Notes Taken by Samantha and Alastair Beadle.
Everyone concentrates on the Trump of the Moonrider, Pylades. He is clearly resisting, but Etienne can feel that their combined effort is stronger than him, and his defences are being gradually eroded away. Just as Etienne is starting to feel the effort, Pylades' defences crumble, and the link is forced open.
Arun (to the surprise of everyone else) jumps through the link!
Etienne grabs Pylades' mind (it is quite powerful, she feels, on the level of the other young Amberites in the group), freezing him in place. Godofos grabs him and drags him through the link. Caitlin and Godofos hit him. He struggles, but Godofos has him, and he can't get away. He quickly falls unconscious. They keep kicking him for a while, 'just in case'. By the time they stop, Pylades is bleeding moonlight from various minor wounds.
They search him. He has a Trump of Gorgon, assorted items of jewellery, including a torc about his neck which Etienne can tell contains magic of some kind, and magical clothing.
Caitlin strips him naked to make sure he's fully searched, and discovers that 'he' is in fact entirely sexless, with no genitals at all. In fact, no orifices at all. Caitlin suggests that perhaps torture by force feeding would be effective on him...
At the other end of the Trump link, Arun appears in the middle of a small clearing in a moonlit forest. Two Moonriders who are there with their swords out look at him and start to move forward, but before they reach him, he goes invisible, then casts a flight spell and takes to the air. With a little time to relax, he looks about. The place looks a lot like Ghenesh, and the magic, too.
To one side of the clearing there may be a horse, one of the Moonriders steeds. It's hard to be sure. It might just be the play of moonlight and shadow giving the impression of the shape of a horse. But it does look a bit too solid for that.
The Moonriders reach where Arun was, and swing their swords through the space where he was, to no effect, then search around the area, but don't check upwards. Then they briefly talk amongst themselves in a language Arun doesn't understand, and walk into the woods, leaving the 'horse' behind. Arun follows.
In Amber, Etienne examines the Moonrider's equipment. The torc seems to be for storing spells, and the clothing seems to be enchanted to protect as if it were armour. At this point Etienne realises she has suddenly become much more sensitive to the properties of her surroundings, including details of the place she is in and things around her above and beyond mere magic.
Guards drag Pylades off by the heels. By the orders of the group he will be kept unconscious.
Etienne is feeling a bit tired by now, so pulls out the Trump of Vitesse, concentrates on it, and vanishes in a purple rainbow to take the time to recover.
Caitlin, Godofos and Jihx decide to go through the Trump of the ruins on Derris and deal with the obelisks there. They concentrate on the Trump, and as the link opens up, step through, into the frozen and dying tropical jungle.
They agree that both Jihx and Caitlin will raise forces to search for the obelisks. Jihx steps through the mirrored portal under the archway, into Ahnel. Caitlin leads Godofos off through the jungle towards the nearest village.
In Vitesse, Etienne is greeted by the innkeeper and given what she asks for - warm milk and a room to rest in.
After five minutes walk, the two Moonriders (with Arun following) reach a second, smaller clearing. The fall of moonlight and shadows on one side of the clearing implies a humanoid figure. They both face it from about three metres away and one starts to concentrate. Arun speculates that this is perhaps how the Moonriders reproduce...
After a few minutes of concentration by the Moonrider, Arun feels a flow of some kind of power between the concentrating Moonrider and the shadowy form. The figure implied by the moonlight and shadow becomes slightly more solid to Arun.
The Moonrider who was concentrating whispers urgently to the implied figure, and a small level of power flows from him into the figure. He stops talking and power flows back. It seems to be something similar to a Trump link. Invisibly, Arun approaches the Moonrider who seems to be this end of the link, to try and see into the link. He makes physical contact with the Moonrider and seems to enter the link. The implied figure of a Moonrider suddenly springs into clarity (though still clearly an image rather than something really there) as a definite figure appears there - another Moonrider. As Arun enters the link, this other Moonrider looks directly at him!
Caitlin and Godofos make their way into the jungle. It gets warmer the further from the ruins they go. After half a kilometre or so the frost has gone. Another half a kilometre and they arrive at the village Caitlin was aiming for. By this point, the temperature is back to normal, i.e. sweltering. Mosquitoes start to nibble on Godofos.
The village is in a clearing in the jungle, with two long houses and the stockade where the children are kept until they are old enough to hunt.
The headman of the village comes out to talk to Caitlin. They discuss the situation, and Caitlin's desire to put things back to the way they should be. The villagers know about the cold. They don't know about any obelisks but some people have been 'lost' in the jungle in the last few months. A party of villagers is organised to assist Caitlin and Godofos - most of the village, in fact.
In Ahnel, Jihx jogs across the grassland towards the nearest fortress. He is greeted by the commander of the fortress, and tells him what he needs. The commander nods, and starts shouting orders. Before too long, a patrol assembled in the main courtyard of the castle. Once they are all there, Jihx leads them out of the fortress and towards the gate to Derris.
Just as Caitlin leads her group out of the jungle, Jihx leads his group through the gate. Some tension ensues as the Derrisians and Ahnelians glare at one another. Caitlin and Jihx confer. A Derrisian starts commenting about Jihx - "You know what they say, the bigger the sword..." Jihx shuts him up. He and Caitlin start shouting orders, and their respective groups split up and start into the jungle, searching for obelisks in the opposite directions (so as to minimise the chances of the two groups meeting). Caitlin goes with one of the groups from her tribe. Jihx goes into the jungle on his own.
Elsewhere, the figure at the far end of whatever communications link the Moonriders are using whispers something urgently. Arun dives for him (dragging the first Moonrider with him to stay in physical contact and so in the link). As he closes, the link wavers. Arun dives through the image and lands in the undergrowth, with the Moonrider. The two of them struggle in the undergrowth. It seems the Moonrider is as strong as Arun, but considerably faster. Things do not look good for Arun, especially as there is still the second Moonrider.
As he struggles, Arun triggers the change to his dragon form. The other Moonrider runs up and tries to help his comrade, but is hindered by the fact that Arun is still invisible.
He points a crossbow at the struggling pair, and aims carefully. Arun starts to cast a spell, slotting the linchpins into place. The crossbow is fired, and the bolt, by chance, grazes one foreleg of his dragon form. Then the spell goes off. It is 'Ray of Sun' - a beam of incandescent solar plasma. The Moonrider Arun is grappling with loses an arm as the beam slices through him. Both Moonriders hiss in pain, and hide their eyes from the intense light of the beam. The one-armed Moonrider tries to fight on by touch alone, but is at a serious disadvantage now. The other one just stumbles about. Arun struggles free of the one-armed Moonrider and flies up into the air, off into the trees.
As he flies off, Arun realises that they have never seen Moonriders in full daylight - it has always been at night or in dimly lit environments.
He goes some distance away, then settles into a patch of moonlight. He pulls out his Trump of Etienne and concentrates upon it. Nothing happens (Etienne is asleep in Vitesse). After a while he puts the Trump away and pulls out that of Jihx, and concentrates upon it.
Back in Derris, Jihx stumbles onto an obelisk, back in the undergrowth. It looks similar to the ones they've seen before. It's not the central one they saw in Ragasa - in fact, Ragasa is the only place they've been to with a central one. He tells the other search parties about his discovery, then uses his sword to blast the obelisk to bits. Shrapnel flies everywhere. Fortunately, Godofos is nowhere near.
As he does this, he starts feeling a Trump call coming on. He accepts it. It's Arun, wanting to come through from dark and moonlit woods. Jihx brings him through. Arun tells Jihx about what he discovered.
In Vitesse, Etienne wakes up feeling much refreshed. She Trumps Godofos, who takes the call. They exchange news. Godofos looks disappointedly at Etienne's throat-to-feet covering flannel night-gown.
Arun comes over, and joins the link. He is passed through to Etienne in Vitesse, feeling the need to re-rack some spells. Once the link goes down he and Etienne discuss what he discovered.
Then they Arun start racking sunlight-using spells. Etienne also starts re-racking her spells, praying to God.
Another obelisk is found in the jungle of Derris. It looks like they form a ring (hexagon) around the ruins. Caitlin goes to look at the ruins. Godofos helps. They clear away some of the plants growing over the ruins here and there, and discovers that the stones forming the large flat space in the centre of which is the gateway to Ahnel have a Pattern-like design carved on them, with the gate at the middle. She and Godofos start clearing off the rest of the undergrowth.
No-one on Derris has ever examined the ruins before, and the only exposed stone was where the grass and whatnot had been worn away by the feet of hunting parties going into Ahnel.
Now that they have two obelisks, it is easy to work out where the other four are, and before too long they are all found, and destroyed by blasts from Jihx's sword.
By this time all of the Pattern design around the gate has been exposed. It can be seen that it is not identical to the real Pattern, just very similar.
Shortly after the last obelisk is destroyed, a warm breeze is felt over the ruins, and the whole place rapidly starts to warm up to its proper temperature.
The business of Derris is finished at about the same time as the re-racking of spells in Vitesse. Everyone Trumps back to the courtyard in Amber, just avoiding trying to Trump into the same space at the same time.
Some more discussion ensues. A new plan is arrived at - force a Trump link to another Moonrider, then go through the link to attack them wherever they happen to be.
They pull out another Trump of a Moonrider, and concentrate upon it as a group. At first the contact is resisted, but much, more quickly than the last Moonrider, their resistance is broken down and contact made. It seems the Moonrider is the middle of a military camp, in the middle of the night. Bad! It seems he is under the porch of a tent, so they decide to risk it, and pile through then rapidly drag the Moonrider into the tent, which is one of a number of black tents in a group here. No alarms are sounded, so it looks like they got away with it.
Arun and Etienne can tell that the shadow is very highly magical. Etienne can tell that time here runs about three times slower than that in Amber. Peeping out of the tent, they can dimly see an army camp of roughly ten thousand troops drawn up below the rise where the tents are pitched. Not good. They can also see six fairly large, bright moons in the sky.
They search the tent after tying up the Moonrider. In an ornately carved chest of black wood they find some maps, at least one of which seems to be of this shadow. The clearest map shows a landscape of rivers and lakes with, in the centre a city built around many canals that form the shape of the Pattern. This does not seem to be one of the places depicted on Lillian's Trumps.
The map also bears markings that seem to indicate troop movements and deployments, as if they were about to try and take the city. Caitlin takes it.
Arun turns into his dragon form, turns invisible, and flaps off to reconnoitre. As he gains altitude he can see that there are a good many tents up here on the rise. About a dozen have Moonrider steeds tethered outside, implying, perhaps, that many Moonriders are here. He flaps down over the main camp, which doesn't have very many tents for the number of people there. To his great relief, the ten thousand plus troops there are not Moonriders - they seem to be fairly short, broadly built humans with pale skin and black hair.
Many of the human troops are praying at banners bearing the Moonriders symbol, a circle divided vertically into light grey and dark grey halves on a black background. The banners are attached to horizontal cross-pieces on vertical poles, and flap in the wind. They seem to be praying to "The Whispering Gods", in a dialect of Thari which Arun is quite capable of understanding.
Arun heads back to the tent where the others are.
Back in the tent, the Moonrider is strip-searched, like the last one. This one also has no genitals or other orifices. 'His' sword has power in it - not just magic - quite a lot of power, in fact. Among other things, it radiates cold. Caitlin takes the sword and brandishes it. Then she tests it on the Moonrider, swinging it at his ankle, and cutting off his foot! No-one other than Jihx really reacts to this; Jihx himself bandages the stump, which is bleeding quite a lot of moonlight. Then he Trumps the Amber courtyard, and sends the Moonrider through, as much for his own protection as to get him out of the way here.
Arun comes back in (still invisible), and tells the others what he has discovered. They decide to act. Now.
Etienne prays to God for a tempest. Right now. Clouds build overhead, and darken. A wind builds, and gusts. It starts to rain, harder and harder. Thunder and lightning crash overhead.
Everyone creeps out of the tent and over to an adjacent one. The wind is starting to blow the tents over now. Caitlin helps by using the sword to slice the guy ropes of this one. The tent falls, and the Moonrider is visible under the black canvas, heading for the exit. Caitlin skewers him through the canvas in a highly honourable fashion, using the Moonriders sword. He dies.
They head for another tent, which has just blown over onto someone else. Godofos stabs this one brutally and he dies.
At this point, they decide to split up and act individually, as they can do more damage, more quickly that way.
Jihx heads for the next tent. The Moonsteed outside snaps at it. Jihx kills it. The Moonrider sees this, mouths something (not audible over the wind), draws his sword and attacks. He and Jihx fight back and forth in the midst of the storm. Jihx can tell he is slightly weaker and slightly slower than himself, so thinks he will win, but it'll take time.
Etienne makes for an intact tent. A Moonrider emerges, and before he can do anything, Etienne calls a lightning bolt down on him, destroying him utterly.
Arun casts a Ray of Sun spell at another Moonrider, burning him down.
The Moonrider Jihx is fighting is dazzled by Arun's spell, and Jihx takes advantage of this to cut him down.
Etienne has made it down to the human camp. She thinks that this shadow has One True God, not unlike the God of the Enchanted Earth, and with the Pattern makes it so. She preaches to the humans there, about abandoning their false gods and turning to the One True God, trying to convince them to come round to their side, and leave the camp. They are not convinced.
Caitlin gets to a tent that is collapsing. Two Moonriders emerge, and attack, but she is too fast, and dispatches them with the Moonrider sword. It works well.
Godofos kills another Moonrider, taking a minor hit in the process.
Jihx, taking his cue from Arun's use of unsubtle magic, blasts a tent with his sword. It collapses, and nothing moves within.
Etienne continues to preach to the human troops. They are backing away now.
Caitlin hears whispering inside another tent. She cuts its guy ropes, and it collapses. A violent gust of wind sweeps down and blows the tent away, leaving a Moonrider standing there. The flying tent catches Caitlin and she is bundled up in it. She quickly cuts her way out, and turns to face the Moonrider.
Arun and Godofos each attack another Moonrider.
Jihx blasts a tent with his sword, but once he has done this, there is still movement inside.
Caitlin flings one of her knife-brooches at the Moonrider as he starts another chant. It smacks him in the mouth. He hesitates, but continues. Another huge gust of wind blasts down from the sky, picks Caitlin up and blows her high into the sky.
Etienne sees this. She calls a column of fire down from the sky onto Caitlin's attacker. He does not survive the experience. As the Moonrider dies, the wind carrying Caitlin dies and she starts to plummet from several hundred feet up. Etienne sees this and casts a 'feather-fall' spell on her. Caitlin starts drifting to the ground as lightly as a feather. And being blown away to the side by the wind.
As she drifts off through the sky, Caitlin Trumps Jihx. He takes the call, and brings her through to where he is.
There are only two of the black tents left. Godofos does for one, and Arun the other. The mass of human troops seems to be very disorganised without their leaders.
Everyone regroups. Caitlin just wants to commit genocide upon the Moonriders as a race, like Oberon did before. Jihx veto's this idea. Caitlin raises her eyes to heaven in a long-suffering way.
More discussion ensues. In the end it is decided to send Arun off to the city (as he can fly, and get there fastest) to:
He flies off city-wards. Once he's gone, Etienne exerts her will over the shadow using the Pattern and, as no-one knows one way or the other yet, makes it such that this shadow has 'One True God', essentially identical to the one in the Enchanted Earth. The people of the city already worship this God.
Everyone other than Arun returns to Amber via Trump. As they arrive, a servant runs up and tells them that another line of cold has gone, and the other two missing lines have not re-appeared.
Etienne decides it is time to re-rack some spells (again), and Trumps off to Vitesse.
Godofos, Caitlin and Jihx decide it's time to eat. A servant leads them to a small dining room, where lunch is served. It's a good buffet spread of meat, cheese, vegetables, bread and wine. Everyone eats their fill.
Once the main course is over, and as there is no sign of Etienne or Arun yet, they decide to build up an appetite for desert and go to the place shown on the next one of the Trumps they took from Lillian.
It is a mountain plateau with a grove of poplar trees on it, which Lillian named as 'The Grove of the Gods'. They concentrate on the Trump, and after a while the image clears. They step through. It is cold, with snow-capped mountain peaks above and a snow-dusted valley with terraced fields and a few villages below.
The trees in the grove seem to be arranged in the shape of the Pattern. They are leafless and covered in frost. Six obelisks are visible through the trees, arranged in an oval about the grove. Jihx raises his sword and is just about to blast the obelisks when an old man in robes appears from behind a group of the trees. He is concerned about the group's desecration of their sacred site just by being there. However, he is placated when they say they are here to help by destroying the obelisks.
Jihx then proceeds to do this. The old man thanks them.
They pick another of Lillian's Trumps (Godofos is forbidden from picking one, though due to unluckiness). This time it is the meadow by a very wide slightly curving river, with other meadows just visible on the other side.
In Vitesse, Etienne is once again greeted by the innkeeper. She orders bread and wine to be sent up, and goes up to her room to pray.
Godofos, Caitlin and Jihx concentrate on the Trump. It soon opens up, and they go through to the meadow by the curving river. They can see that it curves off in both directions. It is quite cold, with a bit of ice at the edges of the river. No signs of habitation are visible.
Nothing that resembles the Pattern is visible; whatever it is, it is not obvious. Caitlin speculates that perhaps the river forms a vary large scale Pattern design. A single obelisk can be seen just off to one side. Jihx blasts it to smithereens.
They decide to follow the river in the hope that it will lead them to the next obelisk. They walk off, at the same distance from the bank as the obelisk was. As they go, Jihx and Caitlin begin to feel an imbalance of forces, the same as that they have felt in the past when only one obelisk was destroyed. As they go on, the imbalance builds. After an hour or so the ground starts to shake very slightly. They decide now is the time to run in the hope they'll get to the next obelisk before anything really bad happens, and sprint along parallel to the river.
The shaking of the ground gets worse and worse until it's only their fast reflexes that are keeping them on their feet. They continue to sprint along. Miles away, at or past the horizon, a vast pillar of molten lava bursts into the sky. Everyone decides now is the time to leave. They all concentrate on a Trump of the Amber castle courtyard. Another pillar of lava bursts into the sky, closer this time. Then another. Hot ashes start to drift down from the sky as the Trump link opens up.
Godofos' hair catches fire as they all pile through the link. He puts it out as quickly as he can!
The three of them concentrate on the Trump of the riverside again. It is more difficult to make the link this time, but when it opens observe through the link without going through. The landscape is being devastated by pillars of lava rising all over the place and earthquakes are clearly shaking the ground to bits. Off in the distance, a roiling silvery-grey storm has appeared, going right down to the ground. Nothing can be seen through or inside it. It is expanding outwards, rapidly, towards the point of view of the Trump link. It sweeps over it, and the link goes down.
A servant runs up. He tells the three of them that another line of cold has just vanished, presumably from 'The Grove of the Gods'.
In Vitesse, Etienne has finished re-racking her spells. She concentrates upon her Trump of Godofos. In the courtyard in Amber, Godofos feels the call coming on, identifies who it is, and accepts the call (not that he has much choice). Godofos brings her through to the others. They fill her in on what they have been doing.
Etienne tries the Trump of the riverside as well. She fails to open the link.
Another servant runs up at this point. He says that another cold line has gone. The group makes the assumption that the other obelisks were destroyed in the cataclysm caused by the destruction of the first one.
Another Trump is selected, this time the beach with the storm off-shore in the distance, which Lillian named as 'The Undying Storm'. They concentrate upon the Trump, and after a while it opens up. They go through, to find the beach cold, with a cold wind whipping in off the sea. No Pattern-like things or obelisks are immediately visible.
Caitlin climbs up one of the sand dunes behind the beach (which are covered in patches of wiry grass) and looks around. She can see more dunes inland. Away to one side she can make out a river winding through the dunes, with a village of wooden huts on stilts at its mouth.
Etienne can sense that this shadow is highly magical, with the magic being very wild and uncontrolled. The storm off the shore seems to be warping the local magic about itself such that there is a good chance it will go awry.
They search around. Jihx trips over the tip of an obelisk protruding from the sand. Etienne examines it (not having actually examined any of the obelisks too closely before) while the other carry on searching. After a while she decides that, although not magic, whatever the obelisk is doing bears a good deal of similarity to sympathetic magic (like affecting like). Hmmm...
Etienne then tries to use her new sensitivity to the properties of shadow to pinpoint the other obelisks. After a while she begins to detect them as still spots in the wild magic flowing back and forth across the area. She can also tell that the storm itself is the Pattern-analogue here; perhaps if viewed from above the lightning visible flashing inside it would make the shape of the Pattern. It looks very likely that the other obelisks are in the sea. They decide this is a job best handled by Arun with his aquatic shapeshifted forms, and so decide to leave this set of obelisks until he returns.
They decide to go to the place with the Pattern-shaped stone 'circle' on a plain instead. They concentrate on the Trump, and once it opens up, go through. The whole place is dull, cold and overcast, and the grass on the ground is withered and unhealthy-looking. Etienne can tell that the shadow is magical, linked in to the stone circle ahead. It is the Pattern-analogue here, and is the same size as the real Pattern. As they approach they can see that there is an altar in the centre, crusted with dried blood. There are also six hexagonal black stone obelisks spaced in a circle around the stone 'circle'.
A little discussion ensues. In the end it is decided that to keep the forces from the obelisks balanced, Jihx will blast one obelisk which Godofos uproots its opposite number from the ground. Jihx blasts his obelisk as Godofos pulls his up. The imbalance of power starts to build up anyway. Jihx runs round and blasts the one Godofos has pulled up. The imbalance begins to settle itself back down again.
Jihx blasts the remaining four obelisks into fragments.
As soon as he does so, the clouds overhead disperse, revealing a blue sky. The sun starts to shine. Fresh new grass and flowers start to grow up through the withered, unhealthy-looking grass. Birds start to sing. All in all, the place looks much better. Result!
They decide they've done enough out in shadow for the moment, and return to Amber via the Trump of the arrival courtyard. They troops off back to the dining room where Caitlin, Jihx and Godofos had lunch previously, and desert is served.
Servants are sent to check the conditions of the various lines of cold again...