a different pony

 sure i remember how each one of those thugs looked but i can't stop seeing the one who came right at me  human-like types can show expression just as much as ponies but not in all the same ways  (gryphons are like that too but i've already got th...

 technically the days here are the same actual length of time as back home but today was still the longest day i've ever experienced  i left off right when ploughshare walked into bell's forge so let's pick it up there  they've been trying to make...

 to borrow a prairie pony phrase this acorn didn't fall far from the tree  like my sire and so many other creatives i know i am very fond of the calming and focusing effect of inhaling the smoke from smoldering glitterreed  but there's only so muc...

 did i mention that i'm in love with the best gryphon ever?  all she had to do was say "nobody here has heard the old gryphon songs" and i realized how i can scare up enough of the local currency to afford whatever we need  tomorrow we'll explore ...

 normally i like to spend some time after i wake up reviewing the previous day's work so that over breakfast i can think about how to move forward on my current projects  instead i'm trying to forget last night's dreams about knifey the kid  so i ...

 when i say "we" from now on i usually mean the folks medya and i have fallen in with so just to recap all in one place here's the list  spark is a forged raised by monks  relic is a forged raised by different monks (is this a thing?)  bell is ...

 i thought i would go to see the local bazaar and maybe the university  instead "krayg" – someone spark does freelance work for – asked us to run a little errand for him  this involved taking a skyboat to where we could take a waterboat to a l...

 ponies sleep  doctors say we're supposed to get eight hours a night but i've always been just fine with six and i can operate pretty well on five if i need to  it's a regular habit i expected to continue but  forged don't sleep  and now i w...

 i'll spare the goriest details but the next morning was mostly spent dealing with corrupted animals and searching the rest of the area for anything useful  we found a rotting box holding a not-rotting enchanted talisman in it along with a written no...

 medya was at the airship dock waiting for me which is basically the best reward ever  we mutually agreed not to split our paths like that again unless absolutely necessary because it's just not worth the heartache and lost sleep  she's very distr...

 medya wasn't the only one waiting for us at the dock  we were greeted by "lead design" who is a very crisp-looking forged made of shiny silver and amethyst crystals  they thanked us for rescuing the salvage team their employers had sent  and t...

 the information kiosk on campus has these maps that aren't satisfied to just be printed with useful stuff  they react when you poke at them  tap the location of a building and it changes to a summary of what's in that building then tap part of th...

 the university set me up with a temporary worker's badge but they didn't just write something on a card and throw a durability spell on it  it's a slab of tempered glass engraved with my name and other bits of info but it also has a little embedded ...

 i only just realized i was avoiding the subject of what that field research will involve  we're taking the "lightning rail" to a place called "eston" right on the edge of "the mournland" to engage in "archeology"  the lightning rail is some var...

 last night i had one of those dreams so clear and strong that it didn't dissolve right after i woke up  i was in a total void which slowly became a meadow under a starry sky and a single straight road in front of me leading all the way up a mountain...

 the lightning rail station is a massive collection of shops and shops and eateries and more shops and also you can catch a train there i guess  everyone showed up on time and ready to go but leali brought two surprises with her  one was a giganti...

 oh and here's an interesting tidbit  that barker going on about galethspyre called it the "home of breland blue" which turns out to be a particular dye used in the country's official seal and a bunch of other stuff and it's popular enough to be a to...

 while on the train to "starilaskur" leali told us about how her research into draconic prophecy got her punted out of two different universities  she's only in morgrave's "department of secondary research" because it's the closest they'd let her get...

 last night was the boring part  the train made an unannounced stop because an old acquaintance of spark's named "herringbone" was discovered stowing away in one of the cargo cars  the guards were going to kick them off the train but spark offered...

 we spent two days in starilaskur which is also known as "breland's watchtower for the world" to hear them tell it  it's basically a military fort that grew into a city which isn't that different from what medya grew up in so she said it all seemed w...

 we had arranged with house orien to swap to an "inspector cart" in "vathirond" so we could travel further up the rail line  instead a bunch of thranian military types had set up there and were directly obstructing this arrangement for no legitimate ...

 i can just imagine the planning meeting  "if we want eston to be on the lightning rail we should put a junction at kalazart"  "sure boss but what if we made it a junction and an ampitheater and a giant summoning circle all at the same time"  "...

 remember when i was surprised that some forged had names with sequence numbers in them because it seemed cruel to birth a living feeling being just to turn around and quantify them?  well it's not just forged who get that  i'm reading through som...

 the trip back to sharn was generally uneventful  we cleared out all the trouble on our way in and nothing new drifted into our return path so i had plenty of uninterrupted time to do three very important things  study those books on forged  sl...

 a little history  i was an early bloomer as far as fine control and strength of my horngrip and i could directly work the most basic elements of magic  but i have no sense of pitch so the singing spellcraft most ponies learn was inaccessible to m...

 here's the status report on my new legs  the physical designs are done and i've started making the molds for casting  the spell matrix is planned out though i still have some double-checking to do  now that the heart and hammer is together eno...

 bell and i went to the local office of the sharn watch to report what'd happened to transom but wthout an eyewitness they couldn't do anything for a full day  we weren't about to wait even longer to rescue them so it'd have to be us  on our way t...

 once everyone in our group was rested up we sorted through the remaining contents of the crate we found transom in  aside from some coins and some shed feathers that medya identified as cazha's much of it turned out to be personal effects of folks w...

 last time we were in the sewers zer' did a great job of mapping so that this time we knew where not to bother looking for lem  so we headed directly to where we'd left off and started exploring again  we found a spot that had caved in but was par...

 he didn't even find a way to form a real interface  he implanted a glowing nodule on the back of his neck to forcibly control it like it's not him but just some machine he stapled on  nothing lines up right and the mana bleed is visible along his...

 i considered morran's situation a bit more then talked with him then did some more thinking and the anger passed quickly enough  sure he's made some decisions in ways that baffle me and some of his behaviors are nerve-wracking but he's doing the bes...

 any guesses why lem didn't come back from running a errand?  don't bother guessing  zhakil dropped by to tell us that cazha had him abducted and stashed in the back of shamukaar  she's headed somewhere else with his emergency alert-us-if-somet...

 falling ...

 i don't remember adding the word "falling" to this journal but there it is  i'd better explain  after we got word from zhakil that cazha planned to bait us into an ambush i made some preparations in the form of spell-infused tokens for medya to c...

 i have a confession to make  i already made it once to zer' but it feels like the sort of lesson i should share  these last couple days have been a little rough because while my front legs don't really hurt they aren't anywhere near comfortable b...

 as of last night everything is cast-molded-fired-distressed-polished-glazed-infused-assembled-ready  there are so many feelings in seeing my completed legs suspended in the test harness  visually they're the same design i had in mind before i cam...

 it took an hour but everything went perfectly and they are amazing!  i also spoke with luminace the scholar but more about that later  i'm going for a run  my legs are more me than ever before and i'm going for the best run of my life ...

 during the harmonization ritual i kept slipping in and out of a dreamlike trance  i had a vision of myself flying through clouds and not in the "falling forward" way but how i imagine pegasi feel  i didn't see wings when i turned to look but i ha...

 after the harmonization ritual i spent much of that day thanking everyone profusely and running around and testing every little thing and taking notes  medya and i spent the rest of it exploring my newest sculpture  between improved embodiment an...

 during the harmonization ritual i kept slipping in and out of a dreamlike trance  i had a vision of myself flying through clouds and not in the "falling forward" way but how i imagine pegasi feel  i didn't see wings when i turned to look but i ha...

 during the harmonization ritual i kept slipping in and out of a dreamlike trance  i had a vision of myself flying through clouds and not in the "falling forward" way but how i imagine pegasi feel  i didn't see wings when i turned to look but i ha...

 after the harmonization ritual i spent much of that day thanking everyone profusely and running around and testing every little thing and taking notes  medya and i spent the rest of it exploring my newest sculpture  between improved embodiment an...

 the "wayfinder society" is a group of explorers and historians who one day found a dormant forged with a tree growing through him so they freed him and activated him and named him "relic"  "ander reed" was among that group and he was the one to gree...

 when ander returned to the foyer of the wayfinders' headquarters he had a book that he referenced as he spoke  here's the really short version  around ten years back ander met a group of skilled swordplay enthusiasts of a school led by one called...

 yesterday morning i could easily have gloated that i hadn't experienced a single glitterreed hangover since before academy  . . .  fortunately this is a mild one and ought to clear up with a brisk morning run and a decent meal  but the run wi...

 i don't know much about halflings but i could tell that boroman was uncomfortably old for his age  seeing the effect of the wasting curse was disturbing ... and i'm still trying to put it out of my mind  boroman asked us to take a letter of marqu...

 morran just stopped by (about an hour after i'd gotten to sleep) to warn me that i should stay away from his lab for at least a couple weeks or at least not mark any more of his chalkboard mistakes  jorlanna assigned an apprentice to help morran but...

 it's still strange but comforting to wake up and feel that my dreams were difficult but to not actually remember them so i started the day extra thankful to selena for banishing whatever nastiness came up  but we'll come back to the topic of things ...

 a very muted-looking rakela brought us some bad news this morning  a member of the "king's lanterns" – breland's special investigators? – saw everything that happened last night and witnessed to the brelish military  we wouldn't have taken th...

 how to make a "horse":  - start with a fully mature pony  - limit their fur colors  - enlarge their height and breadth by half and length by almost two thirds  - reduce their cognitive abilities to those of a newborn foal  how to make ...

 leali arrived with a bit of good news in the form of a revised mana reservoir  the previous version had a minor flaw in that any damage to the crystal itself could cause the whole matrix to fail by explosively releasing all the stored mana at once ...

 there's nothing quite like a breakfast of fresh fruit and mild cheese and terrifying news  medya and i were asleep in our room at the time but relic was up and about  when he suddenly had the same feeling that he did around cinnabar he ran to fin...

 i knew i was close to finishing up the paper but i thought that meant one more night in the open library and then a quick review in the morning before i submitted  then margana located sykes – and he noticed her scrying – so rakela had to move q...

 i once took a commission to craft a statue of the mayor of "topaz meet" who is a prairie pony named "wheatberry"  they wanted a style "less abstract and more representative" so i challenged myself to go all in on detail and accuracy  when i showe...

 spark reminded me of a point worth talking about  she thought i was harmonizing myself first because medya wanted to wait for me to "scout the path" but that's not quite accurate  if i could help her fully harmonize before myself i wouldn't hesit...

 all my limbs are intact but other than that today was rotten  emmer sykes broke out of confinement and tried to crash the airship before we could put him back in  when we landed we had to argue with the mayor of xandrar  we fought a bunch of m...

 i left out a lot of details in yesterday's journal so i'll elaborate before medya wakes up  to be fair the galleon "squallchaser" was lovely and i really enjoyed most of the flight  the only way between decks was by ladder so i did have to modify...

 i said i'd post later but medya's still snoozing and the news got worse so later is now  after cazha introduced me to her maul i refused to be intimidated by it so we displayed it on the wall here in the h&h  not as a trophy but as a reminder no...

 a brisk run and a blueberry oatcake were the right combination to help me calm down this morning  when i got back to the h&h the others explained that jorlanna did manage to get the patent but that it also was "pending" and that if prior art shows u...

 i sent messages to morran and rakela and her commander asking them to do what they can to keep folks from making some bad mistakes  i've done what i can  i also wrote a letter to warn the queen that the winter wolves are here and then i sealed it...

 this morning medya put on her gauntlets and they fit perfectly  to describe my emotions requires a pile of words so here they are  delight accomplishment relief excitement pride encouragement love  also there was much exploration and now she c...

 i'll have to start with a clarification  the artist of "cost of repairs" is in between names right now but she went by "mattock" while her art burned  ...  in the middle of the night our sending stones echoed a call for help so we rushed to th...

 this morning brought our usual courier who brought a large packet for me from the arcane congress – 3 copies of my now fully published paper!  i forwarded one to lead design as requested  one went into my saddlebags to come with to fairhaven so...

 so aundair was still mad that we helped a brelish agent kidnap emmer sykes  pretty much the moment we stepped off the teleportation circle the local watch were ready to take us into custody  i probably would have panicked and possibly would have ...

 with zer's help we found our favorite paladin at the same inn she was at half a month ago (that's where i'd have started looking anyhow) but this time she was packing up to leave  we told meledri about jorlanna's fiend infestation and showed her rae...

 the temple had some gorgeous stained-glass windows and somehow most of them were still intact  but inside the temple we saw a lot of ruined portraiture and other smashed fixtures and also a bunch of bandits shooting arrows at us  and they'd set u...

 selene may be taking the terrible edge off my bad dreams but sometimes i still remember their general subject  last night i dreamt of the sharn sewers and that mage who lost control of his portal and got pulled in to some sort of tentacle parade ...

 my granddam signal flare was a royal guardspony until she died while trying to guard other ponies  that was 20 years ago when i was only 4 years old but i do still remember a little about her  she introduced me to tea-smoked apples  she wore a...

 bell and i worked out what turned out to be two very similar spells  casting "repercussive aura" on a friend means anyone who hurts them will feel the same hurt in return  "repercussive veil" is similar but cast on an opponent so if they hurt any...

 i tried to sleep in today but my sire woke me up – he received the sending stone i sent!  so instead of running with medya this morning i talked with him  he asked if medya and i are safe and i nearly burst into tears  given the winter wolve...

 the weather is hotter and more humid than back home and even more so for zer' and medya but the work continues  last crownsday morning we visited the "adaran mission" which is a cluster of connected houses that serve as both an adaran refugee camp a...

 medya and i both did a lot of shouting yesterday  she's got the right vocal apparatus to make all the loud noises she wants but i don't so now i sound like i spent yesterday gargling nettles  the good news is that most of them were happy shouts!...

 dowser and i checked up on beren and he's doing great but his dad joined the temple of inspiration in dar san which means ... the winterwolves have him  those things are out there invading defenseless people and there's this terrified tickle at the ...

 while 3 of my family members – winter rose and prim rose and signal flare – were going on dangerous but important trips to some remote place in the everglow until they were lost and injured and killed by bandits  their poorly translated twins of...

 i didn't want to talk to my dad with only bad news so i delayed ... and it worked!  around noon d'cannith merrix 2 dropped by the h&h looking for me because they found ways to simplify the renew spell  for 3 hours they covered my planning board i...

 i held my first class on magecraft this afternoon – 14 learners showed up!  i started by asking everyone to introduce themselves and to be honest about their skills and goals so we'd all know what we could learn from each other  apparently this...

 the newspapers here all have a lot more bad news in them than the one i usually read back home  then again they have a lot more news to report because there are so many more people here than back home  but in good news this morning's breland ledg...

 medya helped me understand at least a little more about why bell and zer' put so much effort into toying with those peeping reidrans yesterday  the reidrans represent rigid state power attempting to intimidate us  actively confusing them wastes t...

 i wondered when i'd hear back from the king's son aejar – and he visited today!  there's a lot to like about him but i'll start with his business cards because he gave me two  the obligatory one is a decorated mess of royal titles that don't in...

 some mornings start with sunbeams through the window  some mornings start with gentle nudges from my favorite gryphon  yesterday morning started with a psychic shriek from zer and a warning from atesh that the reidrans' new tower will let them in...

 it took some dedicated relax time to recover enough to journal about the forged march for representation  i'm glad i was there but it wasn't easy because when there's too much noise i struggle not to panic  there is a deep power in the rhythm of ...

 today fortune metrol came by to ask our help with a list written by d'cannith merrix 2  all the items seem to be valid spell reagents but the amounts don't make sense  we're specifically mentioned as being able to help find the stuff so it's prob...

 early this morning meledri came by the h&h and together we all teleported to the temple of the silver flame in sigilstar  teleportation is somewhat surreal because there's little sense of having travelled at all ... except for medya who still doesn'...

 shamukaar holds a strict policy of neutrality – cazha used it to threaten us from behind a shield  the red inn also holds a strict policy of neutrality – technically raelvan held to that and meledri did not  i like the red inn's coffee more t...

 it was an ugly morning  that recognition ceremony the archbishop wanted us to be part of?  as ponies say "the grass ate the rabbits" – it went unexpectedly badly  the ceremony was also to recognize a devoted flamist "arclight" who we knew to...

 yesterday was good  spark and meledri found the evidence we needed to show that bishop egen knew the nature of the murders all along  and when they questioned the priest tara she turned out to be fiendish but they managed to contain her  hjalt...

 medya and relic visited several folks from the list of those injured at the tower but only one would say anything of substance  "hjalta bartell" told them about strange activity at the construction site and rumors of indistinct shadowy figures who d...

 chromatic saw the windowpapers then immediately said she was going to take her art back  the 6 of us volunteered to join her in solidarity and soon we had several others along including aejar and nine so we teleported to wroat as a large group  t...

 the other day aejar said "we cannot rule if we cannot lead and leading sometimes means getting out of the way"  but he also recognized that because he was getting reports that things were good he took his eyes off of sharn for a little too long so h...

 the good news: leali and aejar convinced house cannith to approve the next expedition into the mournland!  the bad news: it won't be for a couple months yet because first they have to build something to get us out there safely?  the could-go-eith...

 i didn't bother to journal it then but 2 days ago someone shot an arrow at spark and narrowly missed  she says it was likely just a "message" to intimidate her but without anything written or any idea who "sent" it all we can do is guess from contex...

 i can't say how but today we received information on exactly what lies "between drum and vanguard"  the blackcaps have many small portals to khyber! – but the treaty that ended the war also declared the areas around those strictly off-limits  o...

 the "king's citadel" are the topmost authority in breland and they deal with threats to king and country  they have 4 inner divisions:  the "king's shields" protect the royals and those close to them  the "king's swords" handle especially diff...

 the 6 of us spent most of the day watching for a chick to hatch from an egg  except the "waiting" was hiding on the rooftops of a pair of rickety warehouses and the "egg" was another warehouse nearby and the "chick" was a massive whorl of screaming ...

 i've been leading a course of 6 weekly lessons in magecraft for a dozen and a half students and the final session was earlier today  i'm proud of them all – even the ones who weren't quite getting it and dropped out after a couple weeks  some m...

 when i was just a filly i had trouble moderating my emotional reactions and as an early bloomer for magical strength i could accidentally become a bit dangerous sometimes  my elderly and patient physic "amber spark" taught me to meditate by molding ...

 i really don't feel like it but i'm journaling this while it's fresh in my mind  we accomplished our mission  but first i rode a platform down a rope at an angle over rocks that would have looked sharp if they weren't entirely obscured by shadow ...

 now that we're headed back to sharn i feel like journaling  we stopped emmer sykes from hurting anyone ever again  we did a good thing and i no longer feel conflicted about my part in it  but it's still hard to let go of just how out of contro...

 gryphons and pegasi have a unique word for the feeling of the air around clouds that are charged with lightning  medya used that word to describe the city streets  king boranel is theoretically returning from a diplomatic visit to flamekeep ... b...

 ir'wynarn wrugar is now king of breland and that scares aejar  wrugar declared aejar "prince of sharn" and that also scares him  he feels there's no time to grieve for his father because the city's administration needs urgent attention  today ...

 in middle tavick's there is a jail where the watch is holding "pilic bekker" – knifey the kid's actual name – and this morning i went there to speak with him  he'll be there for 3 months which seems cruel but he says it'll give him time to think...

 they call it a "brokensword writ"  it's the king's order saying the named people are to be arrested on sight  in this case for the deaths of several reidrans and the fall of the temple in dar san  there are bounties on each of us large enough ...

 i hadn't realized just how much the heart & hammer has become my home away from home and it hurt a lot to have to leave so quickly without knowing when we'll be able to return  i spent most of last night and today repacking saddlebags both literal a...

 i have seen the dead walking  karrnath survived heavy war losses by reanimating soldiers' corpses to keep on fighting but now those "undead" remains are directed to sweep streets and the like  everyone acts like this is fine and not a gut-twistin...

 to d'cannith zorlan's credit: he recognized me by my brand of destiny  he's read my paper and he complimented my willingness to publish it even though it would horrify some people?  the important thing is that morran asked him to try and get merr...

 atur has plenty to offer for those devoted volites who come from all over the country to visit the crimson monestary and add their blood to a communal fountain then drink from same  there's not much here for the rest of us but that doesn't mean it's...

 in the forests of karrnath the military has set free large numbers of massive "fellwolves" magebred specifically as survival and combat training for soldiers  they roam in packs and they hunger for fresh meat and their favorite word is "hunt"  i ...

 vedim enjoys a morning run same as us so we've been going together  he prefers to run just before dawn which is a touch early for us but it's worth it to have him along in case we encounter any more oversized murderbeasts or the like  after the r...

 the coffee-and-prayer session was a calm and affirming way to start the day  afterward availah was curious about my connection to the silver flame  i didn't tell her that i'd stood next to a paladin of the flame while we battled and banished a fi...

 vedim did not join us for our morning run  last night he asked us to meet him at the lucky sable inn once we were ready to leave  he was there as promised but he barely waited for the svestjarb' to stop before he jumped in  we weren't far when...

 everyone presently in the lodge in order of appetite:  1 rattled unicorn (semi-active but hungrier since new legs!)  1 wolfy human (active but trim)  1 clever kalashtar (semi-active)  6 elderly humans (active)  1 brave gryphon (active bu...

 teryk is even less of a town than bedem was  it's about 200 each guards and support staff for the nearby work camp holding 2000 (!) prisoners  most of the non-prisoners wear emerald claw pendants like the one kraal had ... including the enchantme...

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 despite the protective shield zer'atesh cast  despite the shifts of no fewer than 3 people to watch the camp overnight  the snow showed the tracks of a svest' following a biped into the woods  none of us could explain it and the other svesti s...

 every so often i get so focused on one project that i lose sight of all else  for 2 weeks now i've examined that spell from every angle and picked it apart to understand why it did what it did when it did and how  with help from my friends i now ...

 it's taken a week to recover from my self-inflicted exhaustion  time to make good on the promise of journaling about the 14 students who attended my class 3 months ago  here are the abridged notes ordered by my estimation of their magecrafting sk...

 negatives:  banal design  guards who are skeletons  guards who aren't skeletons yet  undead svesti  cartload of ash – enough to poison every existing forged  huge reservoir of pure negative energy  deep underground storage for im...

 the wheat here is the color of hyacinth flowers because farmers draw from lake dark to water the crops  vedim describes lake dark as placid and purifying and and black as night because it's sitting on top of a manifest zone to the realm of the dead ...

 the waters and sands of lake dark are midnight with stars pushed to shore  all light disappears an acorn's width below the still surface  zer'atesh declined for his own reasons but the rest of us had to know  medya dove beneath the surface wit...

 leali contacted us just now – the next mournland expedition is approved!  we'll be required to bring a yet-unnamed h.cannith representative along and that makes me a little nervous but i can cope with nearly anything as long as we can bring back a...

 zorlan couldn't wait to show us his passion project  he thought we'd be impressed at how he misappropriated my work and twisted it so he could graft a forged arm onto a zombie  he tried to fix house cannith's money trouble by signing an illegal g...

 the svesti couldn't go all the way up the mountain so it took a couple of hours of hoofing it – hard work even with my gravity shoes  by time we reached the cave opening the air was the coldest i've ever breathed  the cave seemed to resist ever...

 when i woke up this morning my mind was still spinning around everything that went on with the dragon  medya suggested i talk to either ploughshare for help working through it or dad for a bit of emotional re-centering  i was tired of looping on ...

 the "tower of three" in trolanport is translucent and beautiful and welcoming and misleading in its size  the rest of the city is built by gnomes and other eye-level folk who are just fine with low ceilings and cramped places which are uncomfortable...

 it isn't often one sees a person reach a limb directly into a furnace to handle a piece of glowing-hot steel as casually as fetching a dish from a cupboard  this is how i met leandre  they pulled their left arm from the furnace – an expertly ca...

 leandre met me after work and we talked shop for hours  part of this was a tour through their variety of swappable arms  wood and stone and crystal and dinosaur hide and rainbow-colored glass and polished metal and even some sort of startlingly c...

 i haven't spent all my time at the library  but the "trolanport civic archives" have basically every research paper ever published in khorvaire so i spent a couple days trying not to make excited noises while collecting schematics to study while we ...

 i was worried that house cannith would rely on us to get to the whitehearth manuals then prevent us from accessing them  but cannith south and cannith east couldn't agree on who to send so they pushed the decision onto the most recent head of cannit...

 there's been no response to the letter i sent to queen iliana around 5 months ago  i know dad delivered it to a guard at the castle so it should have arrived but it could have gotten lost or perhaps her response did ... or she didn't want to respond...

 there exists a dinosaur called a "swordtooth titan" that's exactly what it sounds like  in fact there are at least a pair of them and i know this because they were trying to catch and eat our hardbacks just now  i managed to discourage one but th...

 medya explained that the magic zer' used didn't just grab random animals to take on that dinosaur  it found the nearest ones who were in the right mood  they really did enjoy the challenge the same way spark enjoys a mahtabareth fight  i've ap...

 the "seawall mountains" are lovely  in a way this includes "matshuc zaal" – the site of a brelish mobile fortress overcome and wrecked by raiders some time back and now covered in writing and emblems from people and groups passing through  bell...

 rhukaan draal...

 the heart of sand invited me to drink the fermented juice of a cactus and dance in the desert and call to the spirits until the visions came  smoky and sour and sweet then chanting and prancing and laughing and sharing stories and water with other g...

 this morning my stomach was still a sour and smoldering disaster from last night's cactus juice  but the sound of rain overnight helped me sleep so i was rell-rested when zer' informed us all that a large number of bandit riders were quickly approac...

 the border city of "lyrenton" is twice dead  the abandoned darguun half silently decays with none to tend it  the cyre half lies untouched in grey stasis  unlike last time it's noisier in the mournland than out – thumps and grinding and crea...

 i spent the last few days sculpting mind-shielding jewelry and playing board games and learning more dhakaani from kaba  that was mostly to quiet my growing panic about how our compass was acting strangely and nothing we saw matched zer's maps and m...

 to get to whitehearth one follows the path into saerun wood  some time back the government of cyre granted house cannith all of saerun wood and everything within so they reshaped it for their purposes  that's why a third of the city's area is one...

 big news for me: we now have several intact copies of the whitehearth manuals – "forged design and manufacture" – and they have what i need to complete my generalized partial harmonization spell!  bigger news for bell: she wrote them  more ac...

 i don't blame the skylift cable for breaking  but it did  in the moment i panicked but we all made it out safely thanks to teleports and flight and feather fall tokens  the gondola had an emergency spell like feather fall which stopped it abou...

 we finally found the cause of those weird grinding sounds and heavy thumps  ... actually it found us  the cyran military was fond of shipping soldiers and materiel around in convoys of crawlers like the hardbacks but more of them linked in a chai...

 usually only the outside of my current front legs can be seen usually but i have an internal structure – a simple skeleton with sliding plate mounts  i wanted my new legs to be just the plates linked to each other but the "unknown unknowns" stoppe...

 we were on our way around "saerun wood" when the joined hardbacks went dark and still  shortly after that the back lit up with a greenish-white glow  "æther" may have had a solid body once but all that remained was a few bits of detritus swirlin...

 it's like the world is apologizing for everything we've been dragged through  after the mournland the only interruptions have been brelish soldiers stopping travellers to look for anything amiss – which includes us! – but as the expedition's off...

 medya and i already planned to visit home after her harmonization to show off our work and stock up on porcelain clay  also not being around any other folks from home for 8 months can make a pony worry for their own sanity  conveniently 3 ponies ...

 bell and i made some adjustments at the last minute but the spellwork went smoothly and i can now announce that assisted partial harmonization is finally possible!  my front legs are much improved over my previous pair and my back legs are ... perfe...

 i know we didn't visit every pub in fairhaven but we had a proper go at it  listening to musical performers that ander described as some of the finest in aundair  eating foods my mother would disapprove of and drinking wine and ale worth writing ...

 it seems spark found some kinship with the chasers we met in the mournland so bell is helping her with some similarly feline face-plate modifications and i feel it will be a good look for her  also bell is making a pair of dragon-like wings for hers...

 the alta is destroyed now but it was briefly active  its mind control effect reached everyone in shaarat including medya and i so we both had troubling dreams  she circled a cluster of beautiful and opulent towers in the clouds but every time she...

 medya's new forearms are beautiful  she is beautiful  light gleams off of her copper filigree and glimmers through her othelyan crystals  her inner light shines through with every motion  with her first partial harmonization she is the happ...

 krayg has asked us to escort his niece xena to a city in droaam called "great crag"  he wants her to stay safe with her grandmother there because breland's new king seems a little too comfortable with conflict and reidra and both are bad news  we...

 all the crew of the "just leaving" joined to get away from something  for example  shipswright "gunnar toranak" is related to but very different from – and opposed to – the other toranaks we've met  ship's cook "mace marjoram" is the secon...

 earlier today the boat got mired in a huge mass of sargasso  the good news is that a large harvest of kelp will fetch decent coin for the crew  the bad news is that it held us in place long enough for a giant squid to take notice  we fought it...

 today's excitement started with cyre calling down from the crow's nest that he saw a shipwreck – a small boat with broken sails stranded on a sandbar  relic recognized their flags from rokugan – the land of his origin!  as we neared to help t...

 today i learned that i've misunderstood gonghura's name and i've been using the wrong half – kelpblossom is her family's name  i found this out when i happened across a conversation between her and shenaak and featherstep who had really turned up ...

 this morning gem warned me that there were a lot of stories about my great-grand-aunt hellebore and most of them weren't good  this became relevant almost immediately when we dropped anchor at vralkek  the oddly heavily armed port authority repre...

 shortly after i woke up this morning i heard a very large voice right outside the inn boom "i heard there were ponies in town!"  that's how my day started  portmaster "gorodan ashlord" is a fire giant as tall as 6 ponies and he effectively runs t...

 biped furniture is surreal to begin with and seeing it 3 times its usual size is an experience  eating dinner at the same table as a giant is an experience  trying to look pleased while sitting through so many gruesome war stories ... tested my r...

 i haven't talked much about d'tharashk xena being with us because she's been happy to keep to herself  or happy to keep her head down while and after we upended the power structure of a sizable port town three days ago  both are valid  she exp...

 thrakelorn is possibly the only brelish military base i will set hoof in and there are 4 reasons for that  it's mostly centered around healing wounded soldiers rather than wounding more soldiers  while it's technically active it hasn't been espec...

 it's nice having other ponies around to eat lunch with  there's nothing wrong with my surrogate herd from outside the everglow but eating is optional for them – bell and relic and spark are forged so food was never a necessity and zer' has some ki...

 hellebore's green coat and purple mane and tail are in fact the exact shades ekuruk used in "how i felt when i heard"  that is no coincidence  hellebore killed signal flare!  it wasn't completely an accident – she was lashing out at prim ros...