CD Spoilers: The Case of the Stolen Walking Stick

[Ezakra]

The Iron teeth are a givaway, as is the cleaver.
"In Russian folklore there are many stories of Baba Yaga, the fearsome witch with iron teeth."
look in http://www.oldrussia.net/baba.html
plus numerous other sources

No info on the staff though, she always lived in a cabin in the woods, but it spun around on chicken legs...

[Ezakra]

The issue I keep running into is that 1064-1066 was during the "Historical Cycle" of Irish mythology and most of the documentation I have found deals with the disgrace and death of Donnchad mac Briain and the power grab by his successor, which effectively ended the power of the High King in Ireland.  Not finding references to Faerie, though there is a lot in the Ulster and Fenian cycles, but they were around the birth of Christ through the 400's, outside of the date range we were given.  I looked through them anyway,trying to find any woman wielding a staff at all, but I did not have the gumption to go over the translated texts, just looked at synopsis.
There seems to be an association with "Anann" an aspect of a tripartite goddess of death destructions and such, called "Morrigan" who has a few websites devoted to her current worship (?!?)

[Ms Duck]

The issue I keep running into is that 1064-1066 was during the "Historical Cycle" of Irish mythology and most of the documentation I have found deals with the disgrace and death of Donnchad mac Briain and the power grab by his successor, which effectively ended the power of the High King in Ireland.  Not finding references to Faerie, though there is a lot in the Ulster and Fenian cycles, but they were around the birth of Christ through the 400's, outside of the date range we were given.  I looked through them anyway,trying to find any woman wielding a staff at all, but I did not have the gumption to go over the translated texts, just looked at synopsis.
There seems to be an association with "Anann" an aspect of a tripartite goddess of death destructions and such, called "Morrigan" who has a few websites devoted to her current worship (?!?)

why yes, under various names Mab is still worshipped.

as to mother winter, I see her more as Hela/ Lovitar/ Atrops/ Skuld... the final fate, death.

[Esa]

Ezakra: Based on WoJ that we need to look in Celtic lore for the staff, I'm betting MW holds mantles/masks of both Baba Yaga (Russian) and the Cailleach (Celtic), as they are often compared by scholars of mythology anyway and their mythsseem to have borrowed from each other.

Then again, I've been thinking that WoJ only says we can find out how the WC got the blackstaff by looking in Celtic lore in 1065. This does not necessarily mean that this is when MW lost her walkingstick. Could be that she lost it to Arthur/Merlin, it was passed down through Arthur's (supposed) line, and the WC got hold of it in one of the weapons raids pre battle of Hastings.

Lastly, putting in my 2 cents on a few things:
Just because she now wants it back does not mean MW did not orchestrate it being passed to wizards in the first place.
The heist won't be getting the staff back. I think we'll see it again/learn more about it before MW gets it back.

[Ezakra]

Immortals seem to change roles and mantles as Odin/Kringle described fairly regularly, so Yes, I can easily see MW was Baba Yaga, and Atropos as well as Annan (sorry Ducky, ment MW not Mab, are you suggesting that Mab is currently worshipped as an aspect of Morrigan?  That would be really interesting from a RL perspective, though may not inform Jim's writing).
I find it interesting that figures, perhaps in an effort to combat the Oblivion War and the Mistress who runs the war, jump from Mantle to Mantle based on what is believed in at the time.

/Love/ the line " Mab is too much the romantic." I LOLed after that for a while...

[breck]

You ever hear a name and can't quite recall where it came from? I kept seeing baba yaga took me days to remember it was a module in dragon magazine back when i was in college, actually was going to use it but never got around to it. Baba yaga's dancing yurt i think it was called. Back to the walking stick, anyone think that around 1066, before hastings, last time mab and titania talked was when winter assumed the duties of the gate? Perhaps titania's predecessor stole the staff in a power play and was killed for it. Perhaps summer held the gate and winter took over when summer queens changed necessitating a younger queen and to redress balance mother winter loses her staff for a while. Of course that is assuming that blackstaff is the walking stick.

[o_O]

Finding any wizard insane enough to attempt such a theft would be the most difficult part of the entire scenario. 

If something is so insane that even Harry wouldn't consider it then you know that the needle has gone right off the scale.

Unless Mab herself was sponsoring the theft, to get Merlin to adopt the Laws of Magic, as part of the original signing up of the WC to the Unseelie Accords.

[Serack]

In trying to look at this from another angle, I tried to google what important staff might have been at the Battle of Hastings to see who might have ended up with the staff after 1065, and found...

It is popularly believed that maces were employed by the clergy in warfare to avoid shedding blood (sine effusione sanguinis). The evidence for this is sparse and appears to derive almost entirely from the depiction of Bishop Odo of Bayeux wielding a club-like mace at the Battle of Hastings in the Bayeux Tapestry, the idea being either that he did so to avoid shedding blood or bearing the arms of war. The fact that his brother Duke William carries a similar item suggests that, in this context, the mace may have been simply a symbol of authority.

source

Here's a picture of the "club" being wielded by Odo on the tapestery supposedly commishioned by Bishop Odo himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Odo_bayeux_tapestry.png

It's not a staff, but then Dagda's "staff" is more commonly referred to as a club too. 

Gotta keep on researching...

[o_O]

If, as we suspect, the original thief is the Merlin, then we cannot dismiss the concept of time-trickery (especially against a being with intellectus) of the same order as what went into Demonreach.

In trying to look at this from another angle, I tried to google what important staff might have been at the Battle of Hastings to see who might have ended up with the staff after 1065, and found...
source

Here's a picture of the "club" being wielded by Odo on the tapestery supposedly commishioned by Bishop Odo himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Odo_bayeux_tapestry.png

It's not a staff, but then Dagda's "staff" is more commonly referred to as a club too. 

Gotta keep on researching...

[DragonEyes]

The Iron teeth are a givaway, as is the cleaver.
"In Russian folklore there are many stories of Baba Yaga, the fearsome witch with iron teeth."
look in http://www.oldrussia.net/baba.html
plus numerous other sources

No info on the staff though, she always lived in a cabin in the woods, but it spun around on chicken legs...

I wish I had read this yesterday. I wouldn't have gotten all excited that I figured this out today.

[OZ]

I am coming to this late but I think we are missing something if we overlook the ties to Baba Yaga. I mentioned this briefly in another thread but let me make more mention of it here. I should mention that I am talking about legend and folklore here so none of this is etched in stone. Baba Yaga is indeed often pictured as having iron teeth. She is also cannibalistic and is often portrayed preparing her meals cutting up the bodies with a cleaver. Also of great interest to me she is often associated with winter and seen as a guardian or a guide on the border between life and death. It sounds very much like Mother Winter to me. She was an extremely powerful witch. Although she is often seen as evil, she is also often a provider giving those on quests items that they need if their hearts are pure. She is seen in very early myths as having only one leg.(Some think that she may have originally have been a snake goddess thus explaining the single leg.) She is later seen as having one "bony leg". This could tie into Mother Winter's bad leg which seem unusual in an extremely powerful immortal.

 This brings me to the stolen walking stick. I tried to imagine how a simple stick would be needed by someone of Mother Winter's power just to get around. Baba Yaga's main form of transportation was a mortar and pestle. She rode in the mortar and used the pestle to steer or to push the mortar around like a river boatman would use a pole. (the legends vary) If she lost the pestle which was part of her magical transportation, her inability to travel much makes much more sense. I don't have time or space here to go into all the ideas of what the mortar and pestle may have represented but remember that it was said that the absorption of evil influence was not the chief purpose of the staff just a beneficial side effect. ( I am hurrying in my paraphrase and may not have it exactly right.) I am wondering if someone stole her pestle.

[Elegast]

Guys, my initial google trolling hasn't gotten any hits, but Jim flat out said 3 years ago:

How long has the White Council had the Blackstaff
Look for Celtic Lore around 1065 ad.

Now we have another search term to find the actual lore behind "The Case of the Stolen Walking Stick"

I'm quite ignorant concerning celtic mythology, but I did visit the location of the battle of Hastings, and saw the Bayeux Tapestry.

My guess about the staff: it's the Landøyðan of Harald Hardrada. The guy tried to invade England in 1066.

According to the Heimskringla, Harald Hardrada flew a raven banner called Landøyðan or "Land-waster"; whether this was the same banner as that flown by Sigurd of Northumbria is unclear. In a conversation between Harald and King Sweyn II of Denmark,
Sveinn asked Haraldr which of his possessions of his he valued most highly. He answered that it was his banner (merki), Landøyðan. Thereupon Sveinn asked what virtue it had to be accounted so valuable. Haraldr replied that it was prophesied that victory would be his before whom this banner was borne; and added that this had been the case ever since he had obtained it. Thereupon Sveinn said, "I shall believe that your flag has this virtue if you fight three battles with King Magnús, your kinsman, and are victorious in all."[29]
Years later, during Harald's invasion of England, Harald fought a pitched battle against two English earls outside York. Harald's Saga relates that when King Haraldr saw that the battle array of the English had come down along the ditch right opposite them, he had the trumpets blown and sharply urged his men to the attack, raising his banner called Landøyðan. And there so strong an attack was made by him that nothing held against it.[30]

Harald's army flew the banner at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, where it was carried by a warrior named Frírek. After Harald was struck by an arrow and killed, his army fought fiercely for possession of the banner, and some of them went berserk in their frenzy to secure the flag. In the end the "magic" of the banner failed, and the bulk of the Norwegian army was slaughtered, with only a few escaping to their ships.[31]

The raven banner

The banner may have been a red herring, or maybe it was just Odin and one of his scheme, and the pole was the real thing.

That being said, keep in mind that my understanding/knowledge of celtic mythology is very limited...

[Arjan]

I am coming to this late but I think we are missing something if we overlook the ties to Baba Yaga. I mentioned this briefly in another thread but let me make more mention of it here. I should mention that I am talking about legend and folklore here so none of this is etched in stone. Baba Yaga is indeed often pictured as having iron teeth. She is also cannibalistic and is often portrayed preparing her meals cutting up the bodies with a cleaver. Also of great interest to me she is often associated with winter and seen as a guardian or a guide on the border between life and death. It sounds very much like Mother Winter to me. She was an extremely powerful witch. Although she is often seen as evil, she is also often a provider giving those on quests items that they need if their hearts are pure. She is seen in very early myths as having only one leg.(Some think that she may have originally have been a snake goddess thus explaining the single leg.) She is later seen as having one "bony leg". This could tie into Mother Winter's bad leg which seem unusual in an extremely powerful immortal.
 This brings me to the stolen walking stick. I tried to imagine how a simple stick would be needed by someone of Mother Winter's power just to get around. Baba Yaga's main form of transportation was a mortar and pestle. She rode in the mortar and used the pestle to steer or to push the mortar around like a river boatman would use a pole. (the legends vary) If she lost the pestle which was part of her magical transportation, her inability to travel much makes much more sense. I don't have time or space here to go into all the ideas of what the mortar and pestle may have represented but remember that it was said that the absorption of evil influence was not the chief purpose of the staff just a beneficial side effect. ( I am hurrying in my paraphrase and may not have it exactly right.) I am wondering if someone stole her pestle.

Don't forget the house with chicken legs. 

[Serack]

Now we have another search term to find the actual lore behind "The Case of the Stolen Walking Stick"


I quite ignorant concerning celtic mythology, but I did visit the location of the battle of Hastings, and saw the Bayeux Tapestry.

My guess about the staff: it's the Landøyðan of Harald Hardrada. The guy tried to invade England in 1066.

The raven banner

The banner may have been a red herring, or maybe it was just Odin and one of his scheme, and the pole was the real thing.

That being said, keep in mind that my understanding/knowledge of celtic mythology is very limited...

Very interesting.  Of note, the picture you show is of a Norman (invading force from France) soldier carrying that banner, but the other instance of that banner or something similar is of a Norman horse trampling it.

Some of what I have read of the Battle of Hastings is that the Norman force had many mercinaries (possibly some being Norse), and that the English/Saxon force had just won the Battle of Stamford Bridge where the Landøyðan had just been captured only weeks before the Battle of Hastings.  It's even said that the short time between the 2 battles is one of the major reasons why the English/Saxons lost the battle.  They had to march straight from one battle to the other without a chance to recover.

Edit:  finished the broken off thought elegast pointed out below.

[Elegast]

Very interesting.  Of note, the picture you show is of a Norman (invading force from France) soldier carrying that banner, but the other instance of that banner or something similar is of a Norman horse trampling it.

Some of what I have read of the Battle of Hastings is that the Norman force had many mercinaries (possibly some being Norse), and that the English/Saxon force had just won the Battle of Stamford Bridge where the Landøyðan had just been captured only weeks before the Battle of Hastings.  It's even said that the short time

uhm... Cliked on "Post" by error?