) the party plans on reaching either the Gates of Dawn or the Gates of Dusk, the exits from the Land of the Dead into the surface world.
Someone brings up the idea of finding Yelm and hitching a ride with him as he passes through the underworld and out the Gates of Dawn.  At this point I realized that the party had, for all intents and purposes, lost its collective mind.
The party was headed for certain death because:
1. Four of its members had just been rolled up.
2. The Red Moon has been expelled from Earth, but it still extremely powerful in Glorantha.
3. The party was planning on heading into that section of the Underworld where the Red Moon’s power is absolute, and they can feel you coming due to the Ring of the Green King.
4. Not just anyone gets out of the Land of the Dead.  No one is ever meant to get out except for Yelm.  The only ones who have succeeded since time began are:
Barntar and companions – orlanthi heroes
The Seven Mothers – Lunar heroes
Hwarrin Dulthuppa, the Conquering Daughter of the Red Emperor,  and companions, same.
Alakorang Dragon Breaker, rescued from hell by Yelmic heroes
Sheng Seleris, rescued from hell by Argrath Dragonspear and companions, orlanthi heroes.
Sir Ethilrist and his companions (who only raided the top-most level of hell), heroes

Anyone sense a pattern here?
And see (1) above: contrast and compare.
So I decided to give everybody one last chance:
Not everyone can fit through the portal at once; first man through is Grumfar, and he is attacked instantly on the other side by a monstrous demon, one of those that guard the boundaries of the glow line: it has many tentacles and gaping jaws and it proceeds to rip Grumfar up pretty good.  The party, despite the fact that it cannot engage the demon all at once, manages to defeat it.  Thinking things through, the party goes back and asks Ma’at to port them to her shrine in Rome, in Earth.  She is happy to comply and the party appears there without further ado.  In Rome, crossroads of the world but no longer a center of political power, the party is well known.  No one objects to them taking over what would have been the lunar temple if the party had not crushed the lunar adventurers before they could finish fortifying the temple.  It should do just fine.  The group sends messengers east to Constantinople to summon Thorgrim’s ship and to begin moving resources to Rome.

While the party was in the process of rebuilding, refortifying and redecorating, they established contact with the city council that governs Rome at this time.  Rome is technically ruled by Charlemagne, but is in effect a free city on the border of the areas claimed by the Byzantine Empire, very much like Venice.  Byzantine territory extends roughly from Naples south.   Not long after your visit to the city council, Aurelius receives a message: a bird, unlike any seen in Rome, alights on his window sill and leaves a message: a small scroll wrapped in a mallorn leaf, that says that your enemies are planning to attack the Byzantines on a certain date on the west coast of Italy, down near the toe of the Italian boot.  The party can make it by land if they leave now.

Upon arriving at the spot they believe will be the target of the Muslim attack, the party finds an empty stretch of beach, with 3 byzantine garrisons within a day’s march.  The party sends out a rider (Baclane) to rouse the imperial troops and begins to plan their defense.  The Imperials arrive before the Muslims do, and the party has a group of more than 200 good spearmen and very good archers to defend the beach.  The Muslim fleet is spotted and soon the party can see a force of at least 40 ships (which means about 2000 troops) standing in towards the shore.  Aurelius’s source was very accurate.
Part of the party’s defenses involved the use of a gnome summoned by Namon; this summoning and the use of the gnome were detected by the magicians on the Muslim ships, and summoning and controlling a  6 or 7 cubic meter elemental is no cheap trick.  The Muslims decide to overreact and play it safe: they unleash a magical bombardment in the first volley that would have breached the walls of any imperial fort within 100 miles and which did destroy Namon’s gnome, but do little or no harm to the rest of the party and their Imperial allies.  This was followed up by fire from arbalests and arrow engines on board the lead vessels of the Muslim fleet, which managed to wound or kill some of the byzantine troops before they managed to reach cover.  Then the ships switched fire to the party.  The sidhe are driven to take cover from the iron-tipped arrows and Aurelius is flung backwards by 3 arrows that catch him in the belly and tear into his body.  A number of pleas for divine intervention fail, and it is only due to the aid of Lysteria’s sluagh companion and some very quick healing that keeps Aurelius from joining Ra a little earlier than he had planned.   As it was, those arrows would have killed a normal man, and the byzantine troops begin to look at Aurelius with awe.

The party begins to return fire, concentrating on the enemy magicians, to devastating effect.  One of Arre’s shots strikes a wizard’s staff as he is preparing to cast a spell, and the staff explodes, killing the wizard and setting that ship aflame.  When the party stops to draw breath, there are only 2 magicians left alive in the Muslim fleet.  Then the characters go over to the attack.
Nic the Greek directs the byzantine archers to fire flaming arrows at the first rank of ships while Arre, Palanar and Aurelius fire missiles and hurl spells at the Muslim troops manning the siege engines and at the ships themselves.  Those siege engines are terrifying: they are firing volleys at twice the rate of fire (half the reload speed) of normal engines and the arrows that struck Aurelius came from a machine that can fire a dozen arrows at the same time, much farther than a normal bow.
No one has seen or heard of such war machines before, and they will provide an immense advantage to the army that can use them against any opponent who lacks the same weapons.   The party’s missile and spell fire is aided by the wind; at the start of the battle it was blowing from just west of north, but now it has veered around and is blowing from due east.  This increases the range of the byzantine archers while decreasing the effective range of the Muslims, but the real difference is that it blows any fires that start back onto the enemy fleet itself.  And the wind picks up strength.

At the same time the party begins targeting enemy gun crews, Grumfar, Lysteria and Thorgrim (supported by Skin of Life and any other spells they could scrounge up) launch their own attack, wading into the water and attacking the Muslim ships from below.  Thorgrim and Grumfar board one of the ships anchoring the first line and the Minotaur goes berserk.  The effect is terrifying to anyone who can see Grumfar.  They all know who he is and what he can do, and when he kills one man with a sweep of his axe that strikes so hard that he paints the ship’s sail red with his victim’s blood, every Muslim warrior in sight feels a chill run down his spine.  Thorgrim hacks his way to the stern of the vessel and strikes down the man at the rudder and the ships begins to drift.  Grumfar kills his way to the ship’s bow and panics the crew of the fore arrow engine that they trigger the war machine too soon and send a volley of arrows sleeting down the length of the next ship in line.  More ships are set adrift, more ships catch fire and the flames begin to spread to the back ranks of the fleet, and the waters off this nameless beach begin to turn red with blood.  Also with Bob’s sidhe who took one or more arrows trying to board a ship, and who wound up on the sea bottom until someone could remove the bolt.

Nic the Greek has gone to check and see if anyone else is coming to the party, and from a vantage point to the north, spys another group of Muslim ships, one of whom flies the flag of the Emir of North Africa, coming in from the NW.  When these ships spot the smoke of the burning ships, they turn south to investigate.
Battered by a hail of magic, a spreading fire and a berserk minotaur, with feathered death striking down men on every side, the morale of the Muslim ships closest to shore breaks, and the fleet attempts to scatter.  It is pursued by the fire, with flames leaping from the sails of one ship to another, driven by a wind that has stiffened from a breeze to nearly a gale.  The last ship that breaks is the only ship close to shore with a living captain; he goes below decks for a precious moment while his crew abandons ship, and when he comes up from below deck, he is nailed in the back by an arrow from Arre’s bow, and falls into the water.

Those ships which escape the flames meet up with the handful of ships that have come down from the north, and then limp off towards Sicily.  The Emir of North Africa has lost another battle, and more than half of this fleet.  He never takes that sort of thing well.
The party recovers Lysteria and heals her; Grumfar comes out of his berserk rage and then marshals the byzantine troops to gather loot, search bodies and comb the wreckage for anything useful in regards to those war machines.  Two badly damaged, but roughly intact siege engines are recovered, one each of the arbalest and arrow engines.  They are packed off to the attention of the Byzantine commander at Bari on the east coast, along with an account of the battle.  One of the party who can breathe water finds the body of the captain of the last Muslim ship to panic; from the insignia on his armor, he was of high rank, and was possibly the commander of this fleet.  Inside his armor, against his heart, is a water-proofed pack of documents, and some of those documents are maps.  It is not a map of Sicily, or Italy or of part of or the entire Mediterranean Sea, but of islands west past the Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean.  These islands lie 60 miles or so off the coast of NW Africa, southwest of the Pillars of Hercules, which the Muslims call the Rock of Tariq.  There is a marking on the north coast of the northwestern most islands in the group, and a coded message that indicates something of value there, in a cave.  The party also recovers a pair of anchors that register as magical, which Thorgrim saves for his ship when it comes in.

The party decides to investigate, and after the arrival of Thorgrim’s ship, head west.  Thorgrim has the magical anchors equipped and supplies laid in for a long voyage.  The voyage to the Pillars of Hercules is uneventful, unusually so.  It is as if the navies of Malachi of Moorish Spain and the Emir have been recalled or gathered somewhere else.  Thorgrim sails his ship through the Straits and then turns SW; following the map is easy and you make landfall of the islands without any incidents.  You do notice Muslim ships to your east, but they appear to be travelling north/south and servicing the coastal trade.

You find the island indicated on the map and approach it at low tide, so you can be sure of entrance.  When you find the cave, you realize that this wasn’t necessary, as the cave is surprisingly large with a high entrance you could have sailed through easily at high tide.  The cave leads you beneath the highest peak on the island (which is volcanic), and into a second cave that is even larger.  And there you find the wreck of a ship, but a ship the likes of which none of you has ever seen.  It is huge, bigger than any other ship any of you have ever seen or even heard of, and even though it has been beached on its side and partially dismantled, it still strikes you as being awe-inspiring and in its own way, beautiful.  You can see signs in the sand where other ships have been beached and then launched again after the wreck was stripped.  Someone has been here before you, and done a thorough job of taking everything of value.  Sections of the hull have been cut away, and everywhere you can see where metal fittings were pried loose and carried away.  Using detect magic, some of you comb the ship and the beach searching for anything  that might be worthwhile, and you do find 2 more anchors like the ones Thorgrim has rigged on his ship, but you are not sure exactly what they do.

Everyone else splits up and searches the ship itself.  You find placements for siege engines like the ones you encountered in Italy, and a pair of huge turntables, one before the masts and one aft of the masts, that hold a strange kind of scaffolding that you do not understand.  You find, deep in the hold of the ship, bits and pieces that tell you more but not enough.  Old brass and copper coins that are roman, Greek and Phoenician in origin, dated in the middle of the first century, B.C., 850 years in the past.  The remains of strange storage bins holding feathers from Africa and others you have never seen, that must have been preserved by magic, but there is no trace of any magic items or spell that could have done that.  Thorgrim estimates that the ship could hold as many as 500 men (roughly 200 crew and 300 marines), ten times the capacity of the ship that is standard today, with the remains of weapons that were standard aboard roman ships.  The ship is a trireme, but it is clinker-built, like a varangian long ship. It has 2 masts which were never meant to be unstopped for combat, and it lacks a ram.  It has a dragon-headed prow and a woman’s figurehead, and that is where you find the name of the ship, in Greek: Liafail II.

Liafail is a name the sidhe know; it is the name of the Shouting Stone, the magical stone in celtic legend that shouts in the presence of the rightful king.  This vessel was built from the ground up for sailing the ocean, not the calmer waters of the Mediterranean Sea; it has elements from Roman, Greek, Norse and Celtic culture, but none of you, not even the sidhe have ever heard of it before.  The ship itself is empty of anything else of value; you search it again and again, finding nothing, until Noman spots something that the Arabs in their arrogance, completely missed.  The captain’s quarters and the adjoining rooms have been completely stripped of everything, even the doors and the shutters in the windows.  But they only ransacked the servant’s quarters set into the side of the ship just outside the captain’s door.  It is little more than a cubby hole big enough to hold a narrow bed and a wash basin, but Noman spots a discrepancy in the dimensions of the wall where it abuts the captain’s room, and the party finds a carefully concealed hiding place built when the ship was built, and in it is a message, and a stack of blueprints and diagrams and instructions.
Everything is here: diagrams for building not just the improved arbalests and arrow engines but a 3rd type of siege engine that used tubes and counterbalanced lead weights to fire missiles at targets more than half a mile away.  There are pages in Ogham script that describe how to mix sulfur and the yellow crystals you find under dung heaps to create a magical weapon.  And there are plans, detailed plans for another ship, perhaps even greater than the wreck that party stands in.

The message is written in a stiff hand in Greek, but is still legible after 850 years.  It was written by a man named Conops, faithful servant to a man called Tros of Samothrace, who Conops refers to as Master.  It tells of how Tros and his ship were pursued to this island by enemies from Rome; the message mentions Sextus Pompey by name.  The tribesmen on the island were supposed to be friends, but betrayed that friendship, and attacked both the Romans and Tros and his men.  Everything went to hell in a bloody, 3 cornered battle that was fought the length of the island, and which no one won.  The Romans were wiped out and their ships set afire; the treacherous tribals lost almost all their adult males and Tros lost 9/10s of his men, was mortally wounded.
He was laid to rest in his quarters; the message clearly states that the Sword of Macedon was laid to rest with him.  Conops says that he will now follow his master’s last orders and take what men are left, and Tros’s family, and see if they can make it back to civilization.  Conops says he will try to make for the port of Gades, in Hispania.  The contents of the hidden cupboard he leaves behind for Tros’s heirs to recover if they can.  Conops will not risk those documents falling into roman hands; his hatred for Rome is palpable even across the distance of 8 centuries.

The party takes what it can (Thorgrim insists on taking the prow with its figurehead) and then burns the wreck to ashes.  Leaving the island, the party decides to make for shipbuilding center on the north coast of Frankish territory, at what will become the port of Kiel.  This is done to gain access to a known, friendly shipbuilding center that might be able to build the great ship in the diagrams, as well as a place that can communicate with your people in Constantinople, while avoiding any enemy ships in the Med.  Thorgrim heads due north, and the party manages to completely avoid the Emir’s ships to their east, as well as the fleet that Malachi has massed to blockade the Pillars of Hercules.  The only ships that have a prayer of catching you are in for a long, stern chase, north to Britain, through the Channel and into the North Sea and through the Skagerrak into the Baltic.  Thorgrim’s long ship makes good time, with the fastest ships in the Muslim world snapping at your heels.  It is then that Thorgrim discovers the magic ability of his new anchors: they stop the growth of barnacles and seaweed on a ship’s hull, which will keep the ship’s speed high versus any competitors.

The party leads its pursuers north to the channel between Gaul and Britain; as always, it is a hunting ground for pirates.  Thorgrim leads half dozen Moorish vessels into the southern end of the channel to find it open for business.  There are two Saxon warships to the west, a Frankish ship that is little more than a barge, 3 Frisian pirates coming south hugging the coast to the east and 3 Norse long ships at the northern end of the channel looking for plunder.  The party is sniping at the Moorish ships to the south, keeping them at a respectful distance when the Frisians start the party by jumping the Franks, who they think are a bunch of dumb merchants hauling bulk cargo along the coast.  Two pirates grapple the barge, but get more than they bargained for when Frankish knights in full mail come boiling up out of the hold and start slaughtering Frisian pirates before they know what has hit them.  The 3rd pirate heads for the party’s ship, but are blasted with missile fire and magic that sweeps their decks and sends their ship drifting downwind out of control.  This scares the Saxons badly enough that they veer back towards the British coast, away from the party.  The Moors try for one last push to catch Thorgrim’s ship, but the marksmanship of the party’s archers and the devastating power of their magic sets 2 ships adrift and sends the others running for Hispania.  The Frankish knights finish off the Frisians, and the only ships left as a threat are the long ships.


The long ships were lined up 3 abreast, but after seeing the combat in the middle of the channel, pull off to the west side of the channel in single file.  They salute you with raised swords as you pass; Thorgrim’s sail carries the sign of Mjolnir, the hammer of Thor, and having seen you use magic against your enemies, they decide to give you breathing room.  None of them wish to anger someone who has the favor of the Thunderer.  The Norse and the Saxons fall upon the ships you have crippled like starving wolves, and hound the moors out of the British channel.  The rest of your journey, to Danemark where you take on a pilot and then through the Skaggerak and down to Kiel, is uneventful, although Thorgrim did have to ditch the prow and figure head of the Liafail to make speed through the channel.

Kiel is not really what you would call a thriving seaport, not after having lived in Constantinople, but it will do.  There is plenty of space; you’ll need it.  There are plenty of trees; you’ll need them too.  But first, you have to make some kind of arrangement with the local shipbuilder’s guild.  They run the only dockyard that Charlemagne has on the Baltic, and the Norse don’t really like the competition, so they raid every once and a while.  The men who build ships here are not a sophisticated lot, but they’re tough and stubborn, and their descendants will found the Hanseatic League.  You don’t have an experience bargainer in your party, but you don’t need one; you have Epanimon, the local factor for the Pyramid League, Keith’s man in Kiel.  He’s an average looking Greek of average build and not much taste for fancy dressing, but he’s got the tongue of a gold-plated serpent.  He lulls the three representatives from the shipbuilder’s guild into a false sense of security, gets their hopes up, acts like a complete fool and then steals their trousers, their earrings and their favorite pig.  The shipbuilders guild will not only allow you to use their largest shipping way for less than you expected, but will also allow you to buy supplies, tools and cordage from their warehouses at guild rates, and oh, if you don’t mind, they’d like to come over and give you a hand on the weekends.
When you ask Epanimon what he would like as a reward, he says “Send me home.  Actually, home is too specific, any place south of the Alps will do.”
Having settled things to your satisfaction in Kiel (as much as you can at any rate), you hit the road for Aachen, Charlemagne’s capital.  It is located several hundred miles SW of Kiel, on the western edge of what will one day be Germany.  Your journey is swift and uneventful; the Frankish roads are not as good as the old roman roads, but not bad and the border to the east is quiet since Roland lead an expedition to punish the northern Slavs.  You reach Aachen to find that the Emperor of the West is expecting you.  The imperial palace at Aachen is more like a roman estate than a medieval castle, and is located near the Great College of Aachen, where Charlemagne has gathered some of the greatest minds in Europe.  Your visit to the emperor will be in 2 stages: the formal introduction before the assembled court and then a private audience with the emperor himself.


The party dresses for the occasion, and attempts to put its best foot forward.  Lysteria steps forward as the chosen spokesperson for the group, and also for the Unseelie Court as well.  Her speech is encouraging, cheerful, seductive, friendly, proud, and basically, mesmerizing.  She manages to charm everyone, promise everything but doesn’t commit to anything.  And she made everyone like it.  Then Felcia tries to improve on perfection and nearly gets half the party dead.
She moved forward to give the Emperor of the Western world a kiss on the cheek, but remembered at the last moment that the last time a mortal tried this with the Queen of the Unseelie Court, they were tortured to death over the course of several weeks.  So instead she just changes shape to her form as a lynx in front of the assembled court and half the Christian leaders of the empire.  The emperor’s bodyguards are drawing their weapons and stepping towards the lynx when Nick the Greek steps forward and saves the day with an oration that is a musical combination of an apology, a plea for mercy and an offer to swive every widow within 200 miles.  It goes over like gangbusters, and distracts the guards long enough for Grumfar to pocket the cat and the rest of the party to back gracefully out of the room.

The imperial chamberlain then whisks you away to your private audience with the emperor.  With the emperor is the man who is the head of what passes for the imperial navy.  The emperor waves away your attempts to apologize and says that Roland and Oliver had told him about you, but “Seeing is believing”.  You make your pitch to the emperor and he is very receptive.  It turns out that he has incomplete models of the damaged war machines you turned over to the Byzantines; either the Emperor Michael is very generous or the Frankish intelligence service is better than you thought.  Charlemagne thanks you for the copies of your blueprints of the war machines; he is mainly interested in the arbalests and the arrow engines, the other engine he doesn’t think he can use at this time.  He has no plans at this time to build a ship like the Liafail, but will be interested in hearing about your progress when you build yours.  His naval chief looks depressed, but resigned.

In return, the emperor will allow you to perform research in the library at the College of Aachen, and to recruit technical help from the scholars who study there, subject to his approval.  He will not be able to provide you with any troops, but if shipments of supplies and materials for your work will have the same priority as those marked with the imperial seal.
Charlemagne then bids you goodbye and good luck as you go on your way, and he returns to the task of running his empire.



On your way back to Kiel and afterwards.

Your analysis of the plans you have leads you to believe that this is going to cost you a fortune.  At first, it is going to feel like you’re pouring gold into a swamp.  The estimated cost of the ship (first glance) is 2 million silver pieces.  I repeat 2,000,000 silver pieces.  You will learn the following about the ship plans, the war machines and that recipe during this time.

Namon

Namon is translating the recipe you found into a form that Arre can experiment with.  The recipe clearly states that the substance you mix is meant to be placed in hollow lead balls, then triggered by a fuse.  It consists of sulfur, saltpeter, sawdust and resins mixed together and then dampened slightly.    Once the fuse is lit, the balls were then fired or thrown at other ships.  The mixture then gets very hot, hot enough to melt the lead, and it emits clouds of choking yellow smoke that smell like brimstone.  There is a 5% chance each ball will explode, unless you immerse the ball in water.  If you throw water on the burning ball WITHOUT immersing it, the chance to explode is 50%.  And the design of the lead balls make them a perfect fit for the leather and wood tubes of that 3rd war machine you have designs for.

Namon also has a suggestion about who to talk to about this ship; there is someone he knows of who was alive then and who might have heard something about this ship.  He is a sidhe noble called Barinthus, Lord of the Sea.  He is extremely powerful and very aloof, but he is friends with Prince Essus and Namon might be able to get in touch with him, but warns you: you must not joke about his appearance in any way.

Felcia
Felcia has been out hunting and looking for the type of timber the party will need to build this ship.  She has met with a number of lesser fairies in the area, spriggans of the old Rhineland Forests, and she has enlisted their help in finding the trees you need for the keel of the ship and the two masts.  Now you have to get to the trees, cut them down and get them back to the dry dock.
She has also found a possible source for the wool and flax you will need for the sails.  Hint: it isn’t a human shepherd or farmer she’s talking about.



Lysteria

Lysteria has heard a number of rumors from the sluagh, hints about where you can find the immense amount of lead and tin that you need for this ship.   Also, you will need a lot of vermillion paint and special dyes for the ship and its sails.  Both of these things can be found to the north, in the Norse lands.
Lysteria has also heard rumors about a dragon or demon that is terrorizing the southern and eastern coasts of the Baltic.  The Wends (the northern Slavs that live along the southern shore of the Baltic) are terrified of it.


Thorgrim
Thorgrim has been looking at the ship design and trying to get inside the head of the architect.  The dragon prow was 3 dimensional, not in profile as is customary on Norse long ships.  The dragon head was covered with gold leaf, and the eyes were painted a bright scarlet.  The tongue in the dragon’s mouth was red too, and was mounted on gimbals that moved the in and out as the ship moved.  The sails were meant to be dyed the imperial purple and the sides of the ship down to the waterline were meant to be painted vermillion.  When fully rigged, the ship was meant to be seen as a great purple and gold dragon, and would have made a great impression on anyone, and an overwhelming impression on any primitive peoples who saw it.  When Namon and Lysteria see Thorgrim’s sketch of the ship, they agree that it would be perfect as a ship for an ambassador or emissary.

Thorgrim also notes something about the way the ship stows cargo: it was never meant to be a trading vessel, but it has too much hold space for a pure warship.   It would be a devastating instrument of war, able out fight anything (maybe 5 or 6 anythings) it couldn’t out run.  It was too fast and too maneuverable to be easily rammed or oar raked and its freeboard (the space between the waterline and the ship’s deck) was so high that the standard weapons of the roman navies of that time would have been almost useless.  The corvus (a spiked ramp) and the dolphin (a pointed weight) and the commonly used fire pots all had to be over the opponent’s deck to be effective when released, and this ship would ride too high for that.


It would be a perfect ship for an admiral: the great masts would allow lookouts to see farther than any other ship, and signals to be seen by allied vessels from a great distance.  As a weapons platform, this ship would be terrifying, not just in the volume and range of its weaponry, but also in that fire on opposing vessels would have a height advantage.  It was designed to carry a force of 300 men, half a roman cohort, plus 200 rowers.   But what strikes Thorgrim is an insight that only a Norseman or a phoenecian or a Greek would have: this is a perfect ship for an explorer, for someone interested in long-range exploration across the open sea.

The party spends the rest of that winter clearing out the brush and stumps from the huge way where the ship will be built, and in putting in the blocks to support the keel’s weight.  Also, you work at putting together working prototypes of the quick-firing arbalest and the arrow engine.   You learn a few things:
a. Both types of engines require high maintenance: plenty of grease and leather covers to protect the engines from cold and rain.
b. All of the war machines will require highly-trained crews to reach the rates of fire that these machines are capable of, this means months of training.  When you slaughtered the crews of those Muslim ships off the coast of Italy, you may have set back the Emir of North Africa’s ambitions more than you knew.
c.   Aurelius should be dead.  When those three arrows took him in the belly, they should have torn him in half, no doubt about it.  So how is Aurelius still alive?

For that matter, who sent Aurelius that message wrapped in a mallorn leaf?  Is this even the Aurelius you knew?  He’s starting to look different….

In Ancient Egypt, the New Year was not necessarily based on the Winter Solstice, but on the flooding cycles of Father Nile.  Now when spring comes, it is the first spring and the first Nile flood since you opened the entrance to the Last Refuge of Ra.
Aurelius changes.    + 1 to Species max POW, + 1 to current POW, +1 to Charisma.
New Divine Magic: one-use Heal Body.

It is now spring (April 1, 812 AD)