Nimueh of Mercia

FAMILY TREE NOT AVAILABLE

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Nimueh is not necessarily strong or dexterous but is in good health otherwise.

Facial Features

Nimueh has a lot of freckles and light green eyes.

Identifying Characteristics

Nimueh has a symbol of three dots on her left lower arm. Recently, this mark has been adorned with a tattoo which covers nearly her full lower arm.

Special abilities

Darkvision
Fey heritage
Telepathic

Apparel & Accessories

Nimueh wears an ocher yellow shirt and dark navy trousers. Over this, a simple studded leather armour set. Ever since getting her tattoo, she often wears the armour without the vambraces and her sleeves rolled up.
On the belt around her waist hangs the red leather-covered grimoire gifted to her from her patron. A second belt serves as a sword belt for her shortsword. Finally, her mahogany backpack is filled with a ritual casting book, papers, ink, journals, potions of health, feathers, and a carefully packed flute. And it is just slightly too heavy for her.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Nimueh grew up in Mercia, a small town close to Jordberg. Born to Seraide and Vortigen of Mercia, the current (mostly ceremonial) mayors of the small city, she had a relatively quiet and somewhat sheltered childhood. With an older sister, Ysolda, and a much younger brother, Ciaran, the house was often busy.

Gender Identity

Female

Education

Started her studies in jurisprudence, before she headed out to Baferton to either find a mentor for the next phase of her studies or some information about her newfound powers.
The studies included parts of history, debate and skills in insight.

Employment

A member of The Swords Of Eluin, an adventure group, who are in turn employed at the Golden Army of Apelés.

Failures & Embarrassments

Once tried to put on a full suit of armour and totally failed.
Nearly died during a fight at a haunted house.

Mental Trauma

Her brother was snatched away when they outside together. She has blamed herself for her impotence at that moment. But has learned to let it go slowly after her brother was returned.
Was nearly killed during a fight with a night hag. Has gotten a somewhat irrational fear for the spell that was used to do this: magic missile.

Intellectual Characteristics

Nimueh is average intellect-wise, but she has a good intuition and a way with people. However, she is still quite naive, though her time with The Swords of Eluïn has been changing that.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

Since she got in touch with magic and all it entails, she has been getting more and more interested in what is out there and how she can use it. One of her goals has therefore formed around gathering and learning as much as possible about different kinds of magic.
The source of her magic determines one of her other goals: getting more info, or if possible, in touch with her patron.
Other goals include growing as a person, discovering new and interesting places. As well as documenting these adventures, knowledge and information for safekeeping

Likes & Dislikes

Nimueh likes travelling and investigating the world, learning about different types of magic and understanding how it works and where it comes from and has picked up a liking for collecting information of these things in the form of writing and documenting. Tattoos and intricate designs of art and magic circles have also caught her attention these past few months. Dislikes include unjust judgement, destroying important places of history or knowledge and misuse of power. Initially, she really was not fond of heights, but through her travels and learning about spells like 'Fly', this fear has slowly faded. After an encounter with a night hag, she has developed a fear of the magic missile spell, however, with her new ring, this fear is very manageable.

Social

Contacts & Relations

The Swords of Eluïn. "The one into 'alternative deities'"
La Familia. Rank: "Child"
The Golden Army (Apelés). Rank: Squad Red

Family Ties

Parents: Seraide and Vortigen. Brother and sister: Ciaran and Ysolda.

Religious Views

Nimueh's patron is a minor deity named The Bard.
Next to her devotion to The Bard, she has a connection to Selûne, as this was the primary deity worshipped in Mercia, her home town.

Hobbies & Pets

Nimueh has a pet familiar called Mina. Mina is a -currently- little owl, also known as Athene Noctua.

A lady who accidentally got in touch with something otherworldly halted her studies and hit the road for answers. Still without answers, but with new abilities, a group of friends and a war with difficult choices ahead.

View Character Profile

Alignment

Honorary & Occupational Titles

The dragon negotiators
The elemental lords / ladies
The matties van Siadarnivax

Year of Birth

721 UT 27 Years old

Birthplace

Mercia

Parents

Vortigen of Mercia

Seraide of Mercia

Children

Gender

Female

Eyes

Light green

Hair

Dark brown to black

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Slightly tanned

Height

1.62 m

Weight

54 kg

Known Languages

Common, Elvish, Dwarvish & Giant

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Session notes 9-12-2020 & 17-12-2020
18th day in the Feywild

18th day in the Feywild, continued We got picked up by the rest of the group who had found their way to the summoning circle underneath the castle. To get there, we went through a cut painting. A rather large one that was, must have cost fortunes. The circle was in an enormous room with the skeleton of a huge creature sitting there on a chair it seemed? It wielded a sword the size of maybe 10 of ours. Ferrum noted that it must have been a titan -his scholar-y side showing- and he started telling about the fights between the titans, I zoned out a little bit during that conversation as I started looking at the magic circle carved into the floor. The runes in the circle seemed rather rudimentary and I only got a faint blip of conjuration magic from it. I was startled from studying when yet another group of planetars appeared. They spoke again, something about us, and something about protecting? During all this, Rogue tried to sneak away towards the titan's skeleton, to the great annoyance of his brother who angrily followed. I am just not going to intervene I think. The conversation of the planetars continued. "are they leaving?" "we don't know" "what are they doing?" "communicating" "why?" "we don't know". Ferrum decided to go and try to talk with them, but we all just heard "Are they sane?" "no", so I am not quite sure how well that went. More talking, the wizard fella tried to take the lead. More conversation, something along the lines of: "are we wrong?" "no we are not? " "are they good? " "we don't know" "do they know?" "i don't think so". At this point, I decided to go and set up Leomunds tiny hut. Just to have someplace to sit safely. During setting up that I picked up a few more words, such as "they are evil" "they might be" Once we gathered in the hut, the Rogue, Halvar, Brynjar, whatever took out the summoning text. We had to wall out the wizard -which was done by Ferrum keeping him outside the bubble-, to ensure we did not get killed by the Elemental Prince for sharing the information, to the wizards great discontent. We quickly realized that none of us can speak, read or understand Terran. Luckily with the helm of comprehend languages, it became legible for us! And with that, our rogue walked out, helmet on his head and summoning text in his hand, and summoned the bloody thing! Talking about planning! Still, it worked out, I sat in the hut for most of the battle, but I feel I could help them a bit from a distance? The ground shook and the walls started collapsing slightly when this creature made of stone arose from the ground. Stones flew around, jaws snapped at us. I mostly saw Liya firing arrows at an alarming speed at this creature, and the wizard hopped in and out of the hut quite often. I was concentrating on keeping the barbarians in the air. Interestingly, the creature seemed to be trying to break out of this underground cavern? It was stopped by a wall of force, but the walls had taken significant damage. The planatars hovered above as we killed this Zarathan, destroyer of worlds. Eerily, once the dust settled a bit, we could see light coming from the side of the mountain that the Zarathan had tried to breakthrough. Slightly alarmed, but hurt immensely, we decided to let those who need to rest rest, while the others retrieved the heart. This heart, embedded in a body of stone, was not easy to get out. Ferrum and Zolos did their best, but only with some magical aid from the rogue did they finally get it free. The wizard tried to talk with the planetars again. they seemed to be focused on the damaged side of the mountain. The heart is a very large crystal by the by, at least 2,4,4 meters. I am not sure how we are going to carry that up the stairs, let alone out of this mountain. Perhaps Baradox can help here. In the meanwhile, a message was sent to Roberta, informing her of the retrieval of the heart of a titan and informed about the next item: lightning in a bottle. The response was "be creative". And with that, we decided to ask the planetars for help, carrying the crystal heart out of the castle. Somewhat hesitantly, they agreed. Together we brought the crystal outside. And with a "They are gone, thus so are we" the planetars disappeared. We found it strange, but what was even stranger was the next seven or so minutes, in which the entire castle collaped upon itself, into the large cellar/cavern that we had fought the Zarathan in! So, now, we are sitting in a tiny hut placed partly over the crystal. The light refracts in the hut in all these pretty colours. If only we were not next to the rubble of the castle and the temple. The dust is settling and the mist caused by the dragon seems to be lifting more and more and the mess that is now the castle is showing ever clearer in the setting sun After some sleep, we will probably message Baradox is he can come and get us. Maybe Liya and some people can also go and see if there is anything salvageable from the dragon a little down the mountain. Hide and claws are useful I thought. I am not sure actually, but that is it for today, I need to keep watch with Ferrum.

Session notes 26-11-2020 & 3-12-2020
17th and 18th day in the Feywild

17th day in the Feywild - continued So the battle was quite fierce, I stayed in the dome for the most bit though, while Brynjar, Zolos and Ferrum went for the head-on attacks. There was wall-climbing, body slamming (which in fact did not succeed as I cast feather fall as a defensive spell), and large blocks of ice falling down. I could not see a lot of it at first, but after casting that first spell, I had left the dome and that place quickly became a dangerous zone. Oddly enough, some other guy appeared. He looked smart in his dark blue coat, but he just appeared out of thin air it seemed. He called Brynjar his brother. I did not hear it then, as we were, well, battling a bloody dragon, but afterwards, he made it abundantly clear. Just a little more about the battle. So much happened. The dragon burrowed through the ice in the roof of the icy cavern and tried to get away from us. Luckily our hard hitters were flying! Somewhere during the battle, Zolos even changed in water for a little bit, but maybe I did not see it correctly. There was ice flying around and stuff. William and Brynjar eventually finished him off using a powerful smite and a well-aimed slash with a green flaming blade. After all this havoc, the strange new figure introduced himself as the brother of Brynjar. They do not look alike much. His dark hair is so slick that not even the dragon's breath got it out of place and a big moustache. He does not seem to be on good terms with his brother. I did learn that he and Brynjar come from a family of five and that Brynjar originally asked for his sister, not his brother. Seems like there is some family drama there. Anyhow, Halvar, what we should call this brother of Brynjar, or 'Gold' after hearing our pseudonyms (so extra!), is not a man of few words. Repetition seems to be his thing. While he was talking and trying to connect with his brother about them having switched names or something, Liya collected a set of dragons teeth and has started looking at how to dismantle the beast. With the dome setup again, I think we are going to sleep. I just decided to let the new guy in, it is too cold outside to exclude him. It seems less icy than before the dragon died though, but that might just be me. I am going to keep an eye on him, for he does carry a fancy book, and his cloak and ring seem to magic. Okay, I got it, the names thing, Brynjar (who we have known for longer) is actually called Halvar. The caster that just appeared is actually called Brynjar. Just to add to the confusion of the names in this place I guess? Brynjar = Halvar Halvar = Brynjar = Gold I will try to remember. Staying awake proved useful, Brynjar (the rogue) got the book for me. So I just started to copy one of his spells that looked interesting, something about mental connections, which seems to be something up my alley. 18th day in the Feywild Ferrum gave us a good scare this morning. He started stretching, something we have learned to be a trait of Copper. He was just joking around though. I nearly repeated the speech I had prepared yesterday! We spend quite some time planning in the morning, that Halvar, no Brynjar must really learn to listen man. I, for one, am already getting annoyed by this guy. But I guess he and Bryn-Halvar, Rogue, share an interesting story together. Honestly, I am eager to find out what sparked this animosity between them. Must have been something quite severe, if I heard correctly they have not spoken in seven years. More importantly, Bry-Rogue suggested that we get some people, some allies to help us back in the material plane. He fears that the situation in Sarton will be getting worse rather quickly and feels like it might be clever to start informing powerful people to join the battle. I think he has a point, but I know little powerful people. Magic on the scale we as a group are able to do is, next to the wizards of the Circle, a first for me. Nobody back home has the magic of this level I think, or I have not seen it. Perhaps the clerics in Apélès, but they may also be busy there, plus the travel time would be, well, too long. We did however sent a message or Karazoth, the red dragon we encountered in Cozynest. I got a scale from the white dragon just before getting on the road again. We are now going to make our way towards the castle. Just a day after defeating an actual white dragon, we have now defeated an elemental being. It was, scary, but epic. Let me tell you the story of how we ended up here. To start, we were still walking in the tunnel of ice and the new guy was being such a prick. The twit was clearly trying to be nice and not used to it. Brynj- Rogue was having nothing of it. He is very nosy, has a lot of questions. Understandable, but he pops up here, in the middle of nowhere in the Feywild, where you should be sparse with your information as some (read every one) says, and he comes here posing all these questions. But less about that and more about cool castles and monsters. Once we reached the castle, the wizard used some eye-spy spell to scout ahead in the castle. After that, we went into the icy palace. The roofs and all were covered in this layer of ice, making it refract all the light from the setting sun. It was rather beautiful if I am honest. There were however dead ice giants laying around this castle, which was less romantic. In the castle itself, we found the throne room, with a figure atop of it. He looked like a nobleman, clearly frozen and looked conserved in the ice, but no longer alive. Ferrum checked using a spell of some sorts and confirmed it. He was, however, wearing a type of headband, elegant and gold and some signet rings. To sketch an image, the entire throneroom was frozen. Ice with coins, weaponry and people embedded in it. The ice did seem to show the first signs of melting, but Ferrum and Zolos did their best cutting through it and it was still a lot of work. While the two of them cut the ice for coins, Bryn-Halvar THE ROGUE and I try to get out a small chest that gives off an interesting aura. I could not help much with melting it out, the hot swords work better than my small daggers, so I decided to get some good use of my detect magic. This caused something interesting. As I walked past the statues, all different figures of lore and heroic stories, a voice popped up in our heads. "They have found me brother, let's stop them". That caused a battle to ensue. Two angelic forms appeared, speaking to one another through some kind of telepathy on a frequency we all could hear. Things about one of us hiding, about them needing aid and them trying to flee. After quite some shots, some heavy beatings from the barbarians in our party one of them was down and slowly turning into dust and feathers, while the other fled flying right through the stained glass window. We had no idea what they were or what it meant at that moment in time, but we were hurting quite a bit. After sitting down for a while we all felt better and we had even retrieved quite some cool things by slowly melting the ice, or by fiercely smashing into it, as the Captain and Ferrum did. The chest that Rogue and I found contained a set of magical inks! I wish I was a better artist, then I would have been able to create some great things with them! It was after this short rest that we split up, the wizard, Liya, William and I made our way towards to library that was spotted earlier. The light in that library was stunning, it is quite the aesthetic to have this silent and somewhat dusty library with the light of the setting sun shining in. The fact that the skies were clear was then noted by Liya. The perishing of the dragon maybe also caused these clear skies? It had quite an influence on its surroundings in terms of climate. Anyhow, Halvar, well the wizard found a journal without a name on or in it and told the story of someone who was looking to make people happy by providing them with all they wanted. Doing this would help him practice his belief in Ulutiu, hoping to maybe free(?) the god. Strange. The unnamed writer is most certainly the King of High Hopes, or at least it is about him. The rest of the notes were mostly about the way to acquire such wealth to be able to provide anyone with anything they ever wanted. Through making use of another plane with gold and gems in abundance and mining it there. Given the fact that we are most likely standing on the -or a- nexus with the earth elemental plane, it is not strange to suppose it is that plane he is writing about. The rest of the notes is about some other creature that used to be here before, a giant or something. Next to this journal, we found a book about good and evil. It was rather interesting but the points the writer was making slowly became less and less intelligible. In the end, we were just discussing the classic moral dilemmas and we were not getting anywhere. Eventually, I just cut out of the conversation. Liya and Halvar continued discussing faith. I picked up a thing or two about Halvar not believing in anything and saying that you can just determine your norms and values yourself. I find that a strange notion, there is proof the gods exist, there should be one whos values and what not feel 'good' to you? Then you can still determine if you want to follow their rules or guidelines or what you want to call them and be happy. I know for a fact that I have gotten myself in a strange situation regarding gods and other powerful beings, but I was raised worshipping Selûne and I still feel connected to her, even though I now have a stronger connection with The Bard. Anyhow, I am ramble-writing. More importantly, the rest found their way to, what seemed to be the summoning circle. They came to get us soon after. Let me continue in my other journal.

Session notes 8-11-2020
16th day in the Feywild

16th day in the Feywild Yeah, last night was busy. In the end, we all slept in for a bit to compensate. The rest of my watch I used to write some stories about Thalmiir. His life needs to be remembered, and there are quite some stories to tell! I also started writing a letter to send home, but I am not sure where to start. I will try again another night. Oh, I would almost forget that Oranje had set himself ablaze last night! Actual flames engulfed him but did not seem to harm him. It must have been quite powerful magic that he is wielding at this point. Anyhow, I took this morning to change Mina into a snow owl, which is better suited for this weather than a bat. Our day was long, and it is not even done yet. It is way too cold outside to write anything down, I fear my ink would have frozen to my pen. The day started with investigating the creatures that had attacked us this morning, but one of them had simply shattered into ice, while the others were 'regular' undead. After our brief investigation, we went on our way. The first hour or so was quite okay, but Brynjar had already scouted ahead with Odin and seen that a bad storm lay ahead. Soon, we could barely see the person walking in front of us. The snow was freezing, the wind howled and all our feet were soaked. It was at that point that we heard a crack underneath Coppers feet. At that point I had telekinesis, the spell, going, to clear the snow a bit in front of us, but this took us by surprise. What also took us by surprise was two frost giants. A battle ensued. I got hurt badly as I was walking first in line with my spell pushing away the snow. Additionally, I fell into a hole in the ice. Luckily I was tied to Copper/Oranje, who could quickly pull me out. The last things of the battle were kind of a blur, I saw Oranje smite much like William but it felt different, it had a different aura or something like that. While I was trying to get warm with Oranjes help, Brynjar cut out the hart of the giants. After which we quickly made our way to find some cover to have a short rest. In this cave, we still found little rest as the stones somehow started moving. They seemed kind of friendly, but just to be sure we went to sit in the treehouse Liya can create. The stone-creature elementals followed us around like curious puppies. It was kind of interesting actually! But now we are in the hut. Liya and Oranje are talking about some things, I am going to join the conversation. Today I learned more about Brynjar's family. Apparently, they are all trained in different competencies, so all have their own expertise. His knack for magic is one found in the family, possibly through some kind of artefact. I hope I understood it correctly. He said it was kind of like a monastery. I am not sure what to think, but I am happy he is sharing information! We also tell a bit about ourselves. Oranje as well, how he is 203 years old and about the copper division. How he died fighting three druids (heat metal, a bad spell for a warforged). Brynjar is very very interested, saying he has 'heard the stories' or 'rumours' about being revitalized and about how warforged are made. Oranje avoids some of the questions not so skillfully but explains a few things. After the hut disappearing, we decided to wait out the blizzard in the cave. None of us feel like going back into that storm. We continued talking for quite a while. I also sat apart for a bit, well as apart as we can with the earth elementals following us around, to think about my letter again. After half an hour or so, I decided to ask Brynjar for some help, he also said he did not have too much contact with his family, but is trying to reconnect, maybe he has some tips. His best advice was: send the message to the person with who you have the best relationship, start with them and relink your connections via them. I think I can send a message to either person in my family, but I am just not sure what to say. I have seen and learned and done so much these past few months, that I feel like any letter or message would fall short. I miss them, but I also do not, but mostly because I do not have time to miss them. Anyway. I will try again with the tips from Brynjar. It has been three hours, the storm seems to be calming down! Disappeared like magic.... interesting. Now that the wind had calmed down, and the snow had stopped falling, walking outside was way more pleasant. Well, pleasant is a strong word, but it was doable the least. Especially compared to the morning. Not too much later we found the place we are at now, a cave behind a waterfall! Brynjar had spotted it via Odin while we were walking over a large icy plane. Investigating the place revealed an alcove behind the frozen waterfall. I just identified an arcane focus I think, it is like a magical pipe. AND, I am not excited at all, a magical robe! It seems to protect you like armour, but without being unnecessarily heavy! It feels bad to take it though, as it came from a lady that stood here, fully frozen to death. From a letter we found, it seems she was walking down the Path of High Hopes, but sadly, her journey ended here. This elven lady had quite a setup here. A small table, a kitchen like setup and a lot of strange magical components. Out of respect, we buried her just outside this cavern, to give her a proper resting place. We decided to sleep here, all tired from the morning. I am now keeping watch with Oranje, he in thought for a bit so I am writing. Following the find of the magical artefacts, we talked a bit about arcane focusses, and what we all use. I showed Brynjar my tattoo, and he showed me a kind of cog surrounded by six others. I do not quite know or remember what it is a sign for, but I thought it was quite an old god of law and order. But it could be that I am remembering it wrongly. Okay, Oranje walked out not too long ago. I decided to let Mina follow him as stealthily as possible. What I saw. My stomach is still turning. He actually went up to the grave he made for the lady we found here, dug her up and used her body for a ritual! He basically ripped open the body of the poor lady and started chanting in infernal or something, drawing the octagon again. I could not get out of the hut, but by Selûne would I have wanted to do that. However, it seemed like the ritual failed or hurt him in some way, for when he returned he could not speak coherently, just brabbling. He walked like he had spent too much time in the tavern and looked hurt. When he sat down he instantly went off. I put an alarm around him for now and we will see who of the two wakes up tomorrow. I am going to finish my watch and sleep.

Session notes 15-11-2020 & 20-11-2020
17th day in the Feywild

17th day in the Feywild I was up quite early this morning, preparing my speech for Copper when he would wake up, but when he just did it was Ferrum instead of Copper. Lucky for him, I can always just talk in his head. Anyhow, we talked a bit about what happened. William went outside to pray for the poor lady who Ferrum re-buried. I am not sure what he said, some of it was in common, some in elvish and other things in a language I do not know. I am happy he took the time to hopefully let her pass in peace. We had quite the day today, and we are not even halfway done yet. This morning, the road was actually pretty okay. Sure, we had to go over the ice, through the snow and through the mist, but it was not too bad. Brynjar even taped his knives to his shins to keep himself warm! It looked odd the first few steps, walking with warm knives on your legs, but he soon got back into pace. The man walks just as quietly as Liya does, it is kind of scary sometimes how he can sneak up on you. Well, somewhere during our morning, we came upon a fork in the road. A low and a high path. We found small icicles carved into the stone next to the high path, they looked much like the icicle symbol Liya had found in the hut we spend our first night at. We presumed that that would be the path to follow, and thus we did. The mist got even denser going up this path. What was alarming was what Brynjar saw through Odin when scouting: a person frozen in ice with parts broken off. Not much later, we arrive at the spot. What was quite concerning was Brynjar talking about his theory that the creature influencing the weather here might be a dragon, a white one specifically. I do not know much about dragons, but Liya does en she decided to scout around for a bit, looking for traces. It was not long after that we heard a sound that we were quite sure about was not Liya. From the mist, a skeletal creature, about the size of a giant, charged towards us. It had some kind of crystal in his chest. Looked like ice, it was clear but slightly radiating some light it seemed. There was not much time to think about it though. To summarize: Arrows flew, axes and halberts slashed and one nice spell nearly swept us all away. Well, that is not quite true, it swept me away. I find it amusing now, being literally stuck in an avalanche, avoiding battle, but it was scary then, to say the least. After an all too familiar spell went off, a deafening noise echoed through the mountain range. Now, I grew up not too far from the mountains around Volheim, and I knew of the stories of loud sounds in high places with lots of snow, it can cause things to start sliding, but Brynjar had not thought of this. Not but a tenth of a minute later, was I engulfed in snow, steadily falling down. Luckily, I was able to cast telekinesis and ensure I had a bubble to breathe in, for else I would have probably suffocated. It was strangely calm in the air bubble underneath all that snow if I had not been gravely concerned of the others. While I build and sculpted the snow underneath me to bring me up all the 120 or so feet I had fallen, the rest was fighting the skeletal-frozen heart giant. When I got to the edge, I was happy to see Ferrum deliver the finishing blow to the skeletal being, quickly followed by 'shatter is a good idea in the mountains'-Brynjar stabbing the strange glowing crystal. That thing apparently was a different creature, a type of parasite that latched on to the undead giant. Liya and Ferrum were barely standing, and most of us were soaked by the snow that had fallen on us. So no we are resting up a bit. Liya is planning on eating the heart that Brynjar retrieved from the other creatures that attacked us. It looks, unpleasant to eat, to say the least. But alas. She is looking better quickly after eating though, which is good! The rest of the journey was, just like the morning, eventful. We met a man, a captain, who was frozen inside a waterfall. Brynjar and Ferrum rescued him using their flaming weapons. Brynjar had given me and Liya one to keep us warm for the rest of the day, I was quite sad to give them back. Anyhow, his name is Captain Zolos. He has been stuck in the ice for quite some time apparently, plus he looks like an aquatic being, fins and gills and stuff. We decided to take him along, as he probably will not make it down the mountain alone. He was happy to join and to get a new view after being stuck for so long. While we walk further towards our destination, Zolos told us that he was looking for a cure, his appearance is part of a curse that was put on him long ago by some kind of sea creature. During his search for a solution, he was frozen in the river, but he did not see what it was. We found out not much later. The frozen river, that had flowed from the waterfall before it was frozen, had eroded away quite a lot of mountain. The river must have been, 220, 250 foot below us? It was hard to see, as mist lay in the path of the river. Across it hanged a bridge. It was quite broken and torn, so we used fly to get across. Ferrum must have hovered above the chasm for too long, for from below a large white dragon flew up, ready to take a bite out of him! Most of us froze on the spot, out of fear, luckily not like the person we had seen on the path earlier. Still, the battle was quite scary. I got hurt badly quite earl on and just bolted and did my best to aid the others from a distance. Zolos did use some strange magic while we were battling the dragon, he had tentacles or something, but they were spectral. It looked odd, might ask about it later. Still, we fled and the dragon did as well. After that, we sat in Liya's hut for a little bit. It is always so nice in there, such a shame it is only for an hour or so. That hour felt the best though. Afterwards, we were warmed up, healed and patched up a bit and ready to, hopefully not become that dragons afternoon snack. We went outside slowly, checking if the dragon had not been waiting for us, but it was quiet and thus we continued our journey. Not much later, we came across a cave. Brynjar investigated it and found something that looked like the storage space for the dragon. He probably kept his snacks there, frozen waiting to be eaten. In order to not join their fate, we quickly got away. However, the rest of the journey proved to be not much safer, for as we got closer to the castle, more and more things were covered in ice and frost. Frozen people, animals and items. Until we got to the final few miles of the Path of High Hopes, which had become an icy tunnel. The light from the setting sun scattered through the thinner parts of the tunnel/dome, showing the silhouettes of the things trapped deep within. At this point, we had been awake for what we could call a day, and seen enough for like a week, so we decided to set up camp and get a nights rest. using the knives, we cut out a hole in the tunnel, in which I place a tiny hut. And that is where we are now. It is cosy, the lot of us in this hut enclosed in ice, but it only feels semi-safe. Brynjar is scouting now using Odin. He already saw three different buildings, the castle and two others, stables and a temple apparently. There are more skeletal giants there, also frozen ones. They do not seem undead according to Byrnjar, which is good news! Less good news, we are hearing the dragon approach. It has been decided we attack.

Session notes 29-10-2020
14th and 15th day in the Feywild

14th day in the Feywild - continued It is not possible to write while walking up this mountain, so I will have to describe the entire day from memory now that we are safely in the hunter's hut we have chosen to stay in for the night. Well, after our visit to Humblestone, we decided to use the daylight left to get up the mountain. Okay actually we have all the daylight we like but the time we still want to be awake. That amount of time dwindled away quickly as the snow slowly seeped into our boots. The snow quickly was up to our shins, making walking very tiring. We stuck close together and followed in Ferrums footsteps. Brynjar used Odin, the falcon who is better adapted to the cold and wind than the currently bat-shaped Mina, to scout ahead. Thanks to that scouting, we were aware of most of the things that laid ahead. One of these things was a white memorial stone "To all who have lost their lives on the Path of High Hopes". We took a moment to pay our respect. Brynjar built a small tower of stones in front of the monument, while the others nodded to touched the stone briefly. I did too, hoping we would not become part of the group for who this stone was placed. As we continued our way, we were alerted of a building not much further up the mountain. At this point, the snow was too deep for Liya to walk in, so she got up to Ferrums shoulder. We ploughed the last part through the snow to the small hut. After investigating the place, we decided to sleep here and continue our journey after a good night sleep. And that is where we are now. Ferrum lighted the fire and Liya just made some tea with herbs Brynjar found near the fireplace. It seems to be a small hunters hut but designed for those travelling up the path of high hopes, as one of the resting places. After investigating a bit we find a stash of firewood, and a couple of bedrolls. Even a hat and a strange necklace hang on a coat rack! Ferrum noted that the necklace has the symbol of Ulutiu on it, the god of snow, protection and animals. I had never heard of him before. Ferrum and I had the first watch, and it is a quiet one. We talked a bit about this first day and speculate about the ones ahead. I just put an alarm around Ferrum, just in case, the rest we will think about tomorrow. 15th day in the feywild That was two weeks here. It feels weird to have not even been gone for a day in our plane. Even with all that time, it feels like we have too little. Brynjar mentioned it might be smart to start calling in any help we can find for our side of the fight, with the Undead King approaching fast. It suddenly feels much closer than it has been the past few days. We would almost forget why we are here with all the people we meet and the things we do here. After light breakfast and a heavy conversation, we refill the stock of firewood and clean out the hut as well as possible, after which we hit the road again. It is still snowing, the path we walked yesterday is barely visible, you would not know people passed over it mere hours ago. But my fingers are getting cold. Okay, we are resting for the night once again. These days feel short and long at the same time. Well, let us see what we saw and did today. After leaving the hut, we were walking for a couple of hours, when we passed through a kind of valley. The mountain we were one was steep on one side, the valley between our mountain and the mountain next to it on the other side. The wind blew hard between the two peaks and we did our best to keep our hopes up. None of us wanted to give in, thus we walked for, it must have been 4 to 6 hours until we really could not continue anymore. We pushed through the last kilometre or so until we found a set of snowed-in tents, standing in a circle. At first, we thought it was just pointy rocks, but the formation gave it away. Using telekinesis, I cleared most of the snow, and I was it nice to just walk without the heaviness of the snow in every step. Using the same spell, we built an igloo. I once read about those in stories and it was not too hard to do! With the tiny hut inside, it was nice and cosy. Between us creating an igloo and us arriving, I had a less well, nice interaction. I called out to Ferrum mentally, because he was standing there with Brynjar and I felt too tired to actually call, but he responded he could not respond right now. That worried me a lot, for that meant Orange/Copper was back! I walked up to them, semi enveloped him in the snow until he spoke and told him that keeping this from us is not cool. We talked about it and we are okay now, though I fear I may have come along as too angry. I do care for Copper, he is a twisted soul but he has his kind sides I suppose. I am not sure why, I did connect with him before, but now that the war is coming closer the sides seem to get drawn, even in our own party. Anyhow, this place seems pretty deserted. Many of the tents are old and some have fallen in. The statue is one of Ulutiu, and at the bottom lie small stones in the shape of pyramids and other small stacks of stones, much like Brynjar made at the memorial stone at the start of this journey. But now that we are in the igloo/tiny hut. It is time to get our rest. I am not looking forward to my watch tonight, I would just like to get a full nights sleep. Well, scratch that full night sleep. I woke up to have watch with Oranje, and he walked out. At that moment, a bright light came shining in from outside, followed by the sound of sliding rocks in the distance. Startled by this noise in the night, most of the others woke up. Brynjar, William and Liya ran outside, while I stayed inside to keep the hut intact in case of just a sound and a flash. It soon became clear that it was not just a sound. Outside a full-on battle was going on. The only things I saw was an Icy lady and two well, semi-alive creatures. Most of them were dealt with quickly, but both Liya's and Williams's feet had momentarily felt and looked like ice. I had dropped the hut to help them out before they would turn fully into ice. All in all, most of them had found it a frightening experience, and I cannot blame them.

Session notes 21-10-2020
14th day in the feywild

13th day in the Feywild - continued We have been on the boat for, 4 maybe 5 hours. I am not sure how long we have been up, but I am getting very very tired. Xal is fun entertainment, and I had some time to make a few notes on what we saw inside Joltyrs pyramid, but the rest of the time I have just been sitting around, making some music and observing what the rest is doing. It is not much, we are all tired and I think we are going to land soon to start our 'night'. The sun not setting is something I am now slowly getting used to, I think at this point that the night will be strange when we get back to our plane of existence. We landed an hour or so ago, we settled down on some hills and had a beer from Liya's beer-bag. Xal did not like the taste of it though, but the rest of us do. We had a laugh and now most of us are turning in. I will have the second watch I think. 14th day in the Feywild It is really early, I just woke William up for the next watch. I just wanted to quickly write down what I saw so I do not forget. There was this hill giant I think that took a look at our boat. Luckily, he was not very interested in our stone-looking dome, so he just sneezed at our boat and went on his or her merry way. Well, this day and this watch have been enervating. After a calm morning on the boat, we are now starting to see the mountains we are going towards. While still eating from the food we have got from the Emerald King, we sit and watch as we get closer and closer to the snowy peaks. We landed some time ago, Baradox has stayed by the boat while we visited a small village called Humblestone at the foot of this mountain. The people there are all, well, not very tall, so we felt like proper giants walking through the streets. Still, the people seem nice. We got some winter coats, and Liya bought enough food for the lot of us. We are going to need quite some, for we will have to walk up the mountain. I had hoped Baradox could have taken us higher up, but the winds and the mist are treacherous up there, especially for a small flying ship, thus walking seemed the safer option. I just hope that the heart of that Zarathan is not too large to carry, but that is a problem for later. For now, we know that there used to be a path up the mountain, towards a castle of some sorts. It used to be called the 'path of high hopes' as the people who reached the castle were richly rewarded by the noble who lived there. Since a decade or so, the mountain has become more dangerous. It is colder, windier and an everlasting mist has been covering the peaks. Nearly none have come back safely from their journey up the path since this change. A nice thing to look forward to walking up that mountain... Anyhow, we bought some climbing gear and visited a tavern called the Gnarled Gnome. They had some tasty food, roast lamb and cheese. Quite different from the sweet and savoury fruits we got from the Emerald King, but both have their charms. In the end, I returned with some chalk, a new journal and a bag full of herbs to summon Mina. At the tavern, someone picked up our conversation and gave me the tip to go and visit Madame Herbtoe. She had all the types of dried plants and herbs that you could think off. The whole place smelt of mint and old paper. It is a place we should return to on the way back! Liya let me smell the tea she bought when walking back to the boat and now I am slightly jealous I did not buy it myself! Oh yeah, when we walked back to meet up with the rest again at the boat, we - Liya, Brynjar and I- had a snowball fight with a group of children. They took a liking to me, so I joined their team! I got Brynjar and Liya good with a bit of magic and sneaky trickery, but he, it was a fun game. Brynjar had hit hot knives so it felt fair. Ah but it does not matter, I now bear the title 'Nimueh heerser van de sneeuw en alles wat sneeuw is' which is all I could have ever wished for. On a more serious note, Brynjar and I talked a bit about who we are, and I learned that he did a lot of mercenary work at an organisation called the Prime Order. He, like Liya, lived close to Sarton with his family. He apparently is also kind of into old, forgotten and alternative gods and deities. Which is something to remember. Back at the boat, we met up with Baradox, Ferrum and William again. And that is where we are now. We just decided to get started climbing the mountain. Based on some tips from the locals, we will have at least three stops during our trip up the mountain, so we will be gone for a while. Everyone is now packing their stuff and adding an extra layer to their winter outfits. I am not sure if I am looking forward to this trip. Normally, I like snow, but I hope we are not going to literally freeze to death up there, from what I have heard from the people in Humble stone, that is a real possibility... Well, we shall see.

Session notes 15-10-2020
13th day in the Feywild

13th day in the feywild - continued With our pretty crystal tiara's on, we followed the skipping golden kobold through the giant doors of the pyramid. Wary of what we might meet inside, we were surprised to be met by about 40 sets of curious kobold eyes looking at us right after we entered. We nearly lost Xal in the group, but we quickly gave him a piece of red cloth to bind around his tail, so that we could recognise him in the crowd. The room we stood in was gold. All the walls, the floor all. A staircase let to the next floor, of which we could only see a bit of black wall. As we made our way to the stairs, we saw a relatively young lady walk down towards us. She greeted us, stating that she was very happy to see 'some new apprentices' and introduced herself as Gazille. We must have looked confused, as she simply said that 'things will be clearer in an hour or so'. We simply decided to play along and followed her over the second floor. More people walked around here, all dressed in light brown robes like Gazille. While walking we chat with her a bit. Thus, we learned that the people in brown are the apprentices. As she pointed at two figures with triangle helmets who are guarding the next set of stairs, she explains that they are the librarians, and above them, there is Joltyr, or, as we know him, the Elemental Prince. After a short tour, we were given a set of robes, and we pointed to the sleeping quarters. While Liya simply added the robe to her regular outfit, I decided to just cast disguise self to look like I was wearing it, while inspecting the rooms. There stood about 15-20 beds in the chambers we were in. It all looked quite sober. Not much later, we were picked up by one of the librarians, and with a small nod of Gazille, we followed the figure with the large helmet up the next set of stairs. He is not very talkative. On this next level, there were only librarians and a lot of books. the walls were covered with them. A spiral staircase in the middle seemed to lead up to yet another level. Along the shelves and the stairs, small blobs of light hovered, giving the librarians light to work with. Looking through detect magic was quite overwhelming here. The sensation was familiar to the library in Apéles, where I also felt a lot of illusion magic. Ferrum got one of the books while walking up the spiralling staircase, but the book was blank. An odd thing to keep on a shelf. I did not take the time to study the librarians much, but they seemed to just move the books. They were odd figures. On the final dark-walled floor, we saw more books and just a kind of hologram. It did not interact with us but started somehow walking up an invisible staircase, which led to a platform a bit higher up in the room. Walking up the stairs was the weirdest sensation. You only felt the step once you placed nearly all your weight on it, looking down just made you dizzy, seeing the black and gold tiling below you. While walking up the stairs, there was just a sort of dark void and more and more books. Until finally, we heard some mumbling from above us, and we were met with a curious creature. We stood before a sort of round creature with a lot of stalk eyes and one large closed eye on its body. The body itself seemed to have a sort of metal-like appearance. The eyes on the stalks followed us around, and we quickly counted ten eyestalks. One of which seemed to be a milky white. We wisely let William do most of the talking. Joltyr, this Beholder, is the keeper of this mountain. Which he keeps afloat. It floats above the Eye of Tyr, if it were to fall, it would pierce the eye and open up a portal to the nine hells. Which is why Joltyrs name is fitting, as it means Torturer of Tyr. Additionally, he keeps a vast collection of books. People generally walk in here and they are asked to write down anything that they know that he does not already know, thus growing his collection of knowledge. These apprentices are free to leave whenever they like, but often they stick around quite some time, writing a book takes quite some time. I would know hahah. As we explained our business, he started looking at us curiously. As he was certainly not planning on giving us the scrolls. However, we learned that he also could not use them, for when he tried to read one, he lost sight in one eye. It seemed to be some kind of protection which was placed on the elemental scrolls, preventing regular joe from reading them and accidentally summoning a Zarathan, destroyer of worlds, on his doorstep. With a bit of clever thinking, we suggest that we, read and copy the maps for him. Giving him the information he craves, and allowing us to have a copy of the map. This seemed to please him, as he got the case with the scrolls and carefully handed it to us. As directly looking at the scrolls would blind us, we decide to use the spell clairvoyance to look at the scroll, thus preventing direct eyesight. This, along with the helmet of comprehend languages to read the elemental tongue parts of the scroll is written in. Using this technique, we copy the first scroll: Elemental Earth. Showing Joltyr the result, he seemed very pleased with us and gave us some space and time to do the other three. With Ferrums calligraphy techniques, we ended up with two sets of very neatly copied scrolls. We handed the originals and one set of copies back to Joltyr and packed our own. However, as we folded them into the bag, he stated that, if he ever learns that we share the information that is on these scrolls or maps, he will find us, and kill us. However alarming that might be, we nodded and agreed, thankful that he had not already killed us. And that is how we are now on the ship with the information we need, travelling towards the heart of a titan, element three. Without showing Baradox the information, Ferrum explained the route towards our next challenge, the Zarathan, elemental earth. Baradox seems utterly curious to know what we have learned, but we feel we must be careful, as we do not want to have an angry beholder with the power to open a portal to the nine hells following us. So we are now quite quickly flying off towards our next destination! We want to get some travelling done before we settle down to sleep, even though we have been going for quite long today. But the strange time and the long travels make everything a bit hazy. Oh, by the way, we have Xal onboard! As we left the mountain and explained to Gazille that it just was not the place for us, Xal was sent out again to get some new people to enter apprenticeship at Joltyr's pyramid. Pitying him, we decided to ask him to come along with us. He seems to be enjoying himself, watching the feywild from above. On to the third part of our grocery list.

Session notes 4-10-2020
10th to 13th day in the feywild

10th day in the feywild - continued But yes, that was what we did, and now we have got the phoenix in our small bottle! We just told Baradox the whole story. It was quite the story for the two days we have not seen him. It feels much longer though. It feels like the idea of time is slowly escaping my grasp. It could have been one week here, two, or two months even. I am actually starting to miss sunrise and sleeping in the dark. But anyhow, Brynjar is introducing himself to Baradox now, after that, we will go back to the cave with the portal with the Highwind. If the ship fits through the cavern, we will travel via the portal to the Sapphire mountain. Should work, and would save us a lot of time! It was the fasted trip we had with the Highwind. Literally, a flash and we had arrived. At the Sapphire mountain, we spoke to Siadarnivax, he showed us the Ever Ice we had wished for at the Emerald King. Compared to the dragon, the shards seem quite small, but they are at least 1.5m high. But we now have Siadarnivax protecting both the ice and the phoenix, so we should be safe. The next step day on our journey will be the Elemental Prince. A strange figure we know little about, but according to Siadarnivax, he knows a lot. They do not seem to be on good terms somehow. Perhaps they fear each other's knowledge? or envy it? I am not sure. We now at least know that he himself has no special abilities, but there is something about him. He has these powerful maps with the locations of the next two elemental beings, and people tend to enter there but not leave. It sounds odd, there must be something off about that place. But Siadarnivax is happy to provide us with a form of the crystals that will help prevent any psychic damage that might befall us. We just decided that before we go towards the Dragon Spine Mountains, we are going to take a day or two to ourselves. I do not mind, it will be good to have a full night of sleep without keeping watch or feeling people enter and leave the dome. It will also give me and Ferrum some time to brew some potions, it has been a while! Hope I am not too bad out of practice! Some plans were made for the following days. some are going to go on a walk, while others sit down to draw. 11th and 12th day in the Feywild I did not have much time to write, Ferrum and I have been with our head at the potions. We have made three potions of psychic resistance! The liquid has a nice shine to it, so we think they will be just fine! Other things that happened these past two days, well Liya and Brynjar went to get beer. Not here, in Sarton! They only had like an hour or so to get it, because, for an hour there, a day passes here if I remember correctly. But they came back with a whole bag of holding filled with Maple Beer! It must have cost them quite a few gold pieces to get that thing filled up to the brim. But I must admit, it was nice. We enjoyed having a drink together after all that action the past few days. We realised we still had not quite taken the time to really get to know Brynjar or to process all the things that happened. Ferrum and I also talked about Thalmiir. How we miss him quite a lot, and how we should spend his money. We thought about starting a kind of funding. We joked about it being for dwarves who cannot afford proper armour. The Rubyeye fund. It was nice to remember him that way. Anyway. William also showed us a few of his drawings, they look quite nice! It is mostly landscapes and mountains. However, he plays with the perspective somehow. The images seem right, but when you look a bit longer, you start to see it just does not add up. It is really odd and must require quite some technique, I for sure cannot draw like that! I wonder what more talents this guy hides from us though. Not in a shady way, I just think he is slow in opening up. Same would go for Brynjar, I still know little about him. When we met him, he said something about being from the Prime Order or something, and he told a bit about his mercenary work, but that is it. Well, I suppose it is understandable, we have only known him for like, four days. 13th day in the Feywild. We are back on the Highwind. The ship had some upgrades and has a few additional crystals now! The hit from the time we went to the stone giants is almost not visible anymore. But the journey is cold, and we are heading north. We will not go in a straight line towards the Emerald Prince, but we will visit the Emerald King first. It is a bit under a days travel towards the Dragon Spine Mountains, and the King will be an additional stop. On our way there, I have mostly been writing some stories about Thalmiir, and watching the sky. It did not feel like a long trip. But soon we stood at the edge of the forest of the Emerald Kings land once again. It looked different now, lighter, friendlier. We once again followed the path through the forest. I can almost forget how angry and annoyed I had been the first time we passed through these woods. Back then, I would have liked to slash every single tree down, to leave a path like the path that turtle created and is creation. But now, the forest is softly radiating a sense of calm. It is the direct opposite of what it used to be. Odd how quickly that can change. The Emerald King was very welcoming. He offered us to stay and eat, which we gladly accepted. We talked a bit about the Elemental Prince who we are going to visit, and inquired him if he knew anything about the guy. We just learned that he does not like what the Prince has done to the place, and that he keeps to himself. The Prince dislikes losing things, that is it. The King however strongly urges us to keep him alive, at all cost. Why exactly we are not sure about, the Emerald King was not very clear about it. It was something like "If he dies 'it' will take over again". Apparently, something very bad would happen that would literally cause hell. The rest of the evening is simple chatter, in combination with some heavy emotions. Liya offers the King some beer from the Beer bag, and the King tells us that Pen the Satyr went on his way to have an adventure of his own, he will give him our regards when he returns. At the end of the dinner, while we packed some stuff for Baradox, William and Ferrum walked towards the vine and armour statue of Thalmiir. They lit a candle there for him. After a moment of collective silence, we thanked the King for his hospitality and let ourselves out. The rest of the journey was calm. We ruminated on the information we had gotten from the King and watched the skies and horizons closely for cloud giants hurling rocks and for the supposedly strange building the Emerald King supposedly build. Around what I think would have been our 'evening' we finally got a good look at our target: the Emerald Princes home. It was unlike anything we had seen here yet. A giant, black and gold, floating upside-down pyramid floated above a hole of a similar shape. Three thin lines of gold seemed to form four different levels in the structure, while the point pointing down seemed to be fully gold. Directly below it, something like a dark red platform reflected some of the evenings light. Baradox was not comfortable landing on top of the pyramid, which is completely understandable. He, therefore, landed on the edge of the forest, on a safe distance from the strange building. After a few meaningful looks and good luck wishes, we packed our stuff and went out to see what the Emerald Prince would want for his precious information. Before going in, Ferrum sat down and cast something, to see if what we are going to do is a good idea or something. I am not sure if he got any clear answer, but we just continued our journey. However, our short walk to the front door of the complex was interrupted by a small gold creature which sat, crying, on the open field before the bridge towards the pyramid. It was a small golden kobold. After some assurance, broken draconic and mind-talk, we got to know his name: Xal. He invited us to come into the pyramid, so that he may enter the building again. He had been sent to get some new people apparently, so he can only return to his friends if he brings someone with him, which was why he was so sad. We looked at each other and decided that it would not be that bad of an idea to walk in with him. It may be less weird that way? The bridge seemed the only way in, and out, anyway. And thus, we made Xal extremely happy as we walked inside with him.

Session notes 27-09-2020
9th and 10th day in the Feywild

9th day in the Feywild - continued Liya showed up not too long after I had fallen asleep, I woke up and she was there. Good to see that she is safe and found her way up here as well. I am just now waking up and writing a bit while Liya and Brynjar are introducing themselves. After the formalities, a plan had to be made. Still a bit dozy, I listened to the plans the other had. We could go along with the food supply to visit the mines and the forges of the fire giants. It would be a very effective way down to the phoenix. So, that was the plan that was chosen. The Yak seemed to be a bit confused by our interest in the mining activities of the Giants but did not ask any pressing questions. With one Yak, Nahara, as our escort, we made our way down. The whole trip must have taken about 10-15 minutes. There were approximately 15 levels I think, maybe more. But the first 10 or so seemed very empty. Nahara was very calm this whole trip, and just explained to us how they live kind of in symbiosis with the Giants, as they provide them food and they let them live atop their mountain. -This information did worry some of us, as we wondered what would happen to this symbiosis if an important heat source (the phoenix) would be taken away)- Once we hit, what we thought was the lowest floor, we were greeted by a Giant. I finally feel like my choice for picking Giant as my additional language is working out. I had not expected it to come of use, but it did. Ferrum talks a bit to the giant, while the others look at the ore-sorting that was happening a level below us on the right side. Some orcs are working there, as a train of small carts passes by, they sort out the ores from the 'regular' stone. Liya tried to talk to one of them I think, I could not quite hear they were far off and I was paying attention to the conversation between the giant and Ferrum while looking at Brynjar looking at the carts. Our interest in their building and forging seems to be appreciated, as we are told about the giant project that was happening on the other side of the floor below us. We could see this floor because this floor acted as some sort of a balcony for the next. On this lower floor, we could see a large forge, and some people walking around. But most importantly, in the middle hang a giant (well giant for giants) head and torso, made of shining metal. The giant talking to Ferrum called it "Vonindod" and explained that this was the task given to them by their god. Vonindod is a name in Giant of an important character that presumably fought against gods. Thus their choice for this name, a tool that can help slay gods? Well, should I quote this giant we spoke with: "first the earth, then the gods" With a bit of persuasion and semi-genuine interest, we get to talk to the 'duke', Zalto. He is the leader of this community and in charge of the construction of this Vonindod. With deep red hair and a large bushy beard, he is quite intimidating. But when talking to him, this lessens, he seemed like a serious man. We talk to him for a bit and tell him that our business here is based on our interest in history and the forging qualities of the fire giants. We brought this incredibly convincingly, and he agreed to give us a tour of the place! It must have been Ferrum being a kind of small version of the Vonindod, and perhaps the hint of genuine interest along with some sweet words that made him tell about the natural sources they use and how they forge and the different layers of metal they fold for different weapons. Walking through the place, we eventually came over the lowest platform on which the Vonindod is being constructed. Zalto explained that it is built in the image of the Allfather - their god-. Seeing it up close is slightly terrifying. It seems to be a mix of steel, gold and gems. The gems of the eyes almost seem to truly see something, but it could be the light playing tricks on us. Anyhow, from this point of view, we could also see the large adamantine door that we had seen before climbing up the mountain. Good point to remember, should we fall out of grace. But, this door also has a phoenix etched in it. When we, subtly try to ask him about the source of their heat - after mentioning the phoenix- we get a talk about natural heat and the forges being fired up with dense coal and lava, but we naturally know that that is not the whole story. Oh and Zalto said that phoenixes are just really amazing creatures, which stand for fire and power, and that was their reason for choosing this symbol. After passing past the large central forge, I asked Mina to stay and stick to one of the ridges connecting this floor to the next. Just for surveillance, if needed. We continue our tour. Get to see a group of goblins who are 'employed' by the giants and currently eating. When walking through the kitchen we got to meet Zalto's wife. A lovely, albeit intense lady. She takes care of their 'employees' and prepares food. She is somewhat critical of her husband when he explains that we are interested travellers getting a tour from him, as she thinks that we are "just the same, all fixed on one thing". But overall she seems somewhat proud to have visitors. They are clearly the bosses around here, they get the messages from the Allfather apparently and just overall seem to also have earned or taken the respect of the other giants. A true power-couple those two. After a small snack, we continue our way to the actual forges! It was almost unbearably hot there. I did not dare to write there, fearing my books might catch fire or I might sweat them to oblivion. I am so happy that that one spell prestidigitation exists. The forges were also quite a sight to see. Through small gaps in the ceiling, water falls down in a basin, next to which two fire giants are creating swords and axes. The forges seem to be heated by magma or lava which also streams in smaller, somewhat cooled down streams through the room. The carts we had seen when just arriving here pass through this room and are emptied in the large melting pot. Zalto tells us they make everything here, from swords to knives to tools.

peeking through Mina's eyes, I quickly saw two dogs or hounds or something surveil the room around the forge. Not sure what they were.

As we had seen 'all of interest', we walked back with Zalto to the dining room. He invites us to stay for a while, so that we can learn a bit more, and that they may use Ferrum as an example for the Vonindod. We kindly decline, explaining that we have more places to visit, but that we would happily stay for dinner and return sometime after our travels. "If that is the case, may we provide you with a small parting gift? Is there anything you might like as a souvenir of sorts?" After some meaningful looks between the lot of us, we ask for a set of knives and a sword. This is ordered by Zalto to be made and delivered to us at the Yakfolks place tomorrow morning. We are currently on the elevator back up, and we are quite ecstatic. We got some info, we have got Mina as surveillance and we are getting actual weapons from them! We would almost forget what our actual goal was: The phoenix. 10th day in the feywild After getting back to the village and telling our story to the Yaks who were interested, we started planning. We needed a way to know where the phoenix was kept. The forge was a good guess but we had not seen it during our stay. From flying down and getting it as soon as we notice heat coming up from the forge was an option, but we still would not know if they also had a flask or something totally different. Tired as we were, we decided to turn in for the night. The night itself was uneventful. We slept together in a hut of the Yakfolk, which was surprisingly comfortable. While writing, we were interrupted by someone carrying a large tray, carrying two knives and a greatsword. The edges burned with a fiery red and they seem to somehow radiate heat. Ferrum and Brynjar were quickly chosen to be the wielders of these weapons. They sat down for a bit to inspect and get familiar with the weapons, while the rest of us did some stretching and walked around. I, in the meanwhile, looked through Mina's eyes. Through that, I could see the Duke and the Dutchess walk to the forge with a group of fire giants. I picked up some words sounding like "By Surtus' flame, I command this portal to open." Peeking into the forge via Mina the Bat, I could see the flash of a portal opening. It was kind of glowing like lava or magma on the other side, a bit like the lake we paddled over underneath Conwy. I just told the rest what I had seen, Ferrum explained that Surtus is one of the sons of the Allfather, and thus a very powerful entity. It took a while, but well we got the phoenix! Okay okay, what we did was the following. As Brynjar 'filled up' some of the dust of dryness, we said goodbye to the Yakfolk after we had discussed the portal I had seen. The Yakfolk are so nice, we are always allowed to return and if we find a ball for Yoga, we should bring it to them! It has been noted. But the phoenix, the following happened. We walked down the endless steps to the alcove we found Bryinjar at. Where we had discovered the strange tread mill which can open up a portal. After turning it for a bit, while thinking about the place I saw through the portal, William took over, and we went through. The heat hit hard once we got through. From the molten rock, a few small islands arose. Brynjar and Ferrum quickly spotted an egg-like shape on one of the larger islands, which became their target. Well, until the phoenix arose from the lava. The bird, larger than life, just seemed to BE heat. Just that. Arrows and magic did seem to have some effect, but it lit us up like dried twigs. Ferrum caught the most of it, but Liya and Brynjar also got quite scorched, especially when Brynjar got to the presumed egg. Using fly, he hopped over the isles, towards me and Liya who stood at the gate. This lured the phoenix after him, while we Liya shot and I concentrated, Ferrum spoke, and eventually nearly shouted the magic word for the iron flask. The moment Brynjar and Liya fell/jumped through the gate with the egg, Brynjar passed out, I lost concentration from the last wave of heat from the phoenix, and Ferrum jumped the last distance towards the gate. William must have had a great perspective on all of this. After stabilising Brynjar, we realised what we had done, and what the egg in front of us was. Of a phoenix naturally, but the point being, that thing probably hatches within a few days, and we did not have another flask to spare. So we rolled the egg back into the portal, let William close the portal, and laid down to cool down for a bit.

Session note 29-08-2020
8th and 9th day in the Feywild

8th day in the feywild - continued After landing, Liya and William went for a parameter check and they have not returned. Ferrum and I are a little worried but think they might have just forgotten the time a bit. We decide to leave a mark and wait for them a little bit further up the mountain. As we make our way, Baradox makes the Highwind disappear with some kind of illusion magic, and says he will wait for us there. Ferrum and I decide to just make our way up the mountain together, leaving some marks for our teammates along the way. Hoping they would follow. If only I could use sending or some kind of spell, that would have been really useful. Anyhow, these stairs are steep and Ferrum is waiting so let us continue. We met someone new. During our walk up the stairs, we were surprised by a strange creature with multiple heads charging out of a cavern while attacking a man. He was having some trouble fighting him off, so we jumped in to help. After some flying, slashing and blasting, the man lands on our side. He introduced himself as Brynjar from the Prima Order. He has been sent by Roberta to aid us, but the teleportation spell did not work quite as accurate as hoped, dropping him right in the nest of this chimaera. He seems like an okay guy, he did have a strange green glowing sword, but that proved quite useful in this fight. And, if Roberta trusts him, why should we not? Together we take a look at the chimaera's body. Brynjar seems to be quite adept in the arcana. He and Ferrum could really connect with that. They cut out the bladder or something, they say it holds a quite potent venom. After working on this, we decide to check out the cavern the creature came from. As Brynjar sneaks forward while Ferrum and I discussed this strange encounter. Brynjar returned not much later and asked us to follow. Quietly we followed him into the mountain. The cavern seemed much deeper than we had originally thought, and it brought us to quite a large room. There were a lot of small plateaus and staircases around, carved from the stone and only the soft glow of a couple of large crystals scattered around the room gave us some light to see. Most prominently was the white, dead tree that stood in this high room. It reflected the low light quite well, with how bright white it was. . Further into the room, we find a couple of small devilish creatures, who were not too happy with our arrival. As Brynjar walked up to talk to them, he was bitten and this started a fight. The balance in this battle was quickly tipped over to the side of the tiny creatures as the crystals started to glow, and a glowing white portal opened up right before me. From this, a kind of cyclops emerged. This large creature, who had a large purple ball in its head for an eye, quite quickly started attacking us. With a purple laser, it nearly transformed Brynjar into stone before our eyes. Luckily, Brynjar was able to break this glowing orb with one of his arrows as Ferrum slashed into the creature. A little bit later, the legs that had turned to solid rock, slowly regained a regular leg texture. (Quite happy I did not have to experience that) Now we are just relaxing for a bit. We just checked out the rest of this room. We found a skeleton hanging on a kind of turning wheel, it looked kind of eery. Next to that, we found some potions, some dust of dryness and a couple of small diamonds. Oh, and Ferrum found a small rag doll... he took care of it professionally: with fire. Turning the skeleton wheel caused something very very cool if I may say so. We found out that, when thinking of a place, and turning the wheel, it opens up a portal to that place. With Odin, the bird familiar of Brynjar, we tested if this portal goes both ways and it does! It does only bring you places that you have seen thought, so that is something to keep in mind. But this would be a great fleeing route if we ever have the need. Ferrum, after a little inspection of the tree, said he suspects the tree of being a Gate Tree, which amplifies the effect of the portal. It was something with the lay lines of magic I believe. With that inspection of the room finished, I thought it would be time to get some rest. I think we have been up for quite a long time, but perhaps it was just the travel here that tired us out the most. 9th day in the Feywild With one final sweep of this strange cavern and our breakfast behind us, we made our way back to the steps. There are soo many and it is quite frankly quite tiring. I would rather walk through a forest for a whole day than up these stairs for an hour. But my naggin aside, Odin flew up the mountain to see what is up there, and using the sight of his familiar, much like I do with Mina, he could explain to us what he saw. It looked like quite a calm village. But just to be sure, Brynjar went ahead to scout. When he returned, he told us about the village and the two sides, and the large fence around it. He had not been able to understand the language the people spoke, but perhaps they also understood common. Thinking that was the most info we were going to get for now, we decided to just make our way there and ask. The Yakfolk are really cool people. I may, or may not, be a little bit inebriated... The people who live here were more than friendly, and they invited us as their guests. We were brought to meet their village leader Karthakaya. In his hut in the middle of the western portion of the village, it was nice and comfy: lots of pillows, a nice fire and overall a relaxed ambience. When we entered there, we realised just how cold it was outside. Tingly hands and all. After settling down and telling a couple of our stories- how we got here and what we were planning to do- they served us some food, all veggies, which they proudly stated were all grown here. Using the heat of the mountain and the water from the source here. Then a pipe with some herbs in it was passed around. I had smoked something before but this must have well affected me quite much because I think I must have fallen asleep... It was just all quite comfy, even though we had slept not too long before.

Session notes 10-8-2020
6th & 7th day in the feywild

6th day in the Feywild - continued Almost forgot to mention, we are currently on the Highwind again, travelling with Baradox, while writing all this. Just after we stood there looking at Thalmiir, William came running in. He had followed our tracks, found some dead vine creatures, and passed through the different rooms and found us standing just outside the courtroom, befuddled by grief and slight relief of seeing him enter after not having seen him the past few hours. As we told him what happened, the somewhat relieved expression on his face faded to meet the sadness that was in our eyes. As we stepped away to reveal Thalmiir's statue from which all liveliness had now faded, William simply crashed down in front of it. Overwhelmed by his emotions we simply joined him for a little bit. After we had all been quiet for a while, we looked at each other and realised that, even though we do not want to, we must go on. We once again thanked the Emerald King for his aid in slaying the Queen and for the wish that he gave us. This was responded to that we would always be welcome here, an invitation for life. Smiling slightly at the idea that those centaurs could not repeat their word game, we gave a small nod to the King, and we all said our goodbyes to Thalmiir as we made our way out of the reforming throneroom again. The satyr looked better, by the way, he must have drunk from the well as well. The way back was odd. I think it was because, firstly, we were all in thought, and secondly, because the forest was changing around us. The dark forests that we walked trhough on our way here were reshaping as we walked through. It seemed lighter now, and less claustrophobic somehow. The Emerald Queen must have really had an impact on the surroundings. We just discussed what we are going to do. After telling Baradox what happened we were all kind of struck with sorrow again. And after writing, thinking and keeping lookout we continued the conversation. Now, we have decided to take some time, a day or perhaps two to gather our senses. Luckily Baradox knew a place, the Silver forest slightly out of the way north towards the fire giants (our next stop). This sounded good, and we sat down for the ride once again. During this, we also had a discussion about Thalmiirs possesions. Some health potions were handed out, and I was handed the ring of spell storing. It felt odd, somehow. More could be discussed later. During the flight, I took some time to just lie on my back and look at the clouds. Liya soon joined me, but our minds wandered and we did not see anything remotely interesting. What was interesting, however, was Ferrum doing some kind of meditation. That may not sound exciting, but he says he can connect to his ancestors that way, which sounds really neat! He can simply ask a question and get a yes or no answer if I understood correctly. That is really nice, he asked them is staying in the forest seems safe and they responded yes, which is reassuring. William was really quiet throughout the flight, I hope he is doing okay. He seems like the kind of person who processes most of his things on his own, but I hope that a bit of rest helps him. Almost forgot, Ferrum has also sent a message to Roberta. Informing her about how we gained one and (a half) of the ingredients and about the price we paid for that. She seemed genuinely worried about our sudden change in tone (for her barely an hour had passed since our last message) and she mostly said she was very sorry. Next to that, we had mentioned if there was the possibility of sending someone else to help us, as we had learned that with only four the risk of loss is present, and with Erky wandering around this place, we are again with only four. We landed not too long ago on a riverbank. The forest beautiful in a strange way. It is nothing like the forest in the emerald kingdom. The trees are, as the name implies silver. Due to this, they reflect and bend the light of the permanent sunset in strange and enticing ways. After quickly checking out the place a bit, I decided to set up a little hut, as when we arrived, it was already quite 'late' for all of us (except Baradox who had slept already). Laying under the trees gave another nice look at the almost iridescent leaves and needles. Ferrum kept the first watch, because of the fear of Oranje returning, I set up an alarm around him, and William bound his hands. It may seem excessive, but with the heat and pain, Oranje must have gone through we were scared that he might take over and leave when he does. While we were doing this, Liya set u some kind of trap with arrows closer to the river. It looked like quite a contraption. Keeping watch is quite a bore, nothing much is happening. Well, Mina in her bat-shape was quite fun to watch, as the small insects flying around seemed to dance and move around her like the waves around a ship. I think I am going to wake up William in a bit. 7th day in the Feywild The first hours of the morning were mostly filled with cleaning peoples clothes and sending them for a swim in the river. I have now really gotten the hang of the spell I must say hahah! We have also received a letter from Roberta, with the simple question to keep us up to date. Also, she might send someone to help us. The rest of the day was filled with chatting, swimming and overall relaxing. It has been a while since we took some time for ourselves. Baradox joined us in the relaxing, floating in the river and even catching a fish without much trouble! Not sure how he does it, with those crystals grown over his eyes? We exchange some stories, Ferrum explains his story to Baradox. Even William about who, even though we have travelled for some time together now, we know little of his past. He dropped quite some heavy information about his heritage, mainly that he was abandoned as a baby. That is quite, harsh. He did not really want to share much more about it, which is understandable, perhaps later. (I did feel like apologising for asking about his parents some time ago, felt quite bad about that now) Still, we talked a bit about the places we want to go and where we have been. For example, William would not recommend going to the desert while literally carrying a dead man, but otherwise, it has its charm. I am not sure what he has been through, but it sounds very very rough, I truly hope that the universe also balances out all these hardships for him in the form of easier and better times. Baradox seems really keen about keeping information and writing about the past and the current events. He mentioned this to Ferrum, as he used to write down the 'dreams' he had as a young elf about his past lives. I kinda merged into this conversation by being enthusiastic about my new writing habit, which is kind of new actually. Ferrum was not too happy to hear that I was kind of a well laid-back (slacker) in my studies before I met them. His teacher-side seemed quite disappointed about this. He did explain a lot of things about the Elves and the Feywild for me, with some additions from Baradox. I did my best to pay attention, but to be honest, I have never been the best at staying attentive, so I might have wandered off for just a little bit. Okay a little more than just a little bit, but I am quite sure that neither Ferrum nor Baradox noticed. More things that I picked up were the name of Ferrums older sister: Saronya. As well as him theorising that he might have been hurt or killed by his own family, as he had a really rare disease (a blood fungus), but perhaps that is just speculation. The rest of the day, we sat, ate a bit and sunbathed until we were done with it. Without keeping any watches, we went to sleep. 8th day in the feywild This morning we woke up with dark clouds approaching from the east. Today, we will continue our travels and make our way towards the fire giants fortress in the mountain. After breakfast and packing up, we say goodbye to the serenity of this place and get back aboard the Highwind once again. Flying along the river, we can see how large this forest actually is, the silvery shine stretching far. On our trip, Ferrum drops yet another piece of information on us: Baradox is his father. Yes, he is Baradox grandmother, but Baradox is his father. This whole family seems to be a bit odd. Luckily, Ferrum took the time to explain the way elvish reincarnation works, and how this is possible. Like the teacher-duo they are, Baradox filled in the gaps and explained that this is something that is more specific to their family, and it explains their strong ties to their ancestors. Which explains Ferrums connection with his past and his past lives. This talk took quite some time, and all the while we fly rust above the tree tops. It has started to rain softly, but the overall weather is calm, no harsh wind or creepy clouds aiming rocks at us. The light of the permanent sunset now reflects and refracts on the silver leaves and somehow silver evergreen of the forest below. I stated that I wanted to write some things about Thalmiir. Some stories, quotes and memories about him. I already got the following from our wonderful party (some only work in dwarvish) "Hij was best knap (in het maken van dingen)" - Liya "The rapier he made works great!" - Liya "I wouldn't be walking if it wasn't for him" - Ferrum Perhaps on a more serious note, he was a guy who I think really guided us through a lot of things. I think it would be important to note down deeds such as retrieving strange artefacts and saving us in battles as well as leading a rebellion of duergar against a Dao who had enslaved them. These are stories to be remembered. That they might inspire those who come after us or amuse them who listen in on everything I do. A few more hours pass as we approach the mountain in which the fire giants live and work. Ferrum tells us what he knows about the giants: Are they nice? No. Are they stubborn? Yes. Are they stupid? No. That is about it. Baradox has a little bit more info: These giants are building a large robot, one they intend to probably use to try and conquer more of the feywild. They take prisoners and make them mine, their leader is Zalto, who is stronger and larger than the others. They hardly ever go outside. And finally, on top of the hill lives a community of Yakfolk, who live of the heat generated by the forges and grow their food there. After this info we tried to prepare best we can. I attuned to the ring of spell storing. (fancy that I have now got two magic rings) But in order to prep our plan, I had to empty out the spells that were still there: A healing word, a guiding bolt and a sending spell. Feels odd to use these spells which remind us all somehow of Thalmiir. While I let the healing word out without a target and sent the guiding bolt up into the sky, I used the sending spell to message Gizelle, the sister in law of Thalmiir to inform her of his death, but also that we would come back to help. There was little response, but that was to be expected... The mountain is close now. I can spot some kind of large door in the middle of it, it shines slightly green. Almost there.

Session notes 1-8-2020
6th day in the feywild

6th day in the feywild - continued The temple-like structure was an interesting puzzle for us. On the body of the Dryad, Ferrum had found a set of rocks, some full glass, others full stone, and two semi glass, semi stone. The different stones seemed to represent the phases of the moon, which were also depicted on the four pillars keeping up this structure. Next to this, four pedestals stood between the central pillar and each of the outer supporting ones, which had a dent in which the orbs fitted perfectly. Inspecting the central pillar, Thalmiir and Ferrum found a set of small tubes in which they could see small lights, aimed at the pedestals with the stones. We thought we had figured it out: projecting the light through the stones upon the pillars, hopefully, to open some door? So that we tried. With light, torches, candles, magic. Until eventually, a combination of the drift globe, sacred flame, and two torches and some thaumaturgy, we made it! A red moon appeared above us, on a roof that seemed to be glittering with stars, and with that, a door revealed itself. Liya picks up everything, and onward we go. It has been some time since there was a moment to write. A lot has happened. Please bear with me through the following pages. I am actually not sure who I am addressing these journals to... I guess the following parts of this journey must be told and remembered. Let us start where we left off, as the four of us entered the next room, we were greeted by a lady with dark hair, flowing down in braids over a long green dress. She sat seated on her throne of vines, crystals and plants. The whole room looked like the inside of some giant tree, with immensely high roofs and roots and vines throughout the space. The Queen spoke to us first, about something along the lines of 'have you all come to kill me?' but more dramatic. Being somewhat done already as we were, Ferrum shouted something along the lines of 'the opposite!' and I just continued on that line. However, soon as it was clear we were not threatening her, there seemed to be little to no interest left in us from that point forward. It was only when the staff was fully revealed that she paid us any mind once again. Still, it was only to tell us we could go. A bit of talking later we were told that we could get the iron flask by going up. It was that simple. Well, so it seemed. And thus four sets of us their way up to long stairs, climbing and jumping the last bits over and through vines to get to the first platform. On this platform, we were greeted by a group of creatures, some looked like mushrooms that had come alive, others like monkeys made of plants of some sort. There was a nice flower circle in the middle, and we were ushered and encouraged to step in. That when they attacked us. We were surrounded and outnumbered. But that had never stopped us before. And thus we fought. Swings were given and taken, strange spores flew though the air stunning us, in return they got blasted and hindered by the elegant spirits floating over the battlefield who guided and help Ferrum. It was not until it was too late that both Liya and I found ourselves stunned, and that we heard a horrible dud of someone collapsing unto the round behind us. Mere seconds later, I heard what sounded like something striking a boxing sack, and then nothing for a short second. As the strange hazing effect wore off, I turned around, were a few feet behind me lay Thalmiir, on the ground, seemingly bleeding out. Quickly I tried to stabilise, while Ferrum and Liya fought off the last two standing enemies. The spell took no effect. One of the monkey-like creatures then stepped unto the body of the now fully still Thalmiir, as we stood behind it. A painful scream in his mind was enough to scare him off, but not enough to wake Thalmiir back up. After the last two creatures fell, so did we fall down next to Thalmiir, and so did the tears streaming down my face. Nothing worked. Strange vines started growing over his body before we could fully understand and had processed what had just happened. We tried pulling them off but shocked as we were we could not work up the strength to stop the vines from pulling Thalmiir into the vines and ground that formed this platform. Ferrum started hacking while Liya and I just sat there, staring at the now empty floor. Moments later we could see through the ground before us, and the floor almost 200ft further down, as Ferrum had hacked through the foliage that formed this level of the tree. After what felt like an eternity, we moved on. Now only three pairs of feet walked over the strange vine-y floors of this place. Part of us, well, part of me at least, wanted to turn back, but the other part knew that if we did that, this would have all been for nothing. In this next room, we were presented with another puzzle. For which, I must say, I had little motivation. Ferrum and Liya kept quite sharp and did their best to decipher what the goal was of the small animal statues that stood on the pedestals and were engraved above the two different doors to the sides. There seemed to be walls of force in front of the two doors that we could see, as we were unable to go through, and the statues that Ferrum threw to these doors also simply bounced off. It was as I was watching this trying and testing of the doors and the statues unfold with a certain amount of aggression that I suddenly heard soft bells behind me. Faint, but very very familiar. I must have looked like a madwoman as I turned around looking for the source and just saw some of the vines burning on the floor. Out of instinct, or simply because of the desire to burn this whole place down, I used magic to brighten the flames, not sure what it would accomplish. Through the now soft crackle of the vines, we could see the plants starting to shape and move into a shape that we recognised immediately: Thalmiir. Now with markings on both his shoulders, he stood there, created of vines and fire. One side of him showed the symbol of Morradin, the deity he devoted his life to. The other side showed the source of the bells: the Bard, who he had spotted in the forest, and had received a small blessing from after playing the flute. A strange collaboration but one appreciated more than can be put down in words. Even though we were very happy to see him, it was clear that this form would not last, which gave this a bittersweet taste. The reason for him returning was, according to him, to aid us in the following steps of this quest. I can only be thankful to the Bard, Morradin and naturally Thalmiir himself for that. Together we took another look at the puzzle before us. The small statues and the pictures above the doorposts. It was by divine guidance, guesswork or luck that Thalmiir figured out how the figures 'worked'. By holding one of them, one could walk through the door which showed a frosty forest on the other side. While passing through, you would turn into the creature of which you held the statue. The four that we present were: bear, penguin, ferret and hawk. We went in the following order: Thalmiir with the bear, Ferrum with the penguin, Liya with the ferret, which left me with the hawk. Somewhat unhandy we manoeuvred our now animal bodies to figure out what the goal was of this task. The surroundings were marvellous, a small glacier showed the way down to a very clear pool of water on a lower plateau, whereas the other sides of this mountain were covered with forests. The skies were clear, and already being used to looking through this perspective with Mina, I simply circled the surroundings. We figured out that we could still communicate, albeit telepathically. Actually nice to have that on constantly I must say! The puzzle consisted of us finding a set of the same statues, but smaller and carved of gems. Ferret found a set of tunnels, which -through pictures- communicated tasks that had to be done, after which we would often find a small statue. The tasks varied from, catching fish, to actually bombing fish, and making a fox fall asleep. We had quickly figured out that the forest was mostly off-limits for both the penguin and the weasel, because of the many thorny bushes and vines that covered the forest floor. Bear and I, however, could traverse there a little easier. After everyone had been sliding down the glacier (which was perfect for that if I can believe penguin), Ferretfound these tunnels and we started on the first task, catching fish. Using Bear and Penguins fishing skills, two fish were quickly caught and brought to the tube that Ferret was in by me. The last one was more persistent however, the fish stayed deep in the water, in a thin slit to avoid being caught. Bear and I had, in the meantime, found a large rock in a muddy pool not too deep into the forest, and from that, we realised that bait was probably a good idea to get this last pesky fish to come out of hiding. Some pushing and worm-catching later, I returned with the catch to Penguin, who after that quickly took hold of the last fish! A first task was completed, and another tunnel opened up for Ferret to make her way in. This provided us with a small statue of a penguin, very similar to the one Ferrum used to enter this 'dimension'. I flew up to bring it back to the room we had found the statues in the first place to secure it, while Ferret inspected the next room in the tunnels. Flying through the door went as fluent as one would expect, once I went through the door I turned back into myself, my half-elf self who cannot fly without magic. Thanks to this, my landing was, fabulous as one would say. No stumbling, rolling or falling at all, just pure grace. But let us put that aside. When I reentered the mountainous space behind the door in Hawk-form again, the following images were described: They showed a fish with large eyes looking angry, exploding. In the tunnel lay a small stack of tiny bombs with large fuses. Next to this, there was some kind of air pressure system I presume, as I was quickly warned that a small bomb would fly up any moment and that I should catch it. The bear was looking for a way to light the fuse and gathered up a bunch of small actual fireflies he had spotted while walking through the forest as we looked for the worms. He had a fire going quite quickly, and before I knew it, I was flying with an actual bomb in my claws. Dropping the bomb back to our Ferret friend, she transferred it using another tube to the penguin who would have to throw it to the angry looking fish. Which, by the way, had emerged from an underground reservoir kind of structure, it had iron bars for it at first, but I picked up something about a button being pressed which feed the fish into the larger lake in which we had previously fished. The first bomb was not successful, but the next one was up, with the fire going, Bear made his way down the slide glacier to help Penguin. With some distraction and with a large bear hovering over the mean fish, another bomb was delivered and forced into the fishes mouth. With that, yet another small door opened, this time, a bear statue, and a new task. Ferret went through and that brought us the price and told us the task: making a fox sleep. This time, a small stack of bottles with 'dreams' on the label lay beside her in the tunnel. Just like the small bombs, these could be sent up and down via the air-powered tunnels. A first test was, accidentally done on Bear, who noticed the effects of the bottle but due to the low dosage, it had little effect. But we had to devise a plan to get the fox. It was too quick for Bear to catch and too large for the others, who most probably would be eaten by set fox. After Bear had hunted after the fox and scared it into its lair, Penguin had found a set of metal pipes, through some of which flowed water. This sparked an idea, perhaps we could send water up into the hole the fox was hiding in. The water would force him out and allow us to drop the bottle on him. However, this plan met some resistance as the tunnels Ferret was in also slowly flooded. Another plan included using Ferret as bait. She did not like that, but it was the eventual plan we went for. With Ferret quick on her feet, Bear hiding behind the tree, Penguin ready to build up some water pressure and I circling the tree while holding one of the bottles, we readied ourselves. It was one quick and swift action, but the fox slept afterwards. Whether that is of the impact the bottle had or the contents that hit the fox's face, we will never know. But as Ferret quickly made her way back down, she found the final door, hiding the hawk statue was open. With the ferret statue from the fox's necklace, we made our way up together. Bear slightly ruining the nice slide the glacier was, but that did not bother us too much. Stumbling gracefully back into the room, we were back to being ourselves. Well mostly then. Being back here we realised how that small trip had helped us forget our situation here for a second. It became more clear as we walked through the other door, from which the forcefield had dropped, as Thalmiir walked through and over the bridge of vines he sort of grew stuck to it. Ferrum lifted him up, after which the wood in Ferrum's body responded to Thalmiir's presence. It a little weird for the two of them. With the four of us together again we took our final steps to the third platform. There, we were met with a surprised and instantly nervous satyr. His nervousness became exponentially worse as Ferrum charged at him, dropping Thalmiir from his back and aiming his axe at the head of the small guy. As he pleaded and we tried to calm him a bit, we decided just to shout and scream at him. It was just the build-up pain and anger that spat out, the previous platform on which we had met seemingly 'friendly' creatures we had lost one of our own. After calming down a bit, and hissing semi-apologies from between our teeth he tried to explain to us that people were not supposed to make it here and that we could rest here. He presented us with a fountain from which we could drink and heal up a bit. Naturally, we did not trust that at all. We let him drink first, and when that proved no results Thalmiir drank first, and we followed after that, keeping a close eye on the satyr. The fountain was what he had said it was and indeed healed us up a bit. When our anger had subsided a bit, we took a good look at one another and walked into the final room where the emerald queen would be apathetically waiting for us. The room was beautiful, as well as the throne. Similar to the first room, build mostly of dark woods with embedded gems and blooming flowers. There she sat, with the staff. After stating our business once again, we were given the iron flask, which Thalmiir quickly identified. However, as he stated that something was inside, and promptly opened it, the once so confident look of the emerald queen disappeared like our fondness of the feywild had in the past hour or so. From the now open flask emerged a large figure, wearing green robes. His skin was fair and he had long pointed ears, and there was a friendliness in his eyes which left as soon as his eyes turned towards the now pale emerald queen. Drawing her sword, we were in battle once again. However, with the emerald King on our side, the battle was quickly over. Two spells from this fey's hands were enough to make the queen fall, but not before she could hit Thalmiir and the already shocked satyr. As her body withered and was absorbed and turn into the wood and vines around us, Ferrum quickly cut off her head. It turned to a bust of wood in his hands, and after a quick inspection, this piece was put into the back of holding. The ease with which this lady had been slain was somewhat terrifying and just made me wonder what this man is capable of. After Thalmiir had dropped the wall of fire he had initially placed around the queen and her throne, the emerald King took his place at the throne he altered with a quick gesture. After he had sat down, the archfey addressed us. He thanked us for releasing him and granted us one wish in return. Now, from what I know of fey and granting things, I was not quite sure what to expect, but to learn that this was in fact the actual Wish spell he offered us was kind of mind-boggling. Asking for anything Anything you want in the world, within, well some bounds, but not many. Wishing for Thalmiir back to us seemed a logical choice! We would not have to miss him! He could continue adventuring with us, look for his sister-in-law and niece and help us in our following quests for the ingredients! But Ferrum did not think it would be well. In that moment, I did not understand why the answer seemed so simple! And Thalmiir was right there! As we were talking, the magic from Morradin and the Bard already seemed to be fading, as he stood stiller and did not answer our questions anymore. Somewhat desperate I turned to Liya to see what she thought, but she too was deep in thought. Ferrum proposed to wish for something to help us in our quest, asking for one of the ingredients to be delivered to Roberta or Siadarnivax. It seemed like cheating somehow to do that, especially the price we would be paying would be Thalmiir life. Conflicted, but convinced that Ferrum, who has experience with actually having been truly dead, would know what it would be like to be pulled from the afterlife back to here, to fight, live and most likely die again. Eventually, we chose to wish for ever-ice to be delivered to Siadarnivax lair in the Saphire mountain, giving us one of the ingredients for the concentration crystal without us having to fight our way towards it. It felt good to have this, but looking at the now wooden statue that was Thalmiir, gave it a bitter taste. Standing there with his adamantine armour on, and the staff that we had gifted to the emerald queen, his self-proclaimed magnum opus in his hands, it seemed like a strange but somehow strong ending for our friend.

Session notes 25-7-2020
5th and 6th day in the feywild

5th day in the feywild - continued At the upper platform, Liya had created one of those little houses which you can enter via the rope again. All apart from Thalmiir and Ferrum had climbed inside. Thalmiir was still working on the emerald, while Ferrum was eyeing down the great club that the giantess had dropped. Sadly, it seemed to be far too heavy, even for him. I took a look at the rope and decided to climb up as well. almost inside we realised that it was quite weird that none had entered this room yet. So I decided to ask Mina to pry loose from Thalmiir beard and took her on a flight to the other entrance, to see what was up. Here, we heard and saw two other giants call out to Kayalithica -probably the priestess- asking her if everything is alright. Naturally, no answer is given, but the room has gone quiet. As Mina flew over, I could see the two standing there just outside the room, not showing any movement of eagerness to enter. Behind them, there was a somewhat larger room, similar to the one in which we left the one stone giant in meditation. Letting Mina fly back, I could see that Thalmiir was finished with his spell and was holding a large chunk of emerald, as well as some smaller ones. With a short break in Mina vision switching back to mine, I told the rest what I had seen and let Mina swoop down, to the entrance we had entered through. There, one single stone giant stood, also waiting just outside the room. With this information, we thought of a plan. If we wanted to get out, the one giant and a route we knew sounded much more appealing than the other. But how would we go past him without a full-on fight? Thalmiir then had an idea. Animate the great club, and have it be sentient? I was a little confused at first I must say if I am being honest. Still, with the great club hovering upright, and another short lesson in Giant and their culture, Thalmiir let the great club fly towards and through the hallway we had come through. As we heard a sort of gasp from the giant standing there, I took that as my cue to start. Using a spell I made a booming voice emanating from the club and speaking in Giant, I tried to say the following: "My mistress has fallen, she is no longer worthy. Find me a new master so I may be of use again. The only one chosen by the All-Father himself may wield me. A few, somewhat awkward questions and answers from both sides later, the giant was on his way to find others. (almost forgot he had the note we had left the sleeping giant, saying we were sorry about his companions, also he just looked kind of spooked by the whole thing, which is understandable.) But with the giant out of the way, we just made a run for it. Ferrum in the front and Thalmiir in the back were the ones that we bombarded with rocks, which eventually caused Thalmiir to lack behind a little. But we all made it out safely. Panting, we ran out of the caves, and towards the ship where Baradox stood waiting for us. Some rocks were still hurled upwards as we lifted off into the sky. And that is where we are now. Currently, Thalmiir is sitting focussed, moulding the emerald pieces and shaping gold to his needs. It is honestly quite fascinating to watch how he sits there transforming the materials. Baradox is curious about what we were actually doing there and poses some questions. After we had caught our breaths a little bit, we sat down to tell Baradox a bit more about our adventure down the mines, and what we had taken. He in return tells us the ship is a little better, but also a little slower than before. During this talk, we also decided to make a stop at the Saphire mountain, to sleep there for a night to recover and plan our next set of moves. During our conversation, we discovered something very cool and somewhat strange. Baradox asked us about where we came from, not wanting to give a lot of info, most of us just answered with, Jurtal, the north, the south. But Baradox was a bit more giving with his information. He told us he is from Hethea, from a wizards family. He left everything behind to come here and has not been back for 40 or 400 years. He is not certain, for time works strangely around these parts. (ps he also warned us about the effects the feywild can have on memories, and that we must beware) But he told more, about his past. As an elf, he knew that his family, a couple of generations before him, were hunted and killed in the south of Eluïn, and that they had created a Gate, to flee to the feywild, and to the future. This naturally sparked Ferrums curiosity, as that is also part of his past. A couple of stories and semi-awkward moments later, we realised that Ferrum is Baradox grandmother, well in a way. Reincarnation is so weird. Naturally, we cracked a few jokes about that. How he should give candy before the next trip and if he should start knitting. Apart from the jokes and all, there was some more serious talk. About the war, the undead king and how that was all those years and reincarnations ago, and now. As well as some more things from Ferrums past. How he took great value in the 'dreams' elves have in the first +- 100 years of their life and how he spent a lot of time writing down those visions. If I understood correctly, these visions are of their past lives? This habit of prioritizing his visions and writing them down was not very good for his academics, which his mother, in turn, did not like. During our talks of family, the past, future and now, Thalmiir had finished the staff. It is marvellous! We took some time to admire it just now. It is emerald with gold spiralling around it. Some smaller gems are worked into the gold and there are some elvish texts formed into the emerald. (its a bit too sweet for my taste, the text, but I hope it falls into good graces with the queen.) Thalmiir also proudly showed us his signature in the staff, which, after some things about true names and deals, he covered tightly with a cap of gold. But we know it is there! The journey was long, Not sure how long exactly, but I would guess an hour or 6-7. We saw a strange circular cloud over the sea far off, which Baradox knew to be an air temple. I noted the location in my other journal, hoping it does not change location. The rest of the time I spend chatting with William about what will happen to us if we die. Will reincarnate, or not.? Being half elvish, we are not sure what the rules are. Perhaps if we die at the same time one of us may reincarnate? To be fair, we were a little unsure about it and a small existential crisis later we decided to just wait and see what happens. To lighten the mood, and just because Thalmiir started, we also played some music, Liya, Thalmiir and I. We sounded surprisingly good actually. That reminds me, I asked Thalmiir if I could have the flute he had gotten from the lady long ago in the forest, the one I had seen in my dream. He was curious, but it was not an issue. I did tell him all about it, but I wish I had more information. If all of this about the concentration crystal, undead king and the army is done, I would love to go and look for these artefacts. Arriving in the Saphire mountain, we embraced the silence of the place and made our way back to the room where we had stayed earlier. Tired, we retired to sleep. Well, Thalmiir (?) decided to go ahead and keep watch? William woke me somewhere during the night and now I am just sitting here, in a dark room keeping watch. It is quite relaxing, the silence makes it easier to hear the tones floating around in my head. I took some time to admire the flute and cleaned it up a little bit, as well as my own. But I think that I will wake Liya if need be and catch some more dream time before we go to this emerald queen in the morning. 6th day in the Feywild We are back on the road, well in the air. Baradox is driving us again, this time towards the Emerald Queen's domain. Thalmiir has tightly packed the staff in the bag of holding and we sit tight for yet another long flight. We have no response from Roberta yet (A letter was sent yesterday, but for Roberta that must have been +- 20 minutes ago). Oh! Weird stuff, Ferrum's head feels hot. This morning when we woke up, he told us about it. I reached out to Oranje to see what was going on, and he is not feeling well. It is extremely hot and he is hurting. Unsure of what to do, Thalmiir cast a spell to get some answers while we were still in our room in the silent mountain. He learned that Oranje is being punished, that Thalmiir cannot help, and that it will not affect Ferrum negatively. Useful information, but sadly nothing to help Oranje. Our plan for the next part of our quest, includes Thalmiir taking off all his armour. We have learned that Dwarves are not well-liked around these parts, and therefore we are going to pretend that he is our prisoner or slave of some sorts. With Liya's old armour on, we hope to keep him semi-safe, but it is weird to not hear him approach as he walks. We try to prepare for what is to come. We now must be really wary of using names and that is slightly frightening me, we are really bad at it. But, for the first time we are here, we are going to be actually honest: We do have a gift, we do want to give it to the queen, no we do not want to harm her. So, maybe, we will be okay. To be frank, I am a bit tired of the mind games of this place. It feels like we cannot trust anyone, except for Baradox and the Saphire mountain maybe, but the Feywild is large, and we still have quite some things to find... +- 6 hours have passed, and Baradox has started the descent. He said he will drop us off at the edge of the queen's domain, and that we must walk from there. We have walked for a bit. The forest looks relatively normal, though it smells sweet. Liya says there must be a lot of dryads around looking at the forest. I am not sure how she knows, but I trust her on knowledge about forests and follow her wherever she leads. Ferrum found a strange sticky tree -and stuck a torch to it- and Liya the source of the sweet smell: A flower. These flowers are, as she says, used to make sweet tea. She and Ferrum pick a few leaves, but it had some sort of effect on Liya for a short second, which ended their gathering. After that, we also passed some centaurs. They were playing this game with us when we approached them. Saying thing like: you need an invitation to go to the queen, but you cannot get one without seeing her personally, but you cannot go see her because you have no invitation from the queen. You get it, a stupid loop talk. I tried to stay somewhat friendly, actually explained what we were intending, even used minor image to actually show the gift, while Ferrum showed a small piece of the actual staff. They then, finally, let us pass. I am realising that I am already losing my patience for this place, perhaps walking next to William for a bit will calm me a little. Walking through the tunnels formed by vines we slowly made our way through the queen's kingdom. It is beautiful, I have to admit that, but by Selûne are the people here annoying. I will write. What happened was, after we had passed the centaurs, we heard a strange creaking voice. It said something like "you are not going to spoil this for me" and then a couple of small trees started attacking us. Well, the trees did not stay small for long, and some other small vine-like creatures also joined the fight. Thalmiir was nearly hit unconscious, as he had taken my place in front of one of these giant trees. William and Ferrum stood back to back fighting off a tree and vines. Liya used her new bow and basically incinerated the final tree by herself, using some kind of glowing runes on the bow. I did sense the magic but I could not quite place it. It were some nice shots of her! With Thalmiir barely on his feet again after Williams healing hands, we walked on, hoping to find the actual origin of this creaking voice, and perhaps taking a rest. For we would not have fought their trees if they had simply let us pass? A little later, we found a canyon filled with spined vines. With his head still in the game, while looking bloodied, Thalmiir used the slain trees from before to form a bridge to the other side, where we met the source of the voice: A dryad. She stops us in our tracks and states that she does not trust us. What a surprise. Once again, we do our talk, explain that, honestly, we have no intention of harming anything -unless it attacks us-. Show the gift in illusion and in person because she thought it might be a sword. And then finally, she allows us to pass, but she is going to keep an eye on us. Sure we say, we had already expected that someone would be watching. (Which had caused Thalmiir to perform a nice show in the battle with the trees, he did not cast any offensive spells, but pretended to want to hit and harm us while giving us boons in the forms of spiritual shield and such. It was quite a show, not sure how convincing though) Returning to the dryad. We continued our journey. I had wanted to rest after building the bridge, but with the dryad found and semi-convinced, we decided to make our way deeper into the forest. It was not even 10 minutes later that our distrusting woody dryad betrayed us. We walked through a set of doors set in spined walls, and found ourselves in a round room, in a temple-like setting. The doors were slammed shut behind us by the dryad as inside a strange clump of organic material started moving in the middle of the place. It looked like some sort of ball of plants, vines and leaves. And water. That last thing we found out as William carved through it with a shining strike of his halbert, and it sort of slushed out with a smell of rotting plant life. I could almost hear the different gods cheer at his beautiful hit, and powerful smite, had I not been nearly raging and running after this stupid dryad. With a single blast, I could see through the door, where she was weaving vines to lock us in. In the short time I had, I simply shouted a lot of things while looking at her intently. After getting no reaction, I decided to go for her instead. Casting eldritch blast through the small hole in the door and peering at her through the growing vines. A good hit. A few moments, blasts and curses later, half of the door was gone, and I climbed through to get after her. Ferrum followed suit and finished the job, with some very colourful elvish language (To be fair I had not expected to hear that kind of language from Ferrum) Now, that we are sitting here for a little bit I have finally regained my temper. I can now see a little better how it may be hard to trust a group like us, still does not quite justify trying to kill us, but makes it a bit more understandable. Perhaps after we have all patched ourselves up a bit we can continue. Look through this temple for a little bit, I spotted some artwork representing the moon which looked intriguing.

Session notes 15-7-2020
5th day in the Feywild

4th day in the Feywild - continued Just before we were starting our first watch, there was yet another flash of bright light. And with that, our friends had returned to us. Somewhat disoriented, they looked around and found us in the hut that I had created. They looked suspiciously well-rested, especially compared to us. They could not tell us what had happened, but they felt well, remembered everything and were still themselves, so they should be fine right? A little calmer and put to ease now that our group is complete once again, Liya, Oranje and I went to sleep while the other three stayed awake to keep watch. They will have a strange hiccup in their sleep schedule I suppose. But well, we all do here where the light does not seem to change at all. I at least feel like I have been awake for several days, so I will make my way to bed now. 5th day in the Feywild. Sleeping a full night was blissful. No strange dreams today, but the thought of my previous dream still lingers, I wonder what I should do with the information I have gotten? I will have a good thought about it when we are not at risk of literally being eaten by some kind of living stalagmite. Also, I needed my concentration for casting Find Familiar again. I did really miss Mina. She now has the shape of a bat, it is a bit different but it works a bit better here. As soon as we are someplace with shops again, I will have to buy some new components though. This morning had a surprise: Ferrum has returned to us! He was immediately reading the walls with beautiful engravings and stories. He muttered something about the small people (humans?) who brought useful animals for the giants, which was the main reason they were allowed to stay. Just happy he is back, I know the Feywild interests him, I just hope he does not mind waking up underground in these somewhat hostile corridors. Next to this, we have gotten a few new names to remember. Cyan for Ferrum and now that Schoefbout has been rebuild into a new strange animal, which mostly jumps around, his name is now Springveer. With our team returned and well-rested, we made our way to the next room. Using the familiar trick with our immovable rod and some ropes we climb up the giant steps, only to find ourselves in a relatively large room, with a stone giant sitting in the middle in front of a fire. On the sides, cages and bedrolls (?) I could not see clearly and I could not tell afterwards due to something that will become clear very soon. As we were still slightly panting from the climb, and with Ferrum having cast a light spell, we were immediately noticed. Speaking in Giant, Ferrum treaded forward to explain our situation and that we meant no harm, but as I walked up to him to help, I heard that it did not come out quite as confident as he had hoped. The people in the room thought the same and came charging in our direction. Well not quite our, but the direction of the cages on the right of us. I could not quite get a good look at the creatures but they seemed to be large insect-like creatures? Unsure tho. I hoped to stop their assault by hypnotising the lot with the spell I learned quite some time ago. Sadly, I only felt - and saw- it take effect on one of the men. The stone giant sitting in the room did not respond at all. At this point in time, I did not understand why. The thought process was interrupted by the roar created by the giant wall of fire that Thalmiir summoned. It burned hot and nearly white in the heart of the fire. This enormous wall stretched from the end of the room to us and killed every single one of the people and creatures that stood against us. All but one of the strange insect creatures, the sleeping man and the stone giant. But the latter two posed no threat. The former, after one attempted slash at Ferrum, this final creature was slain by the one who it had tried to attack. As Thalmiir dropped the wall of fire, Erky killed the man affected by my hypnotic pattern. Honestly, I was kind of dismayed at the display of power Thalmiir shown, and the sudden ease Erky showed of killing this man. However, there was not a lot of time to ponder at that moment, as Ferrum started to explain to us why the stone giant had not moved, as someone has muttered a question about it out loud. I picked up that the stone giants can go into mediation for +-8h, in order to get in tune with nature and get boons such as being able to move through the stone. I did not know, I learn something new every day with this group. A bit of scouting, with and without Mina, we are presented with a choice. There were several crystals to be found, one could be found by following the river, tho the waterfall where it originated. There, a large statue of the All-Father, over which the waterfall flowed. In front of it sat two large stone giants, also meditating. In the statues eye, a large emerald. This was one of the crystals that popped up on Thalmiir's 'radar'. The other one, a room with lava as a floor and a pillar with a carved staircase in it in the middle, connected to the tunnels via two stone bridges. In this room, where I manoeuvred Mina while looking through her eyes - which was a strange experience by the by. The way a bat perceives the world is vastly different from the way humans, or elves, or something in between, does. It was a strange but very cool experience.- Returning to my point, in the room, a large lady of a stone giant, covered with intricate ink work, stood praying and looking up to a -seemingly- carved dragon in the wall and ceiling. Its body and head contained many smaller emeralds, softly glittering in the warm glow from below. Just above the pillar, in the tail of the dragon, an enormous emerald lay embedded in the rock. That became our goal. While we stood near the opening to the bridge, and I was looking through Mina's eyes at the scenes described earlier. Thalmiir's eye had caught something in the previous room. In the soot of the still smouldering bedrolls, something gave of a shimmer. Ferrum and he had walked up to it and found a small pile of copper and silver coins. They led to a small hole in the rock, where more seemed to lay hidden, only faintly visible in the now low light. Without thought, Thalmiir had grabbed it and he and Ferrum had returned with it when I came back to my own senses, in the literal sense. In his hand, he held a beautifully crafted longbow. An Identify spell later, and we learned that this bow is a Runebow, instilled with runes to give arrows fired magical effects. It was immediately clear who this bow would be given to, and Liya accepted it happily. The time after that was mostly spend planning and creating a plan. None of us are particularly tactically inclined, but we felt like it would be wise to at least have a somewhat feasible plan. Finally, we came up with the idea that we would give fly to William and Ferrum, get them close quickly, and have the rest blast from afar. Before that, confusion would be used in the form of an arrow with darkness cast on it, by Liya. My task would mostly be to keep concentration and just use ranged magic. And with that, we snuck through the hallway to the room. The battle was, interesting to say the least. The giant in the room was overtaken by the darkness that we had cast, and this surprise round proved to be very useful. With William and Ferrum on the frontlines, some hardy hits were dealt, while Liya, Erky and I hit from further away. Thalmiir used the rope and immovable rod to get up to the upper platform to support the others. During these hits, one of the statues - there were four of them- was animated, and aimed for Ferrum. It was just as our metal friend started hovering above ground again, that a rock was hurled at me by the lady halfway melted into the rock on the top platform, causing me to lose concentration. Very lucky... Another stroke of luck was when Ferrum seemed to be affected by some kind of slowing spell, and I managed to hit the caster from all the way across the room, making them lose their concentration. I could not see the magic as I sometimes can, but I somehow felt the magic fade. To our advantage as Ferrum was free to move once again. Other moments in the battle were the attempted throw of Liya by the giantess, who missed Liya as she skillfully slipped from her grasp. The wonderful display of Erky, as he levitated just above the ground using Springveer, while firing rounds at the animated statue. Thalmiir and William, who managed to hit and carve through the giantess while avoiding a lot of hits. And one of the blasts from me that ensured that she finally stopped moving, her weapon falling to the ground below. At this same moment, Liya and Ferrum shot and hit the other giant to the ground. As silence fell in this dry and warm cavern, and the soft bubbling of the magma below us continued to blow even warmer air into the atmosphere, we heard footsteps and noises coming from the other entrance, but no one had entered yet. Somewhat hasted, Thalmiir gathered supplies to start carving and moulding the emerald into a staff, while I climbed my way up the large steps to the upper platform, to see if I could lend any aid.

Session notes 1-7-2020
4th day in the Feywild

4th day in the Feywild - continued- Well, something interesting happened. As we were preparing to take a short break of walking through this dungeon, a bright firey white light appeared, which seemed to be taking Thalmiir away, but in the process also affected William and Erky. They were somehow teleported the three off them in the blink of an eye, leaving Liya, Oranje and I behind. We were, well, somewhat surprised and overwhelmed by this sudden flash of divine (?) intervention. Unsure of what to do we decided to just camp close by this site at which they had disappeared to at least gain back some of our strength. Liya had a cool trick. She took out a piece of rope and threw it up in the air. It just hovered there, but she climbed up and disappeared at the end of it as if entering a treehouse of some sort. Oranje and I quickly followed, and we found ourselves in one of the most peaceful places we had seen these past few days. A beautiful scene was around us, of a calm hilly landscape. There were pillows and blankets and overall comfortable places to sit and relax. I had no idea that she could do this! During our wait, we talked a bit. And now that I have just set up another hut for a nights rest, I thought it would be wise to write some things down of our talk. We are after all still waiting for Thalmiir, Erky and William to return... I wonder where they are. Anyhow, in the past hour or so, Oranje told us about his past, how he was 'created' and the decisions he made throughout his life. How, after they are 'created' they are dumped on some kind of garbage dump where they simply have to survive. It is more of a mental game I suppose, as he does not really need food or sleep? But he said it would take around two weeks before you would be picked up again. At that point, there is some kind of speech, about the Lightbringer (the source of his power) and how they should definitely work for him. If you say yes, you get a bit of his magic and go do whatever this Lightbringer says you must do. If you say no, you get a mark and are sent back to the garbage dump, where you are not only told to survive but are hunted to make it more difficult. If you say no after two weeks of that, the body that soul is in is simply ripped apart and repurposed. Oranje said yes this second time, giving him the powers he has now. It sounds truly horrific, thinking that so many people or well, souls, I suppose go through this. I also asked Oranje about this, about where his well, consciousness, comes from, as I had never heard of something simply creating souls out of thin air? The answer was, not exactly what I expected or what I had hoped to hear. To be fair, I had no idea what I expected to hear. But apparently, souls end up in a place called limbo or purgatory, where your spirit can be picked up by a deity you worship or perhaps another being of power. However, if you are not picked up, you must roam around in those places, and if you are there long enough, you forget everything while slowly fading away. Just at this point, when you have nearly forgotten all, the soul is captured and placed in the body of the warforged. A blank slate if you will. It is all kinds of wrong if you ask me. Oranje mentioned a name for it, I am not sure what it was... 'Autonomy Seed' or 'Seed of Autonomy' something around those lines. It sounded a lot less, well, cruel if you say it like that. Still, I really feel for Oranje, he had to go through all of that... On that note, I am going to ask the Bard to come and pick me up, if that is possible? I wonder if there are others there that were or are picked up by him (or them perhaps I should say them? Not sure but I am sure that he/they understand what I mean). And would the Lightbringer come for Oranje if he were to pass away? He does not quite sound like someone who would do that now that I have heard the process through which he gets his followers.. but who am I to judge? I know nearly nothing of this entity. On a lighter note, Liya also told some things about her past. Where she learned the trick she did just now, creating this place of calm for us. And about her friend, who she visited shortly in Sarton. Funnily enough, she quickly talked about a part in which her friend was turned into a horse by a witch. She tried to quickly continue the story but both Oranje and I went like 'wait a second'. We were quite in sync on that. But this friend of her was transformed into a horse, and later formed back by another wizard or witch. However, he kept the ability to change between his 'normal' humanoid shape and the form of the horse. Which I think is pretty cool. Liya told us a little more, about how they grew up together, both with a love for nature, in the middle of a very industrial and mechanical city. There were some short stories about how they wandered through the woods, learned about the forests. Through one of these stories, we started to talk about the first time we cast a spell, and what that was like. It was all quite fun, and frankly the most relaxed we had been in days. This time came to an end in a little less than an hour, as Liya warned us that we should get out before her spell would fade. Somewhat reluctantly we left the hut, but a little more eager were we to see if our friends had returned already. When our feet hit the ground once again, we were only met with the strange stone creature that had tried to eat us. No sight of any of our friends. I decided to set up camp once again, using another type of hut. Now it is just time to rest and wait, hoping that they will return to us soon.

Session notes 10-6-2020 & 17-6-2020
4th day in the Feywild

4th day in the Feywild I woke up a bit later this morning, but luckily just before Baradox came to pick us up. The rest of my night had been quite uneventful, and I think that we were all quite happy to be able to sleep a full night, without watches etc. During our breakfast, we had a short conversation with Baradox about our next steps. We can go for the phoenix fire, or to the elemental prince to ask some advice on the other items we need. Somewhere in this conversation mentioned an artefact called 'the iron flask' which could be a very useful item in our quest to catch the phoenix. It essentially can catch unwilling creatures if it is opened close to it. However, this item is currently in the possession of the Emerald Queen. When we inquired about this Queen, we learn that she has little patience and that she disowned the King not too long ago. The reason for the latter being that she deemed him to be 'too soft'. That sounds like a fun lady to meet. We must have seen a bit hesitant at this point, as Baradox states that with a bit of sweet talk and flattery we should be able to get our way. Or perhaps offer her something to increase her power or wealth? Thalmiir came with a, somewhat good idea after this was mentioned: making a new staff as a gift her, to get into her good graces. Naturally an emerald for the Emerald Queen. I must say I am a bit doubtful, as an ordinary staff might be a bit, little, compared to the power of this artefact we are after. But it is always worth trying, and perhaps Roze can put an enchantment on it of some kind? I am not sure how that works, perhaps I should ask him about it. But with that, we are once again on the Highwind, this time to the West. To the mines. Thalmiir just informed us that he had received a message from Roberta, through the bag we had gotten from Barry Olden. She inquired about how our first days in the Feywild have been, she knows that three days have passed, as three hours have passed in the 'regular' world. Next to this, she had a somewhat alarming message, the Undead Kings Army is getting closer with the day. At the pace they are travelling right now, they will be at Sarton within the week. That is really quite unnerving, but luckily we still have quite some time to get all the ingredients before that time is upon us. After hearing this message, Oranje shares his view on this battle strategy - waiting for the enemy to arrive-. He states that he does not understand, for he would have organised a counterstrike long before he would ever let them come this close. Thalmiir and William responded to this, about how losing soldiers to this king might cause more force against you in the long run. I decided not to intervene, I have very little knowledge of battle strategies, I know that there are general 'rules' that people keep even in wartime, but more than that, no. After this brief conversation, Thalmiir sends a message back to her. The flight to these mines is approximately four hours, but it is so hard to track this with the sun staying in the same position. I have decided to sometimes simply put a small mark on my arm using prestidigitation, I think that lasts for about an hour, which makes it somewhat possible to track time. Still, it is easy to forget and perhaps more has passed already when I notice. The scenery around us changes quite a bit during our flight. From the mountain and the heavily wooded area, we see the forest thin out more and more until we are over a swamp-like terrain. While we were looking up at the sky, watching for the cloud giants and their rocks, I suddenly felt something come from the right. But before I could say anything, a giant boulder hit us from the side. A crash and a break later, we stand in a totally quiet swamp. It is quite eery. We had no idea what had thrown this giant rock at us. Baradox really looked defeated looking at the Highwind which had been hit badly. A lot of the crystals on the side had broken off and lay scattered on the ground. I let Mina help Thalmiir look for them, as I tried somewhat desperately to mend the ship, but to no avail. Too much wood and crystal had broken off for my simple trick to work. Oranje went to look for some wood to repair the ship with, and wandered off into the swamp. It was moments later that we heard the strange sounds of wood moving? It sounded like snapping and slashing off branches and we quickly made our way there. The tree that Oranje had been hacking at, a strange-looking one with antlers? I could not really see well, as it was a bit off into the distance. This tree was doing real damage to Oranje, kinds of damage I had not seen before... A few spells, arrows and slashes later, another one showed up, locking most of us between the two. It was at this point that Thalmiir summoned a wall of fire, out of nowhere! He had placed it so that the both trees were at the outer ends of it, but it did block me from the rest of the group. Expecting that these trees would run -well I had not expected them to actually run, but you know you can expect anything here- from the fire. They did, eventually but not before the one that came towards the commotion nearly hit me to the ground. I teleported back to the ship, only to find a beat-Oranje there. From the upper deck, we could see the tree that hit me, run off into the distance. Some fiery-looking hitting blasts, and some ocher erratic looking ones that missed later, we sat down in the still broken ship. That is where we are at now. Oranje cut some wood from the first tree that we had slain. We brought it back to the ship and took some time to recover a bit. After that, Ruby, Roze and Oranje worked on fixing the boat for a couple of hours, and that is where we are at now. Baradox is looking over their shoulders and giving them instructions. There is currently not much that I can do to help them, so I am just keeping watch It is about 3 hours later - I guess- and we are flying again! It is much slower and a bit wonkier than before, but flying nonetheless. The mines are quite imposing, it is a giant canyon. Baradox landed a bit off the side, as apparently stone giants own this place. Information that we should have asked for earlier on. And they are not that fond of visitors. After scouting the place for a bit, seeing some figures move, and having Liya go ahead, we learn that there is a human lady with two bears living along the path that we were thinking about taking. We had a short discussion about what we are going to do, but we decided to go down into the mines anyways, as quietly as possible. We were not as quiet as we had hoped. Just as we passed past the door, we heard a scream that we did not understand language-wise, but the meaning was still clear. The lady ran out, including the two large bears. They did manage to get some hits in, but they were quickly overpowered by us. Thalmiir was flung far away by a stone giant that came close to the commotion, luckily, I could help him fall softly. Oranje quickly had the lady pinned to the ground and later to the wall. I made sure that the bears that went down were stabilised, as the lady seemed to care about them a lot, and I was not planning on murdering everyone in our path to get this gift. The stone giant was ordered to go away by the woman, and he did, but not before dangling a large large rock above our heads before melting back into the walls. The lady, understandably, was not very talkative. Her main concern was with the bears. She told us to go further into the mine if we wanted to trade or do any kind of business. And thus we did. Thalmiir was waiting for us, further down into the mine, where he was thrown by the giant. Letting Mina fly ahead a little bit at the time, we found our way to the last place where the light could find its way into this cave system. We found ourselves in a large cavern with a creek running through and several gates. Next to the river, there are enormous statues of delicately carved figures. I am not sure who it was, but one of us knew that sculpting is one of the main skills a leader should have in a community of Giants. That explains both the intricate carvings in the walls and the beautifully carved statues. They looked so real we had to go investigate if they would not suddenly come alive. The whole setting was a bit eery. The place where we arrived, where the sun still hit the bottom of this cave, there was grass and some small flowers. Looking further into the cave, where the light cannot hit, the grass cannot grow any longer, and plants like moss take over. It gives off a very different vibe, somewhat scary but also calming somehow, the low light, soft moss and water running. If we had not been fighting minutes ago, we might have enjoyed it a bit more. After the first round of exploring, we passed over a what seemed to be a petrified tree. Oranje cut off a piece of it, before we walked over it, passing over the creek. We went into the gate of the nearest tunnel in this cave system. With some athleticism and a combined use of a rope and the immovable rod, we clibed up a set of stairs made for the giants. After which Erky scouted forward and found a room with a group of humans camping in it, who also had a space for livestock of some kind. As well as a cavern with a bubbling lake of what I presumed to be mud. Not wanting to disturb the people, and not being interested in the lake, we were thinking about exploring another one of the hallways. To make the search quicker, I used Mina to scout. Sadly, after following another cave system for a little while, she was spotted by a giant who was making carvings, and a somewhat large rock was hurled at her, snapping my vision back to me. I hope I still have enough components to summon her again. I have quite grown attached to her, to be honest. Perhaps later when we take some time to rest I will be able to look through my bag. It was after this, however, that Ruby came with a clever idea: casting 'locate object' to find a large and expensive emerald. This proved to be very useful, as we now suddenly had a direction to travel in. With this newfound location, we made our way past a bridge, where we saw some stone giants pass over. Quietly, - well as quiet as possible, because we are not very quiet as a group we have noticed- we make our way past the streaming water until we start hearing the roaring of a waterfall in the distance. With Ruby keeping us focussed on our foul, we took a turn and eventually found ourselves in yet another tunnel which would hopefully go in the right direction. It was when we were passing through this tunnel that four of us were suddenly grabbed by some kind of tentacles. What had looked like a simple stone or stalagmite, was actually some kind of scary stone creature, intended on eating us all. Oranje, Ruby, Teal and I were grabbed by the creature. I managed to break free with Ruby, but not before getting bit and hurt quite badly by this, thing. It did not seem bothered by armour or metal, as it also munched down Oranje and tried to eat Teal as well. Luckily, Roze, Teal, Oranje, and Ruby hit the creature with some strong swings and bullets, and before it could grab us again it had been slain. It was a close call, however. I had presumed that we - ruby and I- would have been at a safe distance, the place where I had teleported. But it was thanks to Oranje and Ruby shielding me, Teal and Roze attacking and distracting the creature, and my ring of shielding, for otherwise I would have surely been grabbed once again. That would have been really bad. After the battle, we took a look at the creature, as we had seen something shining within his stomach. Well, those who were getting eaten had mostly seen it. Looking through the remains of this beast, we found a dozen of small gems and a couple of larger ones. Thalmiir has kept them to take a closer look at their worth. Sadly, what we are looking for is a tad larger than what we found, so we will have to continue down this tunnel towards the location only Thalmiir knows. It is quite okay, it is fun to do together as a group, but if there are more of these creatures around, this expedition is going to be a dangerous one. We should be fine right? I just hope we can take a small rest before continuing, I am quite tired, and even Oranje looked like he could use a rest.

Session notes 27-5-2020
2nd to 4th day in the Feywild

18th of Vilrand ???? - 3rd day in the Feywild The morning is one of planning and seating. How are we going to obtain this portrait? Steal it? Trade for it? Use the splendiferous bauble? Eventually, the plan is going for a house tour and trying to find the painting and trying to trade the splendiferous bauble for it. Oranje and I volunteer and make our way inside. We get the ring of spell storing from Thalmiir with 'sending' and 'locate object' in them, and the bauble from William. It was simple to convince Earlton to give us a tour after sitting through the last part of his lecture about how he build this entire castle by himself. Some smooth talking from the Oranje and Blue team even gave us access to a tour on the next floor! I had to pretend to write everything down. So that is why I am writing all of this right now. He is telling a story of him killing a hydra all by himself! Next to having a large sense of self, this man has many many collections. Books that I would love to look at, but also paintings of himself, that he made himself, which I would love to turn away so they would not look at me so strangely. He even had pegasi in his house! And a lot of wines, all named after the emotions he had when he suppositly made them. But no sight of the painting. To get this tour we told him some of our adventures, told as spectacularly as possible with some fancy magic effects. He seemed interested and intrigued, and I suppose he was as he tried to tell as interesting stories while showing his collections. Our attempts to see more paintings, such as sweet-talking his artful style and ideas for a gallery only made him show us a statue of himself. Still, he seemed quite pleased with himself, and we got gifted one of his earliest self-portraits and with a forceful smile and semi-respectful nod, we were escorted out of the castle quite drained. With a mutual understanding that we need some silence after all that talk, we walk back to the rest of our group. Second plan. Liya and I will simple use my newly learned spell to teleport right to the location of the painting. Using the locate object spell Thalmiir provided, I soon pinpoint the location of the painting to be somewhere in Earltons bedroom. The whole retrieval was quite quick but bad for my heart. With a simply drawn door and some magic, we were soon on the balcony that would lead to Earltons bedroom. However, he was still there. Looking into a mirror of some kind, practising his speech. When he got up, we hoped he would walk to the door and go downstairs using the teleportation circles Oranje and I had seen earlier, but instead, he walked straight towards the balcony doors. At this point, I had already lost Liya, like she was never there, so I tried my best to hide. Luckily, he did not seem to notice us immediately, but as he started to look around, I decided to use a simple spell to make it sound like someone was knocking on the door and that made him turn around. Pffffff. As the room was clear, Liya and I made our way inside and looked for the painting. We found it in Earltons closet, wrapped in cloth. Looking at it was a mistake. The person depicted in the painting was, well they were dead, and they were rotting and sick and bleh. We quickly re-wrapped it and made our way out the way we made it in, via a pretty magic door. We had to wait a bit for the street to become calm again as all the addicted people came to the lecture to get their fix afterwards. But after that, we were outside once again. As unsuspiciously as possible, we made our way back to our group. A few fly spells later, we were on our way out. Baradox was waiting for us at the Highwind. As we landed, we saw the once flourishing hedges of the maze surrounding Earlton Keep wither at an alarming pace. While flying, we had already seen some of the towers collapsing, but standing here, we can truly see the sudden decay of Earltons lands. Baradox was a bit surprised to see us arrive while the place fell to ruins behind us. But he did not ask many questions. Though he was curious about the painting and wished to see it. Somewhat spooked by what had happened, we urged that could wait until we had returned to the mountain and asked if we could leave. Now, we are on our way back to the Order of the Sapphire. The flight is relatively calm and we try to relax in the following hours. We saw the giant turtle wading through the forest once again, while in the distance we can faintly make out what was once Earlton Keep. Eight long hours of watching the sunset later, we arrive back at the Sapphires. After we got out of the Highwind, William showed Baradox the painting we had retrieved. Not the one painted by Earlton, but the 'grey painting' we were supposed to 'research'. The thing glows with necromancy and transmutation magic, and strangely enough, the withered old sick person in the painting has gone, leaving a blank canvas for Baradox to look at. After Thalmiir cast 'Identify' on the painting, he explains the following about the artefact: If this painting is in your possession for ten days, all that would otherwise hurt you (disease, attacks or anything harmful in any way), will go to the person in the painting instead of to you. This makes you basically immortal. However, if the painting is taken from you, the diseases and wounds on the painting directly transfer to you, most likely killing you instantly. Which is what happened to Earlton.. that painting looked horrific, I can only imagine what things he had avoided throughout his possession of this painting. After this short break, decided to make our way to the council to bring the good news of us completing our 'research'. The meeting at the council was, surprising? When we arrived back at the council's room, we were once again met with the group of people with the large crystal helmets. With a mix of pride and doubt, I presented the painting to who I thought to be Siadarvinax. After a short inspection, we were told to follow one of the council members. He brought us deeper into the mountain, where the number of crystals, and light they emit increased with every turn we took. Finally, we were brought into a large underground cavern. There, a large crystalline dragon lay in the middle, surrounded by the blue crystals in which he almost seems to disappear. This is Siadarvinax. We were somewhat agog and posed quite some questions. Most of which were answered by the Sapphire dragon. Some quick notes: Ingredients: Phoenix fire, (can be found here in Feywild) at the Giants in the north Lightning in a bottle, can be found in a Storm Elders temple (?) Heart of a Titan, can be found in Zarathan, a walking mountain Eternal Frost, can be obtained from a Leviathan. Most of these things can be found, and some can be summoned. However, Siadarnivax does not know the rituals required to do so, the Elemental Prince does. This prince lives in the East, just above the northernmost lake. The dragon did have more information about the giants who have the Phoenix currently. They are with a group of 60-70 and use the fire of the bird in their forge. They are making some kind of metal man to fight for them, which sounds somewhat terrifying. - no offence Ferrum- . Finally, we also learn that the phoenix is most easily transported after defeating it, and can be kept quite long if it is without air (otherwise it will combust and respawn the bird) All useful information, but a lot to take in. With a polite nod, and some words of Siadarvinax, about us always being welcome, and him using the painting to ensure the past is never forgotten again, we are led back to the council room, and finally to a room where we can spend the night. Baradox accompanied us for that last trip, curious to hear about our encounter with Siadarvinax. He has been there before, for the gifting of his mask. We decide to tell him more when we are outside in the Highwind once again, which will probably be tomorrow. For now, we are in this really quiet room, and most of us are going to sleep. I see that Oranje has already switched off for the night. I am just going to play a bit of music, have not done that in a while. I think I must have fallen asleep when I was playing, but I experienced something very curious tonight. As everyone was slowing going to sleep, I decided to softly play the music that I hear in my mind, almost all the time. Sometimes I forget it is there, but then something happens or I use a spell, and then it becomes more apparent again. Not too long ago I had written down the music, but it is easier to just play along with what I hear I noticed tonight. Anyhow, while playing, the room slowly seemed to change. Once again I thought I would find myself in that void again, just like at that wicked cursed house on our way to Cosynest. But it was different. This time I ended up in a forest, it felt somewhat like the forests near Mercia, but older, much older. Here, I kind of saw the story of four musicians, travelling the land. They changed faces, a lot, and travelled a lot as well. There were flashed of this group throughout the world, some places looked familiar, others did not. Throughout the story, it became clear that the people were slowly losing 'themselves'. Not necessarily in a bad way, but they had forgotten who they were as individuals. The final image was of them in some kind of magic circle, through this, they form and change into the figure that had become familiar to me: the Bard. From this final image, the Bard emerged. He sat down in front of me, with the four instruments that the figures in the visions played: A lute, a small drum, a fiddle and a very familiar flute. The one currently in Thalmiirs possession. After this, there was a brief moment of me sitting there with the Bard, a moment of rare silence, after which I was returned to the now dark room, back in the mountain of the order of the Sapphire.

Session notes 13-5-2020 & 20-5-2020
16th of Vilrand - 2nd day in the Feywild

16th of Vilrand - continued I took some time to fly over the city looking through Mina's eyes. I will never, not be jealous of the sight of taking off, I can feel the wind past Mina and the taste of the dry yet sulphury air here around Sarton is strange to experience. The flight was really nice, I actually spot Ferrum walking around. Around noon, we find each other again. Most of us simply took a walk around the city, Thalmiir specifically went to look for Gizelle, but found little in the short time we had. After this short reconnaissance, we walk back to Roberta. She has a new list for us! As we inquire about the contents of set interesting shopping list, we see and feel a large shadow looming over us from behind. A heavy voice booms a few words, and the messy surroundings around us suddenly force themselves into all the shelves. Revealed behind one of the flying piles is Merril, and a floating set of books, who were apparently organizing everything. Merril, and his even his unseen servant look a bit disappointed about the now neat, but completely unorganised bookshelves. The Dragonborn turns to us, and introduces himself as Len Hycel, a wizard expert in the field of 'universal magic'. Yet another one I do not know! I should really make another booklet with all the types of magic I do not know. Now that I know this magic I have a bit, have it somewhat figured out, it might be interesting to start figuring out a bit more about other forms of it! That chronomancy was interesting, but universal magic sounds mysterious as well. After introducing ourselves, and stating our affairs here, Len Hycel leaves us be, and makes his way up the stairs. Roberta and Merril look a bit flabbergasted but quickly return to the task at hand. We need the following items: * Fire of a Phoenix * Lightning in a bottle * Heart of a Titan * Eternal Frost Most of these things sound like they are not real, but the latter is something that might be like that small block ever-ice that Thalmiir has. All of the other things, I have no idea how we ware supposed to get those. We are on our way to the forest, Roberta has told us that we can get all these items in the Feywild, a kind of duplicate dimension of this, but sort of enhanced? It is said to be a strange place, full off trickery and deception. There is a person, called Baradox, who will help us get there. Further, into the forest, Roberta shows us a hole in a tree and explains that we should go through there in about a few minutes. Things to remember in the Feywild: Siadarvinax is the name we should ask for. We can send sending spells to the wizards. Never give your whole name, or "only give your name to people you trust, which is no one". Do not sign anything. Never say "Thank you". We must be back within a month. Other names we gave ourselves: Ferrum = Orange Thalmiir = Red Erky = Pink William = Teal Liya = Lavender Nimueh = Blue Arriving in the Feywild was, in itself already an experience. The world turned and twisted and then I landed in the grass, only to only see Orange. The dancing grass and golden glow of the low sun already gave this place a magical feel. This tall tall grass also obscured Pink and Red in the grass. It took a while before we all arrived there, on the other side of this tree marked with a strange spiralling sigil. As Red was investigating the surroundings, Orange tried to hit the grass with his axe, but it somehow skillfully dodged all of his cuts. After Lavender has come through the portal, we decide to go and look for Baradox, the man supposed to meet us here. It did not take long. As Tha-Red stated that he wanted to go find this guy, he appeared from behind a tree. A sharp, glistening geode was the first thing the rest of us saw of him as he came out of the foliage. The slender person had a sort of large helmet made fully out of a blue crystal. Ranging from light to deep blue, it seemed too heavy to have on one's head, but he gracefully stepped towards us and introduced himself to us as Baradox. The first thing he said after his introduction was 'If you have any questions, do not ask them." Well, that is clear. Following Baradox through the forest and fields is like walking through a filtered version of the forest we walked through in Sarton. However, this land feels and acts as tho it is alive in some kind of way. Everything is more vibrant and seems to glow. As I summoned Mina with a small snap of my fingers, it almost seemed if she was more alive here as well. The soft glowing light reflects and refracts in the crystals we see on the volcano where Sarton would be, which is now covered with patches of the blue crystal that Baradox is wearing(?). Not sure if it is called wearing. When looking at him it almost seems if it is part of him? Who knows, I was told to expect to see things I had never seen before so let us keep an open mind. Wading through the flowing grass goes extremely slow, yet the sun seems to have not moved through the sky at all. It makes it very difficult to keep track of time here, for me at least. Walking up the volcano, Baradox suddenly stops and opens some kind of door. He weaves his hands over it and it opens for him. Walking inside, we once again stop. "Now, you can pose your questions." our crystal-helmed guide says. We learn that secrets are worth a lot here and thus that people may always be listening, so one should always take care. Next to that that we are going to see Siadarvinax, that we should be polite and not too loud, and that we can get more answers there. Walking through the tunnels in the mountain is disorienting, I am glad that Baradox is here for we surely would have gotten lost. There are more figures here with crystal helmets, some are smaller than others (perhaps there is some kind of hierarchy?). The crystals still seem like they weigh a lot, but no one seems to mind and everyone is walking gracefully and with a straight back. Thalmiir took a look at the strange geode structures that form in the tunnels and the helmets. He does not quite know what it is, but takes a piece and pockets it. I have no idea either, but it glows with transmutation magic, and also divination? No, the divination was from Thalmiir's symbol of Morradin, interesting. After some time, passing through some doors that Baradox can open (they seem to melt into the wall at his command), we find ourselves in front of two large, intricately carved doors. We are told to wait. In the room, we are faced with a large semi-circle of chairs, on all a person with a large crystal on their head is seated. We are a bit hesitant, but a push in the back from Ferrum was enough to convince me to go forward. This time, I was on the receiving end of some mind-talk. Siadarvinax, sitting right in front of us, ask us about our business here. As I answer mentally, I get a mental smirk and "ah a psionics user as well?". It was strange to talk to someone who is fluent with this technique. But after a short conversation in which I explain why we are here and that Roberta send us, Siadarvinax states the following. We must prove ourselves to be trustworthy, and then they will help us find the items from the list Roberta gave us. This task that we have to perform before getting any hints or help is to do some 'investigating' and retrieving an object from someone. We did not get much more information from the council of crystals and Siadarvinax, but Baradox will bring us. I do not think any words were actually spoken in that room, it was only after we had given a nod and left the room that Baradox spoke to us again. Or maybe that was telepathic as well? I am not sure anymore. Anyway, he has something he wants to show us. After wandering behind Baradox through the many hallways within the mountain, we find ourselves in a space where a small ship is parked. The ship looks somewhat like a sleigh, but with the same colour crystals covering it. Wulfric is immediately interested by the blasters that are placed on the front and back of the vehicle. As Baradox enters the ship, the crystals on the sides begin to softly glow. After we all boarded the ship, Baradox let the ship slowly lift off and out of the mountain. After a mental sigh of relief from our captain, Baradox told us a little bit more about the 'investigation' we are supposed to do. The people who we met are part of the order of the sapphire. For them, we apparently we have to go and get a 'grey portrait' from a man named Earlton. The whole endeavour is basically theft. We are not too sure about it first, but suppose we must decide there. Then, when we know what kind of person it is, we can decide what we are going to do. Perhaps steal it, but trading could possibly also be an option? The whole trip there will take around 8h, but it will feel like no time passed when looking at the sun. It is such a strange sight. We chat a bit with Baradox, about the odd crystal helmets and how they feel on his head and such. He gives us some tips about the place we are going to visit. For example that we should not pose questions, or take anything we do not know. Our conversation was broken up by the movement of some strange clouds. Well, they are not actually clouds but Cloud giants. This becomes apparent as large rocks start falling from the erratic moving cloud. Scarily enough, we are directly in the line of attack. Baradox quickly flies lower, almost beneath the foliage of the forest we were flying over. He explained that we must not be spotted, they are known as 'sky pirates' and thus we must be careful. We waited until the Giants flew over, hoping that we would not get hit by any of the rocks. SItting like a spring waiting to be released, we all prepared and hoped for the best. As a large rock headed straight for our ship, Oranje stood up and cast a spell I was all too familiar with: Shatter. With a lot of noise and pieces of rock flying about, the rock was destroyed. It was at this peak moment of our shock that Ferrum was not Ferrum that Baradox quietly said, "I am not sure what that was, but I cannot stop this, prepare". With that, the ship bolted forward with incredible speed. This burst of energy and speed would also have made sure that the rock missed the ship, but now, we knew something was up. As soon as we were flying on a constant speed again, Thalmiir raised his hand with a guiding bold prepared to shoot straight towards Oranje. Oranje raises his arms, and answers all our questions. -Who are you, where is Ferrum, are you Copper, what are you doing, why are you here, why did you not say anything-. I take a moment to try and reach Ferrum mentally. I hear a defeated Ferrum state that he does not know who this is and that it feels exactly like when he got overtaken by Copper. Concerned, but being as perceptive as possible, I sat down to mend pieces of the ship that were hit by the shattered rock. Only minutes later, four small points break loose from the cloud giants cloud. Baradox looks very concerned. He urges us to prepare once again, and quickly states that the front cannon is damage dealing, while the cannon in the back slows creatures down. We take places on the ship and prepare for, what are apparently wyverns coming for us. A short battle, with some nice shots and some pretty magical effects, the wyverns eventually leave us be. Strangely, Oranje/Copper/Whateverhisnameis keeps shooting at the wyverns even when they have turned their backs to us and are flying off... While Thalmiir is healing Baradox from the battle, we rest, looking for more clouds acting strangely. After Baradox felt a little better, we took off again. Still five hours to go, so we try to relax for the rest of the trip. We saw a giant turtle moving through a forest and completely wrecking it! It moves very slowly tho, so the forest some way behind him is already healing. As we are almost hanging over the ledge to get a good look of it, we hear Baradox say "it is moving to the sea". Thalmiir -Red- talks to Oranje, who we should just keep calling Oranje I suppose and simply asks him when he is going to go away again. It is not often that I have seen Thalmiir look so distrusting. While eavesdropping their conversation, I do hear that Oranje is not M-54, but F-32 (M-54 was the person calling themselves Copper. Copper is allegedly a regiment of several soldiers, which would explain the plural form he spoke in.) . Anyhow, to get my mind off it, I decide to take a good luck at how Baradox is steering this ship. He seems to have some kind of connection with the steering wheel? It lights up on the sides as we steer to the other side, it is an intriguing sight. As we are getting close to our destination, we see large hedges doom up in the distance. It seems to be a kind of maze, in which we can see some large structure in the middle. That must be Earlton Keep? There are also some smaller structures scattered throughout this maze, small villages perhaps? We cannot look for long, as Baradox lands the ship in front of the maze. He explains that we cannot fly over the maze, there is some kind of enchantment that prohibits it. Naturally, Oranje and Wulfric go and test this out. While they are hovering over the maze - with strange devilish like wings, I had not noticed that before when Copper cast it..-, I set up an Alarm and Tiny hut, in which we can all take a nights rest. It must be somewhere like two or three hours after sunset for us right now, we arrived here, just after noon in our time, were in the mountain for an undetermined amount of time and travelled for eight hours. I am tired at least. The grass acts weird again, it moves away when I try to put my bedroll down. When we have all gathered again, Oranje and Erk-Pink, tell us what they have seen in the maze. Nearly none of the ways are straight, and there seem to be highways and narrow alleyways within the maze itself. Also, it is indeed not possible to fly over, you simply get placed back at the start. It is a shame, as it would have saved a lot of time, however, it might be interesting to see what is present in that maze. I do find it quite intimidating, the hedges are very high, I am afraid that it might be very strange to walk between them, but I guess those are worries for tomorrow, I have the final watch so I will have time to think about it then. Perhaps the 17th of Vilrand - second day in the Feywild The final watch, it is quite calm. Oranje is up with me and we chatted a bit. He does not remember all of what happened. I am not quite sure if we can trust him yet, but I told him some basics of what we did. The house hunting, the fight with the Roc in Old Apéles, a little bit less about the war and the military. Still, he does seem different from Copper, not sure in what ways tho. One of the reasons I am not sure about him yet is the fact that, when I was woken up by the alarm earlier during our rest, he was awake with Thalmir. It could, of course, be that he had woken up because of the sound, but it could also be that he is skipping nights to prevent Ferrum from returning. This morning, when I was keeping watch, I heard something strange from the maze. I let Mina take a look for me, and there was a man, shirtless walking around erratically and shouting. There was hardly any muscle to him and he looked pale as snow. I could not quite make out what he was shouting, but I got parts about him being unable to get out. Frankly, it made me a whole lot less excited to get in there. After discussing what our strategy is going to be over breakfast, we decide to just follow Oranje, as he had seen the routes the day before. We make our way over the largest road through the maze. We walk for, what feels like a couple of hours. The mood is strange through this maze, with the sun barely changing it is like we are constantly waiting for dusk and the angle of the sun casts strange shadows through the hedges. It is somewhere, in this maze that we see a ruby red tiger being dragged along by a group of elvish looking figures. They look somewhat suspicious of us, but walk away confidently. When Thalmiir approaches them, they ignore him at first, and they say some very foul things in Elvish -I think Thalmiir did not catch it as he remained very calm-. They handed him some kind of gem and said something within the lines of 'let us keep this a secret'... I tried to reach out to the tiger psychically, but it did not respond. I am afraid it could not understand me. We decided to continue our way, the main road feels safest for now. I made a sketch of yet another type of teleportation circle, it was one I had not seen before. - how could I, it was in a different dimension after all- but it was quite intriguing! It was made with stones and the runes in the drawing, and all Wulfric and I could get from it, was that it was some type of teleportation. It may be useful someday. The air here is filled with a lot of magic by the way. From abjuration to conjugation and illusion. Also, divination? It is just a bit uneasy, it feels like being watched. Some more walking had passed when we arrive at one of the village-like structures we had spotted from the Highwind. The people here are all elvish looking, and they give nods to William and me occasionally. They look like they are doing well, much better than the person I had seen this morning (well when I woke up that is). Walking closer, we see that there is some kind of alleyway build into the hedge here. Boutiques seem to have built within this strange place. When we got closer to the people, it becomes apparent that they all have somewhat golden looking teeth, and the spare around their eyes is almost iridescent. Curious to learn more about this, I made my way to take to one of them to talk. However, there was not a straight word to be drawn from them. In normal speech or mental. The person I talked to simply did not respond and looked like they were somewhere else completely. On a second look, I saw the enchantment glow that surrounded all of these people. With this little amount of info, I returned to the group, and with that, we decided to find the person least affected by the enchantment. This turned out to be the barber. A strange fellow. In return of food from the material plane, he would explain us a bit about the trade here, which apparently has something to do with tiny satchels of some kind of golden dust that are being handed over everywhere around here. This strange barber told us that that is the currency around here, and gave us a very very tiny bag of it. I gave it to Thalmiir for him to identify it. It turned out to be pixie dust. Not that that made it any clearer to me, but it is used in potions to make people fly and it is also some kind of drug that makes you feel and look younger and more clear. It is also highly addictive. That does explain a lot. The roads towards the castle are getting narrower with every turn we take. The 'main road' that we were following is hardly distinguishable from the roads we called 'side roads'. Luckily, the castle is much closer now. It is an impressive building, lots of small towers and many many balconies. A lot of different styles seem to have been inspirations for this building. The process of me walking and writing was interrupted by the following: an actual rabbit. Thalmiir and Liya noticed something moving or falling in the hedge beside us and investigated. It was a rabbit which could blink away. It somehow teleported from one place to another. The little bag of pixie dust was really interesting for it, and it followed it with its eyes very very closely. Thalmiir attempted to give it a little bit of the dust, and then.. it died. It literally died. Probably an overdose. It was so sad, that tiny rabbit. Thalmiir looked really shocked as well but we soon realised there was little to be done about it. Then he tied the creature to his belt and that was our cue to continue walking. Some more walking later, it was really getting tiring at this point, we arrived at yet another open place, with a broken old teleportation circle. The confused man I saw earlier today was here! He looked, well, not well. Very very thin, only wearing pants and looking bewildered. The rest of the way felt like it took ages, but finally, we were at the castle. It looks quite fancy up close. Together, we make our way towards the throne room. A green-eyed man is sitting on the throne, this must be Earlton. At every door, minotaurs are situated. They are imposing figures, their horns have golden points and they wear purple and silver armour with some kind of shield and a large battle axe. And they threw Thalmiir outside while we were discussing our plans. Just him. Not sure why? When we joined Thalmiir outside, Oranje and Wulfric decided to go and look inside at the throneroom and Earlton, perhaps they can learn something. In the meanwhile, Thalmiir walks around the castle, and Liya William and I set up a place to spend the night, we are not sure how much time has passed but we are certain that we are going to need sleep quite soon now. After setting up a hut in one of the alleyways close to the castle, I decided to let Mina fly up around the castle, just to take a little sneak peek at it. Strangely it had a lot of balconies without any doors leading to them? As well as something that looks like a sea on the third floor? It is a strange building when looking at the entire structure. Still, I was able to find some cool things, that third floor is interesting but I think I have also found his bedroom, up on the fourth or fifth floor. Thalmiir talked to one of the elvish figures, one which was really, well high. Thalmiir simply wanted to know what was up with the way people were treating him, but a very straightforward answer was not provided. There just seems to be enmity between dwarfs en elves here. I thought that was something from the past, as in our world they work and live together almost everywhere. But time here is weird, so maybe the wounds here of what happened have not yet healed? A little while later, Oranje and Pink return. They have listened to some kind of speech by Earlton, about how amazing he was and more of such bragging. This man's ego is out of this world. Still, Oranje and Pink were welcomed to the church-like throneroom that he wat pitching in and happily accepted to Earlton keep. He even gave them to bags of the pixie dust. Our rest was relatively calm until we just got woken up by a figure trying to make their way into our hut, but they gave up after a few failed attempts. Hopefully, the rest of the 'night' is calm. I am really happy with the dark interior of this hut, you can barely notice that the sun is still up outside when you close your eyes. It is quite calming.

Session notes 29-4-2020 & 6-5-2020
13th-16th of Vilrand

13th of Vilrand - continued I forgot to mention that, before we left, the Lieutenant told us that we should be present at the headquarters tomorrow morning. And we also got a fancy bag with which we can send letters or notes to Barry Olden, it prevents us from waking him up with the Sending spell Thalmiir uses. After we left, we made out way back to the Crossed Candles, now a familiar sight here in Apelés. Burga seems happy to see us again, and she is unapologetically curious about our adventure and what we did. She asks all kinds of questions about our uniforms and our task. It is all fun and games, but darn is she curious. We chat a bit and have a drink. Thalmiir and I repair Ferrums stuff from the acid-attacks, I start with his axe, while Ferrum takes off his breastplate. Burga does have some other news for us. Most of the military force has moved out of the city and there were still a lot of rumours going around about the strange explosion from a few days earlier. But that was that, during this conversation I noticed someone come in who nearly blinded me because of the illusion magic surrounding him. He directly approaches us. It was Merril Tasker, the wizard that we have been messaging after Thalmiir learned his name from Oghma. He told us that he was thankful of us retrieving Beomore, and asked us about his behaviour around us. He had been acting, strange, and wondered if it was just Beomore being himself or if he was only like that around him and the other wizards. We assured him that he was just odd, probably because he is a living relic. Which Merril could only agree on. Furthermore, he asked about Ferrums issue, the whole reason we contacted him all those months ago. Explaining how we had dealt with the situation seemed to disappoint him a little bit, but also somewhat relieved with a peek of curiosity when taking in Ferrum who had just come down to give Thalmiir his breastplate. We sat down a little more and talked about the south and what is going on there. Things have been getting weirder and weirder around there, with the Undead Kings army getting closer and closer. Merril suspects that they are around a month away from the city, kind of scary that they are already that close. Concerning that, he asked us if we want to get to Sarton, he can teleport us there if we want, we just have to send him a message. He could use our help with constructing a Mythal (Concentration crystal) which would help the wizards focus their attention on the undead king instead of keeping the volcano at bay. We could help find things for him to do that, but we will wait until we know what the task from the military is before we decide. Merril understood this. We chatted a bit more, about the weather in Sarton and the strange occurrences at the front. After a while Merril left, drifting through the door into the night. Burga was immediately on our tails with questions and curious looks, but we were all quickly off to bed. We had an appointment early this morning none the less! 14th of Vilrand This an early and cold morning, it rained a lot last night and it is still drizzling as we are waking up. We can see the sun is starting to rise through the window as we enter pass past Burga, neatly dressed as always. We really wonder how she manages on so little sleep. Ferrum is late so we chat a bit as we prepare to go towards the headquarters of the army. We arrive at the headquarters just after the sun has risen completely, with a mention of Oldens name, we are escorted inside where we try to make ourselves look neat. Walking through a few corridors brings us to a large room with a round table. On it is a large map, some parchment scrolls and a few blocks and figures. Before we could look at it, Olden arrives. He tells us that we should just stay still and answer when asked a question, all will be okay, no stress. We sat down and waited for the others to arrive. Several people started to arrive: A half-elf lady, a half-orc man, and a human man and woman. They all have the same outfit as Olden, so I assume they are lieutenants as well. Finally, an older man walks in, and all the lieutenants stand up, we -awkwardly- follow their example. This is the colonel. His name is Andrew Smith, and we are introduced by Olden. After our short intro, we are informed that we are from now on 'squad red' and are addressed as such. Like one person. If one of our group causes a problem, it is squad red's problem. And if we are a problem, that will be lieutenant Oldens problem. We report to him, and follow his orders. We should be fine right? The conversation continues and it becomes clear that we -the lieutenants included- are send out to Sarton. We may travel there on our own account, but the lieutenants will leave tomorrow by horse. We state that we have our own means of travel, and no more questions are asked. Colonel Smith will make sure that we have someone to report to is we need it, otherwise, we can just wait until Lieutenant Olden arrives. Ferrum also asked about the uniforms, and when to wear them, and if he may modify them etc. But they are mostly formal wear, and should not be worn in battle or anything similar according to the colonel. Good to know, glad we asked before we did anything. Outside, Lieutenant Olden approaches us. He was curious about our means of transport how we got it. In return for that info, he gives us some in return: It can be tense in Sarton at the moment, stay defensive, do not stir up anything. It may be less, inviting, than Apelés, but stay kind and open. We are going there to help nonetheless. Also, until he arrives, we are free to do what we want, we can stay in contact via the bag. Which we had not even tested yet! He was very surprised about this, as we usually overwhelm him with messages, even in the middle of the night. We joked around a bit, wished him a safe and fast journey, and then went our separate ways. William, Ferrum and I make our way to Anrath, as Liya and Thalmiir are going to find a shop to sell the coins from Old Apelés. As we were browsing at Anrath's Arsenal, I realised we did not make clear where we wanted to meet again later the day. Not very clever of us, but we always found one another again, if it would be at Burga's tonight or tomorrow noon for the teleportation, it should be fine Anrath had some nice things to show us, some fancy shimmering amulet, which would aid in making you not stronger but healthier. Ferrum and William seemed quite intrigued by it, but sadly it was worth 8000 GP and that was a bit over our budget. Still, we thanked her and decided that we should go get some enchanted weapons, as Ferrum had learned that there are monsters out there that can really harm our fancy, non-enchanted metals fairly quickly. So we decided to pay the Bearpickers another visit. As Galgia had said her husband Zarian was an enchanter. Arriving there, we see grandma Bearpicker in the corner of the shop and give her a nod, as we wait for Galgia to arrive. As she recognises Ferrum and me, she asked about the alchemy and how it went and if we had used it yet? So sweet of her! We chat a bit and explain the reason for our visit, after which she calls her husband. Zarian is a bit older, and a bit hard of hearing we think, but a kind man. He seems excited about a new enchantment he has learned, which can be placed on all weapons. He is willing to test it out on our weapons for 500GP a piece. It was at this point that we came a bit closer and discussed this deal. We all were very curious to see what this enchantment did, and Ferrum quickly convinced us that we really really needed this. So I pitched in some money for both of them, so they could have their halbert and great axe enchanted. Zarian happily takes the money and goes to work. He seemed quite eager to try this and we take the first loud words of the giants enchantment as our cue to leave. We can pick up the first weapon in three hours. Once again, The Crossed Candles is our place of reconciliation. Liya and Thalmiir have been at the Keepers where they dropped off the cursed weapon and got good money for it! The coins they tried to pawn as well, were worth quite a bunch. Overall, they made quite some money, whereas we had only spent it. When we tell them about the enchanted weapons, Liya is also interested in having her bow magically enhanced. Ferrum is fine with running to the Bearpickers later in the evening, eager to pick up his great axe. The rest of the evening is calm for most of us. Ferrum has a nice run and returns with his now enchanted "vicious" axe. I can see why we was excited to get it! Tomorrow we will pick up the rest. 15th of Vilrand The morning went by so quickly, we ate something, said goodbye to Burga for now -Oh boy was she curious to know what we were going to do, just saying "going to Sarton" was really not going to cut it for her-. After that conversation and once again packing all our stuff, we picked up the last things at the Bearpickers: William's and Liya's weapons. It was at the beginning of the afternoon that we met Merril again, who teleported us to Sarton. It was really strange, a lot of white light and magic vibes, but the somewhat chilly weather of Apelés was soon replaced with a slightly dark and humid room, somewhere in Sarton. Merril welcomed us in Sarton and immediately guided the way outside. Leaving the small underground chamber was pleasant, especially when that was followed up by a beautiful view of a strange city, build on a volcano. It consists of, several layers build into the mountain itself, with varying styles and sizes of houses and pipes protruding out from the mountain at every corner. Far in the distance, we can see the woods, meadows and farmland and further even the shimmer of lakes and the silhouettes of the mountains that Liya explains are called the Dragons Spine. We arrived on the third layer, and with a ticket from Merril in our hand and Liya paying for us, we were allowed on some kind of trolly that would bring us to the top layer (called Hyrist). Before we were allowed to enter the top floor, the fifth I think, the tickets were checked and we were let off the mechanical system. I have never seen something quite like it, and I have been checking it for some trace of magic but there was none there. Really odd. Merril explained to us that magic is a bit iffy here, most people do not like it. So we should keep a bit of a low profile, especially with the current tensions concerning the war. We heed his warning. The introduction The Circle and their headquarters was, different than I had expected. The tower we entered was not very tidy, but impressive nonetheless. The members of The Circle were different as well, much more approachable and open than I had expected. The whole building seemed much larger than it was on the outside. A large staircase is spiralling up, there are bookshelves reaching to the next floor and papers and books everywhere. We were introduced to Orlando Tritusk, a tiefling wizard focussed on necromancy, he seems to be around 60-ish, however, he explained that he is actually 31, and the reason he looks old was some kind of spell mishap. What that was about and what had happened, he did not explain but he was very eager to learn more about us. We thought Burga had a lot of questions, but Orlando asked the hard questions: what are you looking for, why are you adventuring? -He was looking for a new coat, when we mentioned Bombix, he stated that Bombix owed him 5SP or something- Still, when he asked me the questions, and I told him about finding some info on 'alternative deities' he seemed not weirded out at all, so that is a start! Perhaps they have something lying around in that tower somewhere! The next stop was a pub that Liya visited a lot when she lived here, the Dragons Clockwork, on the second tier of the city. Before we left the wizards to their work, we got the following tips: return tomorrow for Roberta, she might have some tasks for you if you like; buy some lighter clothes for the weather here; keep your tickets safe! After this, we let Liya lead the way through the large city. She guided us back to the trolly system and told a bit about where she lived, and where they sold maple beer et cetera. It was calming and interesting to see where she came from, never expected that we would ever come here, Sarton felt so far away from Baferton where we first met! After a while, we had found our way to the Dragons Clockwork, where we are enjoying some maple beer now. Liya knows the inn owner well, Falcon, and they catch up a bit. Strangely, the fire is on here, even though it is quite hot, it looks very cosy though, which is really nice. The maple beer tastes really nice- and it had to- our expectations were really high after travelling with Liya for more than five months and hearing about the beer every single day. It is somewhat aromatic and spice, but with a hint of flowers. Hard to put down, but really nice, worth the wait! As Ferrum, curiously, put it: "Like a plantar pissing on your tongue". Not sure where that saying comes from, hahaha. While Liya was still catching up with Falcon, Ferrum is staring into the fire and Thalmiir takes Wulfric aside for a talk, William and I are the only ones left at the table. We are both a bit lost in thought, perhaps thinking about the questions Orlando asked us. Still, we chat a bit, until the others return for the next stop of today: Liya's house. Oh Thalmiir gave me the helm of comprehend languages! (its a really warm to have on here, but it is cool to understand all the languages spoken here) About that, William, Ferrum and I really higher the average hight around here, most people here are dwarfs, halflings and gnomes. It was a short walk to her house, which is just outside of the city. When walking out, the appearance of pipelines was higher at first, but then slowly decreased. There were some ticking and other sounds coming from them, but slowly the metal and stone made way for grass and forest. I can see why Liya likes it. During the journey, Liya told us a bit about a friend from her past, Evan who was also an archer. She might want to look him up tomorrow. Meeting Liya's family was so nice! They are very very kind and generous, we got dinner from them and a place to sleep. The house is not very large, the ground floor is the brewery and the storage, and the first floor is mostly the living space. But oh is it cosy and homely. We are introduced to the family by Liya. Mother Rosy and father Grayham have a lot of questions for us, our journeys and adventures. They are naturally happy that Liya was able to sell some beer, but wondered what else she had done in those two seasons. During dinner, a large plate of food and small bread surrounding it is server while we tell our stories. Kate and Ewald -who is actually called Shaun-, brother and sister of Liya also want to hear of our endeavours. Kate asked me a lot of questions about Mina, but after a comment on magic and how that does not exist, I decided to just state that I had tamed her instead of summoning. 16th of Vilrand. I do not remember much of the rest of the evening. Beer was served, and I was very very tired. Starting the day with a freshly made breakfast was a soothing way to wake up from such a deep slumber, and a good source of energy for the rest of the day. It is still early in the morning when the family Armsrun starts their work in their brewery again, and we are back on the road towards Sarton. The city looks different in this light. We now see the pipes running over the walls and the crests on the walls. With the elevator platform, we make our way all the way up to the last floor. Here our cards are checked and once again we are allowed on Hyrist. The tower is even more of a mess today. We enter and wait to see if someone is here to greet us. As we all enter, suddenly we hear a large bang on the second floor, and see a lady fly across the balcony. As we go towards her to help, she is already standing there dusting herself off. The second floor was clearly neater than the first. That was, before a closet or bookshelf had flung itself across the room, taking the lady with it. The half-elf introduces herself as Roberta, the one we were looking for. She is looking into creating Mythrils, the crystals with which a mage can keep concentration without doing it themselves. It would help the mages here greatly, as they would not have to worry about keeping the volcano at bay themselves. For this, she needs quite some items. Mumbling she starts looking around at the papers, walks down and starts looking between the books and stacks of papers there. We follow, somewhat awkwardly as she states that there should be a recipe or a list of things here that she had already found are needed in the creation of the item. Continuing her search she states something about a phoenix and the blue hue of the crystals. We offer to help her, but she would prefer some time to figure it out herself, so she can properly prepare us for a possible task. If we return in an hour, she will have things ready for us. It is not clear at all what this is all about. Very chaotic, but she mentioned something about planes of existence and portals, but I know little about this. Thalmiir had teleported Ferrum somewhere with a spell so maybe they know more? I am not sure, guess we will just see? We thank her and take an hour off, everyone wants to go their own way for a bit. I think most of us are just going to explore the city for a little bit, like Apelés there is a lot to see.

Session notes 22-4-2020
9th - 13th of Vilrand

9th of Vilrand - continued Looking around the rubble and the robes left behind by the unusual cultists, it is only moments until we spot the skull with the eight points around it. The Undead King, once again. How did he - his henchmen- get here so fast? What were they even attempting to summon? I have never heard of such a shadow creature? Was it to attack (new) Apelés? Or does it have some kind of other power? The summoning circle here looks new according to William and Ferrum. They think this place might just be a very good place to channel energy, as the concentration crystal (which is called a Mythral) was probably located here. Sadly, there are no signs of the crystal to be found here, just the place where it was held up. As Ferrum picks up some cloaks and the armour from the figures we just fought, I sit down to identify the strange artefact we are sitting in. The magic around here, illusion and that chronomancy are almost overwhelming when focussing on it. I learned that this relic is called "Beomore's Watch" and it is essentially a protection system that works by shifting and reversing time itself. It can set back it's surrounding for seconds or hours, but also months or years. We are in the middle of it right now. Which is a strange idea. The whole place is slightly magnetic, I can feel it pull on my belt as I stood up, I can only imagine how Ferrum, Thalmiir and William are feeling in their armour! After this short time to breath, we decide to make our way out, before our past-selfs catch up with us. After passing through a very very dusty corridor, we find our way to some kind of throne room. We have apparently come through the back door, as we arrived behind the throne. The whole style of the place is identified as high-elven, not too flashy, but certainly graceful and suggesting status. Everything is overgrown, however. As we are investigating the place, we hear the beating of wings above us... but nothing happened. Quietly, we investigated a bit more. Thalmiir actually finds a teleportation circle on the throned carved from stone. He traces over the symbols and it lights up! I quickly check the vibe of the magic and find it is conjuration. (I should really ask Ferrum or William for some information on these different kinds of magic because honestly, I know the names but not exactly what they involve) As I was copying these symbols, Thalmiir casually decided to just teleport through. We were all a bit taken back by this, as we are unsure where it went. It is at that point that Wulfric states he will be going to, and if we do not hear from him in 10 minutes, we should assume he is dead. Very assuring. Some time passes as we investigate a bit more, looking at the (exotic!) plants, passing through the large doors at the other side of the room, of which one is dislodged. Peeking through, we see yet a larger room, with what looks like a nest in the corner. And thus, we decided to slowly back up again. It is around the 10-minute point, that we are really getting to get a bit worried. William however cleverly mentions that no teleportation circle on a throne would lead to something deadly, as it was probably made as a fleeing route. We all agree on this, but still, I decided to send Mia through first. They are in Beomore's room. They were just there putting up their tents. And with that, we follow through the portal. In the small hut, I set up yet another tiny hut, and we spend the night here. It is quite calm outside, and the evening is calm. During my watch I still look through some books, only to find that it is such an old version of I think common that there is little I can make of it. Still, it was cool to look and there were some intricate drawing in there. 10th of Vilrand The morning started early for my idea. I am not sure why, but I think that time travel stuff messed with my internal clock a little bit. The morning continues with Thalmiir helping Liya unattune from the strange rapier, after which she immediately picks up her bow with confidence we had missed the past few days! And so, this pretty silvered rapier also finds its way into the bag of holding on Ferrums back. After this Thalmiir uses another spell to send a message to Barry Olden stating our findings and asking what to do next. Thalmiir relays that he is happy with what we found and that taking care of the Roc would be a nice extra. And that was how we planned the rest of our day. After gathering up our stuff, looking for some more coins and doing some stretches, we try to go towards the castle quietly, hoping that the Roc is still in its nest. We were sadly less stealthy than we hoped, and the Roc found us earlier than we did it. As we tried to prepare for the attack, Erky was standing far away from all of us, and he was immediately picked up and taken away from all of us. As usual, our plan went absolutely horrible. However, with a blessing, a bit of hypnotising and a clever trick with an immovable rod, we still did not get Wulfric loose... but we did harm the creature a lot. The battle continued until Thalmiir cast the same spell as he did on the shadow creature yesterday: Banishment. This caused it to drop Erky and bought us some time to hide and rethink our strategy. But the Roc is not insane so he flew off as fast as he could when he returned here. And thus we ran. Sprinted our way toward its nest. There we found the creature, which was swiftly finished off by Liya with a few arrows. Now that we are sitting here, Liya is taking some feathers as a trophy, Thalmiir is somehow trying to cut the talons off with his hammer while Ferrum and William help him hold them. I think I will go help them now! 11th & 12th of Vilrand The past two days went fast compared to the 9th. I also did not know what to write about anymore. We were all very tired after the fight with the Roc. Walking back to the beach with the talon was heavy, even for Ferrum. Also trying to balance the boat with it was a challenge, but we made it. Kelly was somehow a bit disappointed to see us return, but surprised and happy to hear that the bird was gone. She honestly looked kind of spooked by that. Still, we reassured her and Liya got her money back. We thanked her and got our horses. Driving back was smooth. The afternoon was nice, a short moment of rain did not spoil the day and was actually kind of refreshing. We have made camp at almost the same place we stayed on our way here and we are expecting a quiet night. 13th of Vilrand The morning is cold! The moment that my spell fades, the cold could come in and I was not prepared. Luckily riding will warm us up quickly. Going back through the forest is quick with Liya and Ferrum guiding us again. I barely have to look at where we are going. To be completely fair, it is really relaxing, reminds me of when we would go riding when we were younger, but then I just sat behind someone on a horse so I really did not have to do anything. It is a nice memory. Just before dusk, we arrived at the quarters of Lieutenant Olden. We carried the talons inside, shared our findings and tell our story of the past few days. He seemed genuinely impressed with us! And that feeling was correct. Before we left, he pulled out a stack of deep green suits. He explained that he was very proud and happy to inform us of our new rank: Squad Red. The uniforms we were gifted are very neatly made. Deep green outside with a blood-red inside and golden stitching. Still a bit confused, but very proud of the new appreciation of the Lieutenant, we walk out of the office with a slight smirk on our faces.

Session notes 9-4-2020 & 16-4-2020
9th of Vilrand

9th of Vilrand - continued It was only moments after I could finish that last sentence, that Liya and I noticed something move high off one of the ruins of Old Apelés. Something with huge wings that we soon saw diving down upon us from that height. A few seconds later, we were battling the giant bird, that Ferrum had identified as a Roc. The battle was short, but not because of our skill, though William did a phenomenal job at harming the creature - especially after it had grabbed both me and Ferrum up in its talons. It was, to state shortly, not a pleasant experience. But to return to the strange matter at hand, as we were fighting, suddenly, everything seemed to reset. We were all back on board, with the enormous bird nowhere to be seen. Confused, still hurt but somewhat relieved we stood there for a second, before continuing our rowing, now much more aware of the sounds of any bird wings approaching us. Strangely, the spell I cast on myself to allow me to fly if I would be dropped by the Roc, had also faded, whereas normally it holds longer. Very peculiar. Old Apelés is a beautiful place, after a few more minutes of rowing, we arrived at the pebble beach. The ground feels so much more secure than the boat. Somehow boat trips seem to disagree with us, always something that tries to get us out of the boat and either into the water or into the digestive tract of the creature. However, the land we stood on was solid and had probably been untouched for many many years. The isle, and the buildings upon it are very much overgrown, and as we heaved the boat upon the shore, most we saw of the ancient city was overgrown by a vast array of plant life. When we were on the boat, we had seen the different layers of the city, and Liya and Ferrum took it upon themselves to navigate us through the overgrown city streets. On our way we found several old houses, Thalmiir even found a few silver coins with a floating city minted into the metal. It is after some walking, that we stumble upon a curious sight. Thalmiir spots a house that, unlike all others, has not been overgrown. A perfect semi-sphere around this hut is seemingly untouched by the teeth of time. For some time now, I have been able to sort of 'sense' magic around me -and see it if I focus-, but the magic at play here is unfamiliar to me. Ferrum tests out the force field by moving his hand in. It is only with considerable force that he can get it back out of the magic circle. Thalmiir cleverly tosses a coin towards the dome, and as it enters, it stops in place. During this, we also spot someone inside, standing quite still. As we are watching, Thalmiir casts 'Dispel magic' and as the dome seemingly dissipates, the man ducks away as he notices us. A very, convincing, conversation later, we are allowed inside. The man is called Beomore. He speaks a weird language. (Yel-ves? = Goodday? or Hello?) Anyhow, he is a magic-user and quite a powerful one as he attempted to stop time when (old) Apelés fell out of the sky. Just as curious as we are about him, is he about our current time and our reasons for coming here. He asks all kinds of questions about the current date and the number of months and planets, states that it is so much easier now, and then asks if we know someone old, how we got here etc. We answer his questions. Tell him about the 'new' Apelés, and the council of wizards that he might want to contact, our journey here and the reason why we are here. We, in turn, learn that the city fell 3257 years ago and that this unusual wizard was the creator of this city. As well as being a skilled caster in the field of a new/another type of magic: Chronomancy. (It is probably that that I have been sensing around here, which makes sense if he created this place.) He also talks a bit about another type of magic, which was only available above what we know to be and call ninth level spells, which is not possible because those are the highest forms of magic available for us now, but supposedly that was different in his time. As we also told him about our reason for being here, we get some information on the castle, a route in and some information on what we might find there. We got a very interesting reaction when we told him about the Roc-incident. The roc was not what engrossed him, but the pulse we felt during that battle. Beomore then explained that this is a type of defence mechanism when triggered, sets back time a few minutes. After which he informs about how often it went off and how if we had been set back far in time or not. Apparently he is surprised about the fact that it still works. And immediately after this information drop, for us and him, he states that he must be on his way. "I do not know you, you do not know me". However, after we convince him to at least contact this circle of high mages, and Thalmiir agrees to contact one of them, he changes his attitude a bit. After Merril Tasker has viewed the situation through some kind of scrying magic, Beomore quickly starts picking up some books and starts drawing some sigils in the rings of the circles on his floor. A few final questions about contacting him and such later, we are left with his final message: "Oh don't be frightened if you meet yourself in the castle". After he left I snooped around the wizard's house a little bit. There was this book laying on a small table next to the bed, and when I looked inside I felt something wash over me. It was some kind of heaviness and I fell face forward into the bed, nearly asleep, but the spell did not take effect. Thalmiir really frowned upon my behaviour, but hey, I was just looking around and he had actually taken coin from a house so who is he to judge? Plus, if you find a whole new type of bloody magic, would you not be curious to learn more about it? Anyway, at least I was focussed enough to actually note down the sigils in the teleportation circle, that we had been asked to do by Lieutenant Olden. If it had been for the rest, they had completely forgotten, their minds already set for the castle and its secrets. Okay, I should not be so salty, I just did not feel so well at this point, the claw from that bird had taken quite a toll. With the hand-drawn map that Beomore had given us, the entrance to the castle was easily found. Ferrum lead the expedition inside. Interestingly we keep passing this strange symbol resembling an hourglass, etched in doors, walls and floors. The whole building has a faint air of the chronomantic magic, some of the carved sigils still seem to softly glow in the darkened rooms we enter. As we continue our way, we enter a room with a large copper dome in the middle, surrounded by several pillars. The smell of the air is stagnant and a bit chilly, but not unwelcoming. The floors and walls are made from what looks like a greenish form of marble, that I have never seen before. Again, the hourglass symbol can be found underneath the dome. We carefully avoid walking underneath the dome and make our way deeper inside the building. Ferrum again leads the way towards a corner behind which find a locked door and a metal rod. With some force, this rod is pushed into the wall, and as that happens, the wall behind us closes and we hear a faint 'click' of the door in front of us opening. There is only one way for us to go. The next room was, interesting, to say the least. The square space that we entered was not very large, but immensely high - I can not even see the roof- and in each corner, there stood a long-forgotten aquarium. As we were inspecting the strange substances in these aquariums, a rock fell from above, breaking the darkest one Ferrum was looking at. From the broken glass, a horrid somewhat sentient creature arose. It smelt acidic, and we soon realised why. As Ferrum's body and axe touched it, they started making a sibilant sound and a chemical smell soon spread. The ooze split itself on our impact and it was a hassle to get it to stop lashing out at us. After the short battle, Ferrum looked exhausted, and I was also looking forward to a rest. As we stood there, wondering why a stone would drop suddenly from above, Thalmiir inspects the door towards the following room. He tries to open the door the 'regular' way, waves his hands to cool it, then tries again to lower the knob using his elbow. Revealed behind this door, is a stream of lava. The immediate heat terminating into the room reminds us of our trips underneath Conwy. The faith kind of sank to my feet at this moment, as this meant that we had to find a way around this and who knows what another route may bring... It was at this point, that an Aarakocra fluttered down from the high ceiling. Their timing nearly perfect. Ekkri is his name, and he is eager to help us cross the lava, which he somehow knows about? It al kind of suspicious. But as it is our only option, and he truly seems genuine, we agree. Ferrum and I take a flight, having been held by enough birds today, while the rest is carried by Ekkri. After this short, and frankly very helpful encounter, we thank Ekkri, tell him the way out - apparently, he had been wandering around here for some time and was eager to get out- and proceed to sit down to take a breather. Now that we are resting, Thalmiir is taking some time to patch up Ferrum's armour a bit. It is slowly starting to look better. I clean Liya's sword for her. The room that we are in is nice. The heat from the lava from the tunnel here heats it up to a comfortable temperature and it is quite spacious. There is a strange contraption in the middle, consisting of a spiral with cloth or canvas stretched between. It looks quite intricate. Thalmiir's curiosity is also piqued by the device and he attempts to turn it as if it is some kind of futuristic mill. (well would it not be an ancient mill, as this place is so old? I am not sure) Anyhow, as Thalmiir released the device after turning it for one round, it spins back by itself, returning to its original position. Naturally, Thalmiir does the same thing, now for seven rounds and the mill turns back even faster than before. It is when it comes back to its start position, that something clicks, an unlocking of some kind. Amused by the small show, rested and curious to see what that unlocked door would lead to, we are now going to continue our way. I forgot to note that the room we relaxed in had two ways out: a door on the southern side and a cave or tunnel back to the lava. It was the Southern door that unlocked after the spinning of the device. This door leads us a short hallway and yet another room. Again, there are the hourglass symbols carved into the floor, which seems to be made of some kind of smooth white stone. Thalmiir later told me he had also spotted a tunnel in the hallway, which reminded him a lot of the tunnels dug by that Bullette creature that took Wulfric's life, I am happy we did not investigate that further. But back to the room, in the middle of it, there was a type of pedestal with a gem on it placed in a glass case. Thalmiir identified it as a diamond but was otherwise uncertain of what it did. It is in this room, that Ferrum and Erky sat down to look at the symbols more intently, there must be something about them. On the opposite side of where we entered, there were iron bars, which seem to be controlled by some kind of pistons? I have little knowledge about these kinds of gizmos. Suddenly, there is some kind of revelation. An image of Beomore pushing and turning the gem-box and suddenly disappearing. Uncertain of what else to do, Ferrum copies the movements. With a flash and a bang, we awaken to find ourselves back in the room with the copper dome. Ekkri was there, looking very very confused by our sudden appearance. However, he was close to the exit so happy about that. (My ears are still ringing as I am writing this down.) After a while, we realised that a new door had popped up in this room. And thus we went, continued our investigation of this strange place. The path lead us through some hallways, until eventually transforming into a spiralling staircase. Ferrum once again takes the lead and guides us up the stairs. There was some fun speculation of these stairs being unending like the one in the wizard's tower of Ms The Grim. Our jokes were however interrupted by a metal rod being rammed into Ferrum from out of the wall. Carefully, we then continued our way, but the strange happenings were far from over. Slowly but suddenly, the staircase started turning. It was on an even pace, and then it stopped, only to be followed up by a much more rapid twist back. Some of us, realise what is going on shout something along the lines of "Brace yourself" as the staircase starts to turn again, this time for 1,2,3.. 7 rounds. A brief pause, and then there is a volatile turning back of the stairs. Thalmiir and I are swung back and luckily caught by William. Even more hesitantly, we make our way further up the stairs remembering to remember what we do in this castle, is likely to be turned back to us later. At the end of the staircase, we find ourselves on a type of walkway. The space itself is square and the walkway is a bridge from us to a room straight forward, and one to the left. The bridge seems stable, the forward seems to be blocked by something, so we make our way to the right room. As Ferrum goes first and walks over the stairs, we see a rock drop down, and hear the breaking of glass. We looked at one another, finally understanding what is going on here. We caused our own fight in the aquarium room. But we had little time to ponder this as we entered the room the left walkway leads us to. It is there where we meet Ekkri, for the third time. He is sitting in a cage. We free him and inquire why he is here and how he could have survived all this time. Apparently he has died a lot of times but has always come back. He explains that he was locked up as a type of experiment, and kept alive for that purpose. Even though he answers all our questions, he also had some questions for us as well: why are you helping me? what are you doing here? We then tried to explain to him that we had met him earlier and that he had helped us fly over the lava. Puzzled but seemingly understanding he asked what to do, simply fly down, help and pretend that he did not know us? Which was pretty much what he did. As Ekkri flew down, we were starting to get the puzzle together. We waited there for an hour, and just now, there was some movement behind the gate of the other entrance the walkway lead to. As we went to look, the pistons in the room with the gem-button and iron bars had moved, clearing the way for us and resetting the button. This route brought us to a much larger room, supposedly the room with the defence device. The roof is very very high, which is held up by pillars reaching just as high. For me, entering this room while focussing on magic was really overwhelming. All kinds of Illusion and Chronomantic magic were present here. How abundant the magic was, so sparse the heat was in this room. It was cold and chilly there, and a strange cone marks the middle of the room. Upon closer inspection, we find that the cone made of several gears, differing in size. During this inspection, a figure is spotted, appearing from the cogs, looking at us and then twisting one. Suddenly we were back at the entrance of this room. The time stuff really started to mess with me at this point. You feel a bit dizzy and nauseous afterwards and it is very hard to wrap your head around. Now that we had seen this creature turning the gears, we were more eager than ever to get this figured out. As cast a spell to give Wulfric/Erky and Thalmiir the ability to fly, we make our way up the stairs to see what is going on up there. I must say, that we were not prepared for what was up there. The scene we arrived at was strange, to say the least. A circle emitting soft purplish light, surrounded by three figures in hoods and tall standing figures in armour. But in the middle of this circle, a creature, seemingly forming from shadows was slowly manifesting. Our battle instincts kicked in and we decided to take down these people summoning such a being. Thalmiir and Ferrum charged forward, while Erky circled from the sky. William focussed on the figures in armour with this Halbert and Liya and I attacked from a distance. Strangely enough, Liya sprinted forward during the fight, to attack with the rapier instead. This caused her to be hit and hurt by the appearing shadow creature in the middle, and she actually fell unconscious. Luckily she was helped by Thalmiirs healing word. Also, his spiritual rams hit the literal air out of the armoured figures, who seemed to consist of just armour, as when they got hurt badly, the metal just fell to the ground. The same for the praying hooded figures, which just left a piece of cloth behind. It was al very hectic, a lot was going on. Ferrum threw one of the armoured guys off the platform which looked really scary. Thalmiir blessed us at some point. Finally, the fight ended when he banished the creature, returning it to where it came from. Now that the purple glow has died down, we must figure out what was actually going on here.

Session notes 28-3-2020 & 5-4-2020
14th of Istrith - 9th of Vilrand

14th of Istrith We have decided to take the following weeks off. Lieutenant Olden has no jobs for us, so we will just wait until we can more Lieutenant Dunn to his new home on the 6th of Vilrand. So until then, time for ourselves. Honestly, I think it might be good. Everyone is really excited about Apelés, there is still so much to see! I really want to try out that fancy alchemy book and I think Anrath can help me and Ferrum figure it out, or maybe she knows someone. I will ask Ferrum if he wants to go there someday this week. Also, I would love to get some more parts of my tattoo done, so I should contact Shef. I will just use today for a bit of relaxing and thinking about what I would like to do the following weeks. Maybe I will make a list, so that I may stick to it, maybe not. 16th of Istrith Went to Shef today for the tattoo plans and we made some appointments to finish it in the following three weeks. -he was really surprised how quick it had healed, little does he know that I can bother both William and Thalmiir for that- But, he did some parts of outlines today and next week we will have some longer sessions. Also got introduced to some of his flatmates, they are all such eccentric people, it was quite fun! They all loved Mina, she is not really a bird who likes petting but I think she did like the attention. But my arm hurts, I am going to see if Thalmiir or William is around to help me out a bit with that before going to bed. 18-20th of Istrith On the 18th, Ferrum and I went to Anrath for some alchemy supplies, and she redirected us to two places where we might get them. One was a simple general store, where we could buy some flasks and a device that shows you the temperature of the substance you are heating up. The other was a family business specialised in the craft, called The Bearpickers. Excited and curious, we made our way there. With Anraths directions, we easily found our way to the small house close to the park. When entering, we are first met with a sleeping, elderly goliath woman, who is sitting in the corner of the small shop. As soon as we enter, another lady walks up, also a goliath who greets us. What we noticed immediately, was that her eyes were stark white. -We did not mention it.- Explaining who we were, our plans with the alchemy book, and how we know little of the art of alchemy. Our extreme lack of knowledge on the subject seemed to amuse her, but this did not make her any less kind, with a lovely smile she showed us the way to the back of her store. It was not what we had expected. Behind the counter, through the door, there was a surprisingly large greenhouse-like structure. Full of plants and wooden shelves full of small bottles and potions. The lady, Galgia, picked up the ingredients we needed without issue. (We only helped her a bit with finding a small blue bottle, and there were like a lot of other bottles, some foaming some bubbling some seemingly empty, it was really fascinating but Ferrum urged me to be very careful with them) Eventually, we gather all the stuff, -not only for the sovereign glue, but also for the universal solvent- and we even meet Galgias son, Tokhal who fetches us some sturdy leather gloves. Which, as Galgia said, were very very important when working on the sovereign glue we wish to create. The boy, who is already as tall as Ferrum, was somewhat curious about him, as he, unlike his mother, realised that this was not a man in armour. Ferrum kindly declined the question of how he became this way, and that seemed to be okay. Galgia said were always welcome to return, for alchemy supplies or enchanting, which her husband, Zorian, is good at. And, if we had forgotten anything we could always come and ask. (Grandma Bearpicker knows a lot!) With that and a few additional tips, we made our way back to the Crossed Candles to try out our new stuff! Ferrum and I are a good team, the evening before, we had already made the oil of slipperiness as a first step in the processes of making sovereign glue. We learned from Galgia that we have the 'scientific version' of alchemy in our book. Which means that we should just try and follow it as precisely as possible. So that is what we did. Starting out with the solvent, as advised we spend our day carefully grinding the ingredients, cleaning and heating the bottles and chatting about our adventures. Ferrum read out the steps as I did the more secure movements, while he used Mage Hand spell to pick up the hot bottles after the right temperature had been reached. All went to plan, Burga would never know we were cooking potions up in our rooms. About that, I have not seen Liya the past few days, I think she might be out and about. She said something about the forest, but overall just seemed very eager to go. I suppose she is doing okay, she is always more in her element in the forest. The next day, the really scary part started the sovereign glue. Ferrum told me that it can be used on basically anything and is 1. very cool. and 2. sound like we should be reaaaally careful. But, everything went smoothly, spilt some oil but nothing that a little prestidigitation can fix. And now we have two little bottles that we are quite proud of. 22nd of Istrith This evening I played some nice parts for the guests at the inn. Burga was a bit sceptical about it at first but allowed me to play if I ensured it sounded nice. I think I did well, as she said I may play again someday. It was really nice to play a bit again, it had been a while. I should really practice more, or Ciaran will be disappointed in me for forgetting the parts we used to play together. 25th of Istrith Walked with Ferrum and William to the library today, apparently, they have gotten access to it somehow. Some old connections, I did not quite catch it. But oh my am I jealous about that! They may only research Ikadosh's history but even that is already cool. I know little about it, in my studies at home it was more about the northern history and its law systems, but I wonder if and how different it might be/have been in Ikadosh. But during the walk we talked a bit, Ferrum spent most his time in the library, but William told me he has also filled quite some of his days in the forest, practising his crossbow. As we arrive at the library, our ways parted, so I made my way to Shef, for one of the longer tattoo sessions. This time, it was quite hard and we were both tired after the hours of inking, but man is it looking good! Shef is humble about it, but I know he is happy with it too. Tomorrow we might just hang out a bit to talk a bit, and perhaps we will go to one of his studies parties, it is Neder tomorrow so there are quite some drinks to be had. 26th of Istrith My arm, it hurt a lot this morning. I had hoped to catch William and Ferrum yesterday on my walk back from the university, but we missed one another. But luckily, Thalmiir was at breakfast this morning. He is really busy, not sure with what exactly. I have seen him pondering over sketches and discussing some kind of mechanic with Erky, but I do not understand it. I hope he will demonstrate it when it is finished! I practised a bit with seeing through Mina's eyes. When the weather is nice, it is really cool just to lay down in the park and let her roam around. I had somewhat expected to see Stuard Dunn or Liya here, but I have not spotted them. Perhaps I fell asleep for a little while. Going out at the campus was fun! A lot of very talented people there! And very diverse. From artists who paint or sculpt, to those studying magic who have animal companions just like Mina! There was a guy who had an almost entirely white cat called Pangur, and a girl with a weasel called Malva. Overall we just really had a good time, with tales and music and a bit of magic. I kind of would really like to be part of this life, but feel like it might become boring. Before heading out to go and study which eventually became what it is today, I might have been content with this, but now, I think I would really miss the group and the thrill of going somewhere new. And I also think that there is something out there to find. Not sure what, just a feeling. Anyhow, time for bed, I should buy some new journals next week, this one is almost full. 1st of Vilrand Today I went out to buy some supplies, a new fancy journal. I even bought one with metal rings that hold the pages together instead of one with a regular back and leatherbound -I also have one of those tho-. I was it at Anraths place that I saw it and I just liked it a lot. Anrath commented on the number of books I carry with me and showed me this fancy bag that works like the bag Ferrum has or the quiver Liya has found. It can store an unlimited amount of books. Sadly, it was a bit out of my budget and I dare not ask Thalmiir to pay again, so I will just have to save up. 3-4th of Vilrand The past few days were really calm, I went to Shef for an afternoon to show how the tattoo is healing. It looks really cool, I am already thinking of extra ones to take but I will wait a bit with those. Shef also advised me that, in his own way: "noo man, just, wait a bit and think about it". But we had a fun afternoon. I also took some time to copy the recipe of universal solvent into one of my journals. The recipes in the second book we bought are still a bit too difficult for us, so Ferrum and I thought about perhaps selling it again, but we could not do it just yet. Those first potions kind of sparked our interest. If we have some time off again, we might try to make some others! I thought about doing some myself, but it is more fun together I suppose. Have not seen everyone in some days, perhaps it is because I tend to sleep in in the mornings nowadays. Normally Liya is up early, which wakes me up, but Liya has not been at the inn since we took our time off. It is quite relaxed I must say to have my own room, but I miss our conversations. I did, however, use her bed somewhat like a dumping spot for all my stuff, I should clean it today or tomorrow. 5th of Vilrand This morning, Liya was back at the Inn! During breakfast, she told us what she had been up to the past few weeks. Mostly, she took time to recharge from the city in the forest, hunting, exploring and such. Quite cool, but rather her than me, I enjoy sleeping in an actual bed. With everyone around the table again, we just caught up a bit, we have not seen each other much these past few days and it was nice to sit together again. Thalmiir was very excited to show what he had been working on but insisted we wait so he can actually demonstrate it. He also gestured proudly towards the engraved tattoos that he and Ferrum created on Ferrum's arm. Ferrum told us that he had found some of the names of his past lives or his ancestors, in the library. I do not quite understand how it works, mother never took the time to explain it fully, possibly because it does not affect me or my brother and sister like it does someone who is a full elf. Anyhow. A part of the information he found is about a lady named Lokwiët. She was a powerful high elf caster, who used a spell called Gate to save a lot of people of the council during the attack on Ikadosh. This cost her her life. It is a very heroic story, and I could see that it touched Ferrum but that he was also slightly proud of this lady, who he partly is. He wears the tattoo, which looks like a round gate with 3 figures walking through, with pride. The engravings around it are a beautiful combination of the giant runes and Elvish script. After a long breakfast and even more talking, we decide to take a walk together and just chat a bit more. We take a detour through the park, before going past Lieutenant Olden's office to get some information for tomorrow. Thalmiir just showed us his invention while we were in the park. We also got a fine for one of the guards. But first things first. The thing Thalmiir has made are some kind of intricate arrows, specifically created for crossbows and specifically to be used on Warforged. Because of this, Ferrum was his demonstration partner whether he liked it or not. The arrow consists of a contraption which is fired and aimed like a regular crossbow, but after hitting transforms in a device that can prevent limbs from moving. An example, William, using his crossbow, shot at Ferrums armpit -he was holding his arms up-, and the arrow snapped and revealed two other pins that pinned into Ferrums chest and shoulder muscles, preventing him from moving his arm down. The same happened with his knee. It was quite a sight to see and we were all very interested in how Thalmiir had made this, but we were interrupted by a guard. He was not amused about us firing actual weapons in the park, which is very understandable, and demanded that we pay a fee of 50 GP. We thought it was a bit much, as we were just shooting on ourselves, but he insisted and we did not want to make him any madder than he already was, so Erky paid and we quickly left and went to the Lieutenant. Olden did not have much to say, we simply have to be at Stuard Dunn's house tomorrow morning and he will tell us what to do. He was very interested in the arrows Thalmiir showed him, and he would happily have the army make some copies for the up and coming war. The evening is calm. I had to clean all my stuff of Liya's bed before she could get in. She was not super amused but did not mind as much as soon as it was fixed. I went by Ferrum and Williams room to ask if I might borrow the fancy belt Ferrum has, just for a day I am so curious as to what it does and how strong one can get using it. And I can borrow it, I have it on my bed right now. - Ferrum carried it here, because yeah it is a heavy belt- and I will start focussing on it now so let us see what tomorrow brings. 6th of Vilrand Never have I ever felt so strong. I woke up this morning, and at first, I felt a bit weird about having fallen asleep with a giant belt on. But would you know it, it is super light now! Mina was a bit shocked when I tried to lift her I nearly launched her up. she is not heavy for me normally, but now it was close to nothing. Also, my bag is lighter than ever before. I could even almost lift Ferrum this morning! What an experience! We arrived at Stuard Dunns place early, but he was already waiting for us outside of his house. He had nothing packed, so we used our bags of holding for all the small stuff, and then filled our cart as full as possible with all the larger furniture. Ferrum and I took care of the stove without issue. I must have been grinning the whole time we were loading stuff upon the cart, I will miss this feeling of being able to lift anything. The moving went relatively smooth. After we had gotten everything on the cart and had swept the house, we were on our way to the new house, close to the park. An afternoon later, all the furniture had been moved in, and the now actual Lieutenant could start sorting his smaller stuff. Sharon was happy to see Stuard happy with his new location. You could see that he was very content being so close to the park now. He told us that he will now spend all that commuting time in the actual park, and that delighted him greatly. Back at the Crossed Candles, we take some time to relax and after I tried to do as many pushups as I could - 53 was the max - I gave the belt back to Ferrum. Over the course of the evening, I felt the strength leave me again. It was fun while it lasted. And I think Ferrum can wield such strength much better than I can. 7th of Vilrand Yet again, we find ourselves at Lieutenants Olden's doorstep. He had called us forth. We are getting paid - 30 GP per month- and he has a task for us. We need to pack something for light and rations for a week. Tomorrow we will hear more. We joked around while buying supplies. As William is our Co-Corporal as Corporal Thalmiir has dubbed him, he stated his full name and title should now be, Mister Co-Corporal William Quickstep to all of us. So any time we wanted his attention, we had to say the full sentence that is now his name. It was a fun bit of horseplay and it made the shopping go quickly. After buying the supplies we spend the rest of the afternoon packing our stuff and talking to and paying Burga for the rooms. To our surprise, Liya arrived home with about four dozens worth of torches. Something more serious, Thalmiir was looking quite troubled this morning so I asked him about it. He shared with us that he had had contact with his sister in law, Gizelle. With some clever code-like communication, he had learned that she definitely was not safe but that she was in Sarton. It was really bothering him, but he was happy that he now at least knew the truth. We went to bed early, in order to be on time and fresh the next day for our task. However, our sleep was disrupted by some kind of shockwave. I did not notice it myself, but that was how Thalmiir and Ferrum described it. Some kind of explosion in the north had caused it. I let Mina fly up and tried to see what it was, but it must have been very far off, at least 80 to 100 kilometres (or about 60 miles) We could not go and investigate now, so after a short message to Olden, who responded even shorter, we went back to bed. 8th of Vilrand There is a lot of speculation about what has happened last night. It could have been anything, really. Burga suspects something happened at the college, but we know that is too closeby for what I had seen. Another theory was the war, but that would be really bad if it was north of Apelés. Whatever it was, Burga proudly stated that "as long as the Crossed Candles stands, I will be there". After a final breakfast, we thank her for her time and say our goodbyes, before once again walking to the Lieutenant. It was quite busy at the outpost. Apparently the pulse that was felt yesterday stirred up quite some things. Olden tells us about what he the strange incident from yesterday: something changed in Old Apelés, the ancient city that fell from the sky. No one has been able to enter it since it fell, but the pulse has changed that. Olden has decided that it is up to us to find what has happened, what caused the sound we heard yesterday and retrieve whatever information or artefacts we might find. If we find a teleportation circle, relaying that information would be most appreciated. But most importantly: Find out why the device went off! We expect the journey there to take about two to three days. However, with Liya's newfound knowledge off the forest, we can do it in about half the time. So, with a bit of luck, we will arrive there halfway the 9th. The forest is dense and quite calming. I can see why Liya likes it here. Still, I am happy that she and Ferrum lead the way, I would have been lost for sure. What was interesting was a group of foreign soldiers that we spotted about halfway through the forest. I could not see clearly, but Liya sneaked there and later told us that they were four of them (three humans and a (half)elf) wearing some kind of armour decorated with red, similar to the decorations often used in and around Sarton. When they first saw her, they were really spooked and pointed out all kinds of weapons at her. But when she inquired about their business so deep in the forest, she learned that they were simply lost after being teleported here by some force? They are on their way to Apelés to ask for help, the south is strange at the moment with the war going on. Liya, being kind as she is, told them the way out of the forest, and they went on their way. They looked kind of confused when we, with Liya traversed past them a few minutes after Liya had left them. Mina has picked up the habit of sitting on Anwyns head when she is tired. Anwyn found it very annoying at first, but now he is okay with it I think. It just looks very funny I suppose, an owl sitting on the head of a horse while riding. The evening is spent in one of the tiny huts, we really must sit close together for it to work properly, but it makes camping quite cosy. You do have to be very careful when keeping watch i have learned. When Thalmiir woke me up for the second watch, he told me that he felt watched and had traversed out of the circle but had not seen anything. Together with Mina, I tried to look out of the hut to see if I would spot anything. I just found Thalmiirs flute that he had left out once again, which i had Mina bring in again. It was very uneasy for a quarter of an hour or so. The forest was so quiet. After this, the regular sounds returned and sometime later I could wake up Liya and get some more rest before tomorrow. 9th of Vilrand. We are awoken by Ferrum who has cooked up a lovely breakfast of our rations. That may sound sarcastic, but I think it was really thoughtful of him. With a positive vibe, we continue our journey towards the old fallen city. Now that we are out of the forest, we see the beauty of the Bountiful Planes once again. The sight has changed a lot since we first rode through them when we were on our way towards Apelés. The cold morning air, the slight mist around the cattle and the seemingly endless rolling hills created a picture seldom seen. Towards noon, we arrive in Pendlefrost. As we drive through the small, but bustling fishing town, we can already see the ruins of Old Apelés over the water. William, excuse me, Mister Co-Corporal William Quickstep, leads the way towards the docks. As we look around and check out the different ships, a lady walks up to us. She introduces herself as Kelly Ryhera, and she is willing to sell us her boat for the fair price of 500 GP. Taken back by this, we tried to negotiate that she might just bring us across the water towards the ruins for a small fee and that she then picks us up again in a day or two. This resulted in a lot of laughter and a 'fun story'. According to Kelly: "a big fucking bird lives there". But we are not taken back by this. With some clever (?) talking, we pay Kelly 500GP as a deposit, and when we return we will get it back. The boat itself is large enough for about eight people. As we enter, we get some helpful tips from Kelly: 1. Do not go overboard. 2. Row with the oars you have. 3. Do not set your sail directly into the wind. With that, our stuff packed into the boat, and the horses in the stable, we set out to go towards the ruins of Old Apelés. With two people rowing, Liya and I are just going to keep a lookout for that bird.

Session notes 21-3-2020
12-14th of Istrith

12th of Istrith This morning, our breakfast was more talking than eating. Thalmiir has had yet another strange dream. This time, he felt like he was being drowned, with all kinds of faces looking at him that were just watching, and always just out of reach. Scary stuff really. We still have no idea what could be causing these strange dreams. And the fact that Thalmiir looks weaker with each night that passes as if he doesn't rest at all, is quite concerning. With this information and our breakfast still in our hands, we make our way to the temple of Moradin to find some guidance. On our way there we discuss what might be causing these dreams. Is it the undead king, angry about the prank calls? Or perhaps Moradin is trying to tell Thalmiir something? Is it the death of Kulragh that is mocking him? By horse, travel is much faster through the city! But walking is nice, there is so much to see in the city, it is however somewhat hard on your calves. At the temple, which is large, and honestly quite imposing, we meet a priest of Moradin called Arnav. Anrav is wearing a type of sturdy priests robes and has a metal pin of some sort in the shape of an anvil with a flame on it pinned over his heart. We explain our situation to him. He can help, if we arrange some compensation of course. For 50 GP he casts the spell Remove Curse on Thalmiir, it sadly does not seem to help. If we want, he can cast Greater Restoration on Thalmiir tomorrow, for the cheap price of 600 GP. We decide to first try and find out ourselves what it is, and thus we thank Anrav for his time and get on to the other tasks of the day. Liya and I join Ferrum on his appointment with Sharon the estate agent. Together, we are going house hunting for a new place for Lieutenant Stuard Dunn! Some quick notes on the houses: House 1: 20-minute walk from the park. Just the ground floor. Neighbours on the second floor. Neighbours tend to be noisy, but kind and are willing to share their drinks. No garden. 1200-1300 GP House 2: 500m (or approximately 1600 ft) from the park Single floor house, with garden. Bit older, and therefore, needs some work. Bit larger than where he lives now. Reparations will take a week or three. With reparations: +-1500 GP House 3: 20-minute walk An apartment in a larger building. Second floor. Narrow stairway. No garden. Smaller than what he has now. 700 GP We all agreed that the second house seemed most ideal, it was, however, a bit more expensive than we had expected. But we promised Sharon we would get back to her in the late afternoon and discuss it with our group, and the Lieutenant. Sharon was more than happy to wait for us and would stick around till the end of the afternoon. Walking back, we had a really nice talk, she has such an energetic personality! Overall, an interesting morning. Liya, Ferrum and I make our way back. It was quite fun, as we were, for the first time, travelling by horse through the city- Which is great actually, as it is really nice to give my legs a rest for a while-. We talked about the fact that it is nice to not have to walk (sorry Ferrum) but also about how Liya has really short legs and has to put two steps for every single step Ferrum sets. Perhaps we could both take one of her hands and swing her, like you sometimes see children being swung between their parents. We entertained the thought for a bit, and talked about how small halfling children must be, and more silly jokes on length. It was a fun bit of horseplay while riding home. During yet another long and talkative lunch, we, first of all, miss William. He just went out early this morning, and we are uncertain of what he is doing, but we suppose he is busy, and hope we will see him this evening. Ferrum tells us not to be worried, William can take care of himself. Erky tells us that he and Thalmiir went to a fortune teller in the south of town. "Elody" was her name? The encounter must have stirred up something in Thalmiir, as he was in deep thought for nearly the entire time we sat down to eat. He did mention something about the smell inside, him burying the sending stone (?) and how the house was very unpleasant. (she had no chairs!) With some questions, we learn that the lady had said something along the lines of "There is someone who you (or we) have not defeated. It is they who do this to you" -the strange dreams that is-. A very cryptic statement. What is concerning is the fact that, next to feeling worse and feeling less healthy, Thalmiir also seems to not regain his ability to cast spells. If I understand correctly, Thalmiir has gotten/gets his strength and powers from his servitude to Moradin. Him not getting these powers back might be a sign of something being off about that? Or perhaps it is just the lack of sleep that is causing that effect. I am not sure how it works. My magic just seems to become more powerful the more I try and learn, but Thalmiir seems to be much more in control of the amount of power he uses when he casts a spell. Still, I know little about it, I can only hope we can help Thalmiir get rid of this as soon as possible. Our theories on the person who is haunting Thalmiir still vary a lot. The Undead King has not been defeated, and we have one of his sending stones. It could be him? Perhaps Kulragh is not really dead, and we have thus not defeated him, and we have his sending stone. It could be him? Gertrude, the hag from the strange manor we visited, we have not defeated her and we took the strange green gem from her. It could be her? It is not a nice feeling to think about people who want to harm you. Thalmiir wants to get a move on, to stop discussing his issue for the time being and continue our days. As we relay the information on the houses we saw this morning, we decide to also give this info to Lieutenant Olden. Lieutenant Olden was, short and direct as ever. He is going to Lieutenant Dunn, and arrange something for the houses. He thanks us, then kindly shooed us out of his office. -funnily we were standing outside discussing our next steps and he had to come back to ask for the address of Stuard--- Lieutenant Dunn-. Still, our minds were still grinding at the issue at hand with Thalmiir. We needed a second opinion. Perhaps another temple might be an option to learning more about this? After getting pushed to a guard by Ferrum - usually, this is done to William. It was a bit unexpected, but I do not mind- to ask about a nearby temple, we are pointed towards the temple of Lathander, the Morning Lord. I thank the guard and we make our way. In the outer castle ward, there is an amazingly large temple. It is made from smooth white stone and embellished with gold and carvings and all. Lathander surely has a strong place of worship here in Apelés. As we enter, a young lady in beautiful robes approaches. The robe has an elegant decoration of a red flag with a golden sun embroidered in the middle. I introduce us shortly and then give the word to Thalmiir, who, once again, explains his situation. How he went to Moradins temple, and a fortuneteller and how they could not provide any answers. The lady, with her friendly and caring demeanour, did show a bit of a smug smile when Thalmiir mentioned that the temple of Moradin had not been able to help. I suppose she just takes a lot of pride in her faith, and a bit of (friendly!) competition between the gods and their followers is not unheard of. She is not able to help us directly, as she is uncertain of what this unknown force would be. The does, however, recommend that if the dreams do not disappear from the Remove Curse spell cast on him earlier, we could come back to get someone to cast a Magic Circle to find out what is causing all this havoc. We thank her for her time and make our way back. Ferrum and I, we had almost forgotten, take a different route and make a quick stop at Sharon's place. She was quite surprised to hear that we had linked her through to the army and that they would arrange the rest of the sale and such. Luckily it was not an issue. We thank her for her time and the nice trip we had in the morning and once again return to the tavern. It was a chilly walk. Fun fact, I think that if it starts freezing in a month or so, that it might be the case that we can get frostbite from touching Ferrum. The metal is quite cold! We had a fun conversation about this and how in Volheim, when it is winter, there was this kind of trend for a while where people would try to lick the metal parts of the lanterns on the streets and get their tongue stuck to them. Naturally, the medics and guards advised people not to do this, which made it even more fun. But anyways we discussed the former during our walk through the streets of Apelés as the sun started to set. Dinner was, weird? Burga started a conversation with us. She was curious about the fact that we were gone so early this morning and just wanted to know a little more about who we are and what we are doing here and such. We realised that we say that we are from the north but only two people actually are? Thalmiir from Volheim and I from Mercia/Jordberg. The others are all from south of Apelés: Sarton, Eekhoorntown, Hethea. Never thought about that. We tend, to have those kinds of revelations quite late. Much like the fact that we call ourselves The Swords of Eluïn, but most of us fight with weapons other than swords. Now we do have them! We just use other things, axes, hammers, spiritual weapons, halberts, bows, pistols or magic. Anyway, off-topic. The rest of the evening is calm as we prepare to keep watch over Thalmiir as he sleeps. Hoping to spot the thing or person that is bothering him. Okay, it was nearly my time to wake up, when we all woke up from a shot from Pipa - Erky's gun- Liya and I looked at each other and ran to the room next door to find out what was going on. Here we found almost the whole gang together, along with Burga. Somehow, she is always dressed in her regular clothing, no matter the time. But that was not the point, the point was the gunshot hole in the wall, she was nearly steaming! and wanted 60GP for the repairs. Tired as I was, after the initial rush from waking up had passed, I was already walking towards my room to get some money when I heard Thalmiir say he would fix it and he started casting Mending on the wall. This seemed to calm her a bit. She urged us to never do that again and exited the room. Immediately, we ask what the reason for the shot was, and why it was in the wall and not in the body of the thing it was aimed at. Erky explained that he had seen Gertrude, the creepy hag. One of our theories was right all along. The annoying thing, however... the bullet went right through her, so she might return. She almost certainly will, now that we have angered her once again. At the moment I am writing this, we are just trying to sleep once again. But I do not really feel that tired anymore. About half an hour ago, after we had slept for 20-25 minutes, there was again noise from Erky and Thalmiirs room. We heard Ferrum bashing about and after sprinting there, we arrive just in time to see him try to bear hug the air. He nearly fell atop of Thalmiir, who is still sleeping. It is at this point that someone says 'magic does not work!'. Erky is the only one who can see her, using his spell to see the invisible. Suddenly, Ferrum just picks up Thalmiir and runs out. As soon as he wakes up, Erky points at the floor and his look told me that Gertrude is either following or fleeing. Liya, William and I are a bit helpless as we cannot see her. So William and I make our way after Ferrum. We find them outside. A few deep breaths of fresh air later, we decide to try a different tactic. I will cast the new spell I bought when we just arrived here, Leomunds Tiny Hut. I was a bit uncertain about it at first, as this one looked a lot more complex than the other spells I have learned to cast as a ritual. The circle was a lot more intricate but it worked out just fine! It was just strange that everyone had to sit so closeby. And now, we are once again trying to sleep. Mina and Ferrum are staying awake to keep watch. 13th of Istrith. It is late in the morning when writing this, the night could not have been interrupted more than it did, I really needed the sleep. But about last night: An hour or two after we had all drifted away for the third time, I felt a presence entering the Tiny Hut I had created. It was the strangest feeling ever. Anyways, I quickly notified Ferrum and we woke everyone up. Erky once again used his spell to see the invisible hag. However, this time Thalmiir manages to cast 'Dispel Magic' on her, and she appears for all of us to see! It is in the next 5-10 seconds or so that this strange lady is simply obliterated. It went so fast that I could barely make out what everyone did, I heard an arrow go, and saw the flashing of Williams smiting hits and I had a moment where I felt she was casting something but I could not counter her magic. She disappeared for a second only to then appear again and fall dead to the ground. There was a large sigh of relieve, and suddenly, we all felt how tired we actually were. It was that Burga that swung open the door once again. - only to be met with the strange dark blue outside of the Tiny Hut.- and demanded to know what was going on. Thalmiir simply held the head of the hag outside the circle marking the hut, and we saw her give a small nod. The only response is 'more on this tomorrow' and she is gone once again. It was at this point we finally got a good nights rest. Now it is nearly noon, and I think that I have only heard Liya wake up. Breakfast was, well breakfast was lunch. Burga wanted to know the story behind the corpse in her tavern, completely understandable. We tell her the 5-minute version of how we found a strange house, with a stranger gem and even stranger lady. That this lady nearly killed us, and that we in return had tried to kill her, which had not worked out, and that she was then angry at us for taking the gem and thus given Thalmiir bad dreams and was slowly killing him, and that we now had killed her to stop her from doing that. She nods. Takes it all in, and kindly asks if we will: 1. pay for the following nights, and 2. dispose of the body properly. We immediately do the first (somewhat surprised that we are not being kicked out) when she says that for an extra gold she will get rid of it. We looked at each other, I hand her two extra gold and thank her. Burga seems content as long as we pay. We also found some things on Gertrude: A strange black gem that emanates a dull light. After focussing on its properties we learn that it is called a heartstone and it can cure any disease. It was also the thing that caused hag to become invisible or actually ethereal. A curious item! Another item was a bag of worn black leather which is a soul bag. This bag can be used to carry an evil soul but is currently empty. After a groggy breakfast/lunch, we decide to make our way to Lieutenant Olden, and on our way there we are approached by a soldier who tells us we should go and see Olden. Such good timing. At his office, we are told that we should keep the following three weeks free, and make sure we are around in the city, as someone will need help moving. The army has bought house #2 from our list and is planning on renovating it in the following weeks. We are appointed to help Lieutenant Dunn move his stuff sometime during that final week -probably the 6th of Vilrand-. The Lieutenant seemed fairly pleased with the fact that Lieutenant Dunn is returning to the army. That meant our first task was completed! Before we were dismissed, we asked Lieutenant Olden a few questions concerning our position and tasks in the army. Would there be another task in the following days before the move of Lieutenant Dunn? Could it be possible to get access to the library as a member of the army? The answers to these questions were 'possibly' and a 'no'. If an interesting task comes up, we will be notified. To get access to the library, we will simply have to pay. There are however a few who do have access: Soldier Ian Rost and Sergeant Jennifer Arcten. They have access for army research purposes. But also for them, the 2000GP entry fee was paid. We thank the Lieutenant for his time once again and walk out. We still have almost the entire afternoon to spend. While Thalmiir makes his way back to the Crossed Candles, William continues working on his amulets and Liya decides to spend her afternoon in the park, Ferrum and I decide to take Erky shopping for a bit. Ferrum and he browse the shelves for some interesting items, but eventually just buy a very nice set of health potions. After this, Erky makes his way back to the tavern as well, to also continue working on his drawings. I as Ferrum if he cares to join me on my way to the university to find Chef, the tiefling boy with all the tattoos. I really want to start expanding the small mark I have on my arm! He agrees and together we stretch our legs during the walk there. Chef was not hard to find. He kind of stands out. We chat a bit, Ferrum introduces himself and we make our way to his studio. The place was quite nice and clean, and the walls were full of amazing drawings! I clean his workspace with a bit of magic, which to my surprise surprises him a lot. His reactions are a bit strange sometimes, I am not sure he is just that chill or he is getting some herbal help with that. However, he kindly explains the procedure to me and takes out the drawing we made -well he made it, I just gave some feedback- a few days ago to discuss what part to do first. As I have never done this before, I ask him to just start with a simple band around the three points I have now, just to see how it feels. Overall, the procedure took about 20 minutes. Which is good cause if it had taken much longer my arm would have 'had some issues' as Chef says it. The band around it was really tight, that is why. Still, the whole thing did not hurt a lot, until that band came off. It was when the blood started flowing again that I started to feel the pain. It was not that bad, but it was just, yeah very annoying. My arm felt al stingy and swole up a lot. But as Ferrum wisely said, that is something William or Thalmiir can help with at home. I got a piece of cloth with alcohol on it to cool the spot for a while, after which I thanked Chef and paid him (only like 2 silver he wanted) for his work. (which was very neat, I can see he has gotten a lot of practice on his own skin, also apparently it was easier to tattoo me than himself. To quote him: "wooooohhoo this is so much easier on someone else.") Anyhow, we thank him, say goodbye and return to the Crossed Candles. At the crossed candles, we tell each other about our days. William showed us the pretty amulets he had made. They are representations of all the outer planes, and he explains a bit about them and the symbols that they have. It is quite interesting. I also explain what happened to my arm. - and at this point, William heals it for a bit (half-elf buddies haha)-. I think I will return to Chef once this has healed up a bit more. He said that there is often a week between the sessions, but with Williams magic, the place already feels a lot better. So perhaps in a day or 2? Anyways, the mood this evening was really good. The only strange thing was that Burga was a bit mad about someone having peed (?!) on the body of the hag? I had no knowledge of this, but it is was not discussed any more as we were informed that it had been dealt with. The rest of the evening was calm and cosy. We talked a bit and felt very relieved that the hag was now gone, that we had completed our first task and just all had a really relaxed afternoon. The evening ended with a nice sleepover party in Williams and Ferrums room inside a tiny hut.

Session notes 15-3-2020
10th to 12th of Istrith

10th of Istrith As we wait for an assignment from Lieutenant Olden -or the chance to go and fight in a pit- we all take a day for ourselves in Apelés. I make my way back to Lady Anrath's Arsenal for another spell scroll. I had once read about it and thought, if someone has it, it would be Anrath. With all the items she has for sale it must be there somewhere. So I made my way there this morning and asked her about it. I kept my visit short, we talked a bit on how I got started with ritual casting. She advised me to avoid buying the cheapest components for these castings, as there less in quality can be unpleasant to work with and be less powerful in use. I, therefore, bought some incense, and charcoal from her, to ensure I had everything to get started when I got back at the tavern. I took the rest of the morning and afternoon to copy the text into my grimoire with the fancy inks that Ferrum had bought for me when we were in Baferton. Casting the spell was interesting, it was strange to see a creature appear in front of me. The little fellow is a small owl and it was really great to watch through its eyes when it was flying. The city looks so beautiful from above, you can see the shoreline and the forest and the castle that is so much larger than I had expected. It was quite a sight to see! I still have to think of a name for him... That evening we gather in the tavern to eat together and everyone tells about their days. Thalmiir went to Morradins temple that is in the Guild District. He told us it was a beautiful temple, quite large and decorated with tapestries and all. He spent his time praying there before heading to a forge to help out and to refresh his skills a bit after the three weeks on the road. I think its good for him to have his mind on something completely else after these few weeks. Ferrum and William went to the Artisans District, looking for a tinkerer. Turns out they were not very lucky. However, they did find a smaller library and found some interesting books which they have started to copy. Ferrum enthusiastically tells us about the axe-wielding techniques he read about and how he wants to try them tomorrow if possible. William was a bit more contemplative this evening but he showed us some copies from a book on light-crossbows and how to use them. Liya goes to the university, like Ferrum and William, she is looking for knowledge. Liya will have to return tomorrow to talk to a man called Theodore Mckinney, a teacher of the history of magic? Afterwards, she spent some time with the silver rapier she got from Kulragh, just to get a feeling for fighting with the shield and new weapon. Curious, I did not know what Liya's university visit was about, but after dinner, she told us that she is looking for information on concentration crystals. Thalmiir immediately calls the Keepers to ask about these kinds of artefacts. He relays that there are very little if none left in the world, as they were almost all destroyed during the same event 'Old' Apelés fell. (possibly because it was held up by one of those crystals Liya cleverly noted) Anyways, but they are seldom found and there is none in the care of the Keepers at the moment. After this short history lesson, we turn our attention back to Liya. Why does she need these crystals? With a new beer on the table, she tells us about the place she comes from: Sarton. The city is built upon an active volcano, and the mages -that founded the university that we are so intrigued by here in Apelés- are keeping it under control using their magic. A concentration crystal would, therefore, be very useful for them, as they would not have to keep their focus on the castings of their spells to keep the city safe. What did not completely clear during this conversation was why exactly they sent Liya to do this for them, or why she kept saying her trip was to sell her families ale. I remember she said something along the lines of 'So that my family can keep doing what they do'. Sounds cryptical, it's an equivocal statement.. does she simply mean that with this Sarton will stay safe from the volcanoes rage, or is she talking about her family specifically? I surely hope that she is not being blackmailed or something. Well, maybe I am thinking about it too much. Anyhow, it is nice to know what she is on the road for and that she decided to trust us with this! Oh, I almost forgot! I showed my new tiny owl companion to my friends and together we thought of the name Mina (or Mhynaeh, for it to match the difficulty of the spelling of my name! -nice joke Thalmiir-) But Mina it is, I hope she is here to stay. 11th of Istrith I woke up today from a somewhat distressed message from Thalmiir... it really sounded like he had had a very rough night. - I now know what it feels like when someone suddenly speaks in your head, I can see why some may find it unsettling.- During breakfast, Thalmiir explains what his message was about: He had a really bad dream, and frankly, he did look quite tired. His dream was a strange vision of him floating over the world and looking down at the planet. Sounds somewhat peaceful, until he starts talking about how the planet starts exploding and breaking off into different pieces, after which the stars start going out one by one. When all was dark, he woke up. Sending the message was the first response to check if the world was okay. Somewhat flattering that he chose to send me a message, but the reason is a bit unnerving. We suspect it was the amount of alcohol we had the evening before and agree to take it a little easier tonight. Our conversation is interrupted by Burga delivering a letter to Thalmiir from lieutenant Barry Olden. As she gives him the letter, Ferrum leans over and inquires about the fight that is supposed to happen tonight, and who he needs to contact later today. She quietly explains that there will be a man here after sunset who she will point him to if he is here. A few meaningful nods later and Burga returns to her work. The letter from the lieutenant simply states that we should report ourselves at the recruitment centre today for a task. Excitedly we make our way towards the recruitment centre, where we learn that our task is to recruit Stuard Dunn. Dunn is a retired lieutenant who was a masterful tactician, who the army want back for the current fight in Sarton. He has, until now, ignored all letters and messages sent to him so now we must approach him personally. He lives in the Outer Castle Ward in a small house. Thalmiir is handed a note with the exact address written on it, which he hands to his co-corporal William, to guide us the way. Before we go, we are all given an insignia, a simple silver badge with a symbol of a shield with two crossed swords behind it, as a sign that we are part of the military. The Castle Ward is a relatively fancy place in Apelés, we make our way there and quickly spot an elderly dwarf in the garden of the address that William guided us to. The man is walking around with a book in his hands and collecting leaves to press them between the pages. As he sees us approach, he immediately knows what we are here for and he is not having it. After a somewhat tough conversation, we learn that Stuard might reconsider returning if lieutenant Olden himself for once came and ask him to return to his post. Additionally, he would like to live closer to the park (The Tranquil Gardens) in the west of the city. Thalmiir relays this to lieutenant Olden. He will try and pull some strings to get this sorted out. Without much more conversation with Stuard, Thalmiir promptly starts a conversation with the neighbours of Stuard: Betsy and Tyran Simmins. It would have been nice if we had known the idea behind this endeavour, but more about that later. This lovely elderly couple was more than happy to tell us about, well yeah anything really. They were very open and offered us tea and stories. Some useful things they told about Stuard, were that he goes for long walks towards the Gardens in the west, that he has served the military for many years and that he has been retired for almost 70 years now. Honestly, I can sort of understand Stuard for not wanting to return, but I can also see why he might be a powerful asset to the military. We thank the Simmins for their warm welcome, and make our separate ways for the afternoon, in the hope to cover more ground. Liya still has to return to the university to talk to one of the professors she has scheduled a meeting with. William and Ferrum suggest they go to the Western park to see if there may be any suitable houses available for Stuard. Finally, our trusted corporal Thalmiir tells us that he wants to find out if Stuard has any comrades left, and thus plans to go towards the archive. I join Thalmiir in a search for some more info on Stuard and who he served with during his time. We hope to find some old friends that may help convince him to return. During our walk there, I have a conversation with Thalmiir about his new position as corporal, about how his communication is concerning that position, but also about his strange dream, and how he is feeling about it. Overall a hearty conversation during a somewhat long walk. As we finally arrive at the archive, we find ourselves in a large building. There are several rows of people waiting in front of some desks behind which some clerk is sitting. A short wait, some explaining and a show of our brand-new insignia later, we are given the following information: Comrades of Lieutenant Steward Dunn: Masha, Angie, Alexander and Leonard. The lady behind the desk looks in the files for us and advises us to go to Alexander, an elderly half-elf who lives in the Southern Ward. And thus, we made our way there. A short stop is made at Barry Olden at the recruitment centre to relay the information we gathered to him. He tells us he is currently working on getting some info on possible housing in the west of the city. It was a short meeting. A few more miles and some even sorer calves later, we arrive at the address provided to us in the archive: Alexanders address. Alexander is an affable man. As we are explaining the situation at hand, he invites us inside his small house. The house is in size quite similar to that of Stuard, possibly these are houses provide to them as a 'thank you' for their service? This assumption is proven right during our conversation with him. His words: "You get a small place for yourself and are then quickly forgotten". Over an hour or two, Alexander tells us about his past, his injury - he is missing a leg- and what his relationship with Stuard was like. During the first item on that list, we walked past his wall with a beautiful silver saber hanging from it, along with a large collection of medals and insignias. Alexander apparently quickly worked his way up in the army ranks, as we spot an emblem signifying a Lieutenant. He has stopped visiting Stuard due to the second item, his leg simply does not allow the long trip anymore. They were never close, but sharing the stories from the past formed a bond between the two. We learn that Stuard has always been a bit of a loner, never telling too much about himself to others. He also has no direct family, and he joined the army after his parents died relatively young. Up until this point, the conversation had been quite light-hearted. Alexander is open about his life and what he knows of Stuard and he freely asks us some questions about what we do and how we got this job and such. However, when we ask about any important events that might be useful to know when approaching Stuard again, Alexanders face becomes grimmer. He explains that, as a lieutenant, you have a lot of men 'under' you. Stuard was responsible for a lot of people during several fights. One of those was near Asyut, during a rebellion between the different social classes. It was not a fair or just fight, but the army was used to simply 'erase' the poor. This caused a lot of (moral) conflict among the army members and Stuard, who was responsible for them. The weight of the lives taken, and lives lost still weighs heavy on him and we see that Alexander is also not unphased by this story. After carefully returning the conversation to a bit of small talk, we thank Alexander for his time and stories. Tired, both mentally and physically, we make our way back to the Crossed Candles. At the Crossed Candles we are immediately greeted by our fellow party members. Their afternoons were filled with conversations as well. Liya spoke to professor Mckinney, Ferrum and William to Sharon the estate agent and Erky talked to a group of students about their exams. Liya has a lot of papers with her, full of notes. She tells us that the man was so passionate about the subject and that he just kept going after she asked him about the concentration crystals. I have not thoroughly read her notes, but she told us that there are three theories on how to create concentration crystals. They are: Creating one using a long, long list of ingredients, finding one and reenchanting it, or finally the myth surrounding the elder elementals and how their hearts would together be a very strong spell focus which could function as a concentration crystal like no other. Liya looked like she was still taking in all the info she got that afternoon and askes William and Ferrum if they had any luck finding a house near the park. They did find an estate agent, a human lady called Sharon. They have to get back tomorrow, but there is probably a house available approximately a 30-minute walk away from the park. Not ideal, but a lot closer compared to where Stuard is living now. Hopefully, Sharon can find some more houses that fit the criteria William and Ferrum set. (Elderly person, relatively small, preferably a garden and finally, the same price as the army normally pays for housing for retired employees) We can only wait. Shortly after we have finished ordering our dinner, Burga and an unknown man approach Ferrum. The somewhat small man simply asks Ferrum, "So you are the guy who wants to fight?". The answer is "Yes". The man introduces himself as Jonny. He talks fast and explains the rules and options for the fight tonight. It is quite clear, you can fight with or without weapons, but magic is never allowed. Ferrum decides to go for a round with axes and swords involved, whereas William would like to try a fist-only fight. We finish our dinner and follow Jonny to a small house close to the edge of the city, we walk right around towards the barn behind it, where we already here a lot of voices talking excitedly. Inside the barn, it is warm and humid. It is busy, and there is some kind of energetic vibe to the place. Bad beer is being sold for a copper piece a pint and bets can be placed on the fights. Ferrum is up first, against "Dikke" (it means "Fatty" in common). This man is a bulk of muscle. He doesn't wear any armour other than a few leather straps over his torso and some studded pants. He does have a metal helmet and looks quite strong. However, we are betting on Ferrum to kick his ass! Naturally, we are actually betting on him. Sjaak the gambler was more than happy to take our money. I always learned that it is unwise to place bets, but even Thalmiir was doing it! He is the wisest among us, and he was right because, in the end, we won! The fight was intense, they seemed quite matched in strength at first. Ferrum shocked his opponent and the audience when he pulled and threw the shield from his hands. But. it got really scary when Ferrum had dropped his fancy new great axe and his opponent picked it up and wielded it like it was made for him specifically, hitting Ferrum back very hard. But, in the end, our friend prevailed! It was a glorious fight and a lot of sportsmanship was shown afterwards. Next up was William. In his full armour, he stood against a man with protection similar to mine. Again, bets are placed, and the fight begins. The hits and blows that were given by both William and his opponent were strong. For a short moment, it looked like William was going to collapse after a few sharp hits to the ribs. However, he recovered and with two solid touches to the stomach and chin, he won! Again, some healing was done and respects were given by both fighters, very courteous. . Jonny seemed impressed with us after these fights (I say 'us' but it is really William and Ferrum he was interested in) and asked us if we might return for another round someday? And well, yes, probably we will return, if new items or fancy belts need testing or if the boredom strikes. (I doubt that the latter will happen anytime soon because there is still so much to see here) We thank Jonny for the evening, and Sjaak for the betting and make our way out of the barn. With some new cash on hands, we slowly walk back to the tavern to have a proper glass of ale. Thalmiir turns in early, hoping to catch up some sleep from last night. The rest of us stick around for Ferrum to give us a round. We toast on ourselves and then make our way to bed, where I decided to write all this down before actually going to sleep.

Session notes 8-3-2020
16th of Iasluin to 10th of Istrith

17th of Iasluin The next morning is better. We have had some conversations about our actions, have seen the people travel towards Baferton and we hope and think they will find a new way of living there. With the coin given by Thalmiir, they should be able to get by for a while. Now that Thalmiir has finished his quest, he really has to think about what is next for him. We are all a bit lost on what to now, we have spent the past 3 weeks focussed on Kulragh, the convoys and the raids. After having travelled back and forth from Baferton to Hibee, we are keen to see someplace new. After a short discussion on what to do next, we decide to go south, towards the war. We are all curious about Apelés, the capital of Jurtal -Well, sort of together with Volheim, no one is really certain about it- but Apelés certainly has a certain allure with its large university and interesting location. I know little more of Apelés, but Ferrum told us that it has approximately 2-2.5 million inhabitants, which is really cool, but what was even more interesting was what he told about the location of the city. I knew that it was situated on a sort of island, but apparently that is 'New Apelés'. Before the city was on the island, it was on a floating archipelago, next to where the isle of 'New' Apelés is now. It is possible that from the first bridge that we will cross in twenty days or so, we will be able to see the ruins from the 'Old' Apelés. According to Ferrum, 'Old' Apelés fell down 2000-3000 years ago. It is like I read in the stories at home: when the mage wanted to slay a god to become one himself. That had some consequences, but I never thought i would see one for myself after all this time. I am quite excited to go. 18th of Iasluin This afternoon Thalmiir tried to use the Sending stone that we found on Kulragh. We do not know what it links to, but we hope to get a response soon. 19th of Iasluin Today we are - once again- back in Baferton. We pay our mercenaries, and give them the handcuffs from Mortel and tell them to tell the guards about Kulraghs camp. We together pack our things, get some food for ourselves and the horses and continue on our merry ways. Towards Chepstow we go. 20-21-23rd of Iasluin The days go slow, travel is fast by horse but it gets boring after a while. The scenery does not change a lot, just plains and sometimes a bit of a hill. Every now and then, I think I can see the sea? 24-25-26th of Iasluin We talk a bit about our travels, about why we went on our way in the first place. I tell the party a bit about myself, and how I should be in law school right now. It is a fun game of 'what is your biggest secret?'. Thalmiir and I share a moment when we say that we have been wandering around without a roof over our heads for a while. It's all fun and games. Liya is surprisingly quiet, we get little out of her. Perhaps its the mood from not having a drink in almost a month, but she seemed to handle that quite well overall. She is just a bit secretive for someone who we have been around and about with for almost four months now. Anyways, we make our way as the horses' feet across the street and we softly hear Ferrum recite the words Giant he is learning. (which is good, because it helps me refresh my knowledge a bit) 28th of Iasluin As the new moon rises, we approach Chepstow. This small city is mostly farmers and farmland. We pick up a few rumours about the war and how almost 20 per cent of Sarton's lands have been taken by now. Luckily -well as lucky as a war can be- there are little casualties. An interesting fact. We do not stay long in this town, Apelés calls. 1st of Istrith Another month has gone, Autumn is on its way. 2nd of Istrith I had a short conversation with Ferrum and Thalmiir concerning the source of my power. I had told them about the Bard a few days earlier, but they seemed to know a bit more about it than I had expected. They could tell me that the Bard is a minor Deity, and does not often 'stick around', he mostly intervenes when things go south and then is back on his merry way, but somehow I have had some kind of contact with him for the past five months or so. Very interesting. They advise me to check the Bard's College in Apelés, the Bard seems to have a connection with them. 3-4th of Istrith Thalmiir has been calling with the Sending stone for the entire journey. There have been some responses, but always from a different person. We are almost certain that it is the Undead King, but we had not expected that he would have an entire sending-centre like the Keepers have (as Thalmiir told us). But still, quite interesting. The other side of the stone got annoyed with us on the fifth day or so, and the responses have become shorter and shorter ever since. They asked us to stop sending. hahah 5th of Istrith. We have arrived at the northern bridge of Apelés which is called 'The Golden Crossing'. The bridge is very long, and protected by large metal gates. As we step towards the gates, - in line there are quite some people going in and out of the city- we are stopped by the guards. They asked about our business and Thalmiir showed his little badge/sending thingy and they let us through. There is a lot of curious folks who want to cross the bridge, from mercenaries to salesmen and here and there a few travellers like us. Ferrum is stopped for a moment, but William quickly joins the conversation and does the explaining after which we can all continue. After passing through three or four doors we are finally on the bridge. The wind feels different and we can almost see Apelés from here! As we continue our way, looking at the other people here, the structure of the bridge and the many many towers situated on this bridge, Ferrum points towards a small hill in the water on our left. The hill that we saw there is the 'old' Apelés he told about! It is quite far away, but interesting to know its origins none the less! The bridge goes on for a kilometre or so, with towers ever 50m. This is a solid bridge. 6-7th of Istrith We were further from Apelés than I thought. The following days we walk through 'The Bountiful Planes', a patch of hilly fertile land on which most of Apelés goods are cultivated. Here was pass through a few small villages. We have a few beers and actually sleep in a bed for once! It was really nice to not have to sleep in a bedroll for the first time in twenty days. 8th of Istrith Today we finally arrived in Apelés! And oh was it worth the journey! We enter the city through the northern gate of the university. The buildings are huge and all very decorated, it is quite a sight to see. Several high towers with pointed tops stand on this huge campus site. Honestly, it is a bit overwhelming but very exciting. We make our way over the university grounds, towards the heart of the city. Thalmiir leads us the way towards one of the safehouses of the Keepers, in the west of the city. It is somewhat of a stroll, but the scenery is a lot more interesting than the past few weeks. It is very lifely on the streets. At this safehouse, Thalmiir drops off the strange stone he obtained from the house in which we fought the doll and the strang hag. Apparently it is called 'The Leachers Emerald'. This strange artefact is stored beneath a house that looks normal at first but is a gateway to a large underground safekeeping cellar. I was surprised that we could enter without an issue. Ferrum also drops something off, the arm of Copper M54. The lady taking these artefacts was curious to find out that it contains a soul. Still, also this was carried past some heavy doors, perhaps never to be seen again. Both of them got 200 GP for the items, time to spend that money here! We make our way back to the city streets, and decide to find a place to sleep tonight. Our eyes fall upon the Crossed Candles, a somewhat fancy place near the university. The owner, Burga is more than happy to help us get a room, and find a nice place to shop for some magical items! Anrath's Arsenal. Anrath's Arsenal is some sight to be seen! The high elf almost literally has - or can get- everything you can imagine. Spell scrolls, magic weapons, rings, armour. All of it. Thanks to Thalmiir's money, we together buy the following things: Ferrum: Belt of Hill Giant Strength Thalmiir: Ring of Spell Storing Nimueh: Ring of Shielding and a scroll for Leomunds Tiny Hut Overall, we -Thalmiir- put down a lot of money for this. I also gave the gem that I got from the mines under Conwy. But we got a nice deal out of it. Excitedly, we make our way back to the Crossed Candles. Back at the tavern, we meet Liya. She has spent her afternoon in the park and has bought a shield for herself. The reason we are here is not all shopping and fun, we have things to do. We want to do something for the country, but prevent ourselves from going in without a plan, we decided to go to the authorities or the army to ask for a task. Burga points us to the army outpost a little ways from the city centre where we can enrol for the army if we wish. Together we make our way there and enquire about a task a squad with our 'skills' might be able to do for the army. We are a bit of a strange group and after the soldier has taken down our names, he kindly asks us to return tomorrow after he has time to enquire higherups about a task for us. And thus we make our way back to the tavern, for a calm evening after all the impressions from the city. The evening is spent going to separate bathhouses. (Except for Ferrum, who stays at the tavern because bathhouses are no fun for him. Perhaps we should just take him along someday and see what happens, maybe it is fun regardless of the possible rust) Thalmiir, Erky and William make their way to the fanciest place Burga could point them to. We see them later that evening wearing fancy bathrobes, fully shaved and armour polished. Never that relaxed in their entire lives. It is quite different from a few weeks ago. Liya and I make our way to the student version of a bathhouse establishment. I want to get some intel on this university, where I could perhaps have studied if things had gone differently. We meet several students, two who are studying singing and painting, a wizard student from the school of evocation who just had his last exam and a young man who looks so battered that he must be from one of the more physical schools. Overall, we all have a nice time, come home relaxed and have a good nights sleep. 9th of Istrith I have never woken up so relaxed. This morning, the rest of the party makes their way to the army outpost once again, whereas I go towards the university. I want to find someone who can make tattoos, I want something to match the tattoo I got from the Bard. I found a Tiefling man who has tattoos all over and I just stoke up a conversation with him. He told me a lot about his artwork and how he did all his ink on his own, it was quite interesting. I asked him to help me design something for me and we sat down together to make a drawing. It became better than I could have ever done it myself! During lunch, we reconvene and tell each other about what we did in the morning. Apparently Thalmiir has become Corporal, and we have all become his subordinate soldiers. It is quite cool. William is Co-Corporal, just in case anything were to happen to Thalmiir. In a few days, we will be called or reached out to for a first task. I suspect they will test us a bit, but we can only wait. When I tell Ferrum about the tattoo, he asks if we can go again. Once again we make our way to the university, this time to find a teacher, preferably known in the language of the giants. After some questions and some asking around, we find a human man named Carlo, a teacher of the Basic Arts. He can help Ferrum create a design for his engravings. Finally, we make our way to the library. Ferrum has something he needs to find. Sadly, we are not allowed into the library, as we are not students here. (and a year of studying is 2000gp, a little over our current budget). To at least help Ferrum a bit, I try to get in by being a bit of a smooth-talker and saying I forgot my card, to no avail. However, thanks to a kind student called Mary Strain (card number 1714237) whose card I could borrow I could get in. Ferrum had given me a few names to research and with some help from one of the library employees I was able to find some things. (I told him telepathically that I was inside but apparently the feeling of someone talking in your mind is a bit odd, at least he did not seem to enjoy it, I'm sorry Ferrum) What was interesting in the library was that I sensed that there was a lot of Illusion magic behind the place where I was sitting sifting through the books. I wrote most of the notes I made in my other journal so that it was easy to pass on to Ferrum. After a long afternoon with a lot of books, I found some information. Not a lot sadly, I think that my days without studying may be affecting my research skills. I think we should return some other day and continue the search. This evening is calm, most of us stay at home in our rooms at the Crossed Candles. We exchange some info on what we did today or what we plan to do tomorrow, talk about what we think about Apelés and imagine what tasks we may get from Lieutenant Barry Olden. -They talked to someone really high up the ladder this morning- Overall a calm evening. There is noise coming from where Thalmiir and Erky are staying. A door opening violently, a splash and some cheering. Then we hear Ferrum sprinting to the hallway - later I learn this was with axes drawn-, only to find it was the Lieutenant and two of his men, coming to inaugurate Thalmiir with some beer. Now he is truly a Corporal.

Session notes 23-2-2020
12-16 Iasluin

12th of Iasluin After a good nights rest at the Gouden Soeplepel, we plan to make our way towards the outpost we learned about the past two weeks. However, before we make the journey, we decide to hire some... more experienced mercenaries for our trip to Thalmiir's enemy, Kulragh. During our trip to one of the pubs, we realise that: one, we are still carrying 100 pounds of salt, and two: it might be smart to have someone guide us through the area. Perhaps one of the people we handed over? Thalmiir and Ferrum go their way and sell the salt for a small price to a very surprised salesman who can pickle and salt things for the rest of his life. After this, we make our way to the guard post, where we try to pick up one of the guys to guide us to their former outpost. After some convincing and some bargaining, we can buy one free if we pay bail of 25gp, which we will get back when we return him. When he spots us, he is certainly not happy to see us, as I heard him say something that sounded like 'please put me back in the cell'. Thalmiir, however, seems quite determined to take this man, who we learned is called Mortel Levi, along with us. He takes him and brings him back to the Gouden Soeplepel. Without Thalmiir, we make our way to the pub where we find a group of men who would want to go with us on our mission. They seem well-traversed and quite eager to go. And for the nice price of 1 gp per day, we are sold on them. They are: Silvestro Dicarzeti, Rolf Voold, Acnor orchs and Robert Casy. We meet tomorrow before dawn, around 6 at the northern gate. As we all slowly make our way back to the Gouden Soeplepel, we spread out a bit. I make a short walk with William, before splitting off to buy some rations for our group. When arriving back at the Gouden Soeplepel -almost simultaneously with Ferrum- it was a curious thing to see that everyone was present in Thalmiir's room, playing cards with Mortel. The sight seems nice enough, until you glance a second time, and see that Mortel is tied up, with Thalmiir's hammer on his foot. Strange. I feel like, now that we are closer to Thalmiir's goal of defeating this man and finding his lost family members, he is acting a bit differently. He is harsher, less patient and overall a bit more intimidating. I am not sure why... I just hope he is okay. We talked about what happened the past few weeks during our travels from and to Higbee. Apparently, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time when the attack happened. It is actually quite sad, I do really hope his family is okay, and that Thalmiir gets some rest and peace of mind after we finish this endeavour. We have a calm and comfortable night at de Gouden Soeplepel. Sisadi is a bit weirded out that we are seemingly going back and forth being villages, but he is too busy to pay much mind to it. Business is going quite well for him! During the evening, Ferrum proudly shows us what he bought in Baferton this afternoon: a great axe. He has called it "usypleniye" (?) (усыпление). I am not quite sure what it means or on what language it is, I will ask him on the way. 13th of Ialsuin Its early morning, and we meet our hired forces with our horses -or pony- at the northern gate. We have taken Mortel with us, so he can tell us about the camp and the patrols and such. He seems to be a bit more relaxed, but not that much. I am not sure what Thalmiir may have said to him? As we once again travel on the road between Baferton and Higbee, we pass one of the ambush spots Thalmiir and I had spotted on our first way there. There is no one there, for now. We decide to spend our first night a bit past this first ambush spot. By keeping watch in turns, we prevent two scouts from going unnoticed. They were sneaking up on us, but were spotted by one of us. The battle, if one may call it that, was quick. One of the scouts was killed by a sweep from Ferrum's new weapon, whereas the other one was quickly bound by William and taken back to our camping spot. Ferrum and I decide to bury the scout that was killed, in order to give him at least an acceptable resting place. Together, we had done this soon enough, and with stone and his sword atop the ground we left him to his final resting place. I am not sure about how I felt at this point. I wish that... I don't know, that he would have made other choices in life, in a way, much like us. What if... yeah not sure. 16th of Iasluin We have travelled further with the mercenaries and our now two captives: Mortel and Charly, Charly being the half-orc scout we.. acquired a few days ago. During the past few days, we have devised a plan for when we arrive at the fort. We will split up into two groups, one entering from the south, the other walking into the camp disguised (me) while carrying a bottle with a spell that William prepared. If I shatter the bottle or reveal the little stone inside, a blob of magical darkness will spring from it. I will then shoot one of my blasts up into the sky as a kind of flare. During all this, I will be shadowed by Liya. We must then eliminate the tower with the ballista atop of it. All while we somehow catch Kulragh. It is quite an endeavour. It's late when we arrive at the fort. Dusk is already setting in, as we start our plan. I change myself to look like Charly, and walk towards the gate with a faked sense of security. I get in without any issue, walk towards the middle of the encampment, release the darkness, shoot up one of the strange bright yellow-orange blasts and jump towards where I remembered the tent to be - out of the darkness and instantly changing into Liya, to look smaller. As I hear the people of the small village(?) run towards the bulb of darkness, I hope that the others have seen the blast and are on their way. I do not see Liya anywhere, but that is nothing new, she has been hard to spot for a few weeks now, not sure how she does that. Back to the issue at hand. There is a lot of movement in the camp now, and as my comrades climb over the wall, and go towards the tent. Our hired forces take the other tower with ease, as I run towards the tower with the ballista on top of it. This ballista had a great aim, as I got hit twice by it. At first, I was just planning to hit the tower, but after I got shot by it I decided to hurl another bottle of alchemists fire at the ballista, and thus also the men operating it. To do this I had climbed up a cage, which contained two of the dire wolfs that we had probably seen earlier during the trip with the convoy. Later I learned that, while I was doing this, Thalmiir, Erky, Ferrum and William had entered the tent in which we expected Kulragh to be. While Liya helped the squad of hired mercenaries take out the archers on the other tower. Kulragh was found in the tent, from which he tried to flee. Thalmiir used a spell to try and keep him bound, and the four men (well, dwarf, half-elf, gnome and warforged) quickly overwhelmed him. When I arrived, after running and healing a bit, Thalmiir had already walked out of the tent, seemingly in frustration. I entered the tent, where Kulragh was laying on the floor, seemingly unconscious. I looked at William, who was keeping an eye on him, asked him about what happened. Did Thalmiir get the info he needed? While William told me how they had taken him out, I looked through his stuff. The rest had already taken his daggers and other weapons from him. Curiously, he had a strange stone with him. I did not recognise it, but later learned from Erky or Thalmiir that it is a sending stone. An interesting artefact, as we do not know where the other 'part' of it is. Another interesting thing was the tattoo on Kulraghs hand: a skull with eight points around it. Ferrum and Thalmiir immediately recognise this as the sign of the Undead King. During our conversation about this find, Kulragh wakes up. Apparently Thalmiir had already asked the questions about his family. The man did not know anything about his family, whether they had been sold, killed or had fled. It was just another Tuesday for him. Thalmiir was nearly fuming. When we asked about the tattoo. -it was a 'gift from the south', whatever that means- No satisfactory answers were obtained. William did, however, look behind the eyepatch that he had on his left eye. It revealed a nasty hole, the flesh had started dying around the old wound. Really not a nice sight. A few more - futile- questions later, and Thalmiir has fully lost his patience. With a strong and well-aimed strike, Kulragh was not more. As Thalmiir stood there, and William added a strike to the hammer blow of Thalmiir, I decided to walk out. Outside, I found Liya. She and the mercenaries had returned from the other -not burning- tower. Carrying with her, she had fancy looking quiver. She asked me if I could identify it, as it showed some strange behaviour concerning arrows and storage space. I gladly took out my book and focussed on the ritual and the quiver, happy to have my mind on something else. After some time, I can inform her that the quiver she found is 'The Quiver of Ellonna" a magical bag of holding for arrows and spears. After all has calmed down, we realise that most people have fled the camp, which was our intention, but it is suddenly eerily quiet, excluding the sound of the flames that slowly consume the wooden fence around the tents and huts. We slowly walk out, past the burning tower and the ruined fence. Just outside of the place, we see a few people, watching the flames, looking at us with disgust, anger and a touch of fear. We try to help, patting out the fire on peoples clothes and such, but they won't accept it. For them, it is like they lost the little they had because of us. It was not that they were living righteous and fair, living from the loot and gainings from stealing and raiding, but with the way we entered and went, their reaction is not strange. I am not sure how to feel about it. Kulragh was certainly not a good man, evil one could even say, but I cannot state I feel extremely good about or proud what we accomplished today.

Session notes 16-2-2020
27th of Aestrun - 11th of Iasluin

27th of Aestrun After a final breakfast at De Gouden Soeplepel we make our way towards Higbee, to help the next convoy, and during that try and find out as much as we can about the horde of the one-eyed half-orc. During our breakfast, Ferrum runs off to buy the second alchemy book from the bookshop we went yesterday. I am curious to see the potions inside. Sisadi has been very kind to us, and we do not have to pay a thing. After breakfast, we wish him well, get Kastanjesok and Derk and hit the road. Before leaving Baferton we, however, buy a pony for Liya, who she calls 'Karel' and two horses for Thalmiir and I. Thalmiir calls his horse 'Dalmus' and I call mine 'Anwyn'. 27th of Aestrun till 5th of Iasluin The weather is okay, it's clear that autumn and winter are or their way. The wind is chilly and salty. The sea must be near, a welcome change from the many hills and meadows. Travelling goes fast by horse, and Ferrum jogs to keep up with us. This is a well-traversed road, the ground is firm from all the carts, horses and feet that walk atop it. Thallmiir and I are keenly watching for places that might be prone to an ambush. Together we spot 3 places on the road that we want to keep an eye on. They are all when the road passes through a patch of forest, with the road being a bit lower than the hills with the trees, giving a possible ambusher great advantage. We mark these places so that the marks are only readable by us, and continue our way. Ferrum and I take a look at the Alchemy book that we bought, it has certainly some interesting potions in it! Even health potions, which would be very valuable, and useful. But there are also things such as a potion of growth, which Ferrum seemed to like a lot. Some time during these days, after learning to ride with our horses (or pony) a bit, Liya decides to stand atop Karel, while practising her aim at Ferrum. I have no idea how she does it, but her aim is quite amazing. The sight, however, must have been alarming to others, as we were quickly stopped by two guards on patrol. Sevil and Mark stop us in our tracks, they enquire about the curious sight and ask if this is 'voluntary' for Ferrum. After some reassurance, and some questions from us ['what are YOU doing here?'] they are on their way. Before they leave I ride after them to ask if we may contact them in case of need, so that they may contact other guards. This is okay. They did look a bit spooked by us. On the 5th of Iasluin, we arrive in Higbee. Higbee looks like a well-guarded city: high walls and a check when people enter. We state our names, and our business [aiding the convoy] and we are allowed entrance. Curiously, Erky calls himself yet another name: Dimbledum Broombrusher? I am so confused what is his real name, or are all these names part of his full name? I will stick with calling him Erky, for now. Names are starting to become strange in this party. As we make our way to the place the lady who took our names pointed us, we talk about the idea of hiring some henchman to aid us during the possible ambush. But this conversation is cut short as we arrive at the guardpost. Here we meet Damien, the leader of the convoy. Overall, the convoy consists of 3 carts, of which one is filled with arms such as swords and bows, the next one is used to carry a large metal box filled with explosives (!) and the final one has a large ballista mounted on top of it. We are strongly advised, to keep ANY FIRE far far away from the metal box. To add our cart to the convoy, Thalmiir, Ferrum and Erky decide to go and modify the car a bit, while William, Liya and I go and find some ruffians to join us. We make our way to the Dippy Slumber after some advice from one of the guards. Here we meet Pete, the innkeeper. His clientele is, interesting. We see a pair of guys nearly sleeping on their table, one actually not even nearly he was just knock out. On another table, there is a group that looks like it could have been us when we first met for the rat extermination task. They have some swords and a bow and look a bit more organized than the other two. We sit down at the table of adventurers with their gear and introduce ourselves. They are James, Sandra and Selissa, a human, an elf and a half-elf. They are more than willing to help us aid this convoy, they will get paid 1gp per day per person and 5sp per day per person extra if we arrive safely. (and also food) Overall a good deal. On the other table, we wake the two men: Russel and Fred. They look a bit... worn out... but a touch of William healing hands helps them feel better instantly. They lie about being able to use bows, but we take them along anyway. Perhaps because we are in a hurry, perhaps to get them out of this tavern to catch some fresh air. As we return to the guardpost, we are met with the sight of the cart reiterated, with higher wooden sides with arrow slits and the tent on top of it all. With our new hired forces and a cart to add to the convoy, we leave as the sun is starting to set. The evening is calm, I had the second watch. I was just watching the guards change their shift - they change every hour apparently- when I see a figure shift and run off, not far of in the forest. I quickly wake Liya and wake Thalmiir so that he can continue to keep watch. Liya and I track the person (?) and find a path parallel to the road we have been traversing on. We see the two (!) figures run away through the fields. Liya fires an arrow but to no avail. With this in new knowledge, we return to the convoy. Thalmiir wants to continue his sleep, so I finish my watch and wake him anyways. 6th of Iasluin Today we pass the first ambush point, and everything is fine. However, everyone is a bit tense from last night. The guards saw us run off and all. However, our hired forces are completely calm, playing games in our upgraded tent-cart. Erky joins them to do an afternoon nap, or siesta as I have been told they call it in Ikadosh. Not sure how he sleeps, because Thalmiir is playing his flute, and he has not been practising a lot. As the night falls, Liya and Ferrum take the first watch. After some time, I am awakened for the second shift. Again, the night is calm, until I spot a slight movement in the grass close to the edge of the trees. I was not sure what to do, perhaps the person causing the movement was running away again, and my running would be in vain once again, or perhaps they expected me to go there so they could try something as we ran towards them. Excuse my rambling. I decided just to keep a close eye the little part of the forest and grass and continue my watch. As the moon continued its way through the sky, I woke up Thalmiir for the next watch. I pointed out the spot where I had seen movement and went to sleep, somewhat uneasily. 7th of Iasluin I wish I had stayed awake when I heard Thalmiir tell about his watch this morning! He had apparently also seen the movement, and had cast a spell to dispel magic on it. This had caused him to see a figure with a mask on, just for a very brief moment until it disappeared once again. He told us that he had not recognised it, but out of curiosity had created a small space in which he placed two owl feathers and some rations to maybe attract the spirit once again. When he did this, he got some strange looks from the guard and the ruffian he had waked up to keep watch with him. Later he swapped out the rations for his flute - because why would a spirit need rations?-. When he went to retrieve his flute, he heard three tones being played and then there was silence once more. After telling this story, we ate our breakfast and Thalmiir suddenly played a very nice piece on his flute, seemingly in a very very good mood. The day progresses slowly as we once again take our positions on either the main road or the parallel road to keep watch on our convoy. Until halfway through the day, when suddenly we hear Ferrum scream and run towards the convoy. He and Liya have spotted something and everyone is suddenly on their toes. We rush towards the end of the convoy, where we quickly spotted a group of people with dire wolves. They do attack, mostly with bows. Given the opportunity, they run for it, towards the northwest, in the direction of the sea. I quickly charmed a group of them, making sure they were not harmed but could also not harm us. They were taken as captives, as well as some others who were, intimidated into giving up. Overall they were very scared, and Thalmiir and Ferrum looking scary did also not help a lot in relieving that, but we did get a lot of info from them. I argued to let them go, as many of them had not attacked us, or only did after we hit them first, and I guess that these people have family and friends as well to who they wish to return. However, they were criminals, and Thalmiir convinced me to turn them over to the guards and let them decide their fate. During all this, we took a rest a little bit away from the ambush ground, where we set up camp for the night. We had to discuss what to do with the information gained from the captives. We now knew where the camp was, that it has eight patrolling groups of two men each and most importantly, that there is no back door. Kulragh, the leader of the group, is the one Thalmiir is after, but he rarely leaves the camp according to our source. It will be an interesting endeavour to get to him I think. After my watch with Ferrum -in which he shows his fancy axe-throwing skills-, I decide to copy what Thalmiir told me helped him contact that spirit. I felt somehow puzzled about this and was curious to find out more. I must have fallen asleep after sitting with the setup for a while, as I woke up the next morning in the slightly damp grass next to my flute. As I woke up, I first noticed Erky, sound asleep next to me. Next to that, I see that Thalmiir had repeated his ritual, barely an armlength away from mine. I like the fact that he is interested in this, I had not expected it from him to have a soft spot for music and what he believes to be a forest spirit. 8th of Iasluin Thanks to this interest of Thalmiir, and a slight feeling that something was up, I have now actually had contact with the Bard. Well it was not that he talked back or anything, but I knew he was there and listening, and that is more than ever before. Very interesting, I am curious to see if there is anything he wants, or if he just wants to hear my stories every now and then. Overall, I just am very content and I had a good nights sleep. Apparently our captives have been quite spooked by those keeping watch during the night. A ballista has been pointed at them, then was removed again and such endeavours. To show them some compassion, I decided to give them part of my rations, so that they wouldn't be starving for the following four days. 9th - 11th of Iasluin The last few days of our journey are calm, Thalmiir plays some flute- he seems to have picked it up well the past few weeks (!)-, Erky works on Schroefbout, Liya continues her mounted bow and arrow training and the rest of us have some talks about what happened and what our plans will be after returning to Baferton. We pass the last ambush-spot without any issue and make our way back towards Baferton. In Baferton, the captives are turned in. Damien is very content with what we did and offers us to buy us a round when returning to Baferton. We kindly decline as to support our friend Liya, but will probably return one day to come back to this offer (when Iasluin is done). After a brief stay in Baferton, we will probably go back and go towards the whole goal of this convoy-escort mission, Kulragh.

Session notes 5-7-2019 & 21-7-2019
15th to 22nd of Irawish

15th of Irawish After arriving in Beidon, we make our way to a tavern where we can stay. Soon we stumble upon the Hearty Pillow, a fine place for our time here. Beidon is a port city, it's busy in the streets and there are all kinds of goods for sale throughout this place. Lucky for us, as we have a nice book for sale! With the spellbook, we make our way towards the auction house The Silver Hammer. Tomorrow there will be an auction, and thus we plan to return the next day. 16th of Irawish The book was sold today for a very nice price. William and Erky did their best to make the bidding go a little faster and a bit higher. This worked out just fine, and we ended up with 522,5gp each! However, this good news was overshadowed by the fact that we hear rumours of people disappearing in the city. There is little known about these vanishings, but kidnapping is deemed the most likely. In the past two weeks, already 3 people have turned up missing. With an already somewhat full head, we decide to go and visit Sybil. Recod gave us her information, and we indeed find her in here bakery “Bread Kneaded”. She is a lovely lady and we talked with her a bit about the city. After bringing up the story we heard about the disappearances, she explains to us that there might be a connection to the new church that is being built in the centre of town: the construction of it started two weeks ago, the missing people are all guild members that were helping the church, and they were all kidnapped while on their way from church to home. The missing people: Arien Darents, a carpenter Lick Sivpah, a butcher Won Jillian, an architect And a fourth person turned up missing soon after Zen greenway, a guard. With this new information, we thank Sybil for her time and make our way back to the Hearty Pillow. During dinner, we sit down and device a plan. We plan to lure out the abductores. Thalmiir will pretend to be a skilled smith, he used to have his own forge so he has the connections and the knowledge to do this. With this, we hope to trick the kidnappers into taking Thalmiir. We will be keeping watch, ready to strike if they appear. 17th & 18th of Irawish Sadly, our plan does not seem to be working. Maybe we are not patient enough, maybe something else is happening entirely. TO BE CONTINUED

Session notes 25-1-2020
20th -26th of Aestrun

Late in the day on the 20th of Aestrun After hearing the story of the dragon and the conversation the men had, we decide to try and find signs that the black sheep have been here as well. Ferrum and Liya track their tracks and we find their footsteps towards the road we followed, going north towards Penthill. We follow and make our way to Penthill. During our travels, Thalmiir plays some (rather nice!) flute, he has really picked up the skill rather well! I talked with Liya about going for a 'Dry Iasluin' a full month without drinking. She is going to try it, but not after getting wasted one more time when we get to Penthill. We arrive in Penthill on the 23rd of Aestrun, somewhere halfway the afternoon. After going around the city for a bit, we notice that it is a lot quieter than we remembered. Asking around about the Black Sheep, and if they have passed through here. It becomes clear that they were here about a week ago, and started their travels northwards over the hills towards Volheim. Thalmiir has some contact with his connection-amulet with The Keepers (they are apparently custodians of important magical artefacts), to inform them, and the Black Sheep that the dragon is our ally now (he gets some strange reactions, as Vistra wonders how we managed to do it). We make our way to The Drunken Albatros, were Ferrum, William, Erky, Liya and I sit down and talk with Gerrick about how he is doing, what happened around Penthill and provide Liya with some well-deserved ale. Thalmiir walks around for a little more. As he returns, he tells us that he bumped into a guy (Merklin?) trying to convince him to join the army. Apparently it had been a somewhat awkward conversation. Thalmiir joins us again as Liya is trying to sell her Maple Beer to Gerrick while being highly intoxicated. This does not go very smoothly, just like William pouring some ale into Ferrums shoulder? Overall, and interesting afternoon. We take some time to ourselves and regather in the evening to discuss the plans for the following days. After some conversation, in which we had a brief interaction with Karazoth via a sending spell, we decide to continue our plan to go to Baferton. The sending spell was to ask Karazoth to perhaps move more towards the south, but this was quickly cut off. He mentioned the name Varadil, a blue dragon that calls the location we mentioned his home. They are not friends. I am concerned about the land that is currently being slowly reverted to the inside of a volcano in the middle of Jurtal. Especially with Halcon and Pluumore relatively closeby, they will probably notice the effects of this dragons new nest. William cures Liya of her intoxication, I hope feels better, it is probably at least two more days of travel towards Baferton. Another topic we discussed was the rumours we heard about the strange island and tower that have risen upon the island north-west of Jurtals mainland. A strange tale that piqued our interest, but something that, with current pressing matters, will be set aside for now. Ferrum asks Gerrick about several things, sightings of strange mists and wolves on the road towards Baferton, but also his tattoos, where he got them and what they mean. Apparently some are from Takatiki, a cluster of islands far east of here, while others are from when he was in Ikadosh. He also tells a story about a man whose tattoos exploded when he died! It was told it was a sight to see, and frankly, I am quite curious and I think it is kind of a badass way to go. Still, I really hope that my tattoo does not do that, I have been knockout a few times, and I've seen Erky die and it will not be easy to revive a person who has exploded. Enough rambling, we are leaving early tomorrow, luckily no more strange tales of time and space shifting mists and wolves roaming around, so we should be able to travel safely. 24 & 25 Aestrun We are back on the road. It is quite calm, perhaps we will see Bombyx again. Thalmiir and I try to play some music. Liya did not want to join in, I think the after-effects of the alcohol are not removed with Williams healing hands. Anyways, Thalmiir plays very well once again, whereas I do not seem to have my day, a dreadful sound came out of my nice flute while strange greenish(?) runes appeared around me. I suppose I should ask Ferrum about what happened, but it was quite entertaining actually, and Thalmiir sounded even better after that! 26th of Aestrun It is drizzling the entire morning, the first signs that autumn is approaching. We arrive in Baferton a little before noon. William, Ferrum, Liya and I decide to visit "De Gouden Soeplepel" (The Golden Ladle in common) the tavern that we sold to Sisadi before we left for Beidon. Apparently business is going well! A new storey and a fancy new paint job show that Sisadi was the right man for this place. Some small talk later we are invited to stay the night in the tavern, free of charge, which we happily accept. During our trip here, Thalmiir and Erky went towards Thalmiirs old forge, in the Artisans District of Baferton. Thalmiirs forge was burned down by a group of ravaging orcs, who's one-eyed leader murdered his brother. That was the main reason for travelling back here, to finish that business. When they also arrive at De Gouden Soeplepel they tell us they went to the blacksmiths guild, where Thalmiir talked a bit with an old friend and gave him his rights to the land on which the remains of his forge are. He promised to use it well. After this, they go to Kira, a lady who is said to be interested in buying gems. Thalmiir and Erky both got to sell some of their gems, and Thalmiir hands us all around 200gp that go got for selling some of the 'party gems'. Erky was very clever to ask about current rumours and about a herd of orcs who was supposed to be around somewhere. He obtained information on them: They attack military convoys who are travelling south, they do this with a group of around 50 men and always on strategically significant points such as the places where the road becomes narrow or when they can attack from above. Later in the afternoon, we go our own ways for a bit. Ferrum and I go to the bookstore to buy some journals, ink and an 'alchemy for beginners' book! I am really looking forward to trying some things out with Ferrum from this book. It can only go well, as we both will have no idea what we will be doing. She also had another book for sale which contained the recipe for universal solvent, which may be handy if we are going to try to make universal glue. Maybe I will go back for it, I have some gold to spare. Ferrum is very sweet and bought me some very nice inks with which I think i can transcribe the spell Alarm, which I also bought at this shop. He is spending a lot of money on small things for everyone, I will set some money apart for him to save. After this trip, we join Liya, Erky and Thalmiir on a trip to a clothing store to buy some warm items for the cold season that is rapidly approaching. Picking up some extra cloaks and warm bedrolls for William, we make our way back to De Gouden Soeplepel. On our way there, Thalmiir addresses one of the guards and asks them about the current situation with Ikadosh and its military movements. We are informed that the south is indeed on the move, and that the north is currently focussed on the defence. Trained soldiers are sent south for backup, as well as supplies such as weapons and commodities, which are often attacked by marauders. At the tavern we see William again, who has been to a lovely play about a group of 'adventurers' who are on a trip through their world. They talk with dragons and do amazing things. There were powerful rings, and there were many of them. I did not catch the entire story of it. But I understand it was a very elaborate performance, with beautifully crafted decors and outfits. Liya gave me a small trinket, I know we sometimes have our disagreements, but this was really kind. I have tied the red thread to my belt along with the trinket. In the evening we all again take some time to ourselves. I took some time to write my journal and I have copied the spell I bought in the shop into the book I have gotten from the Bard. It took quite a while, but while I was busy the time simply seemed to fly, as if my pen and mind were guided by something beyond me. I thought I might also read a bit in the new alchemy book, but I had forgotten that Ferrum was kind enough to carry it in his magic backpack. I will ask him in the morning, perhaps we can look at it during our travels to the next city.

Session notes 18-1-2020
9th to 20th of Aestrun

9th of Aestrun - continued- Returning back at the boat, we tell William and Copper about our adventure and they tell about their time. Dreslar is very happy that we returned his crystal, and offers us a ride back to the entrance of the cave, and even to Sarton if we want. We decide to return to Conwy and tell Fila about our findings. Liya does give a few messages to Dreslar that need to be delivered in Sarton. * As we make our way back to the surface, we are met with the afternoon sun. On our way there, Liya and Erky explain what happened in the throne room, and show that they have stolen several gems. We, discretely, do not tell Mr Fila about this but do explain to him that: there is a group of Duergar, a nearly collapsed temple, and a very very unstable cavern under his mines and the rest of Conwy. He is deeply disturbed by this news, especially the latter, as he immediately starts packing his stuff to leave. After this conversation, we make our way back to Gilda's to plan our route for the next days, have dinner and get a good nights sleep. Tomorrow at dawn, we ride towards Cozynest, grap some rations before leaving the city and be on our way. The rest of the evening, everyone takes some time to do their own things: drinking beer, drawing, writing or ~~drawing octagrams with blood~~ other things. 10th of Aestrun Away we ride, with Derk and Kastanjesok pulling our cart, we leave Conwy for Cosynest. With a week of travels ahead of us, we make ourselves comfortable in our tent cart and share some stories. Thalmiir is very focussed on sorting out all the gems that Erky and Liya got from the Dao. Apparently, there is some kind of spell on them created by the Dao. He fears that the gems may be summoned back and therefore decides to disenchant a few of them. The sorted gems are locked in lead chests that he created the evening before, hoping to keep the magic out. Walking alongside Copper, we talk a bit about him and about what he and William did while we were in the Duergars mines. He offers to let me fly using his magic and I agreed! It was really fun, I could see far, the planes on our left seemed to go on forever. While on the left I could almost see the path in the forest we walked when we were travelling to Beidon. After a fun 10 minutes, I landed back on the ground. We talked a bit about what would happen if one would fly up straight. If there would be a wall, or if it would just be cold. Neither of us was sure. During our conversations, we also talked about what Conwy could do about the giant Magma lake underneath their town. Perhaps pillars, or metal bows, from the same enchanted materials as the boat? Whatever we talked about, there were some things Copper said that were pretty of unnerving. About tieflings, and how they could live underneath the city because it is hot anyways and about duergar 'not being worth so much'. I had noticed this earlier during our talk with Fila, but had dismissed it. Anyhow, the days went fast, everyone did their own things and we liked to just watch the people that passed us on the road. These were the short notes I made during the week of travel. 11th to the 16th of Aestrun The first thing that happened during our days on the road was the gems disappearing from the bags and the chests Thalmiir had made. We were all a bit sad, but there were some nice ones left that Thalmiir had dispelled and we were happy with those. During the following days, Thalmiir was busy with his armour, creating a new breastplate. The process was mostly him focussing on Morradin and the metal and that worked. Very fascinating, but I was afraid I would distract him. Liya has made arrows from the obsidian shard she found in the mines, they look very very sharp and I would not want to be on the receiving end of those. Ferrum returns to us on the 13th! We are all happy to see our friend and companion back and we gladly tell him the things we did. William and he catch up and after Thalmiir is finished with his breastplate, they spend a lot of time with the three of them. I thought I heard some things said in Giant and Elvish, but I was too busy trying to read in my study books, that I did not catch any of it. About that, I spend most of these days writing about our travels in one of the journals we found in the temple of Umbralee. The first one is almost full, I used the second one for drawing the maps and write out the details of the temples we visited, and the third one I have given to Ferrum. Maybe in Cosynest we can buy some new ones. The day before we arrive, Thalmiir, William and Ferrum are being very hush-hush. Not sure what that is all about. But the next morning it became clear that they were planning to remove the arm of Ferrum that 'contains' Copper. Ferrum had a shiny new metal arm, and Thalmiir had the other one wrapped up under his arm**. As they told us about what they did, I did feel a bit sad. I will miss Copper, I sort of understood him as we were both trying to understand our patrons, and I liked his straightforwardness and the conversations we had. But I was happier for William and Ferrum, who now both had the certainty that Ferrum would be the one waking up in the morning! And I know that Ferrums intentions are good, whereas I doubted those of Copper every now and then. Overall, an eventful day, compared to the past few. 17th of Aestrun Today we will arrive in Cosynest. Thalmiir has watched me quite a bit after the events of yesterday, but my thoughts about this were cut short as we start to see Cosynest in the distance. What we saw was carnage. A large red dragon was soaring over the city, spewing fire over it all after which he/she flew away, northward. We all looked at one another and sprinted towards the flaming city. Ferrum arrived first. He helps those trapped under rubble and runs into buildings to help guards save people trapped by the fire. Thalmiir sprints away from the first buildings, running further into the city where he heals and helps as many people as possible, stabilizing and reassuring them. William follows Ferrum and enters the burning building to save as many people as possible, after which he uses his lay on hands to bring them back from the brink of death. Liya goes in and tries to ask what happened, what is going on and why this would happen to the city. Apparently they had been hunting this dragon for a while and this might be its revenge. I ran after Thalmiir, catching up with him after a while as he sits down to heal a group. While zigzagging through the streets I try to stabilise the people that are unconscious, hoping that Thalmiir or William can wake them up later. After an hour or two after the attack, people have moved towards the open places to rest. We make our way towards the marketplace where we strike up a conversation with one of the headguards, Captain Hardstone, a female half-elf. She tells us about the city, how it was sort of founded by a group of adventurers called 'The Black Sheep". They run the city and have gone away about two months ago to hunt this red dragon down. They haven't been seen since. She knows that the lair of the dragon is to the north-east of here, but no more. We are quite unsure of what to do. Liya got a good look of the dragon and is quite certain it is at least an adult. We are not sure if we can take it down, or even find it for that matter. What is strange is that this dragon is found here, within the planes instead of in its natural habitat: the mountains. It must have fled from something..... Not a fun thought. As we are uncertain of a lot of things, we decide to message our old gold dragon ally, Urudill. Thalmiir sends him a message as we set up our camp outside of the city proper. His response is short and clear, stay there, we will meet. The evening and night are quiet on the north side of Cozynest, no one eager to follow the way the dragon left. 18th of Aestrun In the morning, it is easy to see the damage done by the dragon. A large part of the city is not functional, but Liya manages to go around and buy some studded leather while we wait for a sign from Urudill. As we are at our camp, Ferrum tells us about his and Williams past. About how they met, how William was his student, how he died, how William had walked through a desert to find the tinkerer Betty. It is Betty who created his body, but it did not awaken until the 'Arcane storm' hit her workshop and awakened Lucan as Ferrum. It was quite a tale. We learned Ferrums true name, his last name I had already heard in the temple after he asked his question. But he prefers to be called Ferrum over Lucan. Overall, quite a tale, about how William is now teaching Ferrum to be more socially secure, and how they travelled together. And about how Betty tried to trick him into being a servant, which was why Ferrum was so angry about Thalmiir calling him his 'servant' all that time ago when we met Erky. A lot of pieces fell into place that morning. After a well deserved short walk in which we gathered our thoughts, Urudill arrived in his human form. We tell him about our findings and ask for his advice. He is certain he does not want to fight this dragon alone if it comes to a fight. Therefore, we go along and our tactic is 'Eerst praten dan slaan". With this in mind, we take our cart and head to the north, towards Baferton. 19th and 20th of Aestrun. We travel together with Urudill towards the dragons' nest. It is clear it is getting closer and closer as we can see the presence of the dragon affect the ecosystem. There are tremours, there is the smell of sulphur, everything has a slightly yellow colour and it is getting warmer by the hour. Liya is tracking the dragon, as our surroundings are getting uncomfortably hot. Nearing the end of the 20th, we reach the home of the dragon. Looking at the size of the hole, it is an adult dragon at least. Liya wants to sneak in, quick on her feet as she is, but is quickly taken back by the heat and sheer size of the pit. After this, Thalmiir, Ferrum and William decide to go for the diplomatic approach and ask entrance in return giving a large gem. The ground shakes and we take that as a sign they may enter. Urudill, Liya, Erky and I wait patiently outside, hoping we will not get a distress message from Thalmiir. After some time, the men arrive back at the top of the pit. A lot has happened and they seem to have a lot on their mind. We sit down, and they tell us the following. They had travelled down the pit and met with the dragon. He asked why they were here and they stated that we did not want anyone to suffer or be in pain and that they had brought the gem as a sign of goodwill. The gem they had taken with them was worth 1000gp, or 100pl, with which they could buy 100 words to say to the dragon. William spoke, and asked the following questions: Why are you here? The south has turned his back on the dragons, we are being enslaved once again, like many hundreds of years ago. I am not welcome where I am from, I have fled and do not wish to return. I have made this place my home for now, but you filthy creatures entered this place as well and decimated this new place. Stop yourself before you come here to try and stop me. Is Ikadosh planning a new attack? It was always planned, especially after losing the last war. Would you fight by our side if we were to attack? As much as it takes to take back my old kingdom. I will fight by your side, but when this is all over, we will be enemies once more. Are there other dragons that fled? There are more, but not many. Few survived What about Metallic Dragons? Hundreds of years ago, when the Undead King started to rise, the metallic dragons fled to the north. I sense that there is one with you right now. Are you planning on leaving? As soon as the south is free. Until then, I will stay here. Will you stop your attacks if we provide you will no longer be disturbed? I will not attack the villages, but I will hunt in these woods. Contact you? I think you are capable of contacting me. Name? Karazoth. And with all that to think about, we sit down to take a rest. _______________________________________ Things we know but Nimueh does not. * Messages to family and ????? ** Thalmiir talked to Copper, he did not seem pleased.

Session notes 10-1-2020
8th and 9th of Aestrun

8th of Aestrun The day was far from over, as Thalmiir, William, Erky and Copper decided to go and take the boat to cross the lava after Coppers ritual. As Thalmiir send me and Liya a message, we arrived just in time to see their paddle float away. Liya and I wait a while while the rest of the party is out and about on their boat. We play some rock paper scissors and continue the conversation we were having in the pub. After a while, Thalmiir and William return in the small boat and tell us about a duergar/gnome (it was a gnome disguised as a duergar) they had found with a larger boat down the lava-river. Apparently he: 1 had some kind of device Erky has (a gun) and 2: need some help finding something and the boat we had used was his brothers. While paddling back to the larger boat and its owner, William and Thalmiir talk about some kind of crystal that the gnome had lost, that was supposed to power his boat. It was much more than an ordinary boat he had said, as it was the life's work of him and his brother: he did the mechanics, his brother the magic. To be honest, we were kind of unsure about this at first, but the gnome seemed nice and in need of help - especially with the cave slowly collapsing- so we decided to go for it. Copper and William stayed with the gnome, to help him guard his ship and himself. Liya, Erky, Thalmiir and I followed the path that the gnome had pointed us in and we quickly found a large quarry which was down in a spiral. Here, we saw two duergar mining. The mine itself was about 200 ft across and at least 200ft down. The duergar were about a quarter of the way down the first cycle, the next path being about 30ft down. We decided to just walk with purpose and follow the way down the path. I went disguised as one of the duergar and on we went. This did not go as we expected it to go. The two tried to flee as soon as they saw us. They jumped in the minecart and tried to get town as soon as possible. To prevent this, without murdering them, I tried to hypnotise them with a spell, which worked on one of them. As the cart sprinted away, with one hypnotised and one awake duergar, Thalmiir had the idea to block the path one circle down by breaking part of the rock. I helped him by Shattering the stone and before the cart had done a full round, a pile of rocks blocked the way. Liya and Erky were both shooting at the rolling cart, hoping to hit the duergar inside. Erky even chasted it down on the back of his mechanical dog. A few moments past and a cart with a very dead and a very hypnotised duergar arrives at the blockade and crash horribly into the rocks. This wakes the hypnotised one and he tries to turn invisible and run. A few well-aimed shots of Erky later and also this duergar is bloodied on the ground. During the crash, the gems and metals that had been mined were swung out of the car unto the ground. During this, Thalmiir managed to catch a fancy ruby which he immediately estimated to be worth around 2500gp. Because of the noise we caused, several others were coming from the gate at the lowest level of this mine. We decided to pick up some of the gems and go for a deceptive move. I changed into one of the guys we just killed, while Thalmiir and Erky hid themselves and one of the bodies. Liya sneaked away, somehow completely disappearing into the shadows. The duergar approached, I started an act of being in shock pretending there had been an explosive compound that exploded while we tried to mine it. Trying to get away, scared of the cave collapsing, we had jumped into the cart and attempted to run away, only for our path to be blocked by a collapsing part of the wall. Even though I was speaking in dwarvish, they believed it. A large stone creature had followed them, and it seemed to be focussed on the place where we had seen Liya last. Strangely he seemed to notice her while none of us were able to see Liya. The earth elemental picked up a large part of rock, and showed it to me and the other duergar, not speaking just holding it in front of us. I played along, said i did not understand and followed them down deeper into the mines, while acting shaken. The elemental followed with Liya in a pile of rocks. Thalmiir and Erky soon followed. Disguising themselves - in a very creative way- to look like the duergar. Some conversing later, I had heard about the large 'gem' we were looking for. Apparently some had found it and brought it to the 'leader' of these people. He seemed to be really happy with it and kept it in his throneroom all the time. Shortly after this, Thalmiir joined the conversation, introducing himself as a new member of the miners, along with his somewhat brain-damaged grandfather (Erky) who only said 'eeeeehmff' in different intonation -as he does not understand dwarvish or undercommon-. This went relatively smoothly, and as they were new they got a small tour through the common room, sleeping quarters and throne room, where the guide signed to the leader (a Sand Genashi) to show us the large gem they had brought him. Dao proudly showed us the power source we were looking for, after which he sat back down on his pile of gems. Erky and Thalmiir were appointed work, sorting and mining respectively, after which we were told to take it easy and rest for the evening. We gathered in the sleeping quarters, where Liya and Erky soon found us and we quietly spend the night. 9th of Aestrun Thalmiir, Erky and I are sent to go and work. Liya is dodging the earth elementals and scouts around the camp towards the throne room, waiting for the one thing that can sense her - the earth elemental- to leave. During the work, some jokes are made, some rumours are talked about - there was a body found in the rubble that looked just like me, interesting- During work, Thalmiir correctly notices that nobody is happy about the situation they are in, and decided to take a prominent place among the group and shout out, rallying the duergar. With words of freedom, solidarity and fraternity, the miners started to rise up. The Dao and its earth elementals heard the noise of the rebellion and made their way towards the quarry, after which Liya quickly made her way into the throne room. During all this, Erky had made friends with the miners and had stolen a few nice gems for himself during his work. At the moment the rally started, he too made his way towards the throne room. In the mine, a battle between the duergar and the earth elementals took place. The combined forces of the miners proved too much for two of these creatures, as they were slowly pick-axe-ed to pieces. The Dao, who had also made his way, was hurt badly by his former involuntary workers and fled as he realised he could not stop this. As Thalmiir saw this, he send a message to Liya, urging her to leave as the Dao was returning. During the battle in the quarry, Liya had retrieved the power crystal, and both she and Erky had taken this time to stuff their bags with as many gems as possible. Moments after our party members had left the throne room, the Dao entered. He gathered a pile of the gems and used a portal to leave. As the horde of duergar made their way to the very same throne room, Thalmiir urged them to take all they needed and that they should remember the name Doghmar, who had lead them the way towards this freedom(!). We took the rush towards the gold and gems as our queue to leave, and we returned to the boat where William and Copper and the gnome (Dreshar Everharn?) were waiting for us. ----------------------- Gems we picked up: Thalmiir: Emerald (1000gp), small crystals (+-150gp/p), ruby (2500gp) Erky: Azurite (10gp) | 400lbs of gemstones from the Dao's room Liya: Obsidian (10gp), tigereye (10gp) | 400lbs of gemstones from Dao's room Nimueh: Topas (600gp)

Session notes 4-1-2020
5th-8th of Aestrun

the 5th of Aestrun The first of our wind-down days. I am on my way with Liya to some of the taverns in town to sell her famous Maple Leaf beer. We manage to sell some to a man named Donne, to which a proof sample will be delivered. With some messages send by Thalmiir we hope all will be organised as needed. At dinner, we hear that Thalmiir and Erky have created some kind of artefact together, a so-called Musket. I am not sure how it works but it looks fancy. William had been practising his horseriding skills with Derk (his new white horse) and has bought a lance. I had missed it this morning, but Copper has woken up instead of Ferrum. I am not sure what he has done today, he had a booklet with drawings with him. I have put my letter and package on the way towards Jordberg and finally Mercia. I hope that they will arrive safely, it cost me 16gp. I have started to record the music I hear. I hear it faintly all the time, but it is the clearest when I go to sleep. The melody also seems to be more complex. the 6th of Aestrun Today, I have locked myself in my room and practised my ritual spells. I asked Thalmiir about how he does it and if there is any trick to do it well. I have taken a lot of time to do this and I feel much more confident about it now. Perhaps I will go and look for more spells to cast this way. Sadly there is no library in town. Today Erky build a mechanical dog. He calls it schroefbout but it has gained the unofficial name 'Pipa' for some reason. Erky seems to be doing a lot better after having some days off. the 7th of Aestrun Thalmiir has started constructing parts for a bridge across the ravine. He had spotted some large doors when he had fallen down and wanted to investigate it a bit more. I am quite curious to go and look, tho a bit hesitant after the last encounter and the consequences it had afterwards. But I helped him out today and took some more time in the evening to study. I am getting better at playing the Bards tune aswell. The 8th of Aestrun. Today we are going back to the mines. After talking with Matilda for a bit, and Thalmiir going back and forth for some official paperwork, we enter the cave with our bridge parts. With some help from hired forces, we construct the bridge and find our way down. As I shatter the door open, we enter a large staircase, in which we found quite some protective enchantments. From glave wielding 12ft tall statues that we climbed over to cross, to large boulders falling from the ceiling to crush Liya. As we found our way down we came across an octagon-shaped room with a basin and four pillars in the middle. William senses holy energy from here, and we, of course, decide to investigate. There were several tubes going from the basin to different rooms. As we investigated, Erky and Thalmiir found out that these pipes provide magical energy to the pond to create a portal to Oghma, the goddess of knowledge and invention. With some keen following skills and by opening some strange tombs, we find the switches to turn on the different tubes to the central basin. During this search, we are nearly crushed by collapsing tunnels, burned to crisps from explosions and life tapped from ghostly creatures. The second event caused me and Liya to be out for a second, but not long enough for me to see the Bard again. After opening the portal, which makes the bright blue water of the pond turn black like a starry sky, we decide to take a short time to catch our breath. We talk a bit and Copper invites me to help him with a ritual to connect to his patron. It is a strange but very interesting ritual in which I hear some things and discuss some patron-gossips with Copper. Nearing the end of this relax-time, a voice reaches out to us in our mind. Telling us we can ask any question we want, and that we shall receive an answer. Totally overwhelmed by this, I ask a few questions regarding my patron. And I learn that the Bard is indeed always listening, present but rarely answers. I will just have to wait and see what comes to my path. I am curious to know what the others have asked. I hope we will talk about it as we continue our travels. After this endeavour, we return to our inn. Where I give Copper some Sulphur for his ritual, which he wishes to try once again next to the lava stream. Erky and Thalmiir are suspicious and go with him back to the mountain. After Copper has a successful commune with his patron, Thalmiir and Erky step in the small magical boat that is drifting on the lava stream. They paddle away and find a large open cavern. This is the point where I got messaged by Thalmiir to take William and Liya and come back to the cave, where we are now. Waiting on Copper, William, Thalmiir and Erky to return paddling back with their new homemade paddle and musket after losing the original paddle. We shall see where this goes. (ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS ASKED) Nimueh reached out to Ferrum in Copper's mind and asked him a question he wanted to be answered. Thalmiir asked if cities in Jurtal were in danger: answer was not YET Thalmiir asked if Jurtal itself was in danger: answer was yes Liya asked if her family was okay: answer was yes Thalmiir asked if his family was still alive: answer was not all Erky asked if his children were in heaven: answer was, they are not in Limbo and not in the Hells. Erky asked if his wife was still alive: answer was yes Erky asked where his wife was: answer was South Thalmiir asked where the one eyed orc is: answer was North Copper asked if the lightbringer was still alive: answer was yes, but not as a whole. William asked if he was on the right path: answer was yes William asked how he could keep balance: answer was to recreate the universe Thalmiir asked if Copper could be killed without killing Ferrum: answer was yes, split the souls Thalmiir asked if Copper and Ferrum could be split: answer was yes, there is one of the 9 wizards in Sarton who can do a ritual. (Meril Tasker)

Session notes 27-12-2019
29th of Irawish - 4th of Aestrun

The 28th of Irawish Ferrum is staying awake, and it is getting the better of him. This morning he suddenly ran off, away from the forest only for us to pick him up later to join us on the cart once again. Before we leave our camp, William casts a spell and a white horse appears for us to ride. The day goes by slowly, we suspect to arrive in Conwy tomorrow evening. I try to connect with the Bard before falling to sleep, there is a connection, just not very strong. The 1st of Aestrun Traveling traveling with the cart. Keeping watch. Ferrum decides to sleep tonight, also wakes up as Ferrum again. The 2nd of Aestrun Conwy is getting close, slowly but surely we see more and more houses appear in the distance. What is interesting is the fact that most of the houses are built from metal instead of from wood. It is a curious sight to see. What we know about the city is that its main business is salt. The Closa family started the mines in 621 and it has been a wanted product ever since. The salt is shipped all over the world. We spend the night in a tavern called Gilda Malfr's Inn. The owner is Gilda, a human female. She serves us a lovely hunters pie, while Liya is annoyed about the fact that they do not sell their maple beer. We overhear a conversation talking about "Red Stars", but none of us has any idea what they are talking about. The 3rd of Aestrun Today we have a calm day in Conwy. Some people are forging new parts of armour while I am writing a letter home. I found it important to send them something, I haven't let them hear anything from me since leaving Baferton. And I have been carrying the wooden blocks fo Ciaran since leaving Beidon. I have spent some time with Liya in the tavern and then got picked up by Thalmiir and Ferrum. They heard about some issues in the mine, one of the tunnels had apparently collapsed and they wanted to go and investigate. Here we meet Mathilda Together we leave to visit the Fila mines. At the entrance of the mine we find Mathilda the Gray. She is a strong looking lady and after some persuading, Thalmiir is allowed to enter the mine for a short inspection. He quickly analyses the stonework and determines the cause of the collapse. With this new information, we leave and meet with the owners of the mine and offer our services to the family. We will kill the beast that is causing the tunnels to break down for 4000gp total and he will add two bags of 'Stars' (probably salt). A deal is made and we leave to gather the rest of the party for the next day. The 4th of Aestrun Together we leave for the Fila mines. We walk for some time until we find one of the tunnels dug by the animal that is causing the trouble. Erky slips down this tunnel and is soon followed by the rest of us. We arrive at a cliffside, approximately 100ft above a river of Lava. There is a 30ft gap and a 30ft drop between this plateau and the next. And as we are thinking about how we are going to cross this ravine, Erky has already cast a spell and jumped over the ravine. It is at this point, we realise he has fucked up. On his side of the river, the Bulette appears. With no way to get to the other side, I try to blast some spells at the creature, while Ferrum uses the immovable rod and a cleverly placed rope to swing over the ravine.' Quickly followed by Thalmiir and William, who both fall down and have to climb their way back up to the battlefield. Liya and I stand by to watch while trying to use some ranged attacks at the bulette. It is at this point, where a sudden, strong impact pushes Erky to the brink of death, and with one final bite, it is actually over. With his legs nearly separated from his body, he is being dragged away, and only Ferrum is there to follow. This is an eerily familiar situation for me, and it sparks memories I do not wish to relive. While I was stressing on the wrong side of the ravine, Thalmiir and Ferrum rescue Erky and revivify him. With a lot of thinking and creative use of ropes, we get them back to this side of the cliff and leave the caverns with some cut of parts from the bullette and a barely breathing Erky. Mathilda looks kind of scared at us, but lets us pass and wishes us well. We leave for the house of the Fila family. Where we are arriving unexpectedly early, according to our employer. With a smooth few words of William, our payment is raised with 50 percent and we all gain 1000gp(!) But we all decide to take some time off and unwind for a few days here in Conwy, Erky needs some time to heal physically, and some others mentally.

Brief
3th-4th of Aestrun

....

Thoughts and behaviour
4th of Aestrun

நீங்கள் தற்போது படித்துக்கொண்டிருப்பது எழுத்துப்பிழை மாயையான ஸ்கிரிப்டால் நிரந்தரமாக மயக்கப்படுகிறது. மன்னிக்கவும், இவை எனக்கும் நிலவறை மாஸ்டருக்கும் மட்டுமே குறிப்புகள். அடுத்த முறை வரை.

Session notes 11-8-2019
22nd, 23rd of Irawish

22nd of Irawish Disa 'in storage' after our deception and attack in the alleyway. Today we have a 'Free day' Ferrum switches to Copper, they have two very different personalities. Copper is a Hexforged? Served in a war on the front lines? Thalmiir asks La Familia on information about his quest to find a group lead by an half-orc that have wronged him. They are north of Baferton. List of missing people: Ariel Darents, carpenter Won Jillian, architect Zen Greenway, guard Lisk Syvpha, butcher Elliot Greenway, father of Zen, is the owner of a small bookshop. Vana Darents married to Ariel, have a shop with wooden toys. Talked to both, Ariel has been gone for two weeks, supposedly working on an assignment (for an old friend) out of town. Both know Vida, he is described as a kind man, who often picked up stuff, overall good relationship. --> I bought some wooden stackable blocks for my brother, for his collection. Won Jillians family was also visited. Talked to his parents (Jacob Greenway and Ms Greenway) and looked around his room. Letter from 'V' (probably Vida) who has a request, letter redirects us to the docks. ----------------------- 23rd of Irawish Today is the interrogation of Disa. He seems unimpressed but we figure out that there is a trading spot being set up somewhere near Beidon. Buenor, a young member of La Familia joins us on our trip to the docks where we hopefully find Vida or the missing people. We find the place, leave Buenor outside (Copper teaches him a war march?) A tall man called Paelis opens the door. He knows Disa. In the room, we find the five 'missing people', all sitting around a table. They gathered here by Vida's request who wishes to start a market hall on an island not far from the shore of Beidon and needed their help. Vida seems like a middle-aged man, (maybe half-elf?) clean-shaven man, very slender. He seems like a good guy? Who do we help/trust? A deal is struck with Vida, we help him clear out the island of his choice for the market hall. This includes a temple to Umberlee, a sea goddess. Vida has a boat and will sail us there. The little boat got attacked during the journey there, there seemed to be some kind of large sharks and a priestess riding one of the creatures. Both Erky and I nearly died, several people were flung overboard but we all made it safely to the island where we are spending the night before we enter the temple.

Session notes 14-09-2019
24th of Irawish

24th of Irawish We woke up on the island today, it's a tropical island, and it got quite cold tonight. Vida and Liya stay on the boat, chilling in the semi-nice weather. There is a path leading from the beach to the forest. On this road, we meet a rock, who turns out to be a tortoise. Tortoise = Mudcraw. (he is old for a tortoise, 44) The path splits in two. On the left, there is a statue: 2 arms, 2 tentacles, broad head and horns, shield on his back. (which turns out to be 'NOT' 'MAGICAL' ) We continue the path on the right, with Mudcraw. ---> COPPER SEES SOMETHING --> Small man with a mask, or a mask being a man? It is not a mask it is its head, it is completely black except for two vertical white lines over his/her head. No idea what it is, but it seems friendly. Seems to pay attention to Copper. No reaction from spoken words nor telepathic ones. The creature, which we have named Ugo, does not leave the forest as we walk into an open space. Gives copper a headbutt? Open space is a long deserted campsite. The temple was not much further. Thalmiir opens the door to the temple, a lizard awakens and is quickly slain by everyone. The temple itself is abandoned, it's very dusty and the clashing of the waves echos inside. During our exploring we find several items: a small statute of a shark-mermaid lady holding a trident., it shines with abjuration magic Thalmiir tells us. I am not entirely sure what that means, but it looks quite nice. there is a fountain in another room, shaped like a crab. again Thalmiir takes some time to figure out what it does and tells us that if you say a prayer to umbralee (the sea goddess to which this temple is dedicated) you will gain 24h of water breathing, but if you damage the pond in any way, you will be polymorphed into a crab. William, as a paladin of the pantheon, decides to take a moment to speak with Umbralee. While he is taking his time, copper and I try to find our way to the next room. very subtly we break one of the windows to the balcony so that copper can fit through to go to the throne room via the balcony. This was happening while William said to Umbralee that we were here to clean up the temple, very clever of us. In the throneroom, Thalmiir once again takes the lead and sits down on the throne. With the power invested by the throne, he changes the weather and then turns himself into an octopus. Continuing our way into the temple, we enter several rooms: Some kindly greet us with a sudden spray of intense cold, while others are more welcoming with a whole bunch of keys and nice sets of clothes. In the hall connecting these rooms, there are fancy looking glowing orbs. The moment that Copper touches one, he gets teleported to an unknown location. As soon as Erky sees this happening, he follows. Next up William, and Thalmiir disappear in the same way. Having no idea what happened, and after everyone but Mudcraw have gone, I decide to follow suit. When I arrive, I find myself in a large cave opening, there is a large statue of a Kraken and I hear the waves much closer than before. It seems to me that a battle has taken place, but the tread has already been dealt with. William and Erky look ill, pale and exhausted. Coppers eyes glow fiercer than before and Thalmiir looks both tired and proud. With a bit of good timing, a fly spell and a lot of luck, we find our way back to the temple via either a rope bridge or the cave created by the waves. (Copper got dragged along with the waves, but he can fly??) After all this, we decide to take a bit of time to catch our breath. in which i took the time to write all this down.

Session notes 28-9-2019
24th of Irawish

--------------------------------- continued: 24th of Irawish Liya finds us again, after having spent a short holiday on the beach at the ship with Vida. As we continued to explore the temple after our little teleport adventure we found quite some interesting items: some gold a coral crown health potions (they were in wooden flasks so we call them 'coconut potions') drift globe a gryphon saddle a manual a lute a lyre a viol a crossbow with about a 100 bolts salt bottles (Liya can play the lyre. ) Before we got the rest of the temple, we came past some interesting creatures. Thalmiir talks to them, (well tries to understand them using his hat of language comprehension) but the only thing that becomes clear is the fact that they are hungry. Unsure of what to do we give them some meat, but they seem to only eat coins. So we throw them some and try to get past. There is a door, engraved with a face surrounded by tentacles, and it opens up to the amulet that we found earlier (not entirely sure if I wrote about it earlier, but it is a sort of coin with two clashing waves) with a bit of a hassle, we got past the monsters The keys we found earlier come in handy in the next room we entered, where several chests are present. In the chests we find many more items: Liya opens a chest and finds 150 gp Another chest contains candles and 3 empty tomes Copper opens a blue chest with claw marks and finds a pristine wedding dress I open a chest which contains four flasks with an orange liquid inside (turns out to be alchemists fire) and a set of alchemists supplies Thalmiir finds a suit of scale mail and a helmet with a fish engraving Erky finds a fancy hourglass with shiny sand William got a chest containing 50 bottles of perfume (it smells fruity) Thalmiir finally tries to open the one chest we did not have a key for and finds 200 gp and a small trinket of an anchor and a feather. We also opened one chest together, in which we found ink, feathers and journals. As i wanted to exit the room through the other door, i nearly got squashed between two walls that slammed together. With a little bit of magic dispelling we safely got through the door and arrived back at the place where we initially got teleported, with Mudcraw waiting for us. Together we try to find our way out of the temple. As we enter one of the rooms that lead to the garden on the outside of the temple Copper accidentally wakes a bunch of small undead. During the battle he also summons fiends? (i am frankly quite confused and a bit concerned but it looked very cool) The garden is very overgrown but beautiful in its own way. After a short moment of appreciating the sight, Thalmiir suggests that we find another route out, past the coin eating creatures, as he claims to have seen another door. Having no reason not to, we follow, quite exhausted from all the traps and fights behind the doors. As we get back to the coin eaters, they seem to have become a bit more, 'direct' trying to directly take our money. This rubbed Copper the wrong way and he started to fight them. Trying to get us past without much more of a fight, I try to scare them away with a spell to scare them away so that we can safely get through. The door Thalmiir had seen does lead us outside. Ugo, the mask-man is waiting for us. He joins us and rides along on Copper's shoulder. As we walk back to the beach, we decide to take a small detour to the statue Mudcraw had told us about earlier. The statue is very imposing and looks like it has been partially made out of the rock we stand on. It looks out over the sea, where many sunken ships lie. (apparently, Liya had already been here) As Erky and Thalmiir decide to identify the statue, they both get one word, [NOT] and [MAGICAL]. This causes a lot of confusion but after a laugh, we decide to return to Vida and his ship.

Session notes 19-10-2019
24th, 25th and 26th of Irawish

---------------- the evening of the 24th of Irawish As we arrived at the boat, the night was starting to fall. Erky and William still did not look their best, but instead of resting, we decided to sail into the night. After an hour or so, we got close to the shores of Beidon, and someone with keen eyes spotted Wim and Tony walking around on the docks. As stealthily as one can be with a boat, we sailed to a place outside of the city proper and camped there. Without much of an issue, the night passed and we headed into town. --------------------- 25th of Irawish At La Familia HQ, we meet Wim. (Thalmiir also saw some profiles, smuggling routes and messages on a board) Wim explains that members of La Familia have seen us camping outside of the city. With a bit of deception and (fake) proof, we deceive our way out of it, even though he really does not seem to buy it at first. We got to arrange a meeting between La Familia and Vida, for them to discuss things for Vidas trade post. Mostly to leave Vida alone, and specifically not to murder him. After some shopping, we have the following items in our possession Liya has a lot of arrows. Ferrum/Copper has oil for his joints, torches (because he can't see in the dark?) and a vial of anti-potion I bought a quarterstaff, but I have found out that even though I feel I can channel power through it I am still very clumsy hitting things with it. and for the team, we bought a diamond, as Thalmiir knows how to use it for a spell and some healing potions for the next time we get knocked out. ----------------- 26th of Irawish The meeting with La Familia went quite smoothly. We were brought to a room with a table at which no lies could be told. Scary at first, but as we omitted some parts of our story (which is technically not lying) we were totally fine. To our surprise, we were able to keep both La Familia and Vida as 'allies' and we decided to do one last walk around Beidon and then head out, who knows where.

Session notes 3-11-2019 & 6-12-2019
27th, 28th and 29th of Irawish

the 27th of Irawish With renewed energy we decide by vote to travel northward, back towards Baferton and eventually Volheim. Ferrum is back! Thanks to our inventor and some help of others we have created a magnificent tent-cart that will be pulled by Kastanjesok towards our new destination. The first day of travel is calm, a bit of rain. We mostly talk about the things we have done the past few days, what we saw in the temple, what we think about La Familia and Vida. The usual stuff. I also took some time to look at a book that has recently come into my possession. I woke up with it at the end of my bed one morning. It looks a bit like the spellbook I have but it has more complex writing inside. I think it is another way to cast spells, much like I have seen Thalmiir do. I have not yet used the book, i looked through it and thought about asking Thalmiir to take a look at it for me, but I'm not quite sure yet. As we set up for the night Liya goes out to find some food, she is very quick on her feet and returns in no time. We take watch and the night goes by without issue. I suspect Ferrum has stayed up during the night? --------------------------------------------------------- 28th of Irawish The day is calm and travel is swift. Thalmiir tells us a bit about why he wants to go back to Baferton. Apparently he has some unfinished business with an orc? half-orc? He lost his brother to this (half) orc and has sworn to take revenge. He had asked the local authorities and police departments to keep track of stories around the (half) orc and his band of bandits, and they had pointed him back to Baferton. As the evening starts to fall, we decide to set up our camp once again. However, as we look around, we see a rather large house in the distance. As we get closer, we see that the place is abandoned. There is no light inside, the stables are empty. Curious as we are, we decide to investigate. Knocking gives us no answer. Looking inside only reveals two statues standing guard on either side of the door on the inside, and a flash of blight blue lights on the other side of the door. Taking more harsh measures and trying to break the door shows us, rather painfully, that the door is magically reinforced by magic that is preventing the door from being forced open. As this is going on at the door, Ferrum and Liya decide to walk around the building for a bit, after which Liya and I decide to take some time setting up the tents, suspecting we are just going to camp outside. After a while, Thalmiir and Ferrum to try and go around the back inside the house, nearly setting the fence around the garden on fire while trying to climb over. As soon as they are in the garden, the front door opens with a soft 'click'. I just now saw that there is smoke being emitted from the chimney. --------------------- its nearly the 29th of Irawish as I am writing this, sitting next to the ruins of what was montharas manor. Together with Ferrum, I am keeping the first watch of the night. But first the story: So, as we started investigating the mansion after the door opened, a totally reasonable choice, we were immediately met by the statues on the other side of the door. As Thalmiir said the felt the presence of elementals they started to move and shift to attack us. With some quick movements and right hits, we finished them of in a flash, after which Ferrum immediately started running into the next room. Of course, the door had closed behind us. (Selûne be damned) As we continued into the next room, a gryphon statue scared the shit out of all of us for a second. But soon our interest was drawn toward a little doll laying on one of the sofa's in the dusty, half dark room. Liya had already spotted the puppet and suggested we put it in de bag of holding 'just in case'. As Ferrum tries to do this, the doll comes to live, scratches and fights, somehow makes the chandelier drop from the ceiling and disappears into the shadows. Confused as we were we decided to investigate a bit more. One of the rooms that stood out was the dining room, where apparitions of people were sitting down to dine. They did not seem to notice us at first. Everyone at the table was happy and eating except for the host, a middleaged human man who stands up, walks straight towards Ferrum, stands op straight and scrams 'Get out of my house!" .... "NOW!". Shaken by this event, we try to leave the mansion at first, but the door is still closed, so our investigation continues. In all the hassle, Thalmiir has found a sort of ballroom where two other apparations are having a moment. The host of the dinner party, though younger is talking to a lady. If I remember correctly they said the following: "leave together" "cant, a lot of work" "army of undead is rising" "We need to go " before they disappeared into nothing. Looking through the windows from this room shows a different landscape than the one we came from. The garden looks well kept and there are no burn marks on the fences. The hills we travelled through are scattered with houses that we were sure were not there before. Going back to the door, we find that there is a route to the second floor that has opened up. as the front door is still not open, we decide to continue looking around. -two little blue eyes peered at us from the other side of the door- The next floor is a long hallway to which several rooms are connected. The hallways look old and weathered and a soft green glow from lines on the floor is the only source of light present. We hear the footsteps of a little doll and are immediately on edge. As we pass through the rooms (will add a little map later) we find a room with some apparations, a giant spider and a room with a body in a bathtub. All a lot of fun as one can imagine. The dead ladies arms are cut open and the bath is stained red from old blood. As Thalmiir tries to get closer a ghostly image of the lady appears and immediately disappears after touching Thalmiir. Thalmiir starts attacking us with his hands and hammer (as if he was possessed). Speaking directly with him (telepathically) gives no answer and I can't command the lady to get out. So we let Ferrum knock him out, painful but effective. As this happens, the creepy doll appears again, attempting to bite and slash at us once again. Getting kind of done with this doll we attempt to hunt it down once and for all, but she disappears into the shadows once again. After a bit of healing (mostly Thalmiir) we continue into some other rooms. There are those we do not open (Ghouls were sensed on the other side of the door) and those we do. As we find ourselves in a very nice kitchen, we are once again greeted by a not so friendly spirit that throws just about anything at us. A Poltergeist as Ferrum later told me. Everyone was very swift and quick and avoided all of the throws, but as I tried to close the door a plate turned sideways and hit me straight in the face. It was not necessarily painful physically, but mentally it was horrendous. Finally, we find our way to what looks like a study. A skeleton secretary greets us, while writing down dates, names and war strategies, and states that 'Advisor Gertrude' had been waiting for us. (Advisor Gertrude then proceeded to walk through the door, without noticing us, but it was the lady from the ballroom) But the skeleton lets us pass, and in the small waiting hallway we see a little girl holding the damned doll that had been following us all the time. The girl looks at us, smiles and at that moment her throat is cut by the doll and the little thing attacks us again. As we were completely done with her at his point, and with Ferrum pinning her down, preventing her to flee into the shadows, we finally completely destroy her. We hear Gertrude laugh and Thalmiir opens the door, upon which Ferrum, Liya and I are sucked into the door by a strong wind. * A fierce battle takes place, between us and three ghouls who are controlled by the still living(?) Gertrude. The room we were sucked into is a large study, with a lot of dirty windows and walls covered by some kind of sluggish material. On the ceiling, there is the man we saw earlier totally covered by the strange goo, with the green light emitting from him. The ghouls were quickly cut down by us and were equally fast reanimated by Gertrude. As soon as she takes damage, she draws energy(?) from the wall and seems to heal herself. Every time this happens the light grows dimmer in the room. As we are following her around the room, she suddenly disappears and reappears in the hallway. William and I chase her down, as Thalmiir, Erky and Liya focus on the man in the ceiling. Chasing her was successful but I was knocked out by her. and I awoke after Ferrum and William took care of me a little bit. There was not a lot of time to recover, as the building started collapsing. It was only later that I heard that Thalmiir, Erky and Liya had managed to 'kill' the man on the ceiling and that that had caused the house to collapse back upon itself. Outside, we take some time to breathe and camp which is where we are at now. I still feel very shitty but have decided to take the first watch with Ferrum. I needed some time to think after going knock out. During this time I saw the being that gifted me the powers I have now. The Bard, as I have called him before. It was not necessarily scary, but a bit confronting as I had always hoped that he would maybe forget about me? But it is clear he did not, but maybe using these powers granted by him do not help with me trying to escape his view. As Ferrum and I keep watch, we exchange secrets. Ferrum is curious to find out more about the party, as we have been travelling together for some time now. Starting with some simple stories, such as Ferrum being very scared of anything we face in battle, and me telling him that when I was younger I tried to put on some a very ornate set of plate mail armour and fell over because it was way too heavy for me. To eventually stories about how Ferrum, got to be the way he is now, and me telling him about my encounter with The Bard earlier that evening. --------------------------------- 29th of Irawish Eventually, I must have passed out because the next time I woke up, I was right next to the fireplace and Ferrum and William were making a hell of a sound to supposedly scare something away... possibly Gertrude, she got away so maybe she is still hunting us. But I was too tired to think about it then, and I let the subtle music hush me asleep once again.

Who is this person and why are they adventuring?
some time ago?

Nimueh was the 2nd child of the baron of the small city Mercia near Jordberg. She has an older sister and a younger brother, and she has a particularly good relationship with the latter. Both he and Nimueh were curious, playing in the forests and looking for what they then called 'adventure'. As she got older, Nimueh, like her sister started studying more. Not having the magical talent of her sister she decided to go for history and law. Next to her studies she still hanged out a lot with her brother, going on walks and playing music together. At one point in time, the younger brother was taken hostage by a group of local criminals. Nimueh, who was there to witness the snatching was unable to do much, not being very physically strong nor magically gifted. During the time of the negotiations to get him back, she thought a lot about this injustice and prayed for her brother to be protected and brought home safe. During this time is when her patron, The Bard, sought contact. Without Nimueh having much knowledge about it, she got a deal from the bard, where she received powers and her brother was returned home safely. Not knowing why or how she got this power, she told her parents that she was going to travel to study and to experience the different cultures. Her sister, however, sensed something was up and tried to confront Nimueh about the lie she had seen through, but had already left. And so she started her journey confused and trying to figure out, how to get rid of the "gift" she had gotten. On her travels, she became very distant and detached from all, tested and tried her powers on the outskirts of the villages and in the forests she wandered through until she eventually ended up in Baferton and met a group of adventurers who were all looking for their own answers.

Nimueh of Mercia

Nimueh of Mercia

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Session notes 9-12-2020 & 17-12-2020 18th day in the Feywild

Session notes 26-11-2020 & 3-12-2020 17th and 18th day in the Feywild

Session notes 8-11-2020 16th day in the Feywild

Session notes 15-11-2020 & 20-11-2020 17th day in the Feywild

Session notes 29-10-2020 14th and 15th day in the Feywild

Session notes 21-10-2020 14th day in the feywild

Session notes 15-10-2020 13th day in the Feywild

Session notes 4-10-2020 10th to 13th day in the feywild

Session notes 27-09-2020 9th and 10th day in the Feywild

Session note 29-08-2020 8th and 9th day in the Feywild

Session notes 10-8-2020 6th & 7th day in the feywild

Session notes 1-8-2020 6th day in the feywild

Session notes 25-7-2020 5th and 6th day in the feywild

Session notes 15-7-2020 5th day in the Feywild

Session notes 1-7-2020 4th day in the Feywild

Session notes 10-6-2020 & 17-6-2020 4th day in the Feywild

Session notes 27-5-2020 2nd to 4th day in the Feywild

Session notes 13-5-2020 & 20-5-2020 16th of Vilrand - 2nd day in the Feywild

Session notes 29-4-2020 & 6-5-2020 13th-16th of Vilrand

Session notes 22-4-2020 9th - 13th of Vilrand

Session notes 9-4-2020 & 16-4-2020 9th of Vilrand

Session notes 28-3-2020 & 5-4-2020 14th of Istrith - 9th of Vilrand

Session notes 21-3-2020 12-14th of Istrith

Session notes 15-3-2020 10th to 12th of Istrith

Session notes 8-3-2020 16th of Iasluin to 10th of Istrith

Session notes 23-2-2020 12-16 Iasluin

Session notes 16-2-2020 27th of Aestrun - 11th of Iasluin

Session notes 5-7-2019 & 21-7-2019 15th to 22nd of Irawish

Session notes 25-1-2020 20th -26th of Aestrun

Session notes 18-1-2020 9th to 20th of Aestrun

Session notes 10-1-2020 8th and 9th of Aestrun

Session notes 4-1-2020 5th-8th of Aestrun

Session notes 27-12-2019 29th of Irawish - 4th of Aestrun

Brief 3th-4th of Aestrun

Thoughts and behaviour 4th of Aestrun

Session notes 11-8-2019 22nd, 23rd of Irawish

Session notes 14-09-2019 24th of Irawish

Session notes 28-9-2019 24th of Irawish

Session notes 19-10-2019 24th, 25th and 26th of Irawish

Session notes 3-11-2019 & 6-12-2019 27th, 28th and 29th of Irawish

Who is this person and why are they adventuring? some time ago?

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Our Allies

Session notes 9-12-2020 & 17-12-2020
18th day in the Feywild

Session notes 26-11-2020 & 3-12-2020
17th and 18th day in the Feywild

Session notes 8-11-2020
16th day in the Feywild

Session notes 15-11-2020 & 20-11-2020
17th day in the Feywild

Session notes 29-10-2020
14th and 15th day in the Feywild

Session notes 21-10-2020
14th day in the feywild

Session notes 15-10-2020
13th day in the Feywild

Session notes 4-10-2020
10th to 13th day in the feywild

Session notes 27-09-2020
9th and 10th day in the Feywild

Session note 29-08-2020
8th and 9th day in the Feywild

Session notes 10-8-2020
6th & 7th day in the feywild

Session notes 1-8-2020
6th day in the feywild

Session notes 25-7-2020
5th and 6th day in the feywild

Session notes 15-7-2020
5th day in the Feywild

Session notes 1-7-2020
4th day in the Feywild

Session notes 10-6-2020 & 17-6-2020
4th day in the Feywild

Session notes 27-5-2020
2nd to 4th day in the Feywild

Session notes 13-5-2020 & 20-5-2020
16th of Vilrand - 2nd day in the Feywild

Session notes 29-4-2020 & 6-5-2020
13th-16th of Vilrand

Session notes 22-4-2020
9th - 13th of Vilrand

Session notes 9-4-2020 & 16-4-2020
9th of Vilrand

Session notes 28-3-2020 & 5-4-2020
14th of Istrith - 9th of Vilrand

Session notes 21-3-2020
12-14th of Istrith

Session notes 15-3-2020
10th to 12th of Istrith

Session notes 8-3-2020
16th of Iasluin to 10th of Istrith

Session notes 23-2-2020
12-16 Iasluin

Session notes 16-2-2020
27th of Aestrun - 11th of Iasluin

Session notes 5-7-2019 & 21-7-2019
15th to 22nd of Irawish

Session notes 25-1-2020
20th -26th of Aestrun

Session notes 18-1-2020
9th to 20th of Aestrun

Session notes 10-1-2020
8th and 9th of Aestrun

Session notes 4-1-2020
5th-8th of Aestrun

Session notes 27-12-2019
29th of Irawish - 4th of Aestrun

Brief
3th-4th of Aestrun

Thoughts and behaviour
4th of Aestrun

Session notes 11-8-2019
22nd, 23rd of Irawish

Session notes 14-09-2019
24th of Irawish

Session notes 28-9-2019
24th of Irawish

Session notes 19-10-2019
24th, 25th and 26th of Irawish

Session notes 3-11-2019 & 6-12-2019
27th, 28th and 29th of Irawish

Who is this person and why are they adventuring?
some time ago?