Kaolins’ Tale

It was the night before the first moot, and a light shines in the window of one of the log cabins that make up the commune of Nimbin. Inside, the room was long and narrow; it stank of sweat and of hot fevered nights. In the pit at one end of the hall, the fire smouldered low and red, casting a ruddy glow through the greasy and strangely scented smoke that filled the hall.
Three figures sat in postures that ranged from at catatonic slump to a quivering full lotus: Kaolin was idly discussing musk-ox hygiene with Lanolin and Conectas. It was late, and they were all quite high, which may go some way towards explaining their topic of discussion. The door opened and a gangly figure stumbled in from the night. After a couple of tries, the new arrival managed to line up some words and spoke, slightly too fast:
“Dudes! Its the moot tomorrow! Any of you going?!”
“Man, It always sneaks up on me. I promised Dantarrian that I’d go, like months ago, and then forgot about it .” It sounded like Kaolin was going “errrr… guys, could you give me a hand? I can’t uncross my legs.”

As far as Kaolin was concerned, the following day dawned far too early. The sun glowed mockingly above the eastern horizon as he walked bleary-eyed to the transport circle. By the time he’d arrived, his headache, which he’d woken up with often enough that he only noticed it by its absence, was passing. Travelling itself was the normal combination of gut wrenching nausea, and an explosion of light that started behind his eyes and dribbled down his spine.
Kaolin made his way uncertainly out of the circle and waited for the lights to stop flashing. It was with some relief that he observed. “ I’ve probably arrived in the right place; There can’t be many markets with such a mixed clientele going on today.” If you did things wrong, Travelling could bring you out anywhere.

Some friendly green lumpy people pointed him in the direction of the Unicorn’s camp, and he wandered in with a cheery wave to the gatedudes. It was half way through muster; Queen Adelinea was in the middle of an inspiring rant about some vital political stuff which didn’t touch upon the legal status of any interesting herbs and alkoide roots whatsoever, which Kaolin attended with the appearance of interest and a couple of snide comments to Dantarrian, who ignored them. Montague stormed in and held forth on the importance of a Republican government, and the oppressiveness of monarchy in general, before storming off, denying the half-completed censes. Not denying anything about it in particular, but denying it, as it were, in pure essence.
“Those two should, like, chill out and maybe shared a joint.” The rest of the Pen-cethrin were not greatly concerned, being more committed to their work with the guilds.

The market was a cheerful assembly of beings of various species, and nations, all busily intent on not treading on each others toes, and in some cases, on selling each other things. Kaolin drifted through them, occasionally pausing to look at something shiny. After the quiet and somewhat simplistic life he’d had in the woods, it was all rather bewildering, but on the other hand, compared to the Things he’d seen in dreams, it was incredibly dull, So Kaolin managed to wander vaguely through the tents without gawking too much, albeit with the caution of one who has been assaulted by giant pink potatoes once too often.
Somewhat ominously, there were more weapon’s and armour suppliers than blokes selling exotic wonders that’d fallen off the back of a cart, and no soap-box mounted efforts at public speech at all. Still, this was Dragon’s land, maybe they didn’t know what a market was meant to be like. The Transport circle he’d arrived in was quite interesting; rather than being surrounded by an eldritch glow, it was defined by a ring of toadstools, which Kaolin knelt down and examined closely. Giant toadstools, he decided, which needed to be taken home, cut up, dried, prepped and smoked.

The Archer’s guild had a small tent detached from the rest of the guilds. A couple of senior archers were hanging around, generally being louché at a couple of top-knotted Kender. After joining up, Kaolin was told that there was competition tomorrow, as well as some training, which he really should attend. It was quite informal, but showing up would give him something to do on the morrow. As he left, a white haired wolfkin started sniffing at him, This, it turned out was Stormclaw, PackStorm’s alpha male. After a couple of seconds he gruffly told Kaolin to lay off the dope.
“Urg… My shaman does that stuff…. Makes him act funny.”
Kaolin’s attempt to discuss his faith in the wisdom and knowledge of shamans in general trailed off into Stormclaw’s unblinking yellow stare. Apparently satisfied that Kaolin wasn’t going to say anything else involving the word ‘karma’, the pack leader loped off, to a slightly forlorn cry of “ ‘bye hairy dude”

The Pencetherin had brought a wide selection of individuals to the moot of nations, and they, in turn introduced Kaolin to a blur of faces, none of which were particularly memorable. Later in the evening, watching the Unicorn’s High command attempt to party without the benefit of pharmaceutical aids, some gentlebeings in smart uniform tabards walked in looking very orderly. This, it turned out was the Order, led by their second in command, Logan, who had led the Pen-cetherin back when Kaolin was doing too much acid to remember him.
“I’m sure I’d remember you, only I was doing a lot of acid back then” he explained. Of Logan, and his various bodies, treacheries, denials and deaths, he knew little beyond that they were… various, confusing and so wildly implausible that only one far down the road to Enlightenment would claim to understand. He got away with it ‘coz of big brother Nathan, or so it appeared. The sound people imitating chickens emerged form the command tent, “Is it me or does everyone find it humiliating that our bosses spend their time pretending to be barnyard fowl?”

The following morning, the Dragons’ high command, who were hosting the Moot, stood in the market square and shouted. The shout seemed to consist of a couple of basic points:
1)We hate you.
2)We will kill you.
3)That goes for the Guilds as well.
Despite these cogent arguments, nothing much happened, and Kaolin wandered off to demonstrate his skills of bowman ship to the assembled ranks of the guild. Startled by his manifest lack of ability, he nonetheless came joint last in the competition.
After the competition, He stayed to go hunting. It should be simple enough. Shoot some wild pigs, hide behind the big blokes with the shields if they got angry and started to gore people, then shoot them again until dead, skin and gut them, finally go home. At worst there’d be bears, or maybe some mad mage in the woods.
Travelling was more nauseating than usual, the lights brighter. As they faded, Kaolin could see that they’d arrived in a the verdant green jungle, alive with the buzz of insects, and very different from the sort of forest you’d expect to find game in.
The Transport circle moreover, refused to take them back; it appeared to be broken. After a couple of frantic attempts to re-open the circle, those present gave up, and, with remarkably little fear, considering the power needed to interfere with Void magic, the hunting party proceeded cautiously into the woods, where they quickly found there were cunningly concealed traps that could put a pair of cross-bow bolts through someone’s body. Then there were sort of angry animate stonedudes, and a remarkably calm, albeit very hostile, native tribe. The tribesdudes wanted the hunters off their land; the guild members explained that they wanted that too, and so they got on with shooting each other. The tribes dudes were remarkably well-dressed for the heat and had some staggeringly advanced crossbows, especially considering their somewhat simplistic efforts at diplomacy; they also weren’t at all chilled in any way. A couple of the guild members got away, hopefully to a different transport circle, which someone had said might be around the place somewhere. StormCalm died, and Kaolin, StormClaw, Gregor and an unnamed unicorn were taken captive by Manalion’s followers. It was a long night, in a cage made of branches and vines, with a wolfkin on the night of the full moon, especially once Malanion had appropriated Kaolin’s joints. The entertainment wasn’t up to much either. You expected wild-eyed guys smeared with okra waving bone-bedecked staffs to leap around a roaring fire whooping and hollering in a frenzy to the pounding rhythm of log drums. There weren’t any, and it was very dull watching other people carouse.

“Yo! Ancestor dude, that stuffs a bit strong.” It was- in the course of a elfin lifetime, tolerances to one’s drug of choice can approach a couple of hundred times the unadapted norm, and the inhabitants of Nimbin rolled according to their needs. Unfortunately, the advice fell of deaf ears, and the following day, Manolin was not in the best of moods.