Cheyne Aybara

UP: Lake Superior

    The Britannian Games are a week-long collectionof events and competitions that bring forth the toughest competition across theworld. To kick off these glorious games, the opening ceremonies made their wayto a virtue city near you. These games were brought not by boat, not by mageryof any kind, but brought to you by foot!

These series of stops started out at the Empath Abbey in Yew at 4pm CST onSunday. The hundreds of participants in the initial registration of the gamesthinned out when word of a marathon came about. It became the true athletes thatstuck this one out as the mages and less interested warriors exited out towardsthe first stop along the route, Skara Brae's docks.

The trek from Yew to Skara's docks was laid with problems as Brigands attackedthe 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 metup with the running crowd of torch bearers at the crossroads to the west ofBritain 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 asthey made their way to the moongate near the bank. It was through thesemoongates that the torchbearers visited Magincia, Moonglow, Jhelom, and finallymade their way to Trinsic. Parading through Trinsic's stone inlaid streets, therunners gallantly made their way across bridges, waterways, and finally made itto the Western gates. One half of the way through their trip, many of the torchbearers grew tired leaving only a handful of folks to continue towards Britainalong the main route.

These finely attuned athletes made their way North, dodging brigand attacks anddefending themselves as best they could while continuing with their torches heldhigh. They seemingly ran for months during that hour-long trek as Grizzly putit, "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 othersat each checkpoint along their route. The group carried a communication crystalwith them and their event was broadcast by town criers throughout the realms.Small attacks were launched by the many creatures of the wilderness at variouspoints during their trip, but it wasn't until the last leg of the run that thegroup really saw trouble.

"I smelled death," Grizzly stated, "it's a putrid smell, itis." They had just made their way past the crossroads near the desert whenthey were jumped by overwhelming numbers of orcs. "They're dyed red!",shouted Gohan. "When I walked closer to one of the corpses, I knew itwasn'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 attackedin such a large force," Carter continued, "It�s not like any orcsI've ever encountered. The games will continue as planned regardless."

"Is anyone tired?!" Carter exclaimed after watching the peoplerally to defend the parade of torches. Uproars of "Never!","No!", and "Nay!" echoed through the mountain wallssurrounding the desert. The thunderous sounds of victory carried the torchbearers 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 theEmpath Abbey in Yew. Fireworks wands were passed around and mages joined in thecelebration with a number of spectacular effects to kick off this week's events!The games' three man footraces and horse races are tomorrow evening.

From the Town Cryer - The Journal of Ultima Online, Monday, July 17th 2000