Date - 3/26/95 (16th Session)
... In which the brigands assault Rabenstein with disconcerting assistance
On a trip to the monthly market of Leoben in June of 1202, the bandits returned to harrass the grogs, who were forced to abandon some of their provisions and swim across the Mür to escape them. Then, on the night of Lugnasad (August 1), they approached the poorly defended walls of Rabenstein and challenged the sorcerers to show their powers. Invading the Covenant they burned much of the wooden pallisades (including the brewing apparatus) and maimed Wolfgang before being forced to retreat. After the attack, the captain Erik and Hammond the sergeant vengefully butchered the bodies of several bandits who were slain in the assault, decapitating them. Further, none of Merento's spells were able to affect the bandits, and in the ensuing clean up it was discovered that several of the bandits wore pouches around their necks filled with trinkets of the three Magi (such as feathers, strands of hair, jewelry, etc.) who lived in the towers of the Covenant. A single brigand survivor confessed that a mysterious witch in the woods named Morrigan had given them the trinkets and told them it would render the sorcerers powerless against them.
Over the course of the fall and impending winter, the Covenfolk organized a search for this mysterious witch, though upon returning from a visit with Tibor in Hungary, Capra of Bjornaer observed that the name 'Morrigan' also referred to a Celtic goddess associated with war. This prompted the cessation of the search for the elusive witch. To hide the grisly evidence of the buthery of the bandits' bodies, their bodies were burned, and the bones placed in the caves. A wizard's council the following spring, however, agreed to inter their skulls with the others in the ancient Copse of Skulls.
Cast: Erik von Mälmo (Chris Blake), Sir Hammond (Dallas Perry), Merento and Geoffrey (Clint Buss), Gustav and Uri (Christian Young), Hans (Mike Provenzano)
Date - 4/2/95 (17th Session)
... In which Rabenstein is caught up in a disaster at Frohleiten village
At the Tribunal of 1202 previously, a French Merinita Magus had approached Rabenstein's delegation about the possibility that he may be moving through their vicinity researching Celtic traditions in the coming years. The Magus, Sarimarcus, came to Rabenstein in October of 1203 and invited its Magi to a festival in the village of Frohleiten on Halloween night which they might find interesting. Gustav (a Merinita himself) and Rabenstein's French Magus Lassitor attended along with the grogs Hans and Johann, and participated in a torch-lit procession to a nearby hillock where the horned God Cernunnos of Celtic folklore appeared beneath an ancient oak before the delegation to welcome their generosity. In the midst of the mystical evening, Captain Hagen and his Brabancon mercenaries stormed into the hut on the hill and caused a panic. In the ensuing chaos, Sarimarcus and Cernunnos were felled by bolts from the Brabancon's crossbows, thought the mighty oak's roots rose up and crushed/strangled many soldiers. Rabenstein's Magi were fortunate to escape alive, though the two grogs were massacred along with many villagers who tried to flee rather than be arrested. Afterwards, the dead peasants were burned on the hillside with a fire started with wood from the oak (which the Captain's men felled).
This story, including the character of Sarimarcus, was loosely taken from the White Wolf supplement A Midsummer's Night Dream (1992).
Cast: Gustav (Christian Young), Lassitor (Chris Blake), Hans (Mike Provenzano), Johann and Geoffrey (Clint Buss), Lady Enelle (Dallas Perry)
... In which a horned beast roams the valley and the forests begin to encroach
Geoffrey the forester visited Rabenstein with mysterious news from the village of Frohleiten. Since the massacre by the Brabancon mercenaries led by Hagen last Halloween, it turns out a mysterious horned beast has been sighted in the valley, killing sheep and cattle, and described in its appearance as resembling the devil himself. In Frohleiten itself, the fields lay fallow, vines entangle a half-constructed stone church quarried from the hill where the massacre occured, and plentiful oak saplings dot the region (though they appear as trees twice their age). Leading an investigation, the Covenfolk further discovered that many masons (including some Brabancon mercenaries) were strangled by creeping vines as they worked in the churchyard, and the village lay abandoned. A crazy old woman in the village ruins, learning of the survival of Sarimarcus' friends, gave Rabenstein a book she had kept of his (his journal/grimoire).
Numerous attempts were made to capture or track the horned beast over the course of the next year (encompassing several sessions). Then by the following spring (1204), additional oak saplings appeared throughout the valley, reaching as far south and west as Rabenstein itself, indicative of what the Magi began to call the 'curse of Cernunnos'. The attempts to capture or track the horned beast led them to the valley of the little Mür (near the ruined village of Frohleiten). Canon Ramon arrived to beseech the scholars to investigate the advance of the woods and put an end to it if it was within their means. He also relayed strange stories of a madness that had come over Captain Hagen. Journeying to castle Kleistburg, Geoffrey bargained with Hagen's mother Alecia for the capture of the beast of the valley.
By the autumn of 1204, stories reached Rabenstein of mysterious lights that haunted Kleistburg castle, so when Geoffrey the forester next visited the Covenant, he agreed to lead Capra and some of the socii to witness them. Oberving the castle from a neighboring hill, they saw what appeared to be mystical greenish-white lights brilliantly illuminating the countryside surrounding the castle-walls. Probably magical in nature, they seemed designed to better-defend the castle by lighting the approach rather than representing any sort of haunting of the castle.
Cast: Capra (Dallas Perry), Geoffrey (Clint Buss), Katrina (Christian Young)
This page last modified on 11/5/97.
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