[center][u]Summer/Winter of 1223: Storm Rising[/u][/center]
It is now time for a flashback. Gotvinus is told of ruin being brought upon his sodales due to mundane interference. Rheingasse is under house ransom by Duke Waleran III of Limburg; demanding Wilhelm to craft him magic items to make up for his providing of them to Margrave Philip II of Namur in their war.
Gotvinus makes way to Cologne, readily evading Waleran's stationed soldiers for an audience with the co-leader of the Apple Gild. Wilhelm is unsure what's happening, other than hearing of rumours that Philip got ahold of some fairly effective magic items, and evidently Waleran believes he provided them. After some general questioning, Gotvinus headed out for Philip's castle, hearing rumours of a guerilla catapult team and his own castle able to slay entire teams of horses at a glance.
Posing as a diplomat hired by Waleran, Gotvinus obtains an audience. It's a long-winded set of time, but he leaves behind a point of Warp using his more potent mind-reading magic. Philip was approached by a poor man named Boris who claimed to be a magus from Cologne, selling the Staff of Vilano and the Phobos Flagrum; both bearing Hermetic runes. Philip had gladly paid the magus much for the items, then proceeded to hire a team of half a dozen men to go forth with the staff and wage war upon Waleran's castles in retaliation for his aggression. As Philip's own castle is under seige (Gotvinus use simple ReMe magic to get past Waleran's men) the Phobos Flagrum is kept within the castle and brought out twice a day to kill some of the horses. Gotvinus leaves with a 'failure' to satisfy potential negotiations between Waleran and Philip, and makes his leave.
Once outside, he makes haste to Waleran, this time under the explicit position of being an envoy from the Order of Hermes. Making his case, he tells the Duke that the items were never supposed to be sold as it goes against their code, and so Rheingasse's aid under his threat simply cannot be done. Waleran is unconvinced, but is convinced that were Philip's own magic items to be removed, he would cease attempting to force obedience from Rheingasse and other magi for aid in his fight against Philip II.
Gotvinus travels for a time and finds the location of the team carrying the Staff of Vilano, strangely unarmored and bearing not a single bit of metal, using their position as serjeants to the Marquis of Namur as payment for drinks when in the tavern. Staying out of sight, Gotvinus manages to overhear their boisterous carousing, bragging of their invulnerability to iron weapons so long as they willingly bear one in turn. Later in secret, Miruna overheard them recount the tale of a strange man in rags giving them the blessing as thanks for giving him bread.
Later that night, under the cover of invisibility, MuIm for the voice of the wind, and sleep magic, Gotvinus keeps the men asleep and absconds with the staff. Under the rush of success with magic, Gotvinus then disguises himself as a merchant to go before Philip and slaps down the Mentem until he walks out the door with the whip. At a later meeting with Wilhelm, Gotvinus agrees to not lay down the law on Wilhelm, who had used magic to bankrupt several of Waleran's soldiers and their access to funds through gambling; on the condition Wilhelm subtly resolves the conflict between Waleran and Philip.
Gotvinus impounds the magic items to Durenmar for storage, their sigils showing their construction being from before the Schism War. He then gets paid for his service and returns to the covenant.
And now we return to the present, three birds circle the inside portion of the aegis.
The goose lands on Tim's lab and explodes most of the roof with lightning. Struggling to think of what to do, Joseph spontaneously casts an elemental version of Demon's Eternal Oblivion, successfully destroying 3 Might. Due to Weird Magic, he does get blasted in the face with lightning from the effort, but the penetration fails to do a thing. The elemental blows away their grogs, failing to even budge the magi's hair because of the Aegis. Karl targets the owl with a spontaneous MuAu to transform 13 Might into stone for a day, knocking it into Incapacitated.
Threatened by these magi, the two elementals swerve down and surround Karl and Joseph's heads for their suffocate power. Each of them attempt to cast a spell, but fail to penetrate their magic resistance. Not trusting their ability to continue doing magic with two fatigue levels already on their person, they opt to sit down and recover a fatigue, as the elementals can't tell they can still breathe.
After a minute or so, the elementals realize it's not working and begin fighting the others, blowing everything everywhere and beginning to suffocate others...
duh duh duh dunna chargin’ my attack
Using the arcane connection from some of the collateral damage, they enhance their penetration and heavily damage them with MuAu for the same effect as before. One of the Black Cloaks nearly chokes to death because it was transformed into goose feathers while in his mouth/throat (Joseph's weird magic again). But the threat is now handled, and they store the transformed bits of vis in air tight jars at the suggestion of Sanagos; who they are believing to not have the Gift since they've yet to see him cast a single spell.
Next is exploring the ball of violet energy in the crater below that the elementals crawled out of. Through experimentation and Magic Theory, they eventually deduce it seems to essentially be an excessively Warped, 10 pase diameter, circle ward against Animal, Terram, Aquam, and Herbam that's been around for anywhere from 50 to 200 years. It's carved onto a plate of brass inscribed with various Hermetic Forms indicating what it's warding against, but seems to be otherwise empty. After a couple days of excavation, they get the hemisphere completely exposed with a walkway to it. Stripping naked, Gotvinus enters the circle to start using Intellego magics; including a lack of aura and the presence of regio boundary. As he exited, he swore he heard the rustling of pages. Juniper goes in next. Within the boundary of the ward is two layers of regionnes, the middle one seeming to be an empty void, and the top-most one filled with clouds and sunlight along with a huge tome floating within.
