The Chronicle:

It was a few months later that we started discovering what bizarre friends both Ricardo and Lucas had.  It started one evening, on the second Feastday of Nonus 1667.  We were all preparing for a dance given by the townfolk in honour of the refugees from the occupied provinces.  The festivities were meant to welcome them and rejoice for their survival.

As he was closing his chapel for the evening, brother Cadfaello saw a visitor walking towards the town.  The traveller was dressed all in black, a black so dark and solid that in the dimming twilight it appeared to be a flat shape cut out of the oncoming darness.  His head appeared almost to float without a body to support it.  Most striking were the glowing violet eyes.

He stopped at the still-open chapel door and asked brother Cadfaello where he could find Richard O'Bannon.  The good brother, although unsettled, gave him directions and the visitor soon appeared in the town plaza, where we were barely getting ready to begin the festivities.  Lucas was flirting with his paramour doña Salvadora, while Miranda was breaking hearts.  I was quite pleased of having managed to look reasonably fashionable without having to ask for Miranda's help.

The visitor in black and Ricardo immediately recognized one another and with barely a handful of words exchanged, walked away from the feasst to settle their affairs.  After a short while, Ricardo came back alone.  When we questioned him, he tersely answered that the Fae had decide to "test" him.  The gentleman with the violet eyes had come to deliver the message, so that Ricardo would be ready when the challenge came.

We rapidly exhausted our meagre resources of knowledge on the Sidhe, since Ricardo was not forthcoming with details.  In time we gave our attention to the dancing, feasting, and courting.  Lucas went out with doña Salvadora to "admire the moon" – but soon the lady came back alone.  Ricardo seized the opportunity to dance with her, while Miranda and I puzzled over Lucas's disappearance.  My cousing soon reappeared, however; but there was a dangerous gleam in his eyes.  He glared at Ricardo and proferred his apology to doña Salvadora; but after a little while, he made his way towards me.

Somehow, he had been entrusted with a mission, by someone he would not name but believed entirely reliable.  This mission would entail some travel, and on those grounds he thought I would be interested in joining him.  Naturally, Lucas was certainly not hoping for my help!  I suggested that it would be a good idea to bring some armsmen, so he asked our friend Ricardo and also selected a swordsman called Sebastian.  Our confessor brother Cadfaello would also come along.  Obviously, if Lucas had any thought of leaving Miranda behind, this hope was soon dashed.  We abandoned the feast as discreetly as we could and went to make our preparations for travel.  Lucas was exemplary, filling only three small trunks with his most essential belongings, none of which contained Miranda.
 

It turned out that Lucas's itinerary ran through occupied regions – then through Montaigne!!!  We were all rather horrified.  Learning that Lucas had brought Sebastian because he spoke Montaigne seemed at first a blessing; but we soon discovered that the fellow hated Montaigne, and particularly Montaigne swordsmen...

At the border, we were met by a silent, veiled woman and a carriage.  The woman sat with us for the entire trip, remaining quiet.  It is only upon reaching Charouse that she finally spoke.  She told us we would meet her patron at sunset the next day, in the mysterious Catacombs of Charouse.  These twisting, damp, moldy tunnels form a disreputable maze, mixing Montaigne history, Charouse refuse,and immemorial Syrneth past.

When finally we reached the location that had been described as our rendez-vous point, we were greeted by two women draped in heavy black velvet cloaks.  One was reveled to be the enigmatic woman who had travelled with us through Montaigne.  The other pulled her hood back far enough for us to recognize the Empereur's youngest daughter, Dominique, General Montegue's wife.

The princess spoke mostly in Thean or, occasionally, through her maid Anna, the quiet traveller.  It seems that Empereur Leon had started to view General Montegue as a danger to his own grip on power.  He had deliberately sent Montegue to lead the troops most devoted to him on a doomed campaign in Ussura. (after all, no such campaign had ever been successful!)  Princess Dominique did not tell us how she had learned this, or why she had chosen to ask for our help, but she assured us that helping her warn her husband would benefit Castille.  And indeed, Lucas had been told the same by his mysterious source.  For my part, I could see advantages in helping a man the Empereur was frightened of.  We agreed to help, and the princess gave us a sealed letter for Montegue, and papers of safe-conduct that would see us to the border.

Then she pulled out a metallic object and offered it.  It was a compass made of brass-like metal; we had seen Montegue wear a very similar one, hanging from his neck.  The princess explained that they were twin Syrneth artefacts, and always pointed to one another rather than to the pole.  This object would enable us to find General Montegue once we reached the vast wastes of Ussura.

Finally, the princess made some last recommendations in a hurried voice.  We were to make all speed, for every day that passed could be her husband's last; and above all, we were to escape capture by the Empereur's minions, or we would likely never be seen again.  No sooner had she said this that we heard the sound of running, harsh voices shouting in Montaigne, and the hiss of drawn steel.
 

"Musketeers!" warned Sebastian, cursing profusely.

The musketeers started pouring into the catacombs.  Behind us, Anna and the princess disappeared in a murmur of rustling velvet, while we ran towards a different egress.   We held against the first few musketeers that reached us: Lucas and Sebastian with swords, Ricardo and brother Cadfaello with staves, Miranda and I with thrown knives.  But as soon as we had dispatched this first wave, we had to run for our lives for we took our own wounds, and more musketeers kept arriving.

When I studied cartography with father, and later at university, I had not thought to practice my skills in the catacombs of Charouse!  In the maze of tunnels we finally emerged in a most unexpected place: the backstage of the Colombe d'Or Theater.  The performance was under way, a new Eisen opera.  Frantically, we garnered costumes and wigs, then climbed in the rafters, from which hung a wealth of cables.  Sebastian, too wounded, fell back and resorted to crossing the stage to reach the exit!  In great confusion, we managed to flee the theater and momentarily elude the pursuers to reach "our" carriage (actually the princess's, of course.)

For a short while, we thought we had escaped the musketeers.  But soon we heard the gallop of horses and the shouts of men behind us.  We could not easily outrun them, for none of us was skilled in driving a team.  Ricardo was doing his best, but this did not reassure us.

The musketeers' lieutenant was a fire-eater.  He urged his horse right up to our carriage, then leaped like a madman.  He caught the railing of the luggage rack and hoisted himself on top of the vehicle.  We had no choice.  Followed by Lucas and Sebastian, I climbed the outside of the carriage to reach the lieutenant.  The fight was near impossible, with the wildly unpredictible lurches of the carriage, and it took all our efforts combined (and Ricardo's, who for a moment let the horses run free!) to repel the musketeer.  Meanwhile, Miranda  and brother Cadfaello had their hands full preventing more musketeers from jumping inside the carriage through the windows.  In a final challenge, the lieutenant announced that we hadn't seen the last of Charles du Chevalier; then we at last succeeded in pushing him off the carriage.Fortunately for us, his men fell back to collect him, and we were able to escape.

The rest of our flight through the night blurs in my memory, but somehow we stayed out of sight of the pursuers.  We rode on through Montaigne, to the northern coast and the port city of Dechaine.  There, we had to seek a ship to carry us to Eisen.  Lucas and I went to look for a vessel, with Sebastian as an interpreter.  After looking for most of the afternoon, we came to the conclusion that there was only one ship about to go in that direction for the next several days, a small Avalon vessel called the River Mist.  When we asked about it, an innkeeper overheard us and mentioned that an Avalon by the name of Coleson had been looking for some ready funds to to pay the crew.
 

We located this Avalon and reached an agreement; he was very eager to deliver his cargo so he could get paid by his patron, the Eisenfürst of Heilgründ, a collector of antiquities.  Meanwhile, the crew of the River Mist refused to budge until they were paid.  We lent him the monies necessary, above and beyond the cost of our passage up the Dechain River.  It was fortunate for us that we could reach this agreement in time; as we were boarding Coleson's hired vessel, we saw the musketeers gallop into town and rush to the quay.  The captain, Ringer Gutwold, had no interest in speaking to the authorities, and lost no time in departing.

Thus, we fled; and as soon as we were out of sight of the musketeers, an amazing transformation took place on the River Mist.  Sailors promptly changed her trim, shifting her crossjacks and spars; Captain Gutwold disappeared below decks and was replaced by "captain" Lars Ostrom; even the prow figure and the name plate were quickly changed by the carpenter and his mates, and the River Mist became the Windy Bough.  Clearly, these were experienced smugglers.  We sailed upriver unnoticed, and when a patrol vessel caught up with us, my cousins, our entourage and I merely had to duck below decks while the captain of the Windy Bough explained that the River Mist had sailed right past us.

A while later, we had to slow down while we crossed some poorly charted sections of the ever-moving river.  Unfortunately, the captain's caution was not sufficient and we struck a shoal.  The vessel was so well lodged that it would take a lot of work and lightening to free it.  The crew started unloading cargo onto the boats to lighten the vessel, and we helped as best we could.

As we struggled with the unwieldy crates (which the crew protected jealously), a terrible noise rang from nearby.  A jet of water spouted like a whale's, a bubbling whirlpool formed near the Windy Bough, and suddenly we saw a glistening snake-like coil rise from the stream.  It glittered blue-gray as more coils appeared, and the feared Beast of Dechain rose out of the choppy water.  Fiercely, the Beast attacked the boat, and the violent shudder sent sailors sprawling.  The Beast turned its head towards my companions and I, and we saw that its eyes gleamed violet.  It lunged directly for Ricardo.

The fight was terrible.  It seemed very long to us, but in truth it lasted less than half an hour.  We threw everything we had at the Beast, concentrating on its eyes.  Sailors dies, and hardly anyone escaped unwounded.  At long last, the crew was able to dislodge the vessel  from its shoal while my companions and I fought off the monster.  We were only to happy to get off when we reached our destination in Eisen.  Even as we left, word reached us that musketeers had been seen downriver...
 

Our next challenge was to cross the Weissenbergen range.  At the last village before the dark woods, we hired a guide to see us safely through, Hans Fleishwulf.  After a long walk through the forest that blankets the foohills, we emerged onto the Weissenbergen proper.  First, rocky slopes with scrub bushes, then, aas we continued to rise, snow and ice.  As the third day approached it end, we were attacked by creatures of nightmare, gargoyles swooping on us.  The fight left us weakened, though alive.

That night, we woke one at a time to find our guide hand-carving wooden images of us.  First to wake was Sebastian; the guide asked him a riddle.  When Sebastian found himself incapable of answering, he was ensorcelled.  The next was Ricardo, then Lucas, Miranda, and at last Cadfaello solved his riddle.  We were freed from the magical trance, fought back, and defeated Fleishwulf.  We had to find our own way down the mountains into the Eisen lowlands.

When at least we reached a village, we found it burning.  A chimney had caught fire, and the villagers were all fighting the blaze.  We joined in, but this cost us our headstart on the still-pursuing musketeers.  Led by the tenacious Charles du Chevalier, they galloped in before we could be away.  The lieutenant was not without honour, however; seeing the reason for our delay, he offereed to meet Lucas in a duel rather than arrest us straightaway.

Lucas accepted the challenge.  But convinced that her brother was not the lieutenant's equal, Miranda chose to interfere with the duel by throwing a dagger in du Chevalier's shoulder.  Enraged, but holding to his word, the lieutenant let us go so that he could arrest us later.  Humiliated by Miranda's faux-pas, we fled on.

After a long, anxious trek through Eisen, still pursued, we reached the Drachenbergen range which which separates the nation from the steppes of Ussura.  Although the guide we hired this time was sound, the crossing was treacherous.  However, the worst lay on the other side.
 

Ussura was revealed as a cruel, deadly expanse in the grip of a harsh winter.  Everywhere we found traces of Montaigne's attack; but it looked like the powerful army sent by the Empereur was being whittled downed by the elements.  We found soldiers frozen in their tracks, still standing.  Frostbitten and wind-whipped, we feared we would soon meet the same fate.

As we followed the dismal trail of icy death, we were attacked by a band of Ussuran militia men.  We tried to parley with them, but of course they no more spoke Castillan than we spoke Ussuran, and when Sebastian foolishly addressed them in Montaigne, their leader turned into a bear of gigantic proportions and attacked, frenzied.

We had a pitched battle until we could make ourselves understood in Thean.  When we represented that we were here to convince the Montaigne general to leave, everything changed.  The spirit of the land, called the Matushka, gave us safe passage if we would rid her of the invaders.  From this moment on, a ring of spring-like weather accompanied us, while at its edge we could see snowstorms raging.  Our trip became easy through the uncharted wilderness, and by following the Syrneth compass we soon caught up with the Montaigne army.  Surrounded by the Matushka's protection,  we had no trouble impressing the Montaignes and gaining a meeting with General Montegue.

Du Chevalier and his musketeers caught up with us and tried to have us arrested, but we convinced Montegue to listen to us.  We told him our story, gave him the princess's letter, and showed him the compass matching his.  But as he reached to pull his own compass, which hung at his neck, a tear appeared in mid-air, blood dripping from its edges, and a hand reached out to grab the compass from the General.  Obviously, we had just had our first encounter with the abomination of Porté sorcery.

At the same time, Miranda received a powerful vision of dark evil linked to that theft: a sinister man, standing in the clearing of a distant jungle, his face twisted in a cruel smile; strange stone pillars and a box with an indentation matching the stolen compass; and the overwhelming dread accompanying the knowledge that this man must at all cost be stopped from opening the box.

The general, much concerned, decided to heed his wife's warning and leave Ussura with his army.  He bid us keep the other compass, so that we might follow it find the other's track and thwart the thief's plans.  Still under the Matushka's protection, my companions and I had no difficulty in leaving Ussura.

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