this made me laugh I had to draw it

some processes too. I did a bunch of initial concept sketching on sticky notes at work while listening to the world's driest policy trainings. ended up coming up with the top, came home and did additional sketches from there, tweaking and working on it before settling on what we have here :)

I initially went for a roman look but decided against it, since my main idea I had in mind was "an angel with a shroud instead of a helm". it just didn't work out. maybe I'll make one based off of roman armor on the future.

There’s an overgrown path in one of those school gardens the horticulture club set up a few years back - you know, with all the willow trees and roses? It’s made of weird amber-ish stones laid out in pentagons.

If you follow it the right way,  it goes to a little valley on the border (so far as we can tell) of Summer territory. The grass is green, the air is warm, the ring of oaks and maples growing around the rim are always in rich, vivid color; it’s full of thick wildflowers that line the slope, and our house is right at the bottom. 

 If you follow it the wrong way, though, you wind up stuck in either the 3rd back-up spare props room or a life-sized mural on the wall of the Art building’s atrium. And most people follow it the wrong way. 

So, as you might imagine, we don’t get a lot of visitors. Like I said, we rent, and the 4 of us - including me - have never even seen our landlord. There’s a powder-blue ceramic bowl on the mail table: it’s due 3 gold drachmas on the 11th of every month, which always disappear by sunrise. It’s a little odd, yeah. We *do* certainly have questions. But, overall, we like to think we’re lucky. 

See, none of us can live in a dorm. Believe me, we’ve tried. Euclid’s closing in on a Phd in Irrational Geometry and Applied Mathemagics, so zher homework assignments keep warping the fabric of reality; rearranging furniture, tearing holes in the walls, and adding extra space where it really shouldn’t be. Molybdos was the only survivor of a questing party gone very, very wrong. She has wicked PTSD, which manifests itself mostly in violent screaming and semi-corporeal night terrors. Silphium’s sick; I’m not sure what’s wrong with him, quite frankly, but being in the dorm rooms made it worse. The medicine that helps him can’t be brewed Ironside; there’s a good chance he’ll never be able to leave. 

Me? I had a stalker issue. Someone in a few of my classes heard about a particular family heirloom I’m quite loathe to part with, and they got interested. Very interested. Dangerously interested. 

But that’s not the point. The point is, we’re really not used to company. 

So , as you might imagine, it was somewhat of a shock to wake up one morning and find a Gentry man on our living room couch. 

Unconscious. 

Oh, Archivist, he’s in bad shape. There are thick ropes of scars around his neck and wrists. 

We had to scrub a while to get rid of all the ingrained filth - there was lots of it, dirt and dried gore and other crap - but it turns out his skin is pale. Not normal Fair Folk pale, either; the kind you get from spending too long underground. 

He’s got a blade of a nose, eyes a pure gold color, and bright red hair that seems to smoke if you look at it too long. Three fingers on his left hand are fused together by what look like old, pink scars, and his right arm is tattooed with all these crazy woad designs. You can tell that he used to be powerfully built; the guy’s almost seven feet tall, and his clothes (or what’s left of them) hung from his body. 

Well, we cut the damn things off. Then we did our best to clean him up. There were 12 open wounds that needed stitches, and lots of raw areas oozing this pale, watery gold stuff. Not to mention all the aforementioned filth. 

Anyway, long story short: something must’ve gone wrong. He’s been here for 3 days , gripped by delirium, caught in the throes of a hellish fever. He keeps moaning and thrashing around, raving in some kind of language none of us speak. 

Meanwhile, the wifi’s shot. Our phone lines put out nothing but a ‘drone’ noise, like huge clouds of flies in the speaker. Once everyone got home again the next day, the house won’t let us leave. it seems kind of…protective? I guess? The windows won’t open, and none of the doorknobs turn anymore. 

Euclid’s busy with zher chalk, drawing out bizarre patterns on the walls that zhe claims are wards. Silph’s working overtime trying to keep our ‘guest’ alive, and Moly…

Moly hasn’t slept. She’s… erratic. She keeps pacing around, staring out the windows, and clinging to her kukri while she mutters about how ‘they’re coming.’ 

Meanwhile, there’s a bad wind on the rise. The view outside grows darker every hour. Things have taken to lurking about; black and twisted, they hide in the wild grass and wait beneath the trees. Every time someone looks, there’s more of them: biding their time, in no kind of rush at all. They’ve got us where they want us, and they damn well know it. 

Since I can fly sometimes (thanks to that heirloom I mentioned) the others sent me for help. Thankfully, my other form is just smart enough to fit up the chimney flue. It was a tight, painful squeeze, and I lost a few feathers, but I made it. 

I’m sorry, Archivist, I didn’t know where else to go. Hopefully the goshawk rapping at your window didn’t freak you out too much.

 Do you know who our 'guest’ is? Is there someone - anyone - who can take him to safety? Are any Knights available - and, if so, can they please come drive off the intruders before my friends all get killed? I’d be more than happy to guide anyone who needs assistance.

In return, I brought a charm Euclid made. It was zher semester project junior year, and we thought you might have some use for it: 

A crystal lense etched with a Pythagoras tree. Perfect, of course. Those bronze rims around the edge are how you set the thing: they move independently, see? The biggest, outer one is for years, the middle for months, and the tiny inner one for days. Pick a date, work them around so the little notches all line up, then wave your hand over the clear part. It will show 13 minutes of an event you were involved in. 

Please hurry.

-Hamaliel

___

Congratulations: the heir apparent of the Autumn Court is dying on your futon, most likely from some manner of assassination attempt. You can officially consider yourself Embroiled In Intrigue. 

I will reach out to the Knights, but delicately - a good number of them would view your guest as not much better than whatever is coming for him. But there are always a handful more oriented towards protecting the helpless - any helpless - than they are towards eradicating the things that lurk in the dark woods.

I will also try to send word to a handful of Autumn changelings. If you are lucky they will pass on the news of their lost and found prince to someone powerful enough to come to his aid, and do so in time for it to change anything.