BNN: Britannian Games Torch Run
Cheyne Aybara Jul 17 2000 4:17PM
The Britannian Games are a week-long collection of events and competitions that bring forth the toughest competition across the world. To kick off these glorious games, the opening ceremonies made their way to a virtue city near you. These games were brought not by boat, not by magery of any kind, but brought to you by foot!
These series of stops started out at the Empath Abbey in Yew at 4pm CST on Sunday. The hundreds of participants in the initial registration of the games thinned out when word of a marathon came about. It became the true athletes that stuck this one out as the mages and less interested warriors exited out towards the first stop along the route, Skara Brae's docks.
The trek from Yew to Skara's docks was laid with problems as Brigands attacked the large group from every side. Blood amassed in numerous spots along the road, but was little of what would be seen throughout the evening. Reinforcements met up with the running crowd of torch bearers at the crossroads to the west of Britain and escorted them all the way to Skara's docks with relative safety. Parading through the streets of Skara were scores of torch bearing runners as they made their way to the moongate near the bank. It was through these moongates that the torchbearers visited Magincia, Moonglow, Jhelom, and finally made their way to Trinsic. Parading through Trinsic's stone inlaid streets, the runners gallantly made their way across bridges, waterways, and finally made it to the Western gates. One half of the way through their trip, many of the torch bearers grew tired leaving only a handful of folks to continue towards Britain along the main route.
These finely attuned athletes made their way North, dodging brigand attacks and defending themselves as best they could while continuing with their torches held high. They seemingly ran for months during that hour-long trek as Grizzly put it, "We were tired, but the diehard runners, Garrick, Thrand, Slipnot, Enix, Kaiser, Ying, Tralap, Gohan, and Doken WarHawk wouldn't stop for anything!" That they did not.
Quickly making their way past to each city, the group met up with the others at each checkpoint along their route. The group carried a communication crystal with them and their event was broadcast by town criers throughout the realms. Small attacks were launched by the many creatures of the wilderness at various points during their trip, but it wasn't until the last leg of the run that the group really saw trouble.
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"I smelled death," Grizzly stated, "it's a putrid smell, it is." They had just made their way past the crossroads near the desert when they were jumped by overwhelming numbers of orcs. "They're dyed red!", shouted Gohan. "When I walked closer to one of the corpses, I knew it wasn't dye," Carter continued. The orcs were drenched in blood he told us. They were a well organized group for orcs and seemed to know their objective. Had there not been a cry for help earlier while fending off a smaller orc raid, the runners might not have been so lucky. "I've no idea why they attacked in such a large force," Carter continued, "It’s not like any orcs I've ever encountered. The games will continue as planned regardless."
"Is anyone tired?!" Carter exclaimed after watching the people rally to defend the parade of torches. Uproars of "Never!", "No!", and "Nay!" echoed through the mountain walls surrounding the desert. The thunderous sounds of victory carried the torch bearers all the way to the town center in Yew for a victory feast of entrees, pastries, deserts and the finest of beverages donated by the monks from the Empath Abbey in Yew. Fireworks wands were passed around and mages joined in the celebration with a number of spectacular effects to kick off this week's events! The games' three man footraces and horse races are tomorrow evening.*
* Please see the schedule elsewhere in this issue for more details.