EBON GATE ANNOUNCEMENT: GM Thandiwe announced that Ebon Gate 2025’s Merchant week will end at midnight on Friday. They extended Merchanting Time as an apology for the connection issues that took place earlier in the week. Midnight, Cinderella, and the clock is ticking… Don’t miss the story that was written up to go with this:
Text of Discord Post follows:
GM Thandiwe
The Bewildering Case of Awsora Cledns
on 23 Oct 2025 3:51 PM
from the Official GemStoneIV Discord
on #forum/paid-events channel
Awsora Cledns was, by all accounts, a librarian of the highest order—a woman of reason, calm, and poise. On most days, she was the epitome of even-tempered grace. They called her “Right-as-Rain,” the kind of person who could walk into a room full of frantic students and turn chaos into tranquility with nothing more than a well-timed clearing of the throat and the slow, deliberate unfolding of a library card. If there was ever a model of rationality, it was her.
And yet, on the most prestigious of times of the year, during the famed merchanting week of the Ebon Gate Festival, even the most steadfast of citizens were left slack-jawed at what transpired.
It started as a whisper and, at first, no one could believe it. “Did you see…?” someone muttered under their breath. “Was that…?” another gasped, peering from behind a stall draped in glittering trinkets.
It was Awsora Cledns herself, and she was throwing fits.
Yes, fits. Actual, honest-to-goodness tantrums, in the middle of the bustling festival. The librarian who had once carried the weight of dozens of overdue books on her shoulders without batting an eye was now thrashing about like a wind-up toy that had run out of clockwork.
It wasn’t just the odd twitch of frustration or the occasional eye-roll that people had come to expect when the festival crowds began to press in too tightly. No, these were full-blown breakdowns. At one point, she even screamed at a passing cart, “Access Denied!”
And then, there were the system errors. She was muttering to herself, her voice rising and falling in a manner that only the most tech-savvy (or perhaps the most panicked) would recognize.
“Bucket Does Not Exist,” she hissed, flinging a pile of antique scrolls aside.
“Internal Failure!” she cried, her hands trembling as though trying to ward off some invisible malady.
“Expired Token, get out!” she barked, as if sending someone to the corner of the room, or worse, to the void beyond the festival gates.
And that was just the beginning. Things only escalated.
“Incomplete Signature, move on!” she shouted at a vendor selling handwoven scarves, causing the poor merchant to nearly drop his goods in shock.
“Insufficient Privileges, leave!” she screamed at a baffled child who was only trying to buy a sweet roll from the bakery stall.
And if you thought it couldn’t get more cryptic, oh, it did.
She stood rigid for a full minute, not a muscle moving, before suddenly announcing in a voice so cold it could freeze ink, “Unique Constraint Violated, Sheriff!”
The Sheriff, who had been patrolling the festivities with his usual sense of grim competence, was so stunned by this proclamation that he stared at her for several long moments before gingerly retreating behind a food cart for cover.
But what really threw the crowd into a confused frenzy was when she simply failed to lookup.
“Refuses services,” she murmured, her face twitching in a way that made the onlookers exchange nervous glances.
At one point, she looked directly at a group of festival-goers and declared flatly, “You are an unknown host.”
And then, perhaps most mysteriously of all, she muttered, “Non-existent… invalid…” before going catatonic and simply not responding.
After hours of these bizarre outbursts, coupled with a strange and harrowing silence that followed each new outburst, the festival-goers grew deeply concerned.
“Are you okay?” someone asked, cautiously approaching the twitching librarian.
“Have you tried, you know, going to sleep and then waking up again? That can sometimes make things better, right?” another suggested helpfully, but awkwardly.
“Would you like a hamster for your troubles?” a third voice piped up, hopeful, though somewhat unsure of how one might soothe a librarian-turned-lunatic with rodent therapy.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of increasingly strange behavior, Awsora Cledns suddenly straightened up. Her eyes cleared, and with a deep sigh, she explained, as if everything she’d done was perfectly rational, “I’ve been possessed… by a man who wants to turn me into an automaton.”
For a long moment, there was stunned silence.
The onlookers processed this for a while. Some nodded sympathetically, others made a mental note to avoid any future encounters with dark sorcery, but, in the end, the situation seemed to make some sort of twisted sense. After all, anyone who could handle the complexities of library cataloging might indeed be vulnerable to the charms of an evil man trying to turn her into a walking, talking automaton.
Relieved that she’d finally calmed, the coordinators of the Ebon Gate Festival, ever diplomatic and concerned about honoring passes, convened in a quick huddle. After a brief, heated debate over whether possession could be considered a legitimate excuse for skipping work, they came to a consensus.
Just this once, they would extend the merchant week until midnight. They hoped this would help the vendors, many of whom had grown jittery from the surreal turn of events, get back on track.
They also silently hoped the evil possession was, in fact, over.
They weren’t sure if they’d be able to handle another “Access Denied” tantrum… especially if it involved the sheriff.
Ebon Gate 2025’s Merchant week will end at midnight on Friday. We have extended it as an apology for the connection issues that took place earlier in the week.
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