Of course the casual reader can follow either thread forward. Players are on their honour to only read the appropriate one.
Well, here we are again.
How am I doing? Arr, well, a touch of the old trouble back again, if you get’s me meaning. By the time I got something from everyone who wanted to say anything I was caught by an EG! deadline. After that there was something else, then to my surprise: Wow! Another EG! deadline, the working of which ran well over time due to a lot of to-ing and fro-ing at work, a bad gut from the dreadful beer in Manchester (a work jolly), coughs, colds and copious self-pity. However since early May I’ve actually been doing things on this.
One of the things that has spurred me into action is the expectation that I’ll be in London, at the start of June for a few days (4th on) where I will no doubt be forced to drink vast quantities of beer by Pete & Nick hoping to move the game on a bit. It might be as well to have a chat with them and (or) me before that time this isn’t a deadline, just a practical word of warning!
That said, a rapid response is always welcome, though I’ll have to get on with EG! immediately on returning from the deep south.
So eventually, a little before midsummer, having made preparations and put you affairs in such order as necessary for a couple of weeks’ absence, you follow Captain Grimmelshausen into the countryside. It is wild in places of course, but hardly ‘wilderness’ in the old sense. This fact, however, does not subdue the old adventurers’ caution in the matter of equipment. Most carry everything that wasn’t bolted down and could be loaded on a horse.
The former councillor stared into his tumbler and swirled the remaining splash of schnapps around its bottom; the dying fire warmed his boots as he knocked the liquor back and thought of what he’d just heard. The hooves of Grimmelshausen’s horse clattered in the yard and then out into the street, doubtless towards the Burning Forest where the sergeant, oh no, Captain these days, said he’d talked a free room out of Old Richter and his wife. It would be a change from Müller’s, he’d said, and a chance to talk business with them.
The chance that the old days were back! A tempting proposition indeed for those who could not even claim the dubious distinction of being yesterday’s men. Of course, one could hardly complain about the perks of being five years on the Council, but even that had been thanks to his exploits in the old days. Now that elections had been held without that memory well, now he had to go searching if he wanted a favour done. On sober reflection, it couldn’t be the same as it had once been, but it couldn’t but be better than stifling in this stuffy new town of Helstadt. Yes, by God, he’d be a party to the trip, and he’d like to see anyone try to stop him!
“Yes, Anna, I’m going out of town with some of the old bunch again. Mainly for the ride of course, dear. Old times’ sake. Well, if we are troubled by bandits... No harm in going prepared. Erich will look after the business well enough so long as you keep an eye on the accounts don’t let him get away with anything.”
He had considered telling Anna. There’d been a time when he’d impressed her with tales of the wilderness before the change. He thought she knew what he was up to in the early days of the new Helstadt, but as time went by, it became plain that she remembered little if anything. She saw to the business of the household as if it was all there was in life. He could understand; she’d never been involved. And it was too late to discuss it now.
“Now Shadrach, remember you’re the man of the house while I’m gone. Look after your mother and the little ones, and get Erich to take you round the fields with him you won’t learn about the farm any younger and God rewards those who aren’t afraid of hard work. And I want to see an improvement in your letters when I get back!
“Goodbye Anna. I’ll try not to be gone too long. Don’t spare the rod with the children!”
Schnellbein picked his legs up and they trotted out into the street.
So it is that on a misty summer morning six ride from Helstadt in ones and twos, to meet where two tracks cross, out of sight of the town. From under cloaks the dull gleam of armour, as worn by any cautious traveller in the wilder and less frequented parts of the land despite the promise of the day’s heat to come. And too, by one saddle the flaring bell of a blunderbuss, while across another back is slung a quiver. A horse flicks its ear and glances back in seeming nervousness at the halberd shaft slung along its flank. It is an easy day’s ride along the quieter routes, not a furtive skulking down unused tracks but just quiet, unhurried, untroubled. Attracting the attention that any travellers do, but little more.
It was a different atmosphere mixing with the old adventurers again. They were all tense, it’s true, but with a hopeful anticipation instead of the frustration and disappointment of the last five years. It would have been easy to let hopes rise too high, but Malachi could keep a rein on himself as well as he could his faithful horse. If there was one thing he’d learnt from life in the old New Jerusalem it was self control and caution in all matters. Perhaps he’d overdone it. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been here otherwise.
They were all there he’d not been out of town with all of them, but he knew them well enough. Dethorm with his black beard and impressive tally of giants’ heads; van Rijn the daring Dutch mercenary who’d served the town so well despite lacking an arm; the Richters, looking well fed on five years of pub profits; and Grimmelshausen himself, looking rather more dissipated than when he’d had to maintain military discipline at the Southfort. He showed signs of becoming saggy-jowled, with a florid nose; a sad come-down, but what other path had there been for such a man in this grey new world?
The bright sun shone on Schnellbein’s flanks (ah yes! Things had certainly changed!) as they rode out of town and along the dusty track towards the western village of Holzbergfeld. A short ride took the small company through the scattered group of houses and barns, and Malachi noticed that Grimmelshausen sat a little stiffly in the saddle. He thought of Imogen Richter’s spicy Auslander cooking and smiled grimly to himself; serve the old free-loader right! He’d been told that the Burning Forest wasn’t exactly fashionable and its food had a reputation
Eventually the fields gave way to a barer landscape, which gently rose and fell under the horses’ hooves in waves towards the western horizon. The hot smell of horse sank slowly from the conscious to the subconscious. Conversation tailed away and each turned to his or her own thoughts; hope, fear,anticipation, perhaps a kind of rejected love. The camp-fire that evening was a dismal thing and gave them little warmth.
Morning came slow and pale over the stiffening bodies in the dew, no respecter of the hopes they held. One by one they blinked and eased cold joints into motion, and they took their time over Dethorm’s cooked breakfast. When the sun was well up the sky and they were able to delay the moment of truth no longer, they saddled up and rode westward, chasing the shadows.
On the road again seeking the less-used ways, with pauses for the Captain to consult his twinges and intuition by way of navigation. For the others there is no hint of the landscape they partly remember, though distance and direction seem reasonable for the way to the dwarfs’ hill. The rolling grassland is gone, covered by scrub and forest, while of the hill itself, or the north end of the spire ridge there is nothing to be seen. Even though the Jordan might be hidden, the higher ground should be visible above the trees.
“Well, here we are, just about.“ says the Captain. "I don’t suppose any of you can spot it?”
Some look about them and a couple of heads bow and mumble in prayer.
“Watch that!” calls the Captain, sharply, uncomfortable more from habit perhaps than need. Apologies are made. Elijah approaches
“Ah, Serg- Captain. Are you sure, now, that there will be no, ah, temporal irregularities involved in this visit?” Several stir uneasily with their memories at the mention of problems with time, and lean forward to catch the answer. Grimmelshausen appears to ponder for a moment then snorts out “Hah! What do you think?”
He adds he experienced none such on his previous visits to Boris, in this time or the old days. Though further into faerie could be another matter, of course. In fact almost certainly would be.
An hour or so brought them to a low ridge which they crested in line abreast. Ahead, a hill rose steeply from the rolling plain, with the faint lines of what might once have been field walls tracing a tangled net across its sides. To the right of it a low-lying patch of cloud seemed to suggest damp ground, the impression compounded by glimpses of what seemed to be a river, though there should have been no river in this part of the country. As they carefully walked the horses down the farther slope of the ridge the first drops of rain began to fall.
There is little to be seen of a transition. On one side of the ridge, once you know to look for it, there is something familiar in the shapes of the clouds beyond it, but they are lost to sight as you climb the ridge side, and from the crest, well it’s more a foothill to the Dwarf Hill rising solid there in front of you. From the hill itself, looking back the way you came, the view is blurred and obscured by the rain, of course.
The party walked alongside a linear green mound of turf to the place where it intersected with another, and to where they remembered a blockhouse full of dwarves at the top of a shaft into the earth. Grimmelshausen took a deep breath as they approached the rickle of remains of an old herder’s shelter. “Well, here it is. Pray he’s still here, if you feel like it. I might even join you.”
Without doing anything of the sort he stepped forward amongst the rubble and picked his way towards the back wall, up slope and slightly better preserved. As they followed carefully over the loose stones they caught sight of the hole in the hillside hidden by the ruins; a tidy square hole cut out of the rock and running back a few yards to a studded wooden door. It was not large. The horses might fit in if led with care. Grimmelshausen stumbled into the passageway, kicking a stone aside, and rapped sharply on the door with a gauntleted fist. The sound died quickly, deadened by the moist air, and they waited with dry mouths and snare drum hearts.
Without ceremony the door was opened by a short, bearded figure and they were led inside.
You are led into the dimly lit tunnels, to a place where a train of mining carts stand, waiting to convey you deeper. Your animals are left behind for now. The rush through the dark is disorientating and it is difficult to estimate your speed, beyond fast. Sometimes the walls, as seen by the lamps your dwarf companions carry, open out into vast spaces and the smooth rumble of rails below you is broken by shuddering and clattering. In the distance at these places, those who are not too occupied with holding on see occasional distant lights of other tunnels?
Finally, you come to a lit hall, huge, carved rather than natural. It is by no means busy and bustling, though there are a lot of figures moving about here, all short and bearded as far as you can make out. You halt (though the rails continue) by another tunnel, whence the cheery face of Boris Runesinger, philosopher in the dwarven manner, emerges to greet you, once he’s exchanged a quick word with the Captain, too low for you to catch.
“I suppose I could pretend I believed you were coming here as a favour to me, or at least the Sergeant here, but we’re all adults. I’d bet that not one of you could swear, hand-on-heart, that you were not bored spitless out there.
“’Tis all for the best; mutual interest makes good business partners. I want a safe way out of here, you want some excitement and answers. Very likely one will involve the others, so we’re all happy!”
He leads you to a suite of rooms both private and public and leaves you to settle in the while food and drink are provided.
Later he joins you in a discussion of your next move. By way of introduction, he confirms what Praise-the-Lord has told you about his situation. Such concentration of what you might wish to call magic as they have in this place keeps the change that overtook NJ at bay, but there is a slow closing-in of that normality. His own investigations were limited to establishing that crossing from this last enclave of the borderlands into normality robbed him of power, form, language, and knowledge, such that it was only by good fortune he stumbled back here. He cannot risk himself and his people so again.
Thus the discovery that one or two out there still remembered, and were willing to return old favours, pay off old debts, and no doubt run up entirely new debt in the process, was a happy moment. What he needs is a stable bit of borderland to which his bit can be attached, probably to the benefit of both.
Praise-the-Lord pointed out, once he’d stumbled in here, that as this was borderland, and Helstadt was mundane normality, logically there must be fully-fledged Faerie somewhere available, and should it be so he knew a few hardy souls who’d perhaps be prepared to poke about a bit. So Boris had looked. In fact he’d looked a bit harder, for he had been vaguely aware that Faerie was ‘out there’ somewhere, but also that some sort of boundary beyond which he could not penetrate existed there too. He had found a way through to Faerie or somewhere reasonably similar. You are free to take this path if you so wish, though he himself will not, for Faerie and dwarf do not mix well.
There is another possibility. The river you once called the Jordan exists outside the hill, though it can have no in- or egress in the real world, as far as you are aware. Malachi Stark owns a boat (originally constructed for Conrad Steller) in Boris’s keeping that would be suitable for an exploration, certainly it was originally intended to trace the Jordan’s course to the sea. It is stoutly built, with capacious stores lockers, and several gun mountings.
Someone suggests that other remnants than the Dwarf Hill be investigated in the real world, but this is what Praise-the-Lord, Dethorm, and Malachi have spent fruitless time doing in the last five years. Both Praise-the-Lord and Elijah propose searching for such places in New Jerusalem from the other side. Even if found in the Helstadt countryside they’d likely be useless as Helstadt itself as a jumping-off point.
The discussion is fairly quickly concluded, with the decision taken to investigate Boris’s doorway into Faerie, and the properties of that place, before assessing the next step.
After a restless night preparations are made for a descent into the pit. Boris is most apologetic about the symbolism. The entranceway is a steeply sloping scramble, with step ledges and hand holds enough for safety but not speed, in case something should try to make an exit here, Boris says, and gestures too at the straining pit-props holding back the spoil from the digging, ready to crash back and seal the hole.
As leader of this exploration the Captain goes first of course. The cautious and practical Malachi suggests the use of rope for safety, both in descending the tunnel and to keep the party together on the other side in the misty distancelessness of the faerie forest. Which is done, Grimmelshausen first, Müller, Elijah Richter, Imogen, Malachi and Pieter as anchor man (with a few anchor dwarfs to assist). Praise-the-Lord has the longest length of rope to himself, so as to enter the otherworld briefly and report back without the need for others to pass through. He descends slowly into darkness, bracing himself with his axe. As his helmet descends below floor level he stops and reports a dim light below him (though the pit is black to those standing above) a few more steps down and his voice is echoing hollowly as from a distance, then fades altogether. A dozen feet of rope have been paid out, with half as much again being necessary before Müller must step downwards.
The faint sounds of the return are at first covered by Boris’s gentle humming behind you, but as the rope goes slack an outline below rapidly solidifies into the Captain.
"It’s somewhere in Faerie, I think, but not where I expected. Come and see if you recognise it."
The descent is slow and seems rather more than the dozen feet the rope indicated, but no one is much surprised by that. As you descend the faint light rises to meet you, until it is all about you and you are stepping off the large rock you’ve scrambled down. Looking up you see the boots of the next person appearing over the lip of the rock some dozen feet above you.
It is both like and unlike the places you have been before. There is the same pale and sourceless light, spread by the silvery mist that swirls slowly when you are not looking at it to form strange images at the corner of your eye. But rather than the woods of thin, pale trees and the tufts of silvery-green grass there are about you pillars and jumbles of rock. Nonetheless it appears to have many of the properties of faerie some of you know and are familiar with. Firearms are chancy at best, less than half the attempts resulting in a full ignition and hitting the target seems no more accurate at anything beyond the closest ranges.
After these preliminary investigations, so close to the adventurer’s heart, some more subtle investigations are undertaken. With no great surprise it is found that Praise-the-Lord’s compass needle bobs and circles lazily, though perhaps it is a little unusual that it continues to do so when laid upon a rock, and the armour plated tanks amongst you retreat to the middle distance. It does not seem ready to settle even after some minutes (hours?) observation.
In the matters of movement and the conjuration of foodstuffs results are best described as mixed. Trying to move away from the rock that marks the ‘entrance’ from the dwarf hole, while trying to remain in sight of it seems to be a contradiction. Every time you glance around, there it is in the close middle distance, however many rocks you dodge round and whatever angle you strike out at. Trying to get out of sight of it is almost as difficult, for exactly the same reason turn and there it is. Two groups moving off in different directions can meet, while those travelling the same way, separated by the shortest of intervals, can lose contact on a moment’s lapse of concentration. In short distance and direction seem arbitrary here. Food and drink are difficult to come by in the vicinity of the entrance. There are no fruitbearing plants, no roots, no game. At one point Dethorm and Pieter come across a pool (during a brief ‘lost’ period while trying to get back to the entrance, once having got away from it).
Praise-the-Lord has rather more problems in not moving. Indeed he is so successful in moving that he is often to be seen in two places at the same time a peaceful sleeping figure and a sulphurously cursing spirit looking back at it from some distance away. As before, the spirit Grimmelshausen can be distinguished here by his slight translucency and rapid movement, compared with mere mortal clay.
Movement to and from faerie, for those possessed of a body, is only possible through Boris’s entrance, though several try. In one of his forgetful moments the Captain leaves his leaning against a rock and his spirit can be seen to dwindle, momentarily, as if by distance, before being catapulted back by what Boris acknowledges later to be some protective work of his own laid upon the dwarf hill in the real world (or what he regards as real). When you are discussing this incident and other such matters with him it seems that he has little knowledge of events in the faerie pit. Trials bear this out. What he’d perceived as distance and a barrier seems rather an effect of the incompatible nature of faerie and his powers.
Such initial experiments are completed over a few days, in several visits to the netherworld, before serious exploration is undertaken. There is some discussion. An old map of the lands surrounding New Jerusalem is consulted and destinations eliminated. The Elf Hill north across the Jordan deserted in the Change swears Malachi. The Elf Hill east of the Jordan Boris is sure that if there were anything there he’d have found it, or it him, by now. The one to the south of the road Praise-the-Lord feels that elven dead could wait a while longer. That on the edge of the ridge Stark agrees with the Captain. (Well that about says it all for elves, comments Boris). The Castle more dead. Various other places of power someone has a reason against each of them. Where would represent a well-known, but not infamous, target for the first extended foray?
On the basis of present evidence, argues Elijah, it would seem that for a location to remain from the old days, a significant degree of, um, certain types of forces must be present. It may well be that many of the old places exist still, and impinge on the real world of Helstadt, but are too small to find easily from the ‘mundane’ side. Thus the problem is to find these places from the faerie side. While there are several sites that would undoubtedly have the, ah, correct properties many of these involve a degree of risk that at this stage might be inadvisable. Therefore he proposes that the place where this phase of the Great Trial of Life commenced. There are several objections to the hobgoblin ridge voiced before he can make himself heard again, but the practised preacher overcomes the heckling and goes on to suggest the place where he first met the Sergeant in his spirit form, the gateway half a day south of New Jerusalem. Philosophically (he points out) the property of passage between the spheres of the world in, as he recalls, physically non-threatening locations might be carried over into whatever form such a locus might now exist and wherever it might now connect.
All assemble at the foot of the entrance rock after a night’s rest, preparation and prayer (in some cases). Elijah and Imogen disdain the use of guns as too unreliable, preferring bow and axe if necessary, and take food not trusting anything that might be provided by faerie, scarce though such bounty is here.
A few paces bring you out of the maze of rocks and mounds with a blurring suddenness as the mist swirls thickly for a moment. Elijah looks to his wife, but he stands alone. Distantly you hear her cry:
"The eye!"
Something titters off in the bushes. Behind you, glimpsed in the mist, is only a thin stand of silvery trees.
Most of the first half of that account from Malachi