The Joys of Youth
Written by: Sir Iawen Penn
This is my recollection on how a gathering called 'The Joys of Youth' went down on March 13th, 1010. It's by no means as good as Tetch's History, but perhaps if I start covering the ones I attend, then we could glimpse a different kind of Realms. Who knows? - Sir Iawen Penn
Date: March 16th 1010 ------ The adventurers of the Realms were called to an un-named village in unclaimed lands. Rhiassa & The Southern Wastes headed up the two biggest groups, followed by Val'Dara and a smattering of Folkestone. The rest were Independents or flying solo from their respective nations/groups. Two Knights of the Realms were there, as well as three Knights of the Eternal Flame, and two Magi of the Realms were in the questing party. -- A child's doll was animated through the use of Find the Path to one child in particular, named Connor. After wandering the woods, we found many 'blank children' (it's how they were identified as creatures). They had to be beaten in games we devised to finally be let into a fortress in the woods (the door was otherwise strongly enchanted, as no Disenchant spell worked upon it). Next were four doors that we would become increasingly familiar with (as it seemed a brief staging point for us to catch our breath). The second room involved many small children, armed with shanks and stuffed animals. We as a group taught them to fight, amongst other things. Quazar was able to lead one, called 'Guardian' or 'Innocence' out of its chair and to go with us. It disappeared shortly thereafter and everyone had gained the ability to resist death once. It was discovered that if we could get all four Guardians to leave with us, then we could go and see a show that 'Mommy' had put on for all of these children. Next, we listened to a story from the 'Guardian' known for 'Equality'. In this second room personally I was very confused, for I was shown too late that we needed to get Equality to name the name and race of every child that had been in the room when we first started. Since children already had left (destroyed? vanished? bored?), we could not complete said puzzle this way, and I had Cecil destroy her ball/'heart', instead. At this point, Connor had been located, and through magics we were able to get him to remember his family and scurry home. Hopefully he made it, because he has my scarf. In the third room, 'Curiosity Guardian' was teaching a class. Many of us disturbed it, and Laurante and Morradin came across its 'heart' as well, shattering it before the answer on how to 'solve' this Guardian could be presented to the group. Malachi of Folkestone located a magical artifact that required much writing! Such an item was neat, and I look forward to the stories one can glean from it. In the fourth room, there were wooden puzzles all around and a hard fight on the other side. These two, the 'Wizard' and the 'Fighter' were 'Guardians of Cooperation', ergo we needed to get them to acknowledge and work with *each other* in order for *us* to defeat them. However, since we were so scattered ourselves, Venom ended up destroying their two 'hearts'. From here it gets a bit dicey: there was a room filled with children and games, but I am unsure of what it accomplished... The Southern Wastes and Rhiassa hatched a master plan, however, to make the Jenga game go faster! They began sparring, and with a nod to Kazmar from AEston they began moving their sparring closer and closer to the game until it was knocked over. Good game, indeed. There was a giant game of 'Guess Who?' I'm not familiar with it, but I believe we won as all the creatures left peaceably. There was a room with a giant bridge battle, and we had to shout out the answers to random trivia questions in the Realms. This was an interesting 'Mommy' who crafted the fortress, indeed. When we got to the final room, 'Mommy' turned out to be a Puppet-Master. She was a woman who saw that children looked to adventurers as heroes and grew up to make war and such. The children stopped coming to her shows. This made her angry, so she had kidnapped children so they would never grow up, never learn how to harm others... a bit misguided, one might say. Because we had only 'freed' one out of the four Guardians, we had a hard time going from there on how to dismantle each one for good (the broken Guardians had returned). I myself had to 'dismantle' Equality; I'm not particularly proud as to how that was done as the last visage I had was her crying her eyes out. It was then surmised by the Five Ladies that in order to actually defeat The Puppet Master, we just had to walk away and forget her... ...My grand-father once made a comment like that about a different villain. I don't think it'll work, and I don't think we've solved this nor seen the last of this Puppet Master... |
Created by Janna Oakfellow-Pushee at 03-16-10 01:53 AM
Last Modified by Janna Oakfellow-Pushee at 03-16-10 01:54 AM