Irony to the nth degree

Today I announced in Kin chat that I was heading out to the Moors. Did anyone want to come with me? No, but one member charged me with making sure that the relic stayed safe. I had never seen the relic. I didn't even know where it was kept, or who was guarding it. All I knew was that the freeps having it meant we got a nice experience gain boost. Losing the relic meant losing that buff. So, I nodded dumbly and rode off to the moors, not quite sure what I had just promised and hoping he was joking. He didn't really mean for me to watch over this mythical relic, did he? Surely he was joking.

Later, out on the moors, I somehow managed to scrape together a group of a captain, warden and a minstrel. A pretty awesome group. We managed to get a bit of renown off of a group of creeps, and then, after wiping the floor with them, they disappeared. We rode around like chickens for about fifteen minutes looking for them when something popped up in the announcements. Something I had never seen before. Something I didn't want to see. Something that one Kin member had jinxed into happening:

They were stealing the relic. 

If you can manage to read the orange line of text in the chat box, you will see that a certain fragment is being stolen by a warg named Heathcliffe. This warg and I, at least on my end, have a particularly uneasy history, but I digress. 

We jumped on our horses and ran in circles in a panic for a few minutes until we figured out the route they would probably take to deposit where we assumed they would have to take the relic. None of us had ever seen the relic. We all had seen Heathcliffe though, so we made a rough guess and charged off towards the Orc fortress of Dar-gazugasomething. I forget what it was called. With a daring charge and an insane amount of good luck, we made it into the very heart of the fortress. Right where Heathcliffe the warg would have to put the relic. Heathcliffe was not there. 

We stood about dancing for a second, certain that we had averted a crisis and all we had to do was wait for the pup to show up so we could stick him full of arrows and reclaim the relic for the Free Peoples of Middle Earth. Things were starting to feel both a bit triumphant and epic.

Then, in the midst of our celebrations, I noticed some movement at the entrance to the room. Before I could barely get the words "Hey, guys, um, warg" out, Heathcliffe had blazed past us, the relic held tightly in his teeth. The relic was lost. I had watched it happen. The one thing I had never seen, never even known where it came from or where it went - I saw it on the one day when a Kin member charged me not to lose it.

So class, the word of the day is irony.

Here's to you Heathcliffe and your daring-do. Here's to your group, with your warleaders and your spiders and your wargs, who wiped us out, still in the midst of our celebrations, while you blazed past us with that thing blazing like a beacon. Here's to the captain, warden, and minstrel, who fought so bravely and tried their best to keep a squishy hunter alive.