Our group consisted of:

> Arre, Thad's Melnibonean alchemist archer
> Aurelius, Rich O's graeco-egyptian sorceror charioteer
> Baclane - Mark's master of horses
> Cedric, saxon champion and rebel claimant to the throne of Wessex, who made the party's acquaintance in the middle of the English Channel
> Palanar - Leon's Maat/Humakti arkati sorceror
> Nick the Greek –Scott’s Byzantine catacphract (disciplined, well armored horse archer)
> Keith’s Argan Argar Troll, who has left Constantinople in order to enjoy the sunny shores of the Baltic
> Dave’s hunter sidhe, Felcia Shadowclaw, from the Unseelie Court, who follows Fladais the Huntress, who has been guarding the camp.
> 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)
> Harry's viking warrior, Hafnor
> 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 Seelie and Unseelie Courts takes double damage from iron.

People of Note:

Allies and Friends
> Carolus Magnus, Charlemagne, Father of Europe, Emperor of the Empire Renewed, etc, etc...
> Roland, First of the Paladins who serve Charlemagne (who is Roland's uncle)
> Oliver, Paladin, best friend and companion of Roland
> Duke Astolph, mage, protege of Merlin, the only english Paladin in Charlemagne's court.  Next to certain members of the party, he is the greatest personal enemy Malachi has, having just recently made his way into the Castle of Iron in stealth and stolen the cream of Malachi's prize menagerie: a griffin, a hippogryf and one of the giant Eagles of the Atlas mtns.
> Merlinus Ambrosius: you knew he had to be around here somewhere.

Enemies, Threats to Western Civilization and All around Bad People
> Malachi, Mage of the Castle of Iron, Sorceror and Master of Moorish Spain, also called the Curse of Hispania, also called Cidi Atlantes (Lord of the Atlantic or West) one of the 3 great lords who rule the muslim world.
> The Emir of North Africa - ruler of northern africa from Cyrenica to the Atlantic, currently contesting the island of Sicily.  He wears the armor of Hector and seeks the sword Durandal, which was Hector's as well, and is now  wielded by Roland.
> Asshurbanipal - Dread Lord of the Muslim world from Cyrenica in western Egypt to western India, current Guardian of Mecca and Medina, known to be able to summon demons, believed to be thousands of years old.  Eats kittens.

When last we left the party, it was Autumn of 813.

The power of Malachi has been broken and he is pent up in his magical iron castle.  The forces of Charlemagne, lead by the Paladin Reinald (Reynaldo) have laid siege to that castle and you have been tasked by the Emperor of the West with helping to break the defenses of the Castle of Iron and ending the threat of Malachi once and for all.

Charlemagne has set off on his return journey to the empire.  Due to the scorched earth tactics of Malachi in the beginning of the campaign, the bulk of the Frankish army must return north of the Pyrenees in order to maintain supply during the winter.  The largest part of the army takes the eastern route, along the Mediterranean coast while the emperor, his personal guard and most of the cavalry take the northern route through Basque territory.  The rearguard is led by the paladins Roland and Oliver.  They bid you farewell and set off on their journey.

Reinald is going to leave the magical aspects of the siege to your party.  He will devote his efforts to maintaining a traditional siege of the Iron Castle and to establishing and expanding a network of scouts and informants.  He knows that Malachi was able to send out messengers to his allies and subjects demanding reinforcement as the Franks closed in, and he does not want to risk being taken by surprise.

You examine the Castle of Iron and consider what you know: The castle is made entirely of iron; it is covered with a non-flammable grease to fight corrosion and from all accounts, was built very quickly by Malachi when he first established his power in Hispania.

The sidhe in your party can tell you that it was built with magical aid (duh) and generates a magical force that disrupts all long-term enchantments by the Seelie and Unseelie courts.  It causes discomfort and illness among the sidhe, and lesser fey such as pixies and brownies cannot stand to be within 10 miles of it.  Both the Queen of Air and Darkness and the King of Light and Illusion would dearly like the castle to go away, but cannot take direct action against it because of its nature and Malachi's spells.  All the sidhe know and both Lysteria and Namon will tell you that Malachi seems to have an enormous amount of power available to fuel his spells, much more than he should given normal circumstances.  They warn you that, given enough time, Malachi might be able to mount a magical attack against the besieging forces that no normal army could withstand.

Your party begins to investigate the defenses of the Castle of Iron.  You know that Duke Astolph was once able to penetrate the castle from the air to raid Malachi's menagerie, but that since then, the aerial defenses have been greatly strengthened.  Well, if not from above, what about from below?  Namon summons a gnome and orders it to begin digging a tunnel, both broad and well-built, to extend from your lines to the foundations of the castle.  By other means, you are able to discover that the castle is made entirely of iron, even to the dungeons, and they all sit upon a single huge slab of forged iron, 200 meters on a side.  Malachi's fortress sits at the conjunction of 4 major ley lines, and many smaller lines, but the sidhe say that alone is not enough to explain the source of Malachi's magical power.

A week after the departure of the emperor and his army, a message is found in front of your tent.  The sentries say that it was dropped by a huge bird that appeared to be a vulture with golden feathers.  The message is wrapped in a mallorn leaf, and warns you that the lives of Roland and the emperor are in danger from the Emir of North Africa.  If you are to aid them, you must leave at once.  Reinald cannot go himself, as he was ordered to lead this siege by the emperor's express command, and all of his mounted troops consist of couriers and scouts in use.  You ready yourselves and strike out alone; you should be able to make better time than the Frankish troops you are following and for at least part of the way, you can move across country where they kept to the main road.  This becomes less and less possible as you enter the mountains, and finally you strike the road that leads to the Pass of Roncevalles.

You can tell from a distance that the trap has already been sprung, because of the cloud of carrion birds circling over the battle field.  As you come up to the pass itself, you see the first corpses and you realize that the trap consisted of an ambush, not by Moorish invaders, but by Basque hillmen!  The Basques managed to block both ends of the pass with landslides and then launched their attack.  You know that the ambush was closed on the Frankish rearguard, led by Roland, because there are no Frankish bodies on this side of the pass.  You can hear the sounds of battle coming from inside the pass, and you are readying yourselves for battle when you are spotted by the Moors and they launch their first attack against you.  A dozen war elephants are unleashed against you, the like of which has not been seen in Hispania since the time of Hannibal.

Your marksmen ( Arre, Baclane and Aurelius) unleash a hail of devastating missile fire, and then the remaining elephants strike your line and all hell breaks loose.  The elephants can attempt to gore or trample, and if they succeed in grasping a target with their trunk, they throw them to the ground and then kneel on them, with enough force to crush an armored warrior like a bug.  Backed by magic, your blows start dropping elephants, but they have to fall somewhere: Palanar alone winds up with 3 elephants on top of him.  You finally hack the last of the IVORY TUSK bearing behemoths to the ground, and heal up, when you spot the force of Moorish crossbowmen who begin shooting at you from the high ground to the south of the pass.  It is at this point that you hear Roland sound his great horn, 3 times from within the pass.

You receive a reinforcement of your own; Keith's Argan Argar troll has joined you; he arrived from Constantinople with supplies and killed a horse catching up with you.  He manages to tear his attention away from the fortune in raw ivory in front of his ears, and joins your force.  You need him: the crossbowmen that have you in their sights can only fire every three rounds, but their quarrels have been enchanted and they are the best marksmen the Emir has in his service.  What they do not anticipate is the incredible ROF and accuracy of your archers/slinger, and just how fast your fighters can cover ground between volleys.  You tear holes in their ranks, and although they manage to drop a couple of your fighters with their crossbows, they reach the Moorish troops and begin to hack them down.  The crossbowmen break and run to the south, over the hill, and you have a chance to dig Palanar out from underneath his elephants and to heal up.  You'll need to, because the third part of the Moorish reserves arrives from the south, after slaughtering the crossbowmen who deserted.

They are what some legends call ogres: great apes from the fever jungles of the far south, past the southern edge of the Sahara desert.  They carry stone maces and huge shields, and thick leather plate armor crafted from hippopotamus hides.  No one knew that the Emir's power extended that far south; his dominion is much greater than anyone realized, and that means that the magical spells his servants can cast may be much stranger than anyone thought.  And there is something strange about these apes; they are more man-like than they should be, and their bestial ferocity is tempered and focused by a more-than-animal intelligence.  Their onslaught nearly overwhelms the party, but you succeed in killing them all in a knock-down, drag-out fight.   You heal where you have to, but the sounds of battle are fading from within the pass.  You may be too late.

The rockslide blocking this side of the pass is all loose, unstable stones and dirt, but the shoulder of the pass to the south, where the crossbowmen were, is less steep than the northern side, and you  can run up the slope and then jump down into the pass itself.  When you reach high enough up the slope to look down into the pass, it's like looking down into a slaughterhouse.  There are literally thousands of bodies choking the pass, and backed up against the northern wall is all that is left of the Frankish rearguard: Roland, Oliver and a couple of Frankish knights, all badly wounded.

There is something not right; there were only 500 or so franks in the rearguard, instead of the 1500 knights that Roland was leading when you last saw him.

Strewn up and down the pass, and lying in heaps all about the Franks are the bodies of dead and badly wounded Basques; they managed to pull down most of the Frankish force, but paid a dreadful price: more than 4 hillmen have died for each knight, and the Basques will not be able to field a force like this again for at least a generation.  Facing Roland and his companions are the Emir of North Africa himself and his personal guards, the best warriors in Africa and the counterparts to Charlemagne's imperial guards.   A score of them accompanied their lord to this land, and half of them have fallen.  As you come into view, the last two Frankish knights are struck down, and the Emir sends half of his remaining guards to delay you, while he and the other guards finish off Roland and Oliver.

You throw everything you have into fight in order to save Roland.  Thorgrim is the first to reach the five guards who are screening the fight with Roland, and is cut down by their bespelled blades.  The rest of the party closes with them, with Arre providing spell and missile support from the back, while Baclane stays up on the slope to fire down into the enemy ranks.  Namon summons a gnome and orders it to clear the rockslide so that the Franks who are returning in response to Roland's horn call can get through, and then joins the fight against the screening force.

It is a grinding battle against highly skilled warriors who have been greatly enhanced with offensive and defensive magic, and you pay  a heavy price.  Oliver falls after killing an emir's guard, and Hafnor falls as you kill the last of the screening force.  The remaining four guards turn to face you, while Roland and the Emir face each other to finally end the feud that has consumed most of their adult lives.  Roland is exhausted and has multiple wounds; the Emir is almost completely fresh, and although Roland wounds the emir, the Lord of North Africa strikes the greatest Paladin down with a fatal blow.  Someone in the party makes a successful divine intervention to revive Roland, but the Emir wanted to make sure and strikes Roland in the neck immediately after the DI, killing him once and for all.

He takes Durandal and turns to face you as you kill the last of his guards.  He's only one man, but he's wearing the armor of Hector, and now he has Durandal, the sword of Hector, and his power is increased.  He carries another glowing iron sword in his other hand, and from the description you have, you realize it is the Sword of Macedon, the sword worn by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, and one of the artifacts you need to complete the Ship of Worlds.  The Emir is not a wizard, but a proven fighter and warlord powerful enough to be counted an equal to Malachi and Ashurbanipal, one of the three greatest lords of the Muslim world.  He has literally dozens of mages who prepared him for this battle and is so sheathed in magical protections and enchantments that he is blurred by the effects of those spells.  He has what he came for, and he can escape if he reaches the magical door he used to come to this place, a door whose glowing outline you can see in the southern wall of pass.  But you are almost out of power, magic, healing and able bodies and you have crossed the Emir once too often, and he decides to make you pay before he goes.

The Emir has a magical blade in either hand and he becomes a whirlwind of flashing death, dealing wounds to anyone within reach.  Arre manages to peel some of the magic protections on the Emir off with a Dismiss Magic casting, and Baclane tries to nail him with arrow fire, but no one manages to inflict more than a minor wound and it doesn't look good for the party.

You discover the hard way that the stories about Durandal in battle are true and that the Sword of Macedon will damage ANYTHING, even when the target succeeds in a critical parry.  In desperation, Lysteria dives for Roland's body and blows the great horn made of old ivory and embedded with gems, and the resulting sounds echoes across the mountains and it is answered.

The Horn of Roland is the Horn of the Great Hunt, lost to the Sidhe since the time of Julius Caesar; Lysteria is a follower of Lord Sholto, the leader of the Sluagh, whose ranks make up the hounds of the Great Hunt.  The sky above the pass rips open, and monsters pour out of it, winged horrors with shark teeth and tentacles, who look like Lysteria's pet, only size 65 or so; the Great Hunt has come for the Horn stolen from them so long ago.  This is really good for Lysteria, but really bad for anyone who ISN'T Lysteria, because the Hunt is enraged and will only recognize one of their own.

The tentacles of the Hunt are almost upon you, Lysteria is holding up the Horn of Roland in her hands, when the Emir triggers a last ditch defense, an orb of magic that he triggers to unleash a hemisphere of blazing light that drives the Great Hunt back into the rift and seals it behind them.  They take the Horn with them, and by way of thanks, the Emir gives Lysteria a Durandal in the head.  Keith drives his spear through the Emir's armor and into his leg, and the Emir decides to make a run for the magical portal.  He drops Cedric with a crippling blow, and is almost at the portal when Namon goes for broke and does a quick summoning of a gnome, he lucks out and gets a Huge gnome, and he gives the gnome an order to attack the Emir.  The gnome does so, doing a horrible amount of damage to the Emir's legs, and to anyone within 5 meters of the Emir.  This kills Cedric, and wounds the Emir, even through the magic protecting him, enough so that when he moves with Keith's spear in his leg, he takes damage that ignores armor and that, along with the damage dealt by Roland, and the damage taken in the fight with the party, is more than his mortal life has left and he dies literally inches away from the magic door that would have taken him to safety.

The battle of the Pass of Roncevalles is over, and Roland and Oliver are dead.  You collect the armor of Hector, the Sword of Macedon and manage to remove Durandal from Lysteria's head without killing her. You heal who you have to, and you arrange the bodies of Roland and Oliver with fitting dignity just as the van of the Frankish army arrives, in response to Roland's horn call for help.  Charlemagne is desolate at the loss, not just of his strong right arm and the greatest knight in the world, but also of the nephew he loved.  He arranges for the burial of the men who died at Roland's side and he takes the bodies of Roland and Oliver back to the empire with him, along with the head of the Emir.

You do not offer to bury Durandal with Roland, and as spoils of war won by the avengers of Roland's death, Charlemagne does not demand it from you.  No one else does either: another name for Durandal is the Accursed Blade, with good reason.

You return to Aachen with the Emperor to pay your respects at Roland and Oliver's internment.  After conferring with the Emperor, you leave for Kiel and home.  Charlemagne seems depressed; he does want you to finish off Malachi, and he will lead the army into Hispania in the spring to complete the task of driving the Moors out.  As he bids you farewell, you realize for the first time that the emperor is actually a very old man, nearly 70 years old.  He has taken the death of Roland very hard.

You return home to Kiel without any encounters, and settle in for the winter.  You take care of local matters, one of which is an attempt by Namon to get a new personal gnome.  The summoning goes badly; Namon has attracted the attention of a Greater Gnome (Gnome Prince) with his quick summoning of gnomes and it takes a bit of negotiating to keep the Greater Gnome from camping in your summoning circle for the foreseeable future.

When the weather clears, you begin your journey south, you don't see anyone else on the roads, not even imperial couriers, which is a bit strange.  When you reach the crossroads east of what is now Paris, you will have to make a decision: which road will you take?  If you wish to sail to the north coast of Hispania and board your ship, you must take the west road.  If you wish to take the direct route to the siege of the Iron Castle, you would take the southern road, and of course there is the eastern road which leads to Aachen.

As you approach the crossroads, you realize that there is someone waiting for you, a very tall man in a red cloak and who wears blood red armor, that looks to be made of glass.  He has a couple of companions, but he draws your attention.  Both Namon and Lysteria know him; he is Uar the Cruel, younger brother of the King of Light and Illusion.  He is one of the greatest warriors in both Seelie and Unseelie courts, and his brother's trusted spokesman.  Please note that Uar is the only Sidhe who is called "the Cruel", because Uar has hunted down all of the others and killed them.  He gives you a lot of information about what is happening in Northern Africa, including Egypt and gives you the message that the Sidhe courts will not stand by and let Ra do as he wills.  They will move to deal with him, and this time, no more mister nice guy.

Uar then says that the King of Light and Illusion has decided that your party should include someone who is trusted by the Court of Light.  He motions one of his companions to join you.  This is Rich's new character, a servant of Balennus, the Seneschal of the Court of Light.  Uar gives you his complements on dealing with the Emir, and vanishes.

Just as you are welcoming the newest member of your party, you see a number of horsemen coming from the east.  They are imperial cavalry, and include a courier, but also 20 knights and 40 or so men-at-arms; they salute you and give you grave news.

Charlemagne is dead and has been succeeded by his only surviving son, Louis, called the Pious.  The old emperor died at the end of January of apparently natural causes, and was buried the same day.  There was no state funeral or viewing of the body.  There has also been no news of these events, and the new emperor has gone to a great deal of trouble to keep this news from spreading until he was ready. Apparently Louis is getting all of his ducks in order before allowing the news of his succession to spread, in order to limit the possibility of anyone trying to take advantage of the old man's death.

His courier does have a message from the new emperor to you: Finish off Malachi.  The paladin Reynald has orders to help you in any way he can.  One of Louis's knights will be joining your party, this is Harry's new character.

It is now March 1, 814 A.D.