The hunt depicted (if I recall correctly) involves Artemis (one of the myths where she turns someone into something for peeking), which would then link to the moon and all the other astrological things.
Edit: That made me want to check on the obelisk again. If we’re correlating places/objects with celestial things, we have a sun and two moons (or one and half/two of each depending on how you count the Hunt; I lean towards moon since Artemis was goddess of the hunt.).
I’m now half suspecting that we’ll have three more moons if that’s a thing.
There’s also a mural depicting Apollo, so both of the twins were represented. Maybe it’s a marker for the sun and the moon?
Edit: looks like there’s a ton of Greek figures represented, from Artemis and Apollo to Zeus, Venus, and Mercury (don’t mind my Greek/Roman blending please! Just reporting from sources)
A tarp would’ve been smart, although it wasn’t so bad this time.
I don’t have any paint here, so I got out some printer paper and just dipped it in water. I got about halfway through a brushstroke before it disintegrated. Except this time, there was nothing in the sand, so now I’m just feeling guilty over destroying an ancient artifact for nothing.
“Ilya stumbled through the woods with a bright and beaming smile on her face, and a single phrase running over and over in her mind: The great silver bells have finally rung.”
A solid Midwestern reaction if I’ve ever seen one, @Catherine in other news, is this… the sign? Like we’ve gotten it all but confirmed by Marty and Lauren, but this seems like a pretty direct confirmation from the Book. Which is nice and all, but… what do we do now?
I knew to expect this having read a lot of forum topics while catching up, but I’m in love with how many elaborate dead ends we seem to have found! It’s genuinely so great.
Well I did a really preliminary search for “[enter location here] silver bells” and I didn’t really find much (although google really wanted me to listen to Christmas music in March).
I personally doubt that this is actually meaningful, and I think the trail probably ended, but I did find an entry in a book called The Athenaeum about an “inscription from Gerasa.” The inscription, extremely unhelpfully, is not translated at all, but the description says it’s from a church. Very unclear which one, because people during the period this was written in were bad at archaeology and record-keeping in general.
I’m likely way off here, but I’ll say it anyways; silver is the precious metal associated with Lucifer the Morningstar, and silver bells are a key to Enochian rituals for demon and angel summoning. Maybe some of that will help?
Going back to Artemis’ hunt, that’s the legend of Actaeon wherein she turns him into a stag and he is ripped apart by his own hounds. Has anyone noticed any deer or dogs around that are new?
It appears that Gerasa is now known as Jerash, in Jordan. It’s of Greco-Roman build and was destroyed in an earthquake. The temple of Artemis in Jerash was converted into a fortress. According to wikipedia it’s considered the ‘Pompeii of the East’ for how well preserved it is.
I’ll do some more research and see what I can dig up. At the least it will keep me busy during deskwarming.
Perhaps these items are dissolving into sand as the magiq contained within is released? Or they were already depleted from whatever purpose Lauren used them for?
All right I marshaled my last two brain cells to do some more digging on Jerash, please use or ignore this info as desired oof. There’s no Atlas Obscura entries for either one, although the ruins in Jerash get an entry as a whole because they do some really cool reenactments.
The coordinates for the temple of Artemis in Jerash are:
32.282173, 35.890899
The coordinates for Hadrian’s Arch, the other big landmark in Jerash, are:
32.272572, 35.891414
I was hoping Hadrian’s Arch might have housed bells at one point but no such luck. Have silver bells appeared in any of the books before?
This is probably entirely unrelated, but all I could think of when I read ‘silver bells’ is the Mary Mary nursery rhyme.
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.”
Is the version I knew, apparently the original was slightly different:
“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells,
And so my garden grows.”
Don’t know if that’s useful at all, but felt like pointing it out!
So, thus far we’ve brought closure to Sasha and Mrs. Lachmann, then dismantled The Cagliostro’s network of temporary leylines. Both of these were significant people in our collective past, and it seems like every time we finish some “unfinished business” started when we first unlocked the Book’s four locks, the Book of Briars reveals a little more of itself.
It may be because I’m the sensitive sort, but bringing Sasha and Mrs. Lachmann together makes sense to me, but finding The Cagliostro’s artifacts strikes me as odd. Did she mean for us to find them, as a circuitous way to communicate with us that the laws of magiq are re-written? Will she be upset that we destroyed her temporary leylines, or even some meaningful magiqal artifacts. I’m just not clear as to what our role was here (never mind the granular details of what type of stone that obelisk was made of, or triangulating the locations of these points on the map, et cetera).
Lastly, maybe the “great silver bells” are ringing in the dawn of a new age of magiq, the Book of Briars!
Four locks on the BoB, four sections. First section dealt a lot with Brandon, first section of BoB is released after giving closure to Brandon’s loved ones. Second section dealt a lot with Cags and Lauren, second section of Bob is released after sussing out Cags/Lauren’s leyline network.
Third section dealt a lot with Kemetic, etc. Fourth section dealt a lot with our '94 friends. I have a feeling that the BoB will have us catching up with more of our old friends soon.
in other news, is this… the sign? Like we’ve gotten it all but confirmed by Marty and Lauren, but this seems like a pretty direct confirmation from the Book. Which is nice and all, but… what do we do now?
