2000-05-03: The Search For The Emerald Enchantress
For over a Britannian year, the gypsy Doria Romanov thought that her husband, Bryce Barington, had been slain. Bryce had been working on a job guarding a caravan going from Vesper to Cove when the caravan was attacked by undead. But a few weeks ago, Doria discovered that Bryce is still alive in an unknown location.
The other caravan guard, the tamer Browley, claimed he saw something unusual during the attack on the caravan. He saw a woman mage with very pale skin and green hair casting a spell in Bryce’s direction. She was wearing a necklace of green stones, possibly emeralds. Bryce stumbled and fell, with two or three undead on top of him. According to Browley, when he saw Bryce fall, he knew that the battle was lost and ran back to Vesper.
Recently, Doria’s search for Bryce took a surprising new twist. Doria, a gypsy with considerable psychic ability, held a psychic reading to see if she could find out more about this mysterious woman mage. Ms. Romanov said some kind of blocking spell was clouding her vision and she could not see the mage clearly and could not divine where she was. But Doria was quite surprised when her crystal ball revealed that her own parents, Marga and Petrino Romanov, were somehow involved with this woman mage. Doria and the folks at her last meeting went to the gypsy camp near Minoc to confront Doria’s parents and find out what they had to say about this.
As a reporter, I am interested in accuracy in my stories, so I personally visited Doria’s parents in the gypsy camp to get their own version of what happened. I found them both at home in their tent in the gypsy camp south of Minoc. Petrino is a gypsy of early middle age, with a kindly face, and is a tinker by trade. Marga is a psychic and medium, and as we spoke, she shuffled her tarot deck, and idly laid out a tarot spread. She told me that it was she who trained Doria to use her natural psychic abilities.
Marga and Petrino told me that they had disapproved when Doria had married Bryce Barington, a non-gypsy “foreigner”. When Doria arrived at the gypsy camp last week, they were delighted to see her, and they told her how much they loved her. They suggested that now that Bryce was out of the way, it was time for her to return to live with the gypsies. They told me sadly that Doria refused to renounce her love for Bryce or to return to live with the gypsies.
Then Doria told her parents about the vision she had seen in her crystal ball-that her own parents had some connection with a woman mage, and somehow this was connected with Bryce’s disappearance. Who was this sorceress and what was her parents’ connection with her?
Marga told me that she and Petrino loved Doria deeply, and because they wanted only the best for her, which was to return to her rightful place with the gypsies, they devised a plan to get her to return by getting Bryce out of the picture. They met with a mage named Vilendra, known as The Emerald Enchantress, whose specialty was magic to control the minds of others. They described the Emerald Enchantress as a powerful mage with long green hair and very pale skin, who wears green armor and a necklace of emeralds. For a payment of gold, they convinced Vilendra to agree to cast a spell of forgetting on Bryce. Marga and Petrino stressed that they were good folks who meant no harm to Bryce and only wanted him to forget Doria, so she could come and live with her own kind.
According to the Romanovs, when The Emerald Enchantress came for her payment, she told them that she had not only cast the spell of forgetting on Bryce, but that she had gotten the idea of casting a second spell as well. The sorceress claimed that when she first laid eyes on Bryce he was so handsome she thought he was a young god, and she felt her passions stirring.
As she contacted his mind to transfix him for the spell of forgetting, she discovered that his mind was as beautiful as his body. There was no way she could leave this glorious youth. The Enchantress said she then got the idea to cast a second spell on him-a love spell guaranteed to make Bryce fall in love with her alone. With a roguish laugh, Vilendra told the Romanovs that they need have no more worries about Bryce, for not only had he forgotten Doria, but he was now living with her, ensorcelled as the Enchantress’s willing love servant. Marga and Petrino told Doria that perhaps it was best if Bryce was now in love with one of his own kind, for with the “foreigner” no longer interested in Doria, she could return to her rightful place with the gypsies.
As I concluded the interview, Petrino told me that Doria didn’t seem to appreciate their thoughtful plan to bring her back to the gypsies for her own good. Her reaction was to become very angry and upset and she left the gypsy camp.
Doria has asked me to tell readers of BNN that she needs their help to find Bryce and the Emerald Enchantress. She holds a meeting every Tuesday eve at 7 PM (Pacific Time) in her tent in Skara Brae, just north of the Skara bank. If you’d like to help Doria and be part of the quest to find the Emerald Enchantress, join the adventure on any Tuesday eve.
--Stav Korwell
