[Notes for the run of July 22, 1999.] Back in time, we discuss who-all should come along, and what weapons we should try bring. Paris explains that she's not sure what she expects to find in the "heart of the mountain"; she had originally thought to find Justice itself, but now she hopes just to find a clue. And she thinks we may find some of the Magician's books. If so, Calais notes, there's likely to be trouble of some sort, since the Magician told us something always happens to make it hard to get his books. Also, the librarian said they'd only recently found that room, which suggests maybe they haven't yet found the passage off from it, in which case anything at all could be in it. Brillig agrees to come, and takes the point off his large spear and has Paris carry it in her pack. (Paris warns that they search packs on exit, apparently to make sure no books are being taken. We figure it'll cause less trouble if she's carrying weapon bits.) Back to the present. While Calais and Rhori figure out how to open the passage, Brillig gets his spearhead and assembles the spear. When he gets into the small room, he remarks, "This place is not very... happy." He doesn't seem able to elucidate. Claire checks for magic. The walls seem to be resistant to tunnelling, but that's all. Paris says, "It will be interesting to see if the other rooms are sad. If so, I think I know why." Someone asks her about this, but as usual her reply, if any, gets interrupted or drowned out. The books are faded and worm-eaten, but the mages examine them as best they can. The letters in the books seem almost like magical writing, but are missing some bits, making it very hard to puzzle out any words. As Calais pulls on the tab to open the wall, Paris and Rhori are nearest the wall, with Mia and Claire pushed back against another wall and Brillig in the doorway. A greenish gas comes out, doing large amounts of damage (BODY as well as STUN) to Paris and Rhori, but the others see it in time to hold their breath. Calais's lungs burn a bit in sympathy. He also finds that he can't get his finger loose. Mia, Claire, and Brillig's eyes are streaming so much they can't see. Brillig heads back up the stairs. Calais contorts his other hand into the opening to try to work at the loop to get his finger loose. Mia and Claire can't see, but stumble toward where they think the door is, and make it out. Paris is stunned for a moment, but Rhori grabs her and pulls her toward the door. His eyes seem unaffected by the gas, though his lungs are not immune. Calais gets loose, and we all retreat up the stairs. The green gas settles down at the floor level, about six feet thick. Rhori thinks he can keep his head above the gas, and volunteers to go look in the next room. He finds some rolled up cloth, some books in good condition, and some glass globes that are broken. He unrolls a cloth and finds some pictures of men and women. There's also a chest of drawers, some benches, and so forth. He brings the cloths out. They are seven colored banners and two remnants of banners. The red banner has a man's face. Orange has a woman's. Continuing through the rainbow we find a child, a man, a woman, a man, and a woman. The two torn ones are black and white. Unable to come up with the word for "drawers", Rhori makes another trip and comes back with the entire chest. Calais finds no traps; opening the small drawers at the top he finds six felt bags, each containing a crystal with a hole drilled in them, as though to run wires through to hang them. Mia produces a similar one she's been carrying and says they're for a church. The other drawers turn up priestly vestments in the rainbow colors, but again there are gaps where white and black might've been. Rhori goes back to fetch more stuff, and Paris decides to see if her eyes will be affected. She can see, so she goes in to help bring out some books. Rhori sees her and tells her, "You shouldn't be in here." This of course leads him to breath in more of the gas, causing further damage. Paris also finds a nine-place candelabra, some ceremonial knives, etc. In short, we find all the accoutrements of a church. None of it is magical, but most of it is foci. The books seem to be the same as the ones in the first room, but in much better condition. There's exactly two of each book: one in each room. The ink in the fresher books appears to be multicolored [a point that many of us apparently didn't catch at the time]. We wonder what to do with all this stuff. We can't take it out with us. We figure we can tell the Prince's local people about it and let them deal with it. But Mia is concerned that if the local White church hears about it they might try to desecrate it. She gets bogged down trying to get Rhori to understand what "desecrate" means. Mia prays to tell the rainbow gods about what she found, and asks for guidance. The Orange woman appears to her and points, and Mia sees a stream of rainbow-clad people bringing the stuff down to the room, filling the glass globes, etc. They look unhappy, dejected. Not all the books fit, so one set is left in the previous room. The vision fades. Mia tries to remember what the Orange woman is goddess of, but it eludes her. Mia tells us these things were put here by the rainbow church, and that they were unhappy about it. Calais says it looks like all three churches were involved, since there are places for black and white, and Mia and/or Paris mumble something about the two who became one, maybe leaving the other seven? Who knows. More arguing. Rhori thinks we should tell the librarian about the new books. Paris wants to put everything back and tell Prince William. Rhori feels responsible since he's the one who carried most of the stuff out, so if that was wrong he should take the blame for it. Eventually he exchanges some heated words with Claire, tells Paris to do what she thinks best, and leaves. Paris tries to put the stuff back, but finds she can't make it all fit. She manages to get it mostly in place as long as we don't care about closing the secret door, so that's what we do. On the way out, Paris asks the librarian about underground passages and rooms. Eventually she asks specifically about the Tomb of the Lost King, and he tells her it's at the site of the battle, about two days from the city. She also asks about an area associated with lions, and he mentions the city by that name, up the river. She asks if it has anything to do with lions, and he says there are two mountain ranges there that look like two stone lions facing each other. He has a cousin who's a librarian there; Paris asks for a letter of introduction, and he says he can give her one tomorrow. Paris also asks him what the Princes' instructions were about finding new rooms. The Crown Prince wanted to make sure nothing left the library, and to know about rooms that had been found and opened. And Prince William asked to be notified about specific sorts of things found in the rooms. So Paris tells him about the new room, since the Crown Prince wants to know about it, and says she'll write a letter to tell Prince William about the contents. She warns the librarian about the gas, and manages to avoid answering his question about what was found in it. When we get outside, we at first think we must've spent more time inside than we'd thought. Then we realise that it's gotten prematurely dark due to heavy clouds. We get back to the inn, where we find Anton. He asks if we saw the volcano. "What's a volcano?" It seems that, after Anton left us this morning, he went to have a drink, and suddenly everyone was running and pointing. Way off in the northwest, not quite from the direction we came from, one of the hills started spewing smoke, and rocks flew into the air, and a big cloud came out, etc. Claire thinks this sounds like the result of a telluric current ("Who?" :-) coming to the surface, and wonders whether there's some way an earth mage could've made it happen. She thinks it would have to be a powerful mage, unless someone has found a subtle way to affect telluric currents. We tell Anton about the books and their partial writing, and the rainbow stuff we found in the second room. He expresses disappointment about not being there, but doesn't have any new suggestions as to how to read the books or anything else we might've missed. Mia shows him a sample that she copied. She mentions that the better-preserved books had multicolored ink. When Rhori gets back, he's sulking a bit. Brillig takes him aside and cures him, and he feels quite a bit better, but not totally. Brillig tries again but can't make it any better. (Apparently the two wounds are treated as a single large wound in this case.) Brillig heals Paris too, while Mia tries to heal Rhori. She tries twice using her biggest healing spell, but is unable to target it properly to deal with the internal damage. After some discussion, eventually Anton puts forward a theory that the rainbow church may've originally included white and black, and as others had suggested he thinks white and black are the "two that became one" when the world was torn asunder. (From the High Priestess discussion: "The world was torn asunder." "What caused that?" "When the two became one, a choice was made, and the world was torn asunder." "What two?" "The two who became one." "Are they still together?" "Oh yes.") Anton conjectures that this led the rainbow church to boot white and black out of the pantheon. That night, Mia dreams about Henri, which isn't unusual. :-) He's cleaning the floor of the church, with the sunlight passing through the crystals making the book of chaos appear on the floor. She mentions this in the morning. Well, duh, those of us who've never been in the rainbow church -- and Anton who either wasn't specifically told about the crystals we found here or didn't catch it [the downside of trying to short-cut role-play by saying "we tell him about everything" when someone's waiting for a specific cue] -- suggest that maybe the crystals make the books readable. Claire suggests going back to check, but Paris says if it works she'd have to tell the librarian how we managed to read the books, and she seems to think this might then require that we hang around and wait to see if the King wants to take away Mia's crystal. Seems far-fetched to some of us, but Paris has the Prince's entry letter, so if she ain't going, we ain't going. Sigh. We go back out and find ash over everything. The volcano is still smoking. Paris gives her letters to the librarian, adding a note that we might have a way of reading the books but we don't know for sure. The rest of us continue to fret that we may never get another chance, but nobody seems willing to try to change Paris's mind about it. As we're leaving the city by the eastern gate, Paris holds back and uses yet another letter of introduction to get to see the Earl of Eastgate, while the rest of us dawdle outside. She talks with him a bit, and he invites her to a practice combat session so he can have a chance to test her mettle. As they finish, a messenger comes and reports a strange army has attacked Fort Cascassone. Paris passes that information to the party. The next day we make it to the Tomb of the Lost King. Paris explains en route that it's on the way to the Red River, but doesn't explain why she wants to look at it. She says the "lost king" was the second king of the Isles and Tara; he was buried with the other soldiers after the battle of Mount Pelier, so that the people would not know he was dead. His queen, who was the daughter of the first king, donned her husband's armor and led the army on to victory. Inside the tomb is a statue of an armored woman, standing behind a closed sarcophagus identified as that of Queen Branwyn. A second sarcophagus is open and empty. Inscriptions tell the tale we'd heard from Paris. Brillig senses something of great power here, but it still sleeps. It is not yet time. Rhori asks if there's something we're supposed to do or search for, like should we open the sarcophagus. Paris, alarmed, says no, she just wants to pray here. She feels like the place is peaceful and dangerous all at once; it would be a great place for a Vigil. Claire is bored and gets out a piece of a medallion, with which she casts a spell. She determines that two telluric currents cross here. (Who?) Anton checks for magic, and finds none (except Claire's), but the place is a focus, and also carries a sense of latent power. On the fourth day out from the city we get to the river and hire passage on a barge. The barge-drivers ask us about the strange weather. Anton sings them a song about it. Four days of barging upriver, plus a Sevenday at some point spent in prayer, and we come to a place where we indeed see two lion-shaped mountain ranges to the east. Though she has the letter of introduction, Paris can't think of anything to seek at the library, so we head east away from the city, toward the mountains. After a while we reach a cliff too steep to make headway. After spending the night camped at the base of the cliff, we head back to the city of Lions to look for a guide. Rhori tries talking to some of the guards and as usual manages to confuse them mightily, this time by claiming to be under orders of the Prince but having no identification to prove it. Calais noses around and finds some fur-sellers, which leads him to find some folks who do trapping. They refer him to Claude, a trapper who spends lots of time in the mountains and happens to be in town at the moment. We find him in a tavern. Anton tries to chat him up but doesn't do a very good job of it. Calais isn't much better. We eventually hire him at too high a price. The next day he'll take us as high up in the mountains as he knows how to go. In the meantime, today, Paris decides that maybe there'll be something useful to learn at the library after all, so heads off to see.