It's strange, since I haven't had a headache since the curse was removed. Not a proper "I need a spoon for my eyeballs" headache. Not a full "my head has been rearranged twice in ten minutes" headache. Not a real one.
However, my head has been rearranged, at least partially. This is what happened, to the best of my knowledge:
There was a major problem, in the traditional "end of the world" sense, this autumn. The elemental planes were being invaded, and we had to stop them. To be honest, the full backstory escaped me, as I've been wandering around Teutonia and the rest of the world for the last six months, returning home just in time for double potato-peeling duty from the collage (They didn't appreciate my vanishing - again - for half a year unannounced) and missed the build-up, but never let it be said that Phillip Panama was absent when the call was made, and as one of the ritualists around the bar I was sent off to the planes of Fire and Darkness to save the world.
The plane of fire went roughly as expected, I got distracted during the ritual a bit - should have planned ahead, story of my life (as I know it) - we had to fight some native elementals who thought we didn't know what we were doing, but we sealled the plane and went home, bruised and bloodied but successful. The plane of Darkness was less positive. The Orcish Drovid was to do the ritual, and suceeded in banishing the monster as we needed to. However, instead of sealling off the planes below, as we were suposed to do, he took the opportunity to summon a white demon, which proceeded to go around killing things. This being the cue of everybody to get the hell out of here, they performed the ritual to get home.
Notice the "they" in the above. In the chaos of the fight and such I managed to get split off from the main "going home" party, was struck unconcious fairly quickly. A dozen fireballs and at-will protection from magical damage was incredibly helpful, right up until the bit where I wasn't concious anymore. For reasons I don't yet understand, instead of killing me (And Mary, a dark mage stuck in a similar prediciment) we have instead been taken to the White Demon's native plane, though I'm sure the rest of the party just assumes we are dead. We've been patched up so we won't die any time immediately soon, and I suspect they will take my focus before I can regenerate any more mana for fireballs.
Having spent six months with the fae, then two weeks back in Grantabruge, then six months travelling, then two months back home, it will be interesting how the collage react to my actually having a good and logical reason for absense this time.
Though finally passing the Apprentice exams is the least of my worries right now.
-- From the head of Phillip Panama.