Angst

The Leafsta Survivors are a group of characters who share a common background. Unlike most short background descriptions this one is in the form of a book ? The Book of Leafsta, which I wrote, being a newbie, to give my roleplaying a firmer basis. This was an entirely new kind of gaming for me and hope it will show that it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks (or at least some of the tricks). This places the Leafsta Survivors somewhere between a short background description and a formally-constituted family-type guild like the Von?sah or the House of Tramere each with their own forums and guild website.

I began online roleplaying in 2003 when I joined UO at the time I took early retirement for health reasons. Originally, I had intended that Agnes Fretting (the author of the Book of Leafsta) would never become a character, but would be the Guiding Spirit of the Leafsta Survivors, for which I created the forum name of Angst (Angst being the scornful nickname given to Agnes by Leafstans for her all-too-true prophecies of doom). Later I separated the two by creating Agnes as a character, reserving the name Angst for the Guilding Spirit.

This thread will be used to provide background information on the Leafsta survivors, to describe some of the NPCs and characters-in-waiting, to describe landmark events in the very humdrum and everyday lives of its main characters and other ooc background information that might be helpful.

The thread is a revision of a backed-up version of an earlier thread called ?a Sosarian soap opera? on the f4g pre-crash ooc forum. I?ve kept the original dates of when posts were added to the thread.

Angst

See Moongates Wiki for more information.

5 June 2005
I'll use this thread to list new characters, as and when the need arises. I don't claim a monopoly or any copyright over these, if anyone wants to activate one temporarily or on a longer-term basis, let me know and they are welcome to do so. Or use the background and your imagination to create an entirely new Leafsta survivor.

The ones in this post are all based on Jern's IC knowledge (which doesn't of course mean its "true").

Sharon Sinders
Prostitute, now retired, born and bred in Trinsic in 317 SR, her patch was Westgate Road and Stablery Road, plus the part of North Park Street that connects them (these names are those in common parlance used by ordinary working folk, they differ from the grand names given by the Duchy). Single mother to Moll Sinders, in 351 she was going to an appointment with a client at the Travellers Inn when she found Jern unconscious and bleeding from a head wound outside the door , and thereby probably saved his life.

Moll Sinders (player-run by me at time of writing)
Daughter of Sharon Sinders, father unknown. In her early teens a tearaway member of a Trinsic Eastend gang. Known to carry a knife and with a penchant for snooping she had a reputation as a flirt and a trouble-maker, having been the cause of more than one gang fight. Seems to have settled down ? for now at least?Mother of Jern Jr (b 353) and Sharon (b 355).

Will Grabbett
Founding and Senior Partner of the law firm of Grabbett and Rhunn of Baker Street, Trinsic. Drew up Jern's Last Will and Testament.

Will Grabbett is originally from Yew. He was left as a newborn infant in swaddling rags at the entrance of Empath Abbey, given to a wet nurse then, as a child, lived in the abbey as an apprentice scribe. His gift of the gab meant he went on to practice law at the Courts of Justice. Like many other Yewish folk living in the northwest of Yew, he is part of the Yewish Diaspora that took place after the abandonment of Yew town when the swamp and its swamp-monster denizens took over a large part of northwestern Yew.

Settling in Trinsic he built up his own legal practice over the following decade or so. Now middle-aged and stout, he has a soft spot for Sally Buttons (being himself an orphan) and supports the Orphan Fund.

Maddelie Rhunn
Maddelie is junior partner in the law firm. She is a young Trinsician showing promise as both a company organiser and a legal brain, recently qualified as a solicitor and public notary. Becoming increasingly indispensible to the senior partner.

Will Grabbett and Maddelie Rhunn appear to manage the only law partnership in Trinsic. They issue birth, death and marriage certificates and act as public notaries. Will Grabbett is sometimes asked to serve in criminal trials as a defence or prosecution lawyer.

Angst

16 July 2005
A brief outline of the Fiskdotter Matriarchies

My researches of this unusual clan have proved especially problematic as, until I came across the statement by its Arch-Matriarch, Yedda Fiskdotter, they appear to have left behind them very few written documents, at least that I have been able to unearth. The number of ships at the disposal of the matriarchy at any one time has never been great, 5 or 6 being the most as far as I have been able to ascertain. As males are ineligible to inherit or even to own a matriarchy ship this immediately cuts in half the potential number of ships. In addition, many daughters have chosen to leave the matriarchy to find happiness with a miner or blacksmith in Minoc. It takes dedication and determination for a daughter to become a mistress of a ship.

Finally, the kin-sundering, when the Fretting-led migration left for the Yew Forest to build Leafsta Village and settle there (and that the Matriarchs scornfully call ?the lemming trek?) came close to destroying the Fiskdotter Matriarchy. The clan could ill-afford such a major loss of bloodline bearers. This explains the bitterness of the Matriarchy towards the Leafstans. It took nearly a century and a half before the Fiskdotter Matriarchy recovered from that disaster.

I have been greatly helped in my studies by the Twilight Fellowship on Pacific Shard, especially their writing group, whose work and output are quite awesome. I am especially indebted to its guiding spirit, Sable, for his knowledge of, and devotion to, the world of the Ultimas, and for the help and support given to me by many of its players, especially the bard Rustelle.

A simple geneology of the Matriarchy
Three Fiskdotter families were among the Flight Families, Eli, Nettis and Sila, whose ships bore all the refugees to the safety of Minoc. The Nettis line died out at the Kin-sundering, the Sila line eventually failed. But the Elis line, of which the current Arch-Matriarch is head has resulted in two new lines of daughters who became matriarchs in their own right each producing at least one or two extant mistress lines.

I have tried here to reconstruct in a simple way the geneologies of the arch-matriarch line of the Yeddas and the now extinct Nettis matriarch line. This latter will be of more interest to the Leafstans, especially Agnes Fretting whose mother was a Fiskdotter. I have not yet completed my reconstruction of the newer matriarch line or lines.

Dating starts from the birth of those who were ruling Matriarchs at the time of the last Norsefolk Council - held in Minoc in 267 just prior to the lemming trek (only first female issue is shown, males not shown)

The Nettis Matriarchy (extinct)
Became a victim of the lemming trek, and the line died out.

Nettis Fiskdotter
b 266, d 309

Nettis Fiskdotter was an infant at the kin-sundering when her mother, the Matriarch Nettis I, abdicated and took her on the lemming trek. The abdicated Matriarch's younger sister Silla became Matriarch but produced no daughters.

Nettis Fiskdotter helped settle Leafsta and eventually married Anvel Fretting (great grandson of his namesake, Loosefoot), giving birth to the man who later was widely (but wrongly, it now seems) believed to be Smaed Halfelven?s father in 302 and Agnes Fretting in 309. Nettis, Agnes' mother, died in childbirth.

Historical footnote
It may be worth noting here that Agnes, descending from a Fiskdotter Matriarchy line that became extinct after the lemming trek, must surely have known there would be Fiskdotters in Minoc but she does not appear to have looked for them nor mentioned them in any of her writings. This suggests she may be aware that there was bad blood between her Minoc and Leafsta kin.

There are intriguing implications flowing from the central position of Agnes in this saga. For while Jern Fretting is clearly the bearer of the mayoral line of Leafsta, should that die out and assuming no other claimant is found, Agnes' offspring (Smaed and any children he may have) would assume this nominal titular position. And since Agnes is also the last surviving member of the Nettis Matriarchy, should the arch-matriarchy line fail Smaed and his offspring might become the heirs of both the Leafstan mayors and the Matriarchy tradition. But there are a number of "ifs" built in here that make this hypothetical at this time.

Angst

25 October 2005
The Leafsta Time-Line

Background
Establishing an accurate timeline for Leafsta and its survivors is problematic, as several reckoning systems have been used down the ages. I have tried to regularise the time-line by converting all previous reckonings (including Leafsta Reckoning into Stratics Reckoning, in which 381 LR approximates to 351 SR (see footnote to part 21 of Smaed’s Story). One Gregorian calendar year equals five stratics years (see earlier entries for the link to the Stratics Reckoning calendar). All dates in the recent entries for both Smaed’s Story and Jern’s Journal – and indeed all other Leafsta survivors - are now in Stratics Reckoning.

The time-line begins with the earliest surviving records (as far as the Leafstans were aware) of the Norse Isles refugees in Minoc. This is a period of 30 years between the birth of Anvel ”Loosefoot” Fretting and the last Norsefolk Council of 267 SR, where the Fretting decision was made to migrate west as a separate community.

The true Leafsta survivors are, of course, the Fiskdotter clan, who, thanks to their matriarchal organisation, are the only remaining viable group of settlers of the original Norse Isles refugees- and who, of course, brought the refugees to the safety of Minoc in the first place! It is among the Fiskdotters, then, that the timeline is most likely to be successfully extended back – perhaps even to the date of the cataclysm that destroyed the Norse Isles. One day,when I have time, I will make a thorough search of the documents and folklore of the remarkable Fiskdotter clan.

Meanwhile,my own geneological records of the Leafsta families disappeared when the core journal known as Angst’s Journal was lost in a first time of f4g chaos (the one before this more cataclysmic time of f4g chaos). But one day I will try to reconstruct these from scattered notes. Any discrepancies, gaps or irregularities in the timeline are likely to be due to the first time of f4g chaos.

The Timeline
235 Birth in Minoc of Anvel “Loosefoot” Fretting.

255: Marriage of Anvel “Loosefoot” Fretting and Millie Millster. The mayoral/Mastersmith line of the Leafsta Frettings begins with its founder, Loosefoot, who became Leafsta’s First Mastersmith-Mayor in 268.

256 birth of Anvel’s son, Smaed of Minoc, who became the Second Mastersmith-Mayor of Leafsta and who married Heraxa Treefeller, architect of Leafsta.

267: The last Norsefolk Council
Held in Minoc, leading to the kin-sundering and the Fretting-led woegn-migration to the Deep Forest, under Loosefoot. With hindsight this was, indeed, the unmitigated disaster that the Fiskdotters feared and that they argued vehemently against, contemptuously dismissing it as "the lemming-trek". It decimated the Minoc settlers, whose greatly reduced numbers were insufficient to sustain their Norse identity as a refugee colony as a result of intermarriage with Minocans. For a while the migrants prospered, building their village, but they, too were destroyed, leaving a scattered handful of Leafsta survivors, a kind of diaspora. The only branch of the migrants to survive as a viable kinship network were the Fiskdotters on whose ships the refugees fled the natural disaster in which the Norse Isles were destroyed. They only survived thanks to their matriarchal family system, which only became centralised after the kin-sundering when the first Arch-Matriarch took office.

268: Founding of the village of Leafsta in the foothills of the Serpentspine Mountains overlooking the Yew Forest. Founding in Minoc of the Fiskdotter Matriarchy under Yedda, its first Arch-Matriarch.

278 Birth of Bellows, eldest son of Smaed "of Minoc" (Footloose's son). Bellows became third Mastersmith-Mayor of Leafsta, and the first to be born in Leafsta. Married Tama Husbond (the herder Tyg Husbond, who witnessed the destruction of Leafsta is Tama’s younger brother).

303 Birth of Tongs, Fourth Mastersmith-Mayor of Leafsta, married Canif Whittler of the Leafstan carpenter family.

326 September 1st: birth of Jern Fretting, great-great grandson of Anvel “Loosefoot” Fretting. Had Leafsta survived he would have become its Fifth Mastersmith-Mayor.

328 March 21st: birth of Smaed Fretting “Halfelven” to Agnes Fretting and the elf Thalandor of Silverleaf. Smaed “Halfelven”, born out of wedlock to Agnes Fretting was switched for the stillbirthed child of Millie Millster (named after Loosefoot’s wife), and Smaed was adopted as the natural-born son of Millie and her husband Smaed, younger brother of Tongs Fretting, Jern’s father (as described in the extract from Agnes' diary).

336 Flight of Agnes from Leafstato Trinsic guided by Talis (Thalandor) and taking Jern and Smaed with her. She settles outside Trinsic with the retired Leafstan miner Digs Delver.

337 The destruction of Leafsta (based on Tyg Husbond’s account)

340 Death of Digs Delver, without issue. Agnes inherits his croft.

It is at this point in time that the purely background history ends and Jern and Smaed become independent characters (Agnes some time later).

341 Jern goes to Leafsta, finds the ruins, and visits Stonekeep on the return journey. Becomes a serf of the Duchy on his return to Trinsic in autumn 342. Begins the long training to become a blacksmith.

343 Smaed goes to Stonekeep, and enlists as a trainee with the Yew Militia.

348 Footman Smaed takes furlough, visits Trinsic, where he learns of his parentage. Returns to Yew, resigns from the Yew Militia, and begins the search for his father.

348 SR is the date of the last journal entry before the start of the 350s, which I have called The Elven Decade. At time of writing it is April 359 SR. The timeline will be continued when Stratics Reckoning reaches the year 360.

Angst

The Trinsic Frettings: major events of the 350s: The Elven Decade

Jern’s life from his mid-20s to mid-30s is touched by the elves in many ways. Of these, meeting Nian Cethlin and VanQa and Miguen Halfelven in 351 were the most important, followed by his discovery that Smaed was half-elven and Jern’s growing association with the Yew village of Silverleaf. But throughout this period his friendship with VanQa grows and he meets and befriends many of her elven followers.

The magical disappearance of the Yew Swamp in summer 353 and the founding of the elven tree-city of Heartwood in Yew Town that same autumn marked a change in the Fretting fortunes. Smaed moved to Silverleaf Village and embraced his elven heritage. Agnes also moved to Yew as Librarian in the Borough of Yew. Jern alone remained in Trinsic and, without at first knowing it, started a family.

This section of chronological notes therefore concerns the Trinsic Frettings, and mainly matters pertaining to Jern. But the lives of his relatives and other Leafsta survivors still weave in and out.

Summer 350: Jern starts rag and bone trade, to raise gold for Sally’s charitable orphan home. February 351 he meets and falls in love with the leprachaun and fellow serf Nian Cethlin at a rag and bone sale in Trinsic.

67th March 351: Jern visits The Trinsic Rose for the first time and meets Mine Hostess, the Lady VanQa, the leader of the Trinsic elves and her husband, Miguen.

June 351: a thug assaults and robs Jern in Trinsic. Suffers headaches and some memory-loss that appears to be permanent as the decade passes.

49th October 351 SR: Jern and Nian are betrothed. Wedding set for May 352.

Spring 352: Nian goes missing.

Midsummers Eve 352: a chance encounter with Moll results, unbeknown to Jern, in her becoming pregnant by him.

34th October 352 VanQa gifts Jern the old post office as his home by Trinsic Westgate.

February 353: Nian’s letter arrives explaining her departure and the need to break their engagement. Jern hits the bottle, drowning his grief in half a year of sorrowing for the loss of his beloved.

15th March 353: birth of Jern Jr to Moll Sinders, unbeknown to Jern.

February 354: Jern begins to mine precious gems, and makes his fortune from selling several to the rich merchant, Lyim Rashidat, for 100,000 gold.

March 354: Jern visits Silverleaf for first time. The building of Smaed’s cottage with the help of Smaed’s natural father, Thalandor. Kaine takes Jern to visit the pixie village in Malas. Smaed finds a Leafsta survivor, Daisy Roots, whom Jern meets. Begins to study elven smithing secrets from old scrolls.

April 354: Agnes finds another Leafsta survivor, Tyg Husbond, sole witness to the destruction of Leafsta.

May 354: Jern attends the Magincia Festival of Tales and reads Agnes’ verse there.

October 354: Jern is at VanQa’s First “Free Repairs Hour” outside The Trinsic Rose. It was to become a popular weekly event.

June 354: Jern receives his GM Blacksmith Engraving Kit.

Late August 354: Jern meets Moll by chance and sees his son for the first time. That autumn Moll and their son move in to Jern’s home, now named Ye Olde Poste Office.

November 354: Jern opens a vendor’s shop at The Trinsic Rose.

New Year 354: Jern begins a working association with the elf Aegnor, Silverleaf’s leading craftworker. Learns more elven smithing secrets.

New Year 355: With help from Smaed, Jern begins to learn the magic arts: using moongates and recalling using roons.

February-June 355: Jern is introduced to Delucia in The Lost Lands by Count D’Orsay’s factor and given the roons to travel there. He is deeply impressed and strikes gold for the first time. His wealth increases. Buys a horse. Meets the serf Jenny Wren.

July-September 355: The Ilshenar Quest. VanQa and Miguen take Jern there to act as the Duke’s carer during his illness at The Twin Oaks Tavern. Many dangers and adventures.

2nd December 355: birth of a dughter to Moll and Jern, they name Sharon. Jern begins a period of learning some more elven smithing secrets.

February 356: begins to study higher smithing skills than GM.

Summer 356: Jern becomes a freeman of the Duchy, swearing a new oath to his Duke. Begins a period of visits to New Paws Tavern, where he meets Anna-Maria and goes to visit her at Swaggers Inn, Vesper

Autumn 356: Miguen departs on a long journey.

New Year 357: Agnes gets involved in a quest for the ghost of Yew Castle. Jern fears for her. The Trinsic Elves grow a magic tree-village in place of the old one that VanQa calls The Elven Quarter of Trinsic.

January 358: Jern attends Stonekeep Market in Yew. Begins planning to lodge gold claims in Delucia.

Autumn 358: Jern struggles to come to terms with the violation of VanQa by her stepbrother, the drow Iglata Slyannan. Jern realises he is in love with her.

__________________
Old and Decrepit Guiding Spirit of the Leafsta Survivors
Background: The Book of Leafsta,
Other: Smaed's Story, The Fiskdotter Matriarchy, Tyg's Tale,
The Smith and the Queen of the Elves.