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In a break with tradition, rather than giving a blow by blow account of what occurred I’ll tell what I think happened, before and during the mission.  Mostly this is supposition interspersed with fact.

About 5 or 6 moons ago a Valley group broke the rod of Ygantir which was part of some binding mechanism of a great power, possibly Wendigo related.  This release has manifested itself as the release of one of the four ancient powers of wind named Boreas (the North Wind).   That and the other three winds (Corramoor, Sirrocco and Laventer) were the powers worshipped by the ‘The First’ inhabitants of the Tower of the Winds.

Since the release of the North Wind is unopposed by its opposite (the aptly named South Wind) I suspect that the mystics deemed that something had to be done and communicated such to their agents the Shadowsfall.  The Shadowsfall appointed a judge to gather a number of tower groups into the broken Tower of the Four Winds where they’d have to compete to get three chalices and then, the successful group would have the opportunity to complete a ritual.  Interestingly, the ritual was stated as being of no direct benefit to the Valley Towers other than somebody else doing it might be to our detriment.  Also it turns out that the chalices are not important/essential to the ritual, although they were identified as ritual components.  The other factor to the whole ritual thing is the existence of twelve vessels (people), one of whom would be filled by the ritual (all very mysterious).

We were herded to the tower by a combination of the North wind blowing spirits of Evil and Cold TM and the mists closing in.  I believe that since only the Mystics (or their agents) control the mists that is fairly positive proof they initiated the whole scheme.

Our vessel, Cartin the pathfinder, had severe memory problems and led to the thought that it might be memory or knowledge filling the vessel but none of the other vessel we met were empty in this way.  Cartin had invited some of his friends/escapees from Sector 7 to join him in a trip to the Tower of the Four Winds but he had subsequently forgotten about them.

The majority of our mission involved finding out about the Tower of the Four Winds.  We found out that:

* It’s broken, it was previously left open for people to wander about in,
* it used to house The Taranor, The Dymwan, Sandaster and the Windbourn and ‘The First’,
* it rains a lot and
* It is a thoroughly miserable place.

There were a lot of memories of previous inhabitants in the tower and a lot of elementals to fight.

Concentrating on ‘The First’ allowed us to home in on the groups holding the chalices.  The Laventer had a holy man who could interact with us (a programmed image or something) who answered a few questions, implied that he had knowledge about the North Wind and said his body was ‘hidden away’ somewhere and could we wake him up.  He gave us the ritual to do this and said it require a token blood sacrifice.  We later decided that there was no pressing need to pursue that course as having one unopposed wind loose was going to be bad enough without releasing another (insert joke about loose wind here).  The Corramoor later spoke with us and demanded that we not release him and we agreed it to be a bad plan.  In fact I believe Lord Giles gave his word.

We refused to give the chalices to the Shadowsfall, in a moment of high tension, but they co-opted our near allies, The Wizards Concillium to perform the ritual without them.  We didn’t interfere with that, not wanting to spill Concillium blood.

Our exit from the tower was in dealing with (in the physical sense) a Mistweaver who had been duped (by the mists) into thinking that he had to clear out the tower, which is apparently part of the normal tower shutdown procedure.  Once he was gone the tower was opened and we left.

In conclusion, the ritual was probably related to the North Wind/Wendigo mystery and we may or may not have skewed it by not releasing the chalices.  I don’t think we have as the Shadowsfall didn’t fight us for them as they would have if they were essential.  I would recommend against releasing the ancient Laventer holy man as anything that requires a blood sacrifice to come back from the grave has got to be bad.

The only other mystery remaining unexplained is “how did Rasc become so lucky with the dice”?

Everything else is under my hat

Spingle,

Goblin, Ranger and Sometime Ambassador to HM the GK.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 06 January 2010 06:38
 
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