Avalon Calling
Wining, dining, and unready-king-meeting over, the Danger Gang resumes their trip to Avalon. First up: a disappointingly uneventful overnight at some big henge or other made of stones. But atop Glastonbury Tor, they meet a solitary monk, Jago, with plenty of bland and barely nourishing food for all! He tells them of a nearby Thorn that sprouted from Joseph of Arimathea's staff, with vague healing powers...he is still more vague about the disused portions of his monastery, refusing offers of renovation help. Ever suspicious, the DG take a couple of passes bewitching him into being more forthcoming, and finally learn that a trapdoor in the ruins leads to an elven burial ground and the back door to Hell. Now that's more like it!
The dungeon's pretty straightforward (although the trapdoor is iron, not an elvish favorite): a room of sword-handed skeletons, a spiral ever downward. In the last room they meet a belligerent, armed Welshman--Gwyn ap Nudd--who tells them that due to a devil's bargain with the Lady, he is guarding the back door to not Hell, but Avalon, which is super convenient apart from, you know, the belligerent, armed Welshman guarding it. But he only nearly kills Kolya, and is almost totally dead now, except that his bones keep trying to sneakily reassemble when you turn your back. (It's a Death Knight thing.)
The door he was guarding leads to the Lady's creepy beehive of bones, Caer Oeth Anoeth, full of dangerous (but possibly delicious?) ghost honey and pesky giant mummy bees. Through that is beautiful downtown Avalon, where they are greeted by the one-man welcoming committee of giant French-speaking Saracen Abdur Rahman--in the nicest possible way! THERE ARE GIANT WHEELS OF CHEESE. Asked about Isaac the Jew, he says he knows a horse of that description...wha?!? He then bounds off to find the Lady, which hiatus Zombres uses to teleport back to Chrysopolis with their nicest stuff so Miss Avalon doesn't get grabby, as she is wont to do.
You know what else she's wont to do? Assign side quest after side quest. But flattered by the DG's dual gifts of the Hill of Light gemerald and the Shield of Agamenon, she is totes willing to introduce them to Isaac the Jewish Horse and talk to them about Ikulu after only THREE impossible tasks. (If she's not lying.) To wit: 1. bring back the self-playing harp Telyn Teirtu (probably up Jack's beanstalk); 2. bring back the shears & comb of Twrch Trwyth (who by the look of the name should be hanging out in Wales somewheres); and 3. bring back some of that delicious container-shattering honey from Caer Oeth Anoeth. Should be doable before breakfast, right? Unable to think around this wily minx, the DG more or less accepts, and her dog of all colors shows them to the coast, where they sail off to Cornwall, there to plot their next move.
