Rhiannon's Visit to the Library of Cad Gadu, Part 2 (Spring-Summer 1227)
========================================================================

Having found most of the magi of Cad Gadu unwilling or unable to do you
the simple favor of admitting you to the library to research Tribunal
history, you finally turned to Lleison the Crooked, Primus of the House.

Lleison's personal assistant is a young woman named Branwen.  She
reminds you in some ways of Gwenever: she projects the same kind of
efficient leadership.  You had to make an appointment through her to see
Lleison.  As much as you wanted to keep the meeting low-key, Lleison
insisted on receiving you in Cad Gadu's grand audience chamber, the same
cavernous hall where Lleison took your oath of membership in the Order
several years ago.

Sure enough, Lleison put on the shimmering Robes of the Dusty Dawn for
the meeting.  Strangely enough, Lleison did most of the talking.  Even
though you had requested the meeting so you could request access to the
library, Lleison immediately started rambling about the glorious history
of Cad Gadu and the accomplishments of its past Primii.  The only people
present for this lecture were yourself and Branwen, and when you glanced
at Branwen for help in shutting the old codger up for a second, Branwen
just rolled her eyes and shook her head.

So Lleison went on about how Pralix had first built the place as a
fortress for herself and her followers, and then how she had dedicated
it as the headquarters of the Ordo Miscellanea back when the British
magi had tried to split from the Order.  Then somewhere, he believes
during the Schism War, Pralix disappeared and the solidarity of House Ex
Miscellanea fractured.  Cad Gadu began a long decline that culminated
with the humiliation of being sacked by an army of mere mundanes- Cad
Gadu, the fortress that had once withstood the full onslaught of
Dav'Nalleous and his supernatural army!

Sometime after about half an hour of self-repetitious preaching, Lleison
abruptly came around to his point: Cad Gadu was a symbol of
the prestige of House Ex Miscellanea, and the house was a laughingstock
largely because its Domus Magna had sunk deep into Winter.  Lleison had
made frequent, public statements that he intended to rebuild his
covenant to its former glory.  And he needed you, Rhiannon, to help.

Anegin's line is greatly respected within House Ex Miscellanea.  There
are many in the House who still remember the prominent role your ancestor
played in recruiting Pralix's army.  Even though your pater, Elwyn, is
mistrusted by the Quaesitoris, your words in Tribunal will carry weight
with the rank and file of House Ex Miscellanea.  There will come a time
when Lleison will need an advocate at Tribunal, and Lleison hopes you
will return his favor of letting you into the library.

There's more.  A strong, up-and-coming covenant like Spiritus Draconis
can do a lot to help pull Cad Gadu out of its torpor.  He hopes, for
instance, that Spiritus Draconis' well-known silver mine can provide a
needed infusion of cash to Cad Gadu, provided of course some equitable
trading relationship can be worked out.  And as young magi like yourself
mature, they will no doubt train apprentices.  New blood is one of the
things Cad Gadu will need in the future.

The Grand Tribunal is coming up.  A major part of the upcoming
Stonehenge Tribunal's agenda will be to choose delegates.  Lleison, as
Primus of a House, is automatically priveliged to attend the Grand
Tribunal.  Three other delegates are to be chosen by vote.  At the Grand
Tribunal, each delegate is allowed to propose only one topic for
discussion, but the Grand Tribunal is then obliged to give that topic
thorough consideration.  Everyone at the Stonehenge Tribunal meeting of
1227 will may vote for only one representative, and the three candidates
who have the most votes will be sent.  They will use the sigili of their
supporters in all votes of the Grand Tribunal.  Magi who voted for
candidate who lost the race to become delegates are allowed to give
their sigili to one of the winners. 

The question, Lleison summarized wryly, is which two representatives
will the Tribunal choose, other than Blackthorn's chosen puppet?  Grand
Tribunal delegates wield great power, and the election struggle should
be fierce enough to test the alliances of the Tribunal's power blocs.
It is, therefore, highly appropriate that Spiritus Draconis go into this
Tribunal with its eyes open.

For that reason, Lleison readily agreed to grant you access to the
library.  He asked Branwen to write down a specific letter that spelled
out exactly what priveleges you were to have, and present that letter,
with his seal, to Gwydion.  He paused long enough to explicitly say that
he did this as a gesture of goodwill to you and your covenant, nothing
more.  Then, with a mad grin and cackle, he said, "see you at the
Tribunal!" and teleported out of the room (blink!).

Branwen's letter certainly did the trick.  The terms she drew up were:
  * You were permitted to enter the library and inspect any of its
    books, provided a representative of Cad Gadu was in your immediate
    presence as long as you stayed in the library.  Suitable
    representatives were Gwydion, Branwen, or any magus.
  * You were allowed to remove books from the library subject to the
    permission of Cad Gadu's representative.  The only grounds on which
    permission could be withheld were if the book dealt with the
    Hermetic Arts, or if it were in exceptionally fragile condition.
  * You were not allowed to make copies of anything, and had to agree to
    a search of your belongings before you entered the library and 
    immediately before you left the covenant.  If you broke this rule,
    or refused to submit to the parting search, Lleison the Crooked
    promised to challenge you to certamen and, if victorious, force your
    compliance.

The third provision was just to placate Gwydion's paranoia.  It could
actually be turned against Cad Gadu to mean that if you could beat
Lleison in certamen, then they couldn't prevent you leaving with a copy
of a book of theirs; but the likelihood of your winning against Lleison
is miniscule, given his background.

So, Gwydion read the letter and became rather sheepishly cooperative.
In fact, he took the opportunity your inspection of the library offered
to re-organize the collection.  It is remotely possible that he managed
to hide something from you whilst moving all the books around, but if he
were motivated to be that devious, he could just as easily sneak in at
night and smuggle out anything and everything he wanted to hide.

Delving Into the Library of Cad Gadu
------------------------------------
The library was a surprisingly small room, only about 15' by 15', with
six dilapidated chests of books, two lecterns, and heavy wooden shutters
on its windows.  The shutters were rotted and some weather had clearly
gotten into the room over the years, taking its toll on many of the
books.

One of the chests was so rusted that the key no longer worked and
you had to open it with magic.  Gwydion cringed when you did that-- in
spite of his neglect of the library, he appears to take genuine pride in
the collection.  (You gathered that in addition to being librarian,
Gwydion was also Autocrat of Cad Gadu, and since most of the magi no
longer relied on the library for magical studies, he had been content to
let sleeping dogs lie.)  This proved to contain several tractatus on
various Hermetic Arts: off limits to you, but a potentially valuable
find for Cad Gadu.  Instead of being stacked neatly, spine facing down,
and chained securely in place, they had just been thrown into the chest
like a child's toys. 

Another chest, double-locked and bound in iron, was so old that Gwydion
didn't even have a key that fit it.  Opening it was simple, thanks to
spontaneous Rego Terram magic.  This turned out to contain old Tribunal
records- exactly what you had been looking for!  They were, alas,
fragmentary, but went all the way back to the founding of the Stonehenge
Tribunal in 956, Age of Pisces (A.D. 817).  There were only spotty
records from about 980-1040, then a large gap in the
records from 1136 to 1164, and two much later missing records from
the Tribunal of 1199 and 1207 A.P. (A.D. 1060 and 1067).  The last
record in that chest was the Stonehenge Tribunal of 1248, which you know
from Elwyn's teachings about Hermetic politics was the last valid
Tribunal held at Cad Gadu before a string of inquorate meetings that
illustrated, in Elwyn's opinion, how the Stonehenge Tribunal had lost
its cohesion and no longer functioned as a political entity.

Finally, you found a chest of books that looked like there had been an
effort made to restore them.  Some had been re-bound, and all of them
had relatively fresh notes in the margins in a hand you learned belonged
to Madoc the Quaesitor.  Evidently, Madoc hadn't simply hoarded his
source material on the history of House Ex Miscellanea, but carefully
annotated and restored the valuable House records.  It must have taken
him several years of effort, and you would think he would have been
proud of his work and eager to share his House's heritage with a fellow
member.  He must *really* dislike Elwyn.

On a more ominous note, you could also see that Madoc's historical books
had been carefully censored.  You had heard that after the Schism War,
the Quaesitoris had purged from all records of the Order the name and
symbol of the Renounced House.  You learned from oral tradition that the
name of this House was Diedne.  You never really believed that the
Quasitoris could go through all the books in the Order and stamp out an
important part of its early history, but here it is in front of you.
When Madoc found those books, they had been intact, having survived the
zealous censorship of the dark, suspicious years after the Schism War,
only to have their rare and precious accounts of that period obliterated
recently: perhaps within your own lifetime.  And some Intellego Herbam
magic showed you that the words weren't just blotted out with ink or
sanded off the parchment: Hermetic magic could see through such clumsy
mundane censorship to read the words underneath.  These books had been
censored in a more dreadful and effective manner: they had been
mutilated with ritual magic.  

It has been said that House Quaesitor knows secret rituals that it
jealously guards from outsiders.  You always thought such rituals were
investigative types of magic, or perhaps eccentric ceremonies from the 
long-lost Cult of Mercury.  Evidently, their secrets are not limited to
such innocuous pursuits.  Madoc the Quaesitor holds the office of
Quaesitor, but he was not brought up in the House of the Quaesitoris
(the true name of that house is Guernicus).  He could not have known the
ritual spells that could truly censor a Hermetic book.  And, sure
enough, you soon found he wasn't the magus who cast those rituals: on
the back of the title page of each book was the seal of the Quaesitor
Evodius of Aquae Sulis.

Now, you have two rich sources of information: the official
Tribunal records, and the (expurgated) history of House Ex Miscellanea.
You have time to study only one of these in detail.  The Tribunal
records will serve as a tractatus on Hermetic Law, and the House records
serve as a summa on Organization Lore: Order of Hermes.  Which would you
like to spend a season studying?

For your work in getting into the library, and into Cad Gadu in the
first place, you gain 1 XP in Intrigue.  Should come in handy at the
Tribunal. <];^)>