1234, Spring

It is afternoon in Leven. Looking at the strange stones, there is, according to Maedbh a bit of a faerie aura around them. There are footprints of some very large creatures, which seem to fade as they head into the woods. Fade as if the large animal got lighter and lighter.

When she thinks nobody from the village is within earshot, Maedbh starts waving her arms around wildly, and shouting in Latin. Apparently this is needed to make some hard types of magic to work.

The clever magi seem stumped as to how to find out what is going on, and I suggest that maybe we wait until nightfall to see if weird stuff happens, since the villagers said that was when weird things happened.  It’s considered that this might be a good idea. Allistor does cast a spell to dig a hole under the stone. The earth moves out of the way, revealing a large number of bones. Knox is sent down to take a look, and he starts throwing some of them back up. There’s a number that he doesn’t recognise.

Maedbh tries magic again to identify them, and her hair goes briefly frizzy.

Knox recons that some of them are deer and horses. Others are too big for that. Maybe elephants? They look like they could be some of the stranger animals on the stone. Some have cut marks on them.

We push the bones back into the hole, and Alistair stops concentrating and the earth goes back to what is was before.

I send a grog back to the inn to tell them to expect us for dinner, then the rest of us go looking for a guard. Eventually we find a guy in ill-fitting (but reasonable quality) armour and walking around the village. He seems very tired, and not really concentrating. We ask him about things that he’s seen. There have been some odd things, such as large foxes. But there have been deer and horses moving impossibly fast and jumping over trees. There have been large animals crashing into trees and then vanishing.

He also find the mangled body of a traveller, his flesh ripped off the bones, but not eaten.

We head back to the inn to have some more of the stew, which is still excellent. After that, as night falls, we head back towards the stones. There are streamers of greenish light in the sky to the north east, from the direction of the stones. The guards seem to have headed in the other direction, patrolling in groups carrying torches.

The magi cast magic to protect us all, and to allow us to see in the dark.

As we approach the stones, we see there is a bright light coming from the stone that looks like daylight. 

I am surprised by a large rabbit as it darts across the path, being chased by a large fox. They ‘vanish’ through a hedge, and according to Know they simply moved through the hedge as if it wasn’t there. There are tracks on the ground though, and they are visible on the other side of the hedge. But no sign that they disturbed the hedge in any way,

At the stone, the light seems to be pouring out of a hole. Beyond is a field bathed in daylight. Maedbh wanders up to the hole, and says that the ‘aura’ here is eight. Which is apparently high. Which means that the other side is probably very close to the true land of the faerie. What is really odd, is that as we move around the hole, we can always see the same view – a hole that leads into Arcadia.

After discussion about whether the magi want to go inside, it is decided to seal up the hole by moving the stone so that it plugs the hole. The lights go out as it blocks the gateway completely.

There is a slightly trembling in the ground for about 30 seconds, and then things calm down.

Allistor lifts the stone again, revealing light and a widening hole. We can see Arcadia again, and there is a slight trembling of the ground and flickering of lights. He then seals it back up again.

Maedbh things that someone has been punching holes into regios. Jack doesn’t quite understand what is going on, but apparently there was a difference between the original hole and the new hole that Allistor created when he moved the rock back out of the hole.

But the important thing is that the lights have now vanished, and things seem to be back to normal. Normal as in no strange beasts or glowing lights.

It’s possible that some of the magical animals are trapped on this side of the gate, but maybe that isn’t our problem. We head back to the inn, and after some knocking at the door, and scowling at us for coming back late, we are let in and manage to get some rest. Maedbh tells them that nothing particularly exciting happened.

In the morning, we wake to a normal sunny day. Heading back to the stones, we see that there are fresh elephant tracks. Knox tries to track them, but Allistor strides ahead and does a much better job. They lead towards a patch of trees where some large brownish greyish thing is resting.

Jack heads towards it. It seems to stir, and a large ‘limb’ hanging from its face waves around a bit. It is brownish red and grey. The skin is grey, but there is some reddish hair on it. It has four thick legs, and big floppy ears and two big teeth like things sticking out its face. It stands up, it’s about as tall as I am.

I feed it some bread, which it seems very grateful. We send for more bread and apples, and it very gratefully scoffs them down. We think it is some type of elephant, but I try to pretend that it is just a strange horse – a strategy that seems to work.

Our plan is to take it back to the covenant.

It takes several days to get it back across Scotland, and we have to take the long way to avoid the larger stretches of water, but we do succeed in getting it home. We build a shelter for it in the valley outside the covenant, and it seems happy to stay with us.

It seems to have taken a fondness for me, and I introduce my family to it. My children seem to be quite happy to ride on it and spoil it by feeding it lots of apples.