News & Reviews - Mayfest '98

Hurrah! It were that time of year again. Time for Cap’n Dudley and crew to sail the good ship Cutters’ Choice to the land of Cornovii for trade, intriguing and of course to meet up with the rest of the Freebooters’ Alliance. We were all a bit nervy, it has to be said, what with the McBoar clan having been accidentally turned into vampires last year and all. If they hadn’t been running the fest I wouldn’t have been quite so iffy about it.

Well, we gets there, and straightways I feels that something ain’t right. Big disturbances in the Force and that. Turns out the magic in the land’s all gone to cock. Half the time what you casts comes out right and the other half your spell comes out as Wall of Fudge or Summon/Bind Squirrel or somethin’ else you don’t want. Oh dear, says I, why does it always have to be so feckin’ complicated. I keep hopin’ that one of these years we’re going to get to Mayfest and everything will be lovely and relaxed. Some chance.

So we pitches our tents and says hello to Cap’n Lambkin (of the Jack O’ Lantern) and Cap’n Brennan (of the Ruination) and all their unruly lot. There’s somethin’ of a dark cloud over all our hilarity, since the body of Cap’n Bosh (our former captain as was killed last summer) is lying in a nearby tent waitin’ for the funeral service what we’re going to do the next day, but nonetheless we gets a lot of drinking done and says hello to all the new faces. Midway through I notices some kind of portal thing open up in the woods. Oy the Scout runs off to check it out but it don’t seem to be doing much.

There’s much fun and games around the Freebooter fire

There’s much fun and games around the Freebooter fire. Mr. Pum puts his gun to my head and pulls the trigger for a laugh, and of course it goes click, but when he does the same thing to himself it goes bang and he falls over. The stupid sod loaded the bloody thing six months ago and forgot all about it until now. If it hadn’t been for that lucky misfire I’d have had me head blown off. As it is I gets Quirx out of bed and she heals Pum up with many a grumble.

Seems there’s a fair few folks about this year. This sunjammer ship thingy, the Starburst, is hoverin’ a thousand feet up in the air, and since I knows ‘em of old I pops in through their portal and says hello. King Woody the Woodwose and his Queen Twiggy is knockin’ about, too; there’s elves and dark elves and ogres and things going here and there; word is that Melmoth the Vampire Prince and his second the Lady Kohni are somewhere about and mightily pissed off with the McBoars; and the Dragoons from Tolkori is running the bar, I’m glad to see. I spends a few eyes on beer (that’s the Cornovii currency, the eye) and meets some old friends. Eventually the McBoars wakes up and starts bitin’ folks. Time for bed, says I.

Next day we’re all up bright and early and after a few mugs of tea my head is straight again. I keeps gettin’ flashes of five or six twinkly things givin’ off a lot of magick out in the woods, so off goes Mr. Pum and Gussett and the rest to see what’s what, and back they comes with a tale of these toppled stones here and there with writing on ‘em. Seems some bunch of folks tried to move one and got blown to bits by a big magicky surge. This ain’t good, I thinks, ‘cos the stones in Cornovii is what contains and directs the magick flow, and if they’re scattered about instead of in a nice tidy ring, well, it would explain a thing or two. Gussett shows me the symbols what was on one of ‘em - he wrote ‘em down on his arm, the clever chappie - and I gets an idea as to what this might all be about.

Meanwhile there’s orcs and Blue Meanies comin’ out of the woods and bashing people, as they do, but what’s scarier is that there’s these new beasties with ‘em as we haven’t seen much before. Blackish colour, big teeth. Skraith, they are: dark Fey. Bad bad news. Can’t hurt ‘em except with magick and there’s not much in the way of magick weaponry anywhere to be found.

We’re all for startin’ a war over this

Next thing I know is there’s a big ruckus in the camp and we all comes runnin’ back to see what’s happened. Cap’n Brennan’s been stabbed in the guts by one of the McBoars with no warning at all and is in the process of dyin’ messily on the grass. Ship’s Mum and Little Quirx dive on him and commence with the magickal healin’ but it’s to no avail and Brennan kicks the bucket in front of us. We’re all for startin’ a war over this, ‘cos while he wasn’t our captain he was still one of the Freebooters, but it turns out the McBoar was under the control of the Skraith at the time. Wierdest of all is that Brennan’s dissolvin’ into a pile of sticks and twigs at our feet! We found out later that it was actually a fake Brennan, a simulacrum if you will, what the cap’n had had his mage build ‘cos he was so deathly afraid of being assassinated. (By Lambkin, probably.) The real Brennan was safe and well. Nice trick, but it wouldn’t work twice.

Quirx was all tired and drained after all the healin’ she’d done so the Cutters crew took her off to one of the Clootie well recharge points. This tall thingy that called itself the Guardian of the Stones weren’t too happy about us being there but we explained that we was only passin’ through and it seemed okay with that. We lay low for about half an hour while Quirx did her meditation.

Seaman Puke and Mister Pum takes me off to have a look at two of the other stones what they’ve found. One of ‘em has symbols on it like six people all stood round in a circle holdin’ hands. Aha, thinks I, I was right. There’s six major races in Cornovii, y’see - Wose, Fomor, Human, Fey, Elf and Dark Elf - and if there’s six stones, maybe there’s a stone for each race. One of the stones has a wosey tree on it, and the other an old fey symbol, and the other the word in Elfish for human, so we reckons we’re on to something.

At sundown it’s time to take on the sad duty of pallbearer. With slow drum and steady tread we brings Cap’n Bosh to his funeral pyre. Rosie Palm and Badger hands out Holy Water to those as wants it - for those what don’t know, Holy Water is very special home-brewed raisin vodka, and the secret of makin’ it died with Bosh. The last of it gets drunk tonight, and since that’s more than a few gallons I reckon we’ll all be bladdered before midnight. Well, the folks is all gathered around, we sets him on the pile and I reads a few words what I’d wrote in memory of the man and it’s good to see folks is laughin’ as well as sobbin’. It’s what Bosh would have wanted to see. I lays the Discordian Bible on his breast and says goodbye. Lambkin ignites this red flare which he sets right in the middle of the pyre and whoosh, it all goes up in a scarlet glory.

...the Velvet Lady of Drunken Oblivion coshed me over the head that evening. You know it makes sense, mateys.

Don’t remember much else after that, but I took care to drink lots of water before the Velvet Lady of Drunken Oblivion coshed me over the head that evening. You know it makes sense, mateys.

Next day dawns. Poor old King Woody ups and gets his head chopped off by a Skraith and Queen Twiggy’s right distraught about it. In another part of the field, as they says, the FBA spends most of the morning at the sheep-wanging contest, taking turns to throw a sheep as far as you can. It’s a local tradition, they does it every year. Gussett once got married to the sheep but by the next fest he’d eaten it.

As for me, I’m gettin’ mightily pissed off that nobody’s done a thing to get those stones back up. Angus, the Celt what runs the Fest, seems to be more interested in throwin’ beer down his neck with his clansmen. Now, I got nothing against a good drinkin’ session, but if you’re going to be King of a place there comes a time when you has to put the stopper back in the bottle and start doing King things.

So I does it meself and sends runners up to all the camps to say get your arses in gear, meeting by the fire in ten minutes. Naturally it takes more like half an hour but sure enough everybody shows up, except the Dragoons and Brennan’s lot whose arses are glued to the benches in the tavern. Righty-ho, says I, here’s how it is. We needs one person of each major race to carry the stones down to the field where the wild magick’s pooled, so’s the mages can cleanse ‘em and they can be set back at the Clootie wells where they belongs. Hate to say it, but this means you lot is going to have to co-operate. This don’t go down all that well but after a bit of wrangling we gets Queen Twiggy to represent the Woses, my own Cap’n Dudley for the Humans and a little elfy bloke for the Elves. So far so good, says I, now we need a dark elf. The Drow Matron Mother’s the only one about and she says she’s got better things to do. Fine, I tells her, when the Skraith comes I’ll be only too happy to provide ‘em with a map of the site with a nice big red X showin’ the exact location of your own bleedin’ tent. Twiggy has a word with ‘er and manages to talk her around. Hurrah, we has our dark elf - for all of two bastard minutes, before she drops like a sack of spuds and we finds out that some bugger’s come up and killed her dead with a poison dagger and run away before anybody could do anything. Oh, fuckin’ marvellous. Down to three delegates again

As luck would have it we finds another Drow. Despite him seemin’ to want to kill all the Celts and vicey versa we manages to bandage up the gunshot wounds and get on with the meeting. Seaman Eldred comes up with this orc he’s caught in the woods ‘cos he thought I might want one. Bless his heart. The little strugglin’ orc gets nominated as Fomor delegate whether it wants to be or not. Five delegates. Now we just needs a Fey.

Problem with that is that there’s no Fey in this world no more. We puts our heads together and trades knowledge, and soon enough it becomes apparent that we needs to go through the Portal to get to ‘em. What’s more, once we’re in there, the Fey King’s going to need a magicky artefact of some sort what’s going to get drained dry sendin’ the fey delegate back through. Portal don’t open until much later on, so we’ve got a while. I reckons it won’t be a problem. Send one of Angus’s men through with a magick sword or somethin’, the Fey King sends us a Feydelegate (burnin’ the sword up in the process), the six delegates sort the stones out, and everything will be right again. That’s the plan.

Bugger that for a lark. Nobody owns up to havin’ any magick stuff about. Now I knows for a fact that there’s at least two magick blades somewhere, ‘cos the Skraith have been gettin’ hit with them, but nobody wants to give theirs up. Angus is takin’ the situation seriously at last and is despairin’ the lack of a magick thingy to take through. I turns to the other FBA crew members to see if they can help and to my surprise Gussett has a little magick bracelet thing he found years and years ago and has no idea what it does.

So I brings Gussett over to Angus to see if he can sell the bracelet. Gussett asks for two thousand eyes. Angus says twenty. I says oh for fuck’s sake and off I go in a fit of pique. Quirx and I cook some dinner and feel better for it. Later I finds out that Angus has wrote out a promisary note for fifteen hundred eyes for the bracelet. Bloody hell. Hope he can cover it.
Things is interrupted at this point by the Champions Contest. This is another local tradition which basically means people fights each other to see who’s best. Some of the duels is hot, fast and vicious, some is long and drawn out, but most is just comical. (This Major Sharpe bloke, what’s turned up lookin’ a bit lost, does rather well for himself. Every time he gets hit all the women fuss over him.) I stands up to fight Brennan and it’s a real challenge ‘cos he’s one hell of a swordsman and of course it goes on for ages but the crowd reckons me the winner and so I feels good for the rest of the Fest. Round two was just everybody in at once fightin’ each other, which were a bit silly, but there you go. Seaman Puke won in the end, and if I tells you she’s only ten you’ll get an idea of how seriously the whole thing got took.

Then it’s time for Idiotball (aye, more fine old local tradition) in which five people with swords face off five other people with swords and try to get an orc’s head to the other team’s goal shield. There tends to be a lot of cheatin’ involved and this year turns out better than most. Tactics include: shootin’ the other team with guns, runnin’ off with the goal shield, eatin’ concealed bananas and throwin’ the skins under the other team’s feet, waving beer at the Celts’ team and temptin’ them off the pitch, and best of all the whole FBA girls’ team takin’ their tops off as a distraction. The Erkan team from the FBA won but somebody had stole the prize money.

While all this was goin’ on, Little Quirx kept gettin’ attacked over and over by the same Blue Meanie. Every time it got killed it crumbled into ashes, but it always regenerated, whether she scattered the ashes or dunked ‘em in holy water or buried ‘em or whatever. Right pain in the arse it was. Finally she tries puttin’ all the ashes in a little bag and lo and behold, it works. Quirx now has a Blue Meanie in a bag ready to let loose any time she wants. People respects her a bit more now.

So afternoon wore into evening and I had the right pleasant job of marryin’ Badger and Rosie to one another... both of ‘em girls, you understand. There were a bit of an hiccup when it turned out that Badger was already married to Mistress Flick who had the documents to prove it but bein’ a kind soul (and seein’ as the marriage was never consummated) she let her remarry anyway.
With all this going on we’d totally forgot the portal was open. Shite. Angus and his boys headed off to it but they got to it just as it closed. Bugger arse feck. Nothing was going right. What we didn’t know was that some other feller had gone in earlier on with a magick thing, which the King of the Fey took off him, much to his annoyance. Never mind, at least we’d have our Fey delegate.

The Fey shows up soon after, a perky little bloke he is, with a great big nose. He tells us that we can call on the Fey if we really really need to by hoppin’ widdershins three times in a circle. Then he goes poof and disappears. Oh well, it were getting too dark to go fetch the stones that night anyway. Time to visit the tavern and lie low for a bit. There I has a chat with this Druid what’s come back through the portal from the Fey lands. He only left two years ago but he’s been there so long his hair’s white. Nice bloke, he is, and one of the only ones here as has the first idea what’s going on.

Some time that night Angus gets shot by his own men. Mad, those bloody Celts are. All mad.

It’s an early start next day. The Skraith are on the move and we has to get the stones back up before they can do too much damage. Everyone heads down to the firesite. It’s good to see folks gettin’ their fingers out for a change. I tries to call the delegates to order. The little orc what Eldred caught has chewed through its ropes and buggered off in the night and so we’re stuck for a Fomor delegate until Bill the Ogre says he’ll give it a go. Finally we does a little widdershins hoppin’ about the fire and there’s a flash and the Fey turns up. Six delegates at LAST. Right. Off we go.

The main body of our forces is sent into the woods to cause a lot of noise and distraction while we takes a smaller strike team from stone to stone, quietly pickin’ em up and carryin’ em to the assembly field. There’s a big hitch when two of the delegates gets bit by a snake what was sleepin’ under the stone but Quirx sorts ‘em out and before long we’re movin’ again. The woods is wierd today. There’s silver-faced things about what takes one hell of a batterin’ before they’ll go down.

After a lot of trekkin’ hither and yon we’re finally coming into the field with the last stone and wouldn’t you know it, all hell’s breakin’ loose. There’s these three Skraith stood there among the other stones, keepin’ the Jack O’ Lantern crew and the Ruination crew away from each other and the stones with forcewalls. Poor old Oy is dead, burned to ashes ‘cos he attacked one of the Skraith, and his brother Stoppit’s met his end as well. Later I found that Major Sharpe had had two of the swords what could hurt the Skraith, but hadn’t brought ‘em out of his tent until five minutes ago. Jerk me rigid if the man’s not the most goose-livered horsefelching pillock I ever did meet.

Jerk me rigid if the man’s not the most goose-livered horsefelching pillock I ever did meet

So it’s a stalemate and we looks at Oy smoulderin’ on the grass and wonders what to do next. One of the Delegates throws the last stone into the ring, what might do some good ‘cos now they’re all together, but I’m gettin’ the awful feeling that we’re too late doin’ this, and besides we still has the Skraith to deal with.

Then the Skraith do somethin’ strange. They says they wants a Freebooter to take over the festival an’ to rule as King. Cap’n Dudley says he’ll take the job, and we’re all in agreement, so the Skraith say right you are then and suddenly the force walls is gone. Hurrah for King Ernest Dudley, we all says. Oh yeah, says the Celts, we ain’t too happy about that. Stand against him and you stand against us, says the Skraith.

Oh dear.

At this point I remembers somethin’ Crampon’s been tryin’ to tell me. About how the Cap’n had seemed to have strange powers all through this weekend. Crushin’ throats at a distance, that kind of thing. I’ve been so busy running around trying to sort the stones out that I’ve not noticed what’s been goin’ on under my nose.

I tries to get the mages together to cleanse the stones, but when we has a go our hands go black and tingly. We don’t try again. The Skraith have gotten a foothold in the realm. Arse. Nothing more we can do, for now. The situation may not be good, but at least it’s stable.

Off we trudge up the hill again. Lookin’ over, I see King Ernest’s smilin’ in an way that gives me the horrors, and just for a moment I think I see his eyes go all black. Trick of the light, maybe. I don’t know.

Mayfest ended here, but the story is definitely TO BE CONTINUED.