CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Gathering Home


               ur interviewer meets with Munchkin at The Gathering entrance, to be invited inside. Munchkin offers to give our interviewer a tour, leading her through stone passages decked with green vines, finally arriving at the pool. Our interviewer marvels at the beauty of the house and enjoys a good soak as Munchkin tells the tale of The Gathering's formation.

"Phoenix was the original name of the group which opened this house. Once we recovered Brosh, we renamed the group The Entranced."

>Calysto tugs a journal from her pack and opens to a new page.

"...Phoenix began with two members, Breyd and myself. Many others came to us after I left DoL, asking me to open a house based on honor. I laughed at first. But then Breyd left DoL, and I stopped laughing. I wanted her to have a home. So we started thinking, and Breyd did much of the research. Liondra soon joined us, and we finally came up with the fisrt draft of the Charter for a house based on honor and teaching.

"Devising a method of handling essences was not easy. One of our first theories was freeze-drying them, and from there, stasis. But both were too much like imprisoning. Eventually we back tracked and came up with the cleansing theory, derived from the enlightenment theory. we had to release the charter early, before we were finished. Because we learned of The Pretenders. On the date of release, I think we had five or six members. That tripled or quadrupled daily after the charter release, until the original Phoenix group, on the day we recovered Brosh, was over 60 strong. I would like to note that, while working on the charter, we had a lot of support from some really great dreamers. A couple of these were Tux and Dr. Carl G Jung. They, and several others, were a major incentive to use to not give up. They were marvelous.

"Well, we gathered our members, and sometimes worked 36/7 to keep them together and motivated. Anyone who thinks it's easy is nuts. It's work, a LOT of hard work. The three founders, Breyd, Liondra and myself, each had our own roles. Bred was the words, she was the thinker. Lio was the brute force, the protector. And I was the charisma, the flame that brought people in and kept them devoted. If one founder had dropped out, we would not have been able to keep the group intact.

"Breyd, in fact, wrote the ritual we used to summon Brosh. We chose to perform the ritual at the Bridge of Memories, which is known to have a portal into the chaos. The ritual employed the standards we base the house on: the pillars which support the house. There are five pillars all total: the granite is the pillar of honor, the defenders and warriors. The ivory is the pillar of harmony, responsible for knowledge and diplomacy. The jade pillar are the nurturers, they are responsible for supplying the physical and emotional needs of members. The gold pillar are the greeters and recruitors, they work with new dreamers, helping them find their place in the dream. And the fifth pillar is the house itself, which is supported by the other four pillars. So, we performed the ritual in early October I believe, at the Bridge of Memories. We had if I recall nearly 100 dreamers there. Near the end, just before the point where Brosh was to appear, I stormed. I ran all the way back crying, to see her standing in the water, dazed. We had succeeded. The IC, who had been ridiculing, immediately tried to claim credit for her recovery, but she aligned with The Entranced, as we now were. She named the three founders as leaders of the group, and gave each an Entranced Egg.

"For every ten members, we received another Egg. A major determination as to whether a house would open was dream power. From what we learned, this encompassed many things. Membership was a factor. As was essences, both DM and lesser mare. From what I was told, we surpassed UoC in lesser mare essences, and membership. I'm not really sure on DM essences. Anyway, All Hallows Eve arrived. We had sent Lady Brosh back into the chaos to meet with Lord Boethius, her mentor, to learn if we had reached our goals. We were to recover her at midnight. Again, at the Bridge of Wishes, using the same summoning ritual. As we waited there, two hours early, we learned Saggitar had returned and opened UoC-- early! We fought despair, thinking we had lost our battle, but we refused to give up. On the stroke of midnight, though most of us secretly thought she was lost, we performed the ritual again, and Lady Brosh appeared wearing the crest of a guardian of The Entranced. At that moment the house opened for the first time since the Great Loss."