Recently, Achaea saw the end of what was probably the single most complicated event/storyline ever run by Iron Realms on any of our games, containing over thirty distinct sub-plots that contributed to the overall story. For those who are unfamiliar, events like these in our games are a mixture of God/admin-driven story and player-driven story. We seed the story with its initial elements (or sometimes take the seeds of a story from what players are doing and go from there), and then the event/story becomes a cycle, with players and admin alternately driving and being driven by the actions of the other.

Frequently, after major events, we’ll do a write-up of the event that puts the story elements in a single document or set of documents, often written ‘in-character’, in order to dramatize the event further, allow the major player participants to enjoy some credit and time in the sun, and record it for posterity. I’m going to post said documents here, in the order they took place. This is part 1. I’ll occasionally place notes in [ ] for those who aren’t familiar with Achaea’s lore.

Subj: Night eternal: news from the shadows

Upon a cheaply printed sheet of newsprint, smudged with ink:

As any fool with eyes can see, strange happenings are afoot, my friends. One only has to gaze up at the sky in daytime to see, well, that there ain’t no such thing as daytime. An eclipse, sure, I can accept that, but this ain’t no natural eclipse. And that beam of light, down there in the Southern Vashnars[a mountain range]? Ain’t right. I’ve been keeping my eyes wide open and my ears to the ground, pounding the pavement seeking out the truth of things for you, my readers.

The girl down at the tavern has a cousin who lives near the ocean, and they write back and forth a lot. The other day she told me, a few days before it all happened, all the tritons in the waters down there up and left. He saw ‘em board some big shells pulled by whales, no joke, and off they went. Not a glimpse of them since.

It’s like my cat, Speckle, he’d been acting all jumpy-like, spooked, just before it all went down. Everyone knows animals are more perceptive. Not that I’m calling tritons animals, oh no no. But maybe they could sense it in the tides. Weird stuff.

So there was a huge party in Hashan for the opening of a planetarium, everybody knows that. All the bigwigs were invited - city councillors, House Lords and Ladies, Church prelates, a veritable list of who’s who. I hear even Epicurus and Averroes came all the way from Ashtan and Shallam, and the Tsol’aa King from the Aalen, the mayor of New Thera, all kinds, all dressed up.

This planetarium, some mysterious rich guy donated it out of the goodness of his heart, right? Right. So from what I hear, the rich guy, Tavarius, demonstrated a new contraption of his in the middle of the party, and this demonstration showed him some location in the Southern Vashnars. And he just leaves the party, and no one can find him, or this place in the Vashnars.

Then the eclipse happens. Wow! I’ve never seen anything like it. Of course, now the charm has worn off a bit, seeing as how it’s been almost a month of the same old, same old, dark in the day, dark in the night. I’ll tell ya what, I’ll be glad to see some sunlight again. For that matter, I’d be glad to see moonlight again. The moon is darkened as well, and I hear tell there’s been no sight of the Lady Ourania[Goddess of the Mooon] since this began.

Of course, if things were left to nature, the planets would have moved off again and the sun would be shining, birds would be singing, and all that happy stuff. But Tavarius did something to make it stick, and now those planets - Noxtra, Somnutra, Lunastra - are locked to the sun. And now he’s behind some magical shield up there on Mount Nicator leeching power from the sun. Doesn’t anybody have a hammer tattoo around here? [Hammer tats are used to smash magical shields.]

There’s some who say he’s doing it for our own good, and he means to use that power to give us all immortality. I don’t know about you, but me, I’m not that trusting. All I know is, things sure have gone to hell since this eclipse started.

Every night since the eclipse began, there’s an eerie roar in some city, and some demon called the nychtaur starts rampaging and killing folks. People kill it, but it’s hard to take down, and the next night — there’s that same roar again.

Don’t even get me started on Ashtan. Not that it’s ever normal in Ashtan, but it’s weirder than usual, what with chaos vortexes pickin’ people up and spittin’ them out in other places, and who knows what those things are doin’ to your insides while you’re in there?

I hear the forests took it hard, and the forest spirits disappeared. I don’t know what happened exactly, but a few days after the eclipse the forests started shining with some green light, and they’ve seemed healthy enough since then. But how long can that last? Green things need sunlight to grow, and that’s a fact. Don’t you start about the Darkenwood, that’s what Mama calls an a-no-ma-ly.

What happens next? I don’t make the news, I just report it. Something tells me there’s gonna be plenty more to report.

Your faithful independent reporter,
Maxwell Grant