"Silence, wretch, or you will feel worse pains than that," said Zoltan to the cage. This would be easier if any of his new brethren were around, but most of them were off enjoying their newfound mobility thanks to the conduit. Of the few that remained at La Maison Soulombre, Hazan was busy packing for his survey of the Sea of Sorrows, another futile hunt for the traitor-lich, Lochspeare flat out refused to take an "unnecessary" trip to the cellar, and Skully was lost in a bottle of Borcan red upstairs in his chambers. Zoltan suspected their excuses were simply to hide the unease they still felt around him, but he had not joined the Fraternity for camaraderie. Their ambition and resources still astounded him at times, and he was determined to put both to use.
At last reaching the bottom of the stairs, he felt a swell of pride as his gaze fell on their triumph. "Greetings, 'Hizzoner'," ... or should I say, Melano? ... "I trust you are as comfortable as usual?" Zoltan deposited his paraphernalia on the prepared table beside The Book while ignoring the stream of Infernal obscenities that issued from the corpulent devil on the pedestal. He gave the creature a few solid whippings out of principle and then turned back to the table.
He set the candles in a typical ritual circle around The Book and lit them with a thought. Zoltan's gift of The Book had been well received at first, and all agreed that the Cellar was the safest place for perhaps the most detailed description of the Misted Lands ever created. But as the conduit began to be used more often, The Book had begun to be viewed as a nuisance by many of the brethren. Even now, as he inscribed runes in the table and filled them with assorted mystic powders, Zoltan felt the pull. The need to fill in the blank pages was almost unbearable to many who passed by, but Zoltan had become accustomed to it over the years, or perhaps it had simply lessened as Zoltan had poured nearly all he knew into it, and there wasn't much left for him to write.
The fiend stirred in its confines, and growled, “Have you forgotten me, Moth? Or are you going to tell me what foolishness you're doing over there?”
Zoltan placed the covered cage in its place among the runes and turned to the hellspawn. "You words are merely a foul wind, Gatekeeper, but you would do well to show some respect, especially since I've brought you a friend." With a flourish, he removed the cloth from the tall birdcage, revealing a raven standing amongst arcane circles inscribed on the base of the cage; clearly the cage itself was not what was keeping the raven inside. "Wretch! show 'Hizzoner' your true form!" The raven briefly puffed into a cloud of brimstone scented smoke and then resolved into a sullen-looking imp.
“Hmph. The Moth builds my army for me. May I have a Pit Fiend next?”
"Silence!" A few more whippings forced the fiend into obedience, then Zoltan returned to his ritual. "You forget your place in the Lawgiver's blessed hierarchy, Gate-warden. Wykie here has his own task set before him. He knows better than to join in your futile dream of escape, isn't that right, Wretch?" The imp rolled his eyes, crossed his arms, let out a slightly sarcastic "Yes, Master," then turned back into a raven to give himself a little more room in the cage.
Despite his insolence, binding the little devil into obedience had been quite easy, for one of Zoltan's skill. And his hold over the creature had been proven at the Black Spire. Though it protested, it followed his orders: once in the lost land of Bluetspur, Wykie had performed the Power Ritual as Zoltan specified, and found a way to return to Hazlan, a piece of that desolate domain's psychic power within him. All was going according to plan.
Soon, the pull of The Book would be gone. There were few problems that could not be solved by proper harnessing of diabolic power, and the backing of the most powerful organization of wizards in the world. From the wooden box, he removed the doll golem prepared by the Fraternity's insane vampiress, and sat her in front of The Book. The doll allowed Zoltan to clip the coil of mage-spun wire to her back, and he wrapped the wire around the base of the imp's cage thirteen times before clipping the other end to the rune at the peak of the cage. A few brief incantations, and the bizarre apparatus was complete. He handed a black quill to the doll, who eagerly set to writing in The Book.
It worked, of course. From now on, the users of the conduit would no longer have their time wasted by being compelled to write in The Book as they passed. Rather, the imp's telepathic powers would simply pluck the knowledge out of passersby and the doll would fill the pages. It would be like an encyclopedia written in collaboration by all who came near it.
Zoltan bid the imp and the fiend farewell with a few cursory whips each and ascended back to Souragne, a fraction of a smile on his lips....
Esteemed members of the Fraternity, yes the rumors are true. Behold! Mistipedia, the Fraternity's Ravenloft wiki, is here.
Many thanks to Nerit for prodding us into this by taking the plunge first and convincing us that it is the right way to go. And as mentioned in the Cemetery announcement, she was responsible for rescuing Gryphon Hill's maps from extinction for use in her wiki. Now that they are hosted here, we have permission to use them as well in ours. And thanks also to the words of encouragement from other members who wanted to see a Ravenloft wiki here.
As you will see from a brief browse, the wiki is already far from empty. Through long hours slaving away with bound devils, xml, arcane spells, php, and perl scripts, we've imported all the information from the Ravenloft Catalogue into the wiki as a starting point. The Catalogue will remain live, and (hopefully) will continue to be updated. In fact, I'll take a moment here to announce that The Forgotten Children netbook is now completely indexed in the Catalogue (and hence, also in the wiki), marking the first non-canon source, and the first Masque of the Red Death information in the Catalogue. And we are now set up to import future changes in the Catalogue into the wiki as well.
(Aside: Why keep the Catalogue? We believe it still serves a useful purpose. Since it is more controlled than the wiki, we can be sure exactly what is and isn't covered in it. If you search for something in the Catalogue and it doesn't come up, you can be reasonably sure it doesn't exist in the list of products that are complete in the Catalogue. The dream, of course, being that one day all the products will be completely in it. Also, the wiki will have summaries of information, but the Catalogue will still point you to the exact pages where the full information lies.)
As you probably know, a wiki allows anyone to edit it. We require you to register a username and not make anonymous edits, but beyond that, Mistipedia is yours to fill in. Wikis thrive on the community, and their willingness to pitch in. Don't be shy, go ahead and edit. It's easy! We know you all have a lot to say.
Just please abide by the guidelines on the wiki Main Page. Apart from that, go nuts! We need your brains! (this ritual has been hungry work...)You will see a lot of "WIKISEED" labels in the wiki. This is an indicator that something has been imported from the Catalogue, but hasn't yet been filled out into a full wiki entry. Please feel free to edit these into more cohesive text, and remove the WIKISEED label when you're done. In the future, we plan to import the List of canon and non-canon Material into WIKISEEDs as well. Stay tuned...
The wiki is currently available at this address:
http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki
The Catalogue remains at:
http://fraternityofshadows.com/rldb
And is now also available here:
http://rldb.fraternityofshadows.com/
As soon as I figure out how to do it properly, the wiki will also be available at any of these addresses:
http://wiki.fraternityofshadows.com/
http://ravenloftwiki.fraternityofshadows.com/
http://mistipedia.fraternityofshadows.com/
This is the Fraternity's final gift for this year, but there are more goodies to come in the next. Happy New Year! We'll be seeing you...
GonzoRon, for the FoS
