The widow wails

The Widow Wails...

[OOC, this account may have inaccuracies as I was not present for some of the run. Do feel free to add to this, or to correct any details that are wrong. I have tried to be factual rather than to make assumptions as to the ending of the event. This account is also posted on the RP forum pages at http://egyptseco.vlexo.net/b/index.php?showtopic=16 where it can be discussed! With huge thanks to Orrin and everyone at PRET involved in creating such a fun event. I hope this account does it justice].

Yesterday a strange sound was heard across Egypt and many attended to this call for aid. After much casting about, we came together in Adn, to discover a man named Orrin begging for our aid. He had found a poor woman by the name of Phile, upon the road and was asking us all to aid her.

The widow’s story was this: her husband, who she called ‘Akki’ in love, but had a longer name in truth, and herself had visited this land to trade. Whilst she had been searching for herbs, she heard Akki arguing with a man in Greek (their native tongue). Then, no more! Her husband was gone!

She entreated us to help her in her search for him. She was extremely distressed and had fled the area she was in but could remember it well – a winding road in mountains, in a place where herbs were plentiful. We cast about, in groups and singly. At this point I was called into another dream and some time passed where I slept under the stars, dreaming of sea lilies. Some ranged to the East, some to the West, but I believe it was Taemon who first suggested this place was the area called Heaven’s Gate.

Under the night sky we ran with Phile, trying to at once console her and also to discover more of this crime. At last many came to the coast of Heaven’s Gate, but found nothing but sand and the water. Ranging ahead, Linalia and spy brought us to a place where an oasis was formed.

At that moment, Sariel felt the gods whisper to her as Anubis’s boat drew away in the darkness. She called us into the oasis and we searched therein for a clue. Poor Maevre stumbled in the grass looking ahead to us and not beneath her feet; alas!, but it was zeus that finally found it, a quiet marker in a coppice of palm trees.

We read the inscription. I had dropped my quill in the excitement (or perhaps as I slumbered), but it stated that here indeed, lay the body of this fair man; his Ka drawn away into the next life. But; what strangeness was this! The grave was there by ‘the royal decree of Egypt!’

There was horror amongst us. Had Wahim ventured forth from his scriptorium and done this, or had Sami, that lover of games and friendship, turned in rage and struck this man down. Of this last, Booboo swore it could not be so with tears of conviction on her fair cheeks.

But of course, one of us said, and Phile confirmed... the man who abducted this poor traveller spoke the treacherous tongue of the Greeks. And who have we heard recently, someone said, speaking in such accented tones? Nikomedes, the advisor to Sami, the one who mocks our attempts to pick herbs and laughs even when we win Sami’s tourneys as weak and pathetic. Could it have been him, acting in treachery?!

Many swore that Nikomedes would be found. Others expressed their doubt; in both the widow’s tale and indeed, the assumption of this Grecian perfidy. But at the last, we contemplated the grave of this poor man before we departed, and consoled the gentle widow in her grief. I gave her a flower, that she might plant it in memory and sorrow. A mystery...and a murder...

Ptahiah of the Zfree people, who is also the Scribe RosaLuteria.

Other Phile Storyline Links

• The widow wails - 18/05/09 Account of the event written by Ptahiah
• Phile's Concern - 00/05/09
• Phile Explains! - 22-07-09 (Phile chats with DP Korrin)
• Phile Talks to Murtha and Voyna - 25-07-09
• Phile's Sorrow - 26-07-09 (Akakios'wake)