Twelve hunters gathered at the RWC last night, ready for battle. Exactly WHAT they would be battling wasn't so clear.

As when any group of friends gather, for the first 10 minutes after arrival they chatted and bantered, exchanged compliments and good-natured insults. Lissa waited for the conversations to subside and then began instructions for the hunt.
The hunt would also be a contest, and would pair each with a random person. Each team was given a bag, and told to gather as many gems as they could in 35 minutes of hunting whatever they wished. The hunt would end at the Vesper Jewelers, where each gem bag would be sold and tallied. The gold gathered during this time was to be split between the team members.

The teams were set, and each team given 3 minutes to acquaint themselves, since in many cases they hadn't hunted together before. Since there was an odd number of people, Lissa also participated, pairing with Gweneth Farblade. Everyone quickly left to wherever they had decided to go, and it was on!

At the top of the hour, everyone gathered at Vesper, and waited while the bags were counted. Then it was back to the cafe. The first place winners would get a choice of 25k each or a split of the gem money. Second place would get whichever of the two wasn't chosen.

First place was taken by Wolfsbane and GotMilk(*V*), who had gathered a whopping 20,459 in gems. They chose a split of the gem gold and each got checks for 27,670.
Second was SirJamesII and Crom(*V*), with 12,658. For their efforts they each received 25k.

Other teams, who all did great as well, were:
Magni(*V*) and Rift
Aries(*V*) and Kara(*V*)
Magoo(FTH) and Black Sunshine
Gweneth Farblade(*V*) and Lissa Eldi(*V*)

In the end there were no losers since everyone made some gold and had some fun. Thanks everyone!

Crowd of spectators at finish line

The monthly Chesapeake Regatta was hosted by Tancred on Monday night at the Red Wolf Cafe. The featured course for December for the Skara Express, a long course fraught with navigational perils and even a few sea beasties. A generous donation of 200,000 gold pieces by Ultima Dork from the Chesapeake board over at Stratics helped liven the evening. The race got underway with a tossing surf from Skara Brae as the participants scrambled to launch their ships and make sail.

All along the route, the contestants battled for the lead, but as with more than a few regattas in the past, the infamous Pink Pirate, Yanni, managed to prove his seafaring skills above the rest. He won the race with a new record-setting time of 18 minutes and 4 seconds, beating the old record by 11 seconds. Yanni won the 50,000 gold and was followed by a close second by Magni who took hom 25,000 gold pieces. Unfortunately, all the other contestants foundered before making landfall.

The Victorious Yanni disembarks

Congrats to the winners and a special thank you to Ultima Dork for her generous gift - it is very much appreciated and will be used to fund future events. Also a thanks to Hablin for making sure the gold made it in and acting as a intermediary.

In other news, the 2nd Annual Red Wolf Cafe Holiday House Deco Contest rules will be announced soon! Last year's contest had extra excitement with the appearance of Ferbert from the UO dev team as a celebrity judge for the contest.

For the next few days the finshing touches on a seires of new tools will be done. These deal mostly with the info on *V* members, The Member Section and the Virtue Section.