The Leafsta Survivors are a group of characters who share a common background. Unlike most short background descriptions this one is in the form of a book – The Book of Leafsta, which I wrote, being a newbie, to give my roleplaying a firmer basis. This was an entirely new kind of gaming for me and hope it will show that it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks (or at least some of the tricks). This places the Leafsta Survivors somewhere between a short background description and a formally-constituted family-type guild like the Von’sah or the House of Tramere each with their own forums and guild website.

I began online roleplaying in 2003 when I joined UO at the time I took early retirement for health reasons. Originally, I had intended that Agnes Fretting (the author of the Book of Leafsta) would never become a character, but would be the Guiding Spirit of the Leafsta Survivors, for which I created the forum name of Angst (Angst being the scornful nickname given to Agnes by Leafstans for her all-too-true prophecies of doom). Later I separated the two by creating Agnes as a character, reserving the name Angst for the Guilding Spirit.

This thread will be used to provide background information on the Leafsta survivors, to describe some of the NPCs and characters-in-waiting, to describe landmark events in the very humdrum and everyday lives of its main characters and other ooc background information that might be helpful.

The thread is a revision of a backed-up version of an earlier thread called “a Sosarian soap opera” on the f4g pre-crash ooc forum. I’ve kept the original dates of when posts were added to the thread.

See Moongates Wiki for more information.

5 June 2005
I'll use this thread to list new characters, as and when the need arises. I don't claim a monopoly or any copyright over these, if anyone wants to activate one temporarily or on a longer-term basis, let me know and they are welcome to do so. Or use the background and your imagination to create an entirely new Leafsta survivor.

The ones in this post are all based on Jern's IC knowledge (which doesn't of course mean its "true").

Sharon Sinders
Prostitute, now retired, born and bred in Trinsic in 317 SR, her patch was Westgate Road and Stablery Road, plus the part of North Park Street that connects them (these names are those in common parlance used by ordinary working folk, they differ from the grand names given by the Duchy). Single mother to Moll Sinders, in 351 she was going to an appointment with a client at the Travellers Inn when she found Jern unconscious and bleeding from a head wound outside the door , and thereby probably saved his life.

Moll Sinders (player-run by me at time of writing)
Daughter of Sharon Sinders, father unknown. In her early teens a tearaway member of a Trinsic Eastend gang. Known to carry a knife and with a penchant for snooping she had a reputation as a flirt and a trouble-maker, having been the cause of more than one gang fight. Seems to have settled down – for now at least…Mother of Jern Jr (b 353) and Sharon (b 355).

Will Grabbett
Founding and Senior Partner of the law firm of Grabbett and Rhunn of Baker Street, Trinsic. Drew up Jern's Last Will and Testament.

Will Grabbett is originally from Yew. He was left as a newborn infant in swaddling rags at the entrance of Empath Abbey, given to a wet nurse then, as a child, lived in the abbey as an apprentice scribe. His gift of the gab meant he went on to practice law at the Courts of Justice. Like many other Yewish folk living in the northwest of Yew, he is part of the Yewish Diaspora that took place after the abandonment of Yew town when the swamp and its swamp-monster denizens took over a large part of northwestern Yew.

Settling in Trinsic he built up his own legal practice over the following decade or so. Now middle-aged and stout, he has a soft spot for Sally Buttons (being himself an orphan) and supports the Orphan Fund.

Maddelie Rhunn
Maddelie is junior partner in the law firm. She is a young Trinsician showing promise as both a company organiser and a legal brain, recently qualified as a solicitor and public notary. Becoming increasingly indispensible to the senior partner.

Will Grabbett and Maddelie Rhunn appear to manage the only law partnership in Trinsic. They issue birth, death and marriage certificates and act as public notaries. Will Grabbett is sometimes asked to serve in criminal trials as a defence or prosecution lawyer.

16 July 2005
A brief outline of the Fiskdotter Matriarchies

My researches of this unusual clan have proved especially problematic as, until I came across the statement by its Arch-Matriarch, Yedda Fiskdotter, they appear to have left behind them very few written documents, at least that I have been able to unearth. The number of ships at the disposal of the matriarchy at any one time has never been great, 5 or 6 being the most as far as I have been able to ascertain. As males are ineligible to inherit or even to own a matriarchy ship this immediately cuts in half the potential number of ships. In addition, many daughters have chosen to leave the matriarchy to find happiness with a miner or blacksmith in Minoc. It takes dedication and determination for a daughter to become a mistress of a ship.

Finally, the kin-sundering, when the Fretting-led migration left for the Yew Forest to build Leafsta Village and settle there (and that the Matriarchs scornfully call “the lemming trek”) came close to destroying the Fiskdotter Matriarchy. The clan could ill-afford such a major loss of bloodline bearers. This explains the bitterness of the Matriarchy towards the Leafstans. It took nearly a century and a half before the Fiskdotter Matriarchy recovered from that disaster.

I have been greatly helped in my studies by the Twilight Fellowship on Pacific Shard, especially their writing group, whose work and output are quite awesome. I am especially indebted to its guiding spirit, Sable, for his knowledge of, and devotion to, the world of the Ultimas, and for the help and support given to me by many of its players, especially the bard Rustelle.

A simple geneology of the Matriarchy
Three Fiskdotter families were among the Flight Families, Eli, Nettis and Sila, whose ships bore all the refugees to the safety of Minoc. The Nettis line died out at the Kin-sundering, the Sila line eventually failed. But the Elis line, of which the current Arch-Matriarch is head has resulted in two new lines of daughters who became matriarchs in their own right each producing at least one or two extant mistress lines.

I have tried here to reconstruct in a simple way the geneologies of the arch-matriarch line of the Yeddas and the now extinct Nettis matriarch line. This latter will be of more interest to the Leafstans, especially Agnes Fretting whose mother was a Fiskdotter. I have not yet completed my reconstruction of the newer matriarch line or lines.

Dating starts from the birth of those who were ruling Matriarchs at the time of the last Norsefolk Council - held in Minoc in 267 just prior to the lemming trek (only first female issue is shown, males not shown)

The Nettis Matriarchy (extinct)
Became a victim of the lemming trek, and the line died out.

Nettis Fiskdotter
b 266, d 309

Nettis Fiskdotter was an infant at the kin-sundering when her mother, the Matriarch Nettis I, abdicated and took her on the lemming trek. The abdicated Matriarch's younger sister Silla became Matriarch but produced no daughters.

Nettis Fiskdotter helped settle Leafsta and eventually married Anvel Fretting (great grandson of his namesake, Loosefoot), giving birth to the man who later was widely (but wrongly, it now seems) believed to be Smaed Halfelven’s father in 302 and Agnes Fretting in 309. Nettis, Agnes' mother, died in childbirth.

Historical footnote
It may be worth noting here that Agnes, descending from a Fiskdotter Matriarchy line that became extinct after the lemming trek, must surely have known there would be Fiskdotters in Minoc but she does not appear to have looked for them nor mentioned them in any of her writings. This suggests she may be aware that there was bad blood between her Minoc and Leafsta kin.

There are intriguing implications flowing from the central position of Agnes in this saga. For while Jern Fretting is clearly the bearer of the mayoral line of Leafsta, should that die out and assuming no other claimant is found, Agnes' offspring (Smaed and any children he may have) would assume this nominal titular position. And since Agnes is also the last surviving member of the Nettis Matriarchy, should the arch-matriarchy line fail Smaed and his offspring might become the heirs of both the Leafstan mayors and the Matriarchy tradition. But there are a number of "ifs" built in here that make this hypothetical at this time.

25 October 2005
The Leafsta Time-Line

Background
Establishing an accurate timeline for Leafsta and its survivors is problematic, as several reckoning systems have been used down the ages. I have tried to regularise the time-line by converting all previous reckonings (including Leafsta Reckoning into Stratics Reckoning, in which 381 LR approximates to 351 SR (see footnote to part 21 of Smaed’s Story). One Gregorian calendar year equals five stratics years (see earlier entries for the link to the Stratics Reckoning calendar). All dates in the recent entries for both Smaed’s Story and Jern’s Journal – and indeed all other Leafsta survivors - are now in Stratics Reckoning.

The time-line begins with the earliest surviving records (as far as the Leafstans were aware) of the Norse Isles refugees in Minoc. This is a period of 30 years between the birth of Anvel ”Loosefoot” Fretting and the last Norsefolk Council of 267 SR, where the Fretting decision was made to migrate west as a separate community.

The true Leafsta survivors are, of course, the Fiskdotter clan, who, thanks to their matriarchal organisation, are the only remaining viable group of settlers of the original Norse Isles refugees- and who, of course, brought the refugees to the safety of Minoc in the first place! It is among the Fiskdotters, then, that the timeline is most likely to be successfully extended back – perhaps even to the date of the cataclysm that destroyed the Norse Isles. One day,when I have time, I will make a thorough search of the documents and folklore of the remarkable Fiskdotter clan.

Meanwhile,my own geneological records of the Leafsta families disappeared when the core journal known as Angst’s Journal was lost in a first time of f4g chaos (the one before this more cataclysmic time of f4g chaos). But one day I will try to reconstruct these from scattered notes. Any discrepancies, gaps or irregularities in the timeline are likely to be due to the first time of f4g chaos.

The Timeline
235 Birth in Minoc of Anvel “Loosefoot” Fretting.

255: Marriage of Anvel “Loosefoot” Fretting and Millie Millster. The mayoral/Mastersmith line of the Leafsta Frettings begins with its founder, Loosefoot, who became Leafsta’s First Mastersmith-Mayor in 268.

256 birth of Anvel’s son, Smaed of Minoc, who became the Second Mastersmith-Mayor of Leafsta and who married Heraxa Treefeller, architect of Leafsta.

267: The last Norsefolk Council
Held in Minoc, leading to the kin-sundering and the Fretting-led woegn-migration to the Deep Forest, under Loosefoot. With hindsight this was, indeed, the unmitigated disaster that the Fiskdotters feared and that they argued vehemently against, contemptuously dismissing it as "the lemming-trek". It decimated the Minoc settlers, whose greatly reduced numbers were insufficient to sustain their Norse identity as a refugee colony as a result of intermarriage with Minocans. For a while the migrants prospered, building their village, but they, too were destroyed, leaving a scattered handful of Leafsta survivors, a kind of diaspora. The only branch of the migrants to survive as a viable kinship network were the Fiskdotters on whose ships the refugees fled the natural disaster in which the Norse Isles were destroyed. They only survived thanks to their matriarchal family system, which only became centralised after the kin-sundering when the first Arch-Matriarch took office.

268: Founding of the village of Leafsta in the foothills of the Serpentspine Mountains overlooking the Yew Forest. Founding in Minoc of the Fiskdotter Matriarchy under Yedda, its first Arch-Matriarch.

278 Birth of Bellows, eldest son of Smaed "of Minoc" (Footloose's son). Bellows became third Mastersmith-Mayor of Leafsta, and the first to be born in Leafsta. Married Tama Husbond (the herder Tyg Husbond, who witnessed the destruction of Leafsta is Tama’s younger brother).

303 Birth of Tongs, Fourth Mastersmith-Mayor of Leafsta, married Canif Whittler of the Leafstan carpenter family.

326 September 1st: birth of Jern Fretting, great-great grandson of Anvel “Loosefoot” Fretting. Had Leafsta survived he would have become its Fifth Mastersmith-Mayor.

328 March 21st: birth of Smaed Fretting “Halfelven” to Agnes Fretting and the elf Thalandor of Silverleaf. Smaed “Halfelven”, born out of wedlock to Agnes Fretting was switched for the stillbirthed child of Millie Millster (named after Loosefoot’s wife), and Smaed was adopted as the natural-born son of Millie and her husband Smaed, younger brother of Tongs Fretting, Jern’s father (as described in the extract from Agnes' diary).

336 Flight of Agnes from Leafsta to Trinsic guided by Talis (Thalandor) and taking Jern and Smaed with her. She settles outside Trinsic with the retired Leafstan miner Digs Delver.

337 The destruction of Leafsta (based on Tyg Husbond’s account)

340 Death of Digs Delver, without issue. Agnes inherits his croft.

It is at this point in time that the purely background history ends and Jern and Smaed become independent characters (Agnes some time later).

341 Jern goes to Leafsta, finds the ruins, and visits Stonekeep on the return journey. Becomes a serf of the Duchy on his return to Trinsic in autumn 342. Begins the long training to become a blacksmith.

343 Smaed goes to Stonekeep, and enlists as a trainee with the Yew Militia.

348 Footman Smaed takes furlough, visits Trinsic, where he learns of his parentage. Returns to Yew, resigns from the Yew Militia, and begins the search for his father.

348 SR is the date of the last journal entry before the start of the 350s, which I have called The Elven Decade. At time of writing it is April 359 SR. The timeline will be continued when Stratics Reckoning reaches the year 360.