Araphel adds an ally

In the words of the Dark Lady, "Vash asks one question":

Here is the beginning of another tale, but I cannot tell you the end.  Eighteen years ago, a raven plucked an arrow from the heart of a man who lay dead on a field of battle, and she set that heart to beating again.  The ripples have not yet spread far, but I can tell you this much: four years ago the man Alred who is called Duke was supposed to fall from his horse while hunting and die.... However, on the day that the man Alred was to die, he was not here in the forest hunting, but on a ship.

This was a year ago that she told Vash this, so you can see the ripples are starting to spread already.

You can read Araphel's panicked reaction to learning about the new Pope in "Araphel and Amarel are alone":

This was not a matter on the scale of one strange valley, with its unexpected births and miraculously avoided deaths, and with its last refugees from doomed races living a few years longer than anticipated.

If Desiderius had consented to be made Pope six or eight months early, who could say when or where he would die?  Perhaps Otto of Lagery would die in obscurity.  Perhaps the pleas of the Emperor of Byzantium would go unheeded.  Perhaps there would be no Crusade.

And perhaps Araphel and Amarel and all their brothers would spend the rest of their time on earth seeking out men and women who were never supposed to have been born.  How many would be found?  Amarel still had not found the one he sought.

Any letter from the Continent must have taken weeks to arrive, and yet none of their brothers had come to give them new orders, or even to warn them.

They were alone—with each other—with their secrets—with Flann and her sisters—with Aelfden—and with Dantalion, who found it all “interesting.”

So you can see Neshrael was right -- they both share the same fear at the moment. They haven't had any contact from their leaders since before the new Pope. Araphel & Amarel's leader Ezeqael can't stop by since he's still in a body, but Neshrael's leader Baraqiel is supposed to be free for a while yet, and he's sort of in charge of the Scotland area. So what's he doing? :x

Oops, Twisted, I missed your edits.

The subject of what has changed due to Leofric's survival could fill an entire forum post of its own, but you've hit some of the high points. Eirik would probably not have gone to Man, either, and he would never have met Sigrid -- that's another. So there the events in the world have definitely changed. There was not supposed to be an Eirik Jarl challening Whitehand in the south of Man.

A discussion of what might have happened to send Aelfden to Rome early, and why Victor is Pope early, occurred in "Arapel is called a coward":

Araphel raised a threatening hand, but Dantalion leaned away.

“Ah!  Aelfden!”  he chuckled.  “Aelfden, Aelfden…  But Aelfden was not supposed to go to Rome three years ago, was he, dear brother?  He was not supposed to go for five years yet, long after Victor was dead in his tomb.  Wasn’t he?”

Araphel shrugged uneasily.

“What might not our good Abbot have said to the man, in all innocence?” Dantalion purred.  “Perhaps impressed his duty upon him, showed him his calling, and so forth?  O dear Araphel: what might not your earnest charge have said while you were off frigging some louse-ridden hosteler’s daughter?”

“It’s your fault!” Araphel spluttered.  “You’re the reason why he went to Rome in the first place!”

Dantalion stood up straight, but he had been leaning so low that the effect made it seem he had been struck.  “You should have been keeping him quiet.”

“I was not supposed to be with him by then at all!” Araphel protested indignantly.  He shoved Dantalion with his right hand and shoved him again with his left.  “I had to hurry to join him!  You’re the one who sent him to Rome before his time!  It’s your fault!”

Dantalion jabbed him painfully in the breastbone with his knuckles.  “You still could have been watching over him!  It’s your fault!”

Etc.

Aelfden told Brandt about his decision to go to Rome in "Father Aelfden announces his plans". This was after Dantalion visited him in the form of a woman, and his guilty obsession with that event was what drove Aelfden to go to Rome at that time (winter of 1081). So it actually was Dantalion's fault he went to Rome. But Aelfden was not supposed to be in Lothere at all, so that was never supposed to happen, etc., etc...

Verity, we don't really know what happened to Baraqiel other than that Dantalion got to him. If he did somehow do something serious enough to him that he's out of commission for a while, then he at least had a chat with him beforehand. In "Dantalion cries up from the depths" there was this line:

He dropped onto his knee and smashed the warm lump into the cold earth, hissing through his teeth the ancient spell he had bought from Baraqiel in exchange for his silence.

He got Baraqiel to give him the spell to make a body such as the angels wear. He didn't know how to do it before. Of course, he could have annihilated him afterwards. I don't think Dantalion is above that sort of thing.

Penelope, you can see some of Aelfden's story on his bio page. He's practically the only person for whom I have written a real bio, and even that's not done. I find it INCREDIBLY HARD to write about these characters in an encyclopedic tone. :x You will notice that there's a big mystery in the winter of 1073-1074. We're going to delve into that in the next month or two.

As for his name, it could mean either Elf-Valley or Elf-Dane. Hmm! Also, he wasn't supposed to go to Lothere, but then again the elves were supposed to be extinct by this time, in Lothere and everywhere else. So that's another mystery -- assuming it meant anything at all. (It meant nothing at all when I gave it to him, but I am the Queen of retroactive prophecy with this story. )

That was Dantalion in the crypt. (This is the crypt underneath Sigefrith's castle -- not the crypt underneath the old church.) That black and batty gargoyle statue that disappeared when Theobald touched the orb? That was him. It is pretty obvious, now that we know that Dantalion was the same guy as the demon Aelfden met in the church in the very next chapter.

However, Myrddin wasn't down there with him. Myrddin didn't show up for a few years after that, following some other rather strange events.

How did Dantalion get trapped down there? Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

I don't think Hel is powerful enough to trap Dantalion anywhere. As she told Lar in "Lar visits a special prisoner":

He can’t be controlled.  I don’t think so.  I did everything according to the rites, and he was still more powerful than I.”

“What rites?”

“The rites for summoning daemons!  According to the teachings of Solomon.”  She snorted.  “You don’t even know the name, do you?  You don’t even know how to read, do you, elf?”

“Is it written in books?  We have books.”

“My dear Lar, surely you realize that every book is different, and some books tell about one thing, and some books tell of another, and very few books tell of daemons?  I think it unlikely you have the books that would serve.  You would need my books.”

“The Khir has your books.”

“Oh, does he?” she sneered.  “Then once you have become powerful enough to steal books from the Khir, and once you have become clever enough to learn how to read, then you will be in the unenviable position of knowing how to summon Dantalion without being able to control him.”

Aside: The only thing cuter than Lar and his obsession with books (with or without pictures) would be Lar learning how to read. "C-A-T cat."

Dantalion definitely has his mind on other things than Hel and Druze right now. We will check in on those two in a little while.

Egelric has been to the tree, though not as often as he used to. He doesn't feel like it belongs to him or Elfleda any more, since pilgrims come to it now. I also can't quite picture Egelric talking to the tree. He might come very close, but he's already so taciturn and unable to talk about his feelings... he would have to break down a lot of walls before he let himself go to that extent. It would have to be inner dialog. But I treat that part of Egelric's heart as mostly off-limits anway.

Hmm, Tiffany, there's not as much action and adventure as I would like in this story, because it's just so hard to do with the Sims. I suppose Eirik & Sigi's recent Escape From Whitehand Island would count as action/adventure, though we didn't see all of the swashbuckling that was going on. It would be fun to do more.

I think historical soap opera is what best describes it. Definitely soap opera, and it just happens to take place in a historical context. I guess there's more humor than in your average soap -- not that I watch those, but my exposure to my grandmother's soap opera habit in my youth gives me the idea that it's non-stop drama and no poking-of-fun at self or anything else.

Speaking of which, I reeeeally need to hurry and get the next chapter up. Somehow I don't want one of my co-workers (who know about this site) stopping by and seeing "No sodomy!" as the first line of the first chapter.

What a difference a letter makes!

Egelric has been to Sela's tree a few times I'm sure. I don't suppose he has visited Lili's tomb much yet since she's only been dead a month, and she's buried beneath the floor in the chapel at his castle, where he hasn't spent much time lately. (And we have seen, through Ethelwyn's retelling of Alred's retelling, that that idea ended up creeping Egelric out a bit. He never went in that chapel before, and now...)

Anyway, I don't think Egelric is really the weeping-over-her-grave type. He is such an island... I think he carries his monuments around inside of him.

Nor do I suppose the younger boys have gone or expressed an interest in going. It doesn't seem like an idea a four- or five- or six-year-old boy would have unless somebody put the idea into their heads. And as much as you might like to think they mourn Sela, neither of them have any memories of her. I think any desire to make pilgrimages to her burial place will come later as they grow up and want to learn more about her as part of the construction of their own identities. (Gils surely less than Wulf since Sela wasn't his mother.) I don't know anything about child psychology or development, though, so if anyone knows better how six-year-olds would think about the murdered mother they scarcely knew, feel free to correct me. Lili is the one they're pining for, though.

Finn, now, he is definitely at a stage where he might want to get to know his mother in that way. He is really desperate for some knowledge of her, since he is trying so hard to set himself apart from his father's rather monumental and, lately, somber persona.

Wulf grows into the chin eventually, at least to the same extent Egelric and FERGUS! did. He always will be a little exotic-looking (to put it generously) due to the mix of his mom's features with his dad's though.

No news on the two little elf girls. The boys haven't seen them since before Surr and his brother were killed.

Devin, Egelric's kids have always been the innocent bystander victims of the tragedies of his life. From Iylaine and Finn on up to the newborn Baby-Flann. Also the victims of his own (arguably self-indulgent) periods of withdrawal. And Gils gets a double dose of tragedy from Egelric and his natural father. As Alred once said -- and which should be the tagline of this entire epic -- "It is rarely pleasant to live a story-worthy life."

I suppose it is worthy of being a quotable quote in that case.

I totally understand the amazement, Verity.

You need the "One More Slot Packages" (OMSP) from mts2. They are just plain surfaces of various heights that have an invisible recolor. They are under Surfaces-->Misc. You put a bunch of those down, put one object on each one, then using move_objects on & snaptogrid off, put them in the same square as the table. Then recolor to invisible.

They do take up space as if they were tables, so sometimes it can be hard to get a Sim to sit at a table with stuff placed "on it" by way of OMSPs, or even walk into a square near one of these, depending on how far off the grid it's sitting. So be aware of that problem. I usually use them for objects on side tables and such. For table scenes like the most recent dinner party, I make everyone sit down first, then put down all the bread baskets and candles and decor with OMSPs. Otherwise the Sims won't sit.

The original (table height) was by ariffrazalin. I don't use that one anymore since the invisible recolor switches back to brown when you reload the lot, but you can see some screenshots on that page. There is also coffee table height and end table height. I don't usually use those 2 either since they also have the recolor problem.

I do use the OMSP for beds and counters, "even more OMSPs" (which includes a table-height recolor that does not switch back to opaque when you reload the lot, since people complained), and still yet more additional OMSPs.

Basically, the brown ones switch back to brown when you reload the lot and the green ones don't, so they're easier to tell apart in your catalog.

If you have OFB you can also use these to pose Sims on surfaces of different heights, using Hysterical Paroxysm's tutorial, but I've never tried that, so beware glitches.

FERGUS! & Cian = favourite odd couple of Lothere.  

FERGUS! is the best body to happen to Araphel. I’m sure it’s also partly (majorly partly) to do with Dante stuck in Cian’s mortal body, but Sebastien was definitely too much of a weakling to deal with Cian.

I’m also beginning to like Araphel more now that he isn’t pining every other chapter for Flann, although I figure she’s at the back of his mind most of the time. But maybe that’s just another advantage of his new body’s enormously good humour.

Now, Neshrael, on the other hand… am I understanding he’s letting the monks rape each other under his watch? O_​o