Producer: Masi
Name: Campofiorin
Region: Verona, Italy
Vintage: 2006
Price: ~ 18
My mom is dead. While I didn’t really know her, it’s still hard to say and hear. A few weeks ago, on the day I both met and watched her die, one of the last things she said to me was that I should seek out a secret conclave of the Autumn Court. Although I knew the Autumn Court was one of the four major fae political entities, I had no clue why my Duke had kept my mother prisoner for nearly seventy years in a vain attempt to get her to tell him where this conclave was located. Not until my mother told me that this conclave had finally cracked the secrets of baptism did I fully understand the significance of the conclave’s whereabouts.
You see the advent of monotheism and the widespread use of baptism marks the decline of the fae influence on the development of human culture. Once a human is baptized they can no longer perceive our true forms, nor are they capable of learning fae magik. Until baptism became widespread it was common for fae families to secretly swap their newborn child with one of a human couple. The human baby would be raised in our ways thus gaining long life and mastery of our magiks. The fae baby or changeling as we call them would in turn be raised as human and would often learn to control fae magik on their own through instinct. As they grew into adulthood and bore children with a human mate they would interject our blood into the human race thus ensuring the survival of the fae. However, if a changeling was baptized, it would be forever locked in its human state. Neither capable of using fae magik nor able to see its own kind.
After narrowly escaping the magical realms with my life and with the ring that had slipped from my mother’s hand as she slipped from my grasp, I spent countless hours examining the ring hoping for some clue into my mother’s life since I knew her so briefly. But I found nothing unusual. However, one night when the moon was full and its light filtering through the forest canopy into my bedroom, something unexpected happened. The moonlight seemed to refract through the single emerald stone set in the ring onto the walls of my bedroom. Simple faescript danced around as I tried to hold the ring steady, but they were easy enough to read. They revealed coordinates. To what I didn’t know but thinking back on my escape, it couldn’t have been a coincidence that my mother’s ring slide off her finger and into my hand. No, my mother intended for me to find these coordinates and they were my first clue as to the whereabouts of the conclave. These coordinate led to the Olympic Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest.
Eventually, I made arrangements to travel there. The Olympic Peninsula is a huge, wild place. Its temperate rainforests are the home for many giant hemlock and spruce trees. I couldn’t think of a better place for an Autumn Court conclave to be located. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the peninsula was populated by dozens of tribes of native people. All of them unbaptized and all of them capable of making covenants with the Autumn Court. However, finding the home of the conclave or what was left of it seemed daunting. But, I soon found on my hikes through the forest that ancient trails were still marked with lines of faerie crystals.
Faerie crystals look like nothing more than strangely shaped quartz to humans, but when a fae is near, they resonate and sing. It was easy enough in the quiet of the rainforest to follow these songs to wherever they led. I followed them for miles until radiating lines converged on an ancient and enormous spruce tree located deep in the Hoh rainforest. As I approached I could sense that it was a fae tree. Sort of like my own home in Montpelier, but comparing this tree to mine would be like comparing the Taj Mahal to a trailer home.
It’s a common misnomer to believe that a fae lives inside his tree. It’s more accurate to say that a fae’s tree marks an entry point into a space carved out of the realms in-between. These realms are located in another dimension which is often used by fae magik. For instance, when a fae poofs from one spot to another, he is actually travelling through the realms in-between to arrive at their destination. These realms extend to all places and some believe all times in both the magical and mundane realms. So, when I made my way up to the ancient spruce tree, it would be a simple matter for me to enter its extra-dimensional space as long as it wasn’t warded – it wasn’t.
Upon entering the tree I immediately found myself in a long foyer. Walking the long hallway, I marveled at all the intricate paintings and embellishments. Some of the paintings were of famous fae theoreticians and philosophers. As I walked to the end, the hall eventually opened up into a large, circular courtroom. The gallery around the outside of the room appear to have room for hundreds of fae and in the center was a large circular table with a podium located in a cutout in the middle of the table. The room smelled as if no court had been held here in quite some time; however, on the podium rested a large, leather bound book that seem to call to me.
As I walked onto the podium I reached to open the book, but I soon found that it was locked. I tried to lift the book from the lectern, but it refused to be lifted. I labored to force the book open with whatever I could find, a candlestick holder, my hiking pole, I even tried to cut off the binding using my Swiss army knife but nothing seemed to work. At that point I realized that the book was locked using no simple mechanism. Rather, its lock was a sophisticated enchantment intended to keep anyone who wasn’t a member of the court from opening it. It was at that moment that I decided to see if my mother’s ring was the key. It had gotten me this far, why not the rest of the way?
Untying my mother’s ring that was hanging on a simple string around my neck, I tried touching the ring all around the binding to no avail. It was then I decided to see what would happen if I tried to open the book while wearing the ring. So I tried sliding it on my pinky knowing that my hands were much larger than my mother’s. But strangely enough the ring was too large for my pinky as it easily fell off my finger. So, I slide the ring on my index finger and it was a perfect fit. Yeah, it was a bit girly for my tastes but if it allowed me to open the book then I’d just put it back on the string later.
While wearing the mom’s emerald ring I reached out to open the book, but surprisingly it opened on its own as I touched it and began to sing images in my mind. I could see all around me the fae spirits of those who had inhabited these chambers in times past. Sitting around courtroom table were five regal figures all of them looking at me with desperate expressions. I don’t know how, perhaps from my schooling or perhaps it was an effect of the enchantment itself, but I seemed to know everyone sitting around the courtroom table. There was Levee, a bold and confident explorer; Horace, the old and benevolent philosopher; Marcie, the whimsical, but astute theoretician; Rawling, a calculating and devious politician and lastly, Verona, a graceful and intelligent theologian. Somehow, I knew all of them to be the last members of the conclave.
It was Levee that approached me, his outstretched hand reaching to touch my forehead. But I was scared and tried to back away only to find that no matter how hard I retreated I stayed in one place. As Levee touched my forehead I could feel all the surrounding spirits fade away along with my consciousness.
I finally awoke several hours later back in my hotel room. My mother’s ring was once again hanging around my neck on a string. How I got there I had no clue; however, I wasn’t alone. The thoughts and possibly the spirits of the last members of the conclave were inside of me all jumbled together. They were a confusing morass of images, emotions, and ideas. While I found I could push these thoughts to the outer recesses of my mind, I soon found out that when I slept each of them struggled for control of my mind. It was only later after speaking with my adopted mother Aosoth that I became resolved to gain control of these spirits. To harness their wisdom and knowledge and to claim the legacy left to me by my mother, Jaelynn Bik.
This was taken with my Nokia phone cam and mailed in directly from the Verona Amphitheatre.
No rehearsing, no editing, no Intro - so not your usual finz.tv quality, but in return practically live at 9pm Verona time which is 3pm eastern.
(For clarification: This is only the last LIVE episode, not the last edited one. We will hit you with more footage taken during our trip when we are back to our respectivr headquarters..)
If anybody has special off-the-tourist-track tips for Verona, hit me on Twitter @w0nk0!
Thanks for watching and good trades,
W0nk0
The city of Verona.
"Verona is a city in Veneto, northern Italy, one of the seven provincial capitals in the region. It is one of the main tourist destinations in north-eastern Italy, thanks to its artistic heritage, several annual fairs, shows and operas, such as the lyrical season in the Arena, the ancient amphitheatre built by the Romans.
Verona is the setting of the story of Romeo and Juliet, made famous by William Shakespeare. Although the earliest version of the story is set in Siena, not Verona — the move was made in Luigi da Porto's Istoria novellamente ritrovata di due Nobili Amanti — a balcony falsely claiming historical connection to the fictional lovers has become a tourist attraction for lovers; the short passageway leading to the balcony is covered with slips of paper carrying their graffiti, and a bronze statue of Juliet stands under the balcony, one breast polished by those touching it for luck." – Wikipedia
