The Arbiter's Ruling / Next Year in Elysium

For two powerful wizards, there is only one thing stronger than love: stubbornness.Final episode of Season 1! If you like what you've heard, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser.Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.Narrated by: Ben MeredithA Faustian Nonsense production.

Auerbach's Destiny: Some people are born to greatness, destined to be saviors of their land. Others...not so much.Memorial: A cottage in the woods built for two. Three perfect coneflowers. And a single, fresh grave.Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.Narrated by: Ben MeredithA Faustian Nonsense production.

Forbidden: Don't go in the forest. Don't open your eyes after sunset. And don’t look behind the cellar door.... if you know what's good for you. (Trigger Warnings: Mental / emotional abuse & kidnapping)The Gods Above the Table: Each week, two men play at being gods. And each week, millions of tiny people live and die by their hands...Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.Narrated by: Ben MeredithA Faustian Nonsense production.

The Silver Thread: If you wake up with a silver thread attached to you, of course you're going to look for the other end. But what are you going to find there?Heart of a Soldier: Magic is remarkably good at putting injured soldiers back together. Even when the mages can't find all of the pieces.Trigger Warnings: Violence (Heart of a Soldier).Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.Narrated by: Ben MeredithA Faustian Nonsense production.

The Arbiter's Ruling: All Ministers are equal, and all Ministers are as one. Except those who would keep magical spells for themselves. Set in the same world as Myer's Helping Hand.Next Year in Elysium: Welcome to the wedding...Pour some ale, raise a glass, and join us in a toast. Next Year in Elysium!Trigger Warnings: Emotional abuse (The Arbiter's Ruling).Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.Narrated by: Ben MeredithA Faustian Nonsense production.

Gallants in Distress: Just as there are damsels in distress, there are gallants in distress. Hamlyn the street-ale vendor is about to find out how knights track down these distressed men.The Next Town Over: The Collective has forsworn violence. But how then to deal with the People, who have not?Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.Narrated by: Ben MeredithA Faustian Nonsense production.

The King's Cup-Bearer: For five years, the king and his cup-bearer have been trapped in the king's chambers. Now, finally, his servant is going to venture forth and find out what is really going on in the kingdom...The Merchant of Dreams: Every day Dimitri sold dreams to anyone who asked, but he could not dream himself.Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.Narrated by: Ben MeredithA Faustian Nonsense production.

There was one place where there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of magical ley lines that gathered and writhed like snakes. It was destiny that this should be the greatest city ever built: Frostford.Meet Myer, an absentminded young mage who works for the Ministry in Frostford. Now meet Myer's helping hand: Stepwise, the daemon he creates so that he can find the things he misplaces. Myer is about to discover that giving humanity the ability to search for anything, at any time, can lead to catastrophe. Part 2 of 2.Written by: Jonathan CohenNarrated by: Trevor SchechterA Faustian Nonsense production.To read the full transcript of this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/myers-helping-hand-part-2TranscriptAccording to Myer’s tracking spell, there were now nine Stepwises – eight of them outside of his control. Now it was time to panic.Myer tried to slow his breathing and thought of his lesson on Runaway Magic. How could he not think of it? It was the highlight of every Ministry student’s first year of study. The magister who taught the course showed them how a magic spell that simply doubled objects would lead to disaster. He started with a copper coin and kept doubling it with a simple incantation. The single coin became two coins, then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and by the tenth doubling the magister showered the podium in copper and told the students that there were now over a thousand coins…before he made all but one of them disappear with a flourish.Any magic that was not properly cast could lead to runaway magic. There were rumours that this was one of the reasons the Ministry had been formed in the first place, but the magister would neither confirm nor deny this. He had scraped the chalk across the large slate at the front of the class, then tapped each syllable, emphasizing the word: “Cat-tas-stro-phe!”Myer re-read the spell he’d written to conjure the first daemon. There were no flaws that he could see. No, Stepwise had been copied by human means, at least at first.He bit his lip. “Stepwise, double yourself,” he said with some dread.Stepwise stretched and split down the middle. Now there were two Stepwises in front of him. Eleven red spots on the line symbol. Cat-tas-stro-phe.He could duplicate enough Stepwises to catch the other Stepwises now, but since at least one other person knew how to duplicate the rogue daemons, there was no stopping them.And each daemon used a tiny bit of manna…unnoticeable at first, but once it became a case of Runaway Magic, the manna would start adding up.Myer was a clever young man. He often had many clever ideas and brought these clever ideas to Alastair or the lower magisters. This time, he felt that the cleverest thing he could do was to…say nothing.It would have been simple to deconstruct the Stepwises. All Myer needed to do to make them disappear was to reverse the spell inscribed on the sheet of parchment he now kept locked in the bottom drawer of his chest of drawers. He could even tear the parchment into pieces, if he did not mind the thought of every Stepwise suddenly deconstructing violently.But the moment Myer broke the spell, all of the accumulated manna that animated the daemons would instantly flow back into the manna reservoir at the end of the street, and from there into the neighborhood’s ley line. The Ministry would not fail to notice an *increase* in the supply of manna…especially when a young, clever minister resided only a short walk away.The next morning Myer noted with a dull resignation that there were fourteen red dots on the symbol. On his walk to the Ministry, he spotted at least two Stepwises flitting about the buildings above him: one had a hammer in its mouth, and the other carried an apple.If Alastair...

Every world in this realm is crisscrossed by ley lines; filaments of earth energy that connect places of worship, monuments, and historical sites. You have passed through innumerable ley lines in your life: think of any desolate place you have been where the hair on the back of your neck stood up for no reason you could fathom...Meet Myer, an absentminded young mage who works for the Ministry in Frostford. Now meet Myer's helping hand: Stepwise, the daemon he creates so that he can find the things he misplaces. Myer is about to discover that giving humanity the ability to search for anything, at any time, can lead to catastrophe. Part 1 of 2.Written by: Jonathan CohenNarrated by: Trevor SchechterA Faustian Nonsense production.To read the full transcript of this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/myers-helping-hand-part-1TranscriptEvery world in this realm is crisscrossed by ley lines; filaments of earth energy that connect places of worship, monuments, and historical sites. You have passed through innumerable ley lines in your life: think of any desolate place you have been where the hair on the back of your neck stood up for no reason you could fathom.The more ley lines that intersect in an area, the more magically powerful that area is. Some unfortunate towns only have a single ley line passing through – barely enough to allow a local mystic to dowse for water. Other towns are gifted with an abundance of ley lines.And of course, once the men and women of this world understood ley lines and how they could work to their advantage, they built towns and villages at the great crossroads of these lines. A mage might wander an unspoiled land, with enchanted spectacles on his nose, until he found a spot that burned with a grid of reddish-gold ley lines arcing across each other. Then he would send back word to those who had sponsored his expedition: here shall be a great city.There was one place where there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of ley lines that gathered and writhed like snakes. It was destiny that this should be the greatest city ever built. Those of temperaments sensitive to magic had already settled it as a village, but with the ley lines to power their efforts, it grew into a city of spires and minarets, columns and porticos. Frostford: The largest city in the known world.One cannot simply dip a wand or a staff into a ley line and extract the magic needed for a spell or incantation; it takes training and skill to handle the ley lines. It takes a Minister.And so, it came to pass, in a section of Frostford that was neither too poor nor too wealthy, that a young junior minister named Myer was late for his work.Myer was no more than twenty, with a shock of black wavy hair that never quite stayed where it should. He had hazel eyes and the babyish curious face of a child, and at this moment he stood among a pile of his clothes, looking for his staff.He could summon the staff, of course; this was a trifling cantrip for any minister. But Myer had nearly expended his allotment of magic for the thirty-days, and he did not want the Ministry to sanction him.Thomas would know where the staff was. But Thomas was not here, Myer thought.The staff was ebony. Why had he chosen ebony? With his black robes and furniture of dark wood, and black walls, the staff was nearly impossible to find. The only spot of light in his chambers was –And here he turned to his cat, Bedlam. Bedlam was officially a familiar, as far as the Ministry knew, but the luminous white cat with light green eyes, pink nose and ears spent his time sleeping or looking on with disdain. As Myer now saw, the cat had his paws wrapped around the ebony staff.“Give that to me!” Myer said, leaping for the cat. In a flash, Bedlam...

It had been decades since the last dragon had been sighted in the region; Goodwife Bayliss was the oldest Baravian, and even she could only dimly recollect her grandparents telling tales of an ice dragon spraying the countryside with frost and icicles, freezing the cattle and sheep where they stood.Nobody had seen a dragon since then. Until now.Every town menaced by a dragon could use a knight. Every lonely wizard could also use a knight. What happens to a love affair when the dragon has been defeated?Written by: Jonathan CohenNarrated by: Joe CruzA Faustian Nonsense production.To read the full transcript of this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/the-knight-and-the-dragonTranscriptOnce, there was a quiet town called Baravia that was nestled in between two hills on the eastern edge of the continent. Baravia was well-situated: it had a river that brought water, and fish, and boats with trade from other villages down the coast. The plain it stood upon was high enough that the temperature was moderate. It was considered the friendliest town in the region.The Baravians prided themselves on being friendly. At the entrance to the town stood a statue of the town’s founder with open arms, and an inscription in several languages reading, “Welcome to Baravia, all strangers who seek it!”Baravia was also known throughout the region to welcome travel from visitors, commerce from visitors, and certainly gold from visitors. But there was one type of visitor that Baravians did not like at all.It had been decades since the last dragon had been sighted in the region; Goodwife Bayliss was the oldest Baravian, and even she could only dimly recollect her grandparents telling tales of an ice dragon spraying the countryside with frost and icicles, freezing the cattle and sheep where they stood.Nobody had seen a dragon since then. Until now.The farm animals smelled the sulfur and fled, spooked. The farmers also smelled the sulfur, but they did not know to run until a shadow fell across their land. With a wingspan several yards wide, orange-red scales, and yellow slitted eyes, the dragon swooped and soared and buzzed the tops of the farmhouses until the farmers cowered in their cellars.Then came the fire: magical fire, green and blue and orange, straight from the dragon’s mouth, scorching the thatched roofs and searing the rows of corn, and somehow miraculously missing the animals which stood fearfully at the edge of the river, trying to decide which was a worse fate: to enter the river, or be burned by the dragon.Goodwife Bayliss was not afraid; at the age of ninety-six years, she was only afraid of the aches that afflicted her hips. She stood in the largest scorched cornfield with her non-magical scythe and her non-magical voice and shouted at the dragon. “Get away!” she cried. “Leave Baravia alone!”The dragon made a long swooping arc downwards, and the one farmer who could see Goodwife Bayliss later said it looked as if the dragon was coming straight for her, fire lashing the field in a straight line. At the last moment, the dragon pulled up, but Goodwife Bayliss’s arms were more agile than her hips, and she reached up and hooked the dragon’s head, which spun down towards her and incinerated her.“Our beloved Goodwife Bayliss has been slain,” Olliver, the council leader said at the hastily-assembled council meeting. There were a few murmurs at the use of the word “beloved,” but nobody wanted to be a person who would speak ill of the dead, especially one who was still standing in scorched-carbon form in the field where she had been struck. “We must do something.”“Our crops are in danger,” one farmer said.“Tradesmen are avoiding our town,” a merchant added.They sent soldiers to fight the...