Galerie de Paris - Tid bits d'information (Tidbits of Information) - Mémoires et Histoires (Memories and Stories) - Ariane

My First Flag Quest
by: Ariane, le Bel Auteur

   While enjoying a nice drink or two or ten with friends in the Horse Guards recently, both those in attendance at the party with me and my mentor, the lovely Grande ArchDuchess Kincla, conspired to talk me into joining the upcoming flagquest, in spite of woeful lack of experience in combat and quests. Once I'd succumbed to their persuasive skills, my friends at the party supplied me with healing potions and Kincla equipped me with a lovely lady's shortsword.
   By that time, the flagquest had started; Kincla gave me a quick debriefing, instructed me to attack anyone who attacked me, attack anyone who attacked her, pick up a flag if I saw it on the ground and RUN, and otherwise to keep myself safe. I peered at my map, attempting to figure out where the blazes I was, and Kincla charged into the fray. While still attempting to triangulate my position, it came to my attention that a certain well-armed ArchDuchess was throwing daggers at me. I made a hasty retreat and remembered the potions that my friends had bestowed upon me; I drank from them until I had regained my health.
   Fully healed, I ventured out onto the streets once more, and was passed by the ArchDuchess Quintana. She slowed her mount at my side and asked of me, "Should I kill you?" She was reduced to terror by my response -- "Um...no?" -- and the endearing smile that I sent her direction, and quickly fled.

   The fight for the flags, by this time, had left the street I was on. Obedient to my mentor's command to keep myself safe, I settled down to keep an eye on affairs from afar. It seemed, at first, that the green team might come out victorious, for they held three of the flags -- but then I discovered that the man who held them had been slain, and all three lay abandoned on the street!
   Kincla had been slain and I was the only one of our team left, so I gathered up my courage and raced for Rue N S Mederic -- only to discover that all four were now in the possession of Duc Calintz de Cerevinian, and he was only a short distance south of me. With healing potions and shortsword firmly in hand, I raced after him, but the chase had hardly begun before a notice spread throughout the city that all four flags had been run up, and the flagquest was over.
   I sheathed my sword and put away my potions with a disappointed-but-hardly-surprised sigh, assuming that Calintz had reached his flag base before I had been able to catch up to him -- only to reread the notice, and discover that the winners had not been the Calintz's yellow team, but the red team that Kincla and I had been assigned to.
   After much confusion, for Kincla was still dead and I certainly hadn't been able to get my hands on the flags myself, I came to the only reasonable conclusion -- that Duc Calintz had run the flags up our flagpole, to afford this inexperienced, unskilled newcomer the honor of her first flagquest victory. We returned to the Horse Guards to celebrate, and although the Duc made a great show of his chagrin at having 'accidentally' run the flags up the wrong flagpole, it is still my personal conviction that he did so out of the kindhearted intent of ensuring that the memory of my first flagquest was a joyous one.