Uldinor
2/4/97 O.L.G., 6 p.m., the Baron’s Castle in Var
The Elf-King of Ketzia arrived as dusk was beginning to blink its eyes across the horizon. The sky had turned that strange color neither grey nor blue, with the western clouds glowing golden as evening’s setting rays caught them. He rode in on a strange steed neither exactly garen nor exactly elk, but some dangerous-looking combination of both. He was accompanied by a train of elves, perhaps a dozen in number. No one saw them before they emerged from around the curve of the road on the Baron’s Road and became visible from the castle.
Malford’s men, of course, saw to the mount and the comforts of the visiting elves without delay. They didn’t know who they were, but a powerful veil of enchantment and illusion seemed to spring from them; and they were quite clearly Ketzisti elves, the strange elves of Ketzia, the folk of the Faerie-Land. The Baron was summoned, and upon realizing that this was the Elf-King whom he had demanded, Malford led him to a sitting room.
Already Malford’s ambitions were stirring. He was a Baron, come out of nothing; was that enough for him? Not by half. He wanted more- bigger lands, more gold, more powerful magic. He had that thirst for life that only adventurers have; and so he determined that this meeting, however ill-begun via the xvarts, would give him something useful. Some edge... something.
Much more, in fact, than he expected.
The Elf-King- who never gave his name- admitted that the mountains weren’t really his, but stated that the particular section the xvarts lived in was probably theirs by right. He didn’t seem overly concerned at the losses the party inflicted on the xvarts; he was a little put out, but he seemed willing to be eminently reasonable about it. A good thing, too, since everyone knew what happened when the fey folk were angry: your milk would curdle, your food would spoil, animals would hate you, and so forth. So when Malford gratefully offered to do a favor for the Elf-King in return for his concessions on the mountains and xvarts, the Elf-King immediately affirmed that there was indeed something he needed help with.
“Uldinor,” he said, his voice dripping hate.
“Who is Uldinor?” asked Malford, cocking an eyebrow.
“A summoner,” the Elf-King replied.* “He has the secrets of the circles that allow him to summon and command fey folk, and that protect him from fey! He can control us, and we are powerless against him!” His fists were clenched, and his lips curled in a snarl. “Even I dare not go against him; he has many of my folk guarding him against their will... I would not harm them, if I can avoid it.”
“Sounds tricky,” commented Lochenvare.
“Why is he doing this? What does he have to gain? From what I’ve heard of Faerieland, it seems like he could just get lost in it pretty easily,” Malford remarked.
The Elf-King winced. “He could, but in the meantime many fairies would die. Why he’s doing this...” He stopped for a long moment, looking down. Then, haltingly, the Elf-King continued, “One of his circles... one of the material components... is pixie wings.”
“We’ll do it,” Dexter said. “We’ll help you.”
2/10/70 O.L.G., 2 p.m., Ketzia
Picture meadows of thousands of shades of grass, blooming with early flowers- splashes of yellow and white and blue on a green canvas. Throw a few clouds in the sky, puffy like cotton balls. The sky was a deep blue, the color of that one beautiful child’s eyes. Cheery little shrubs popped up happy and healthy on every ridge and roll. Animals flitted about- squirrels raced and mice scampered and cats played with their prey and snails slowly trekked along and butterflies spread their colors like rainbows in the sky. There were stranger things too- ‘bunnycorns,’ as the party dubbed them, were rabbits with unicorn horns; the group saw several families of them, including adorable little babies.
Their travel was, as the Elf-King had assured them it would be, unimpeded by the normal detrimental effects of Faerie. The sun advanced across the sky, leaving the group day and night which might otherwise have blended into perpetual twilight; the weather was fair, when it might have grown wroth with them out of whimsy; no fiendish trees barred their path, nor riddled doors their way, nor troll-haunted bridge their road. It seemed that the Elf-King’s good will meant quite a bit- at least, if one trusted all the stories and tales about Faerie.
Which Malford, at the least, did. Rajah had never heard those tales, having been brought up in the jungles of Gorel by tigers. But he listened as Dexter and Malford excitedly told the stories. So did Lady Charlotte, but her attitude was more parochial. She disapproved of faerie tales and such as pagan artifices to cover the influence of Bleak, and so she noted Dexter’s telling of the tales with a reluctant sense of dismay. After all, Charlotte had heard Dexter speak in the Voice of God... could she doubt him now? Well, clearly, the answer was yes, because she did... but... It was very confusing. She filed the faerie tales away for another day.
The group found Uldinor easily. It was almost as if the land itself led them to him. Perhaps it did. There was a house, and it was human-sized; and it was clearly out of place. The party had seen nothing like it yet.
They drew off a short distance to discuss strategy.
“We don’t want to hurt any faeries if we can avoid it,” Malford said, and Dexter instantly agreed.
“It may not be possible to avoid hurting some of them,” Rajah stated. “If they get in our way, we have to remove them for their own good. Some of them may not be removable unless we hurt them. Or even kill them.” He tossed his mane of hair. His muscles rippled as he stretched his arms and legs, loosening up for fighting.
“Be that as it may, we should minimize it as much as possible,” Malford insisted.
“Instead of fighting our way through there,” Rajah suggested, “we might be better off just running through each room until we find this summoner guy.”
The group greeted this with silence for a moment, then Malford giggled. “I can just see it. We’ll pick up a train of faeries!” He started to laugh hysterically, and the others joined him.
When the laughter subsided, Dexter said, “Let’s do it, then.”
And they did. The group clustered around the entrance; then Rajah threw open the door and they all sprang inside. Malford scrambled to the next door and threw it open before the fey could respond to him, but then, anguished looks on their faces, the enslaved fairies threw themselves at our heroes. Rajah knocked a sprite back and Dexter smacked a brownie with his staff of combat. Then the party was through into the next room, and Lady Charlotte was already cutting down the sprite blocking the exit. Then through, while Malford whirled and blanketed the closest faeries in a color spray.
The next door led to Uldinor.
The man was standing, grinning, in the center of a circle, but the grin vanished instantly when he realized that his attackers weren’t fae. “Wait!” he cried, “don’t-“
Lady Charlotte didn’t even pause long enough to detect evil. She charged, followed by Rajah, who tore at the summoner like a tiger, screaming and growling. Malford moved in and landed a backstab, and Dexter’s staff of combat dealt a telling blow. In moments it was over, and though the nixies and sprites had begun reluctantly attacking the party in a half-hearted effort to defend their master, the instant Uldinor dropped the faeries all stopped.
The nearest nixie sighed, a great sigh of relief.
A brownie groaned, “At last...!”
And our heroes grinned. A job well done.
Next Time: Our heroes have dinner with King Verrion of Thule!
*Summoners are important to this part of the story, or I probably never would have even mentioned them. A summoner was a master of circle magic, based on the summoner class from Paladium. I don’t recall there ever being a pc summoner back when I used them, at least not in Cydra. Anyhow, summoners used circle magic, that is, they inscribed circles and invoked their magic. There were three types of circles- summoning circles, circles of protection and circles of power. A summoner could invoke so many circles per week (I think?- don’t believe I still have the rules for all that).