To the heart of all things

Walking through Tentcity one fine day, Zalph hears of a farm nearby being attacked by bandits and dead things.

"Why this farm must be out of balance. Where is it I shall go and assist."

After receiving directions he is notified of a few others that have offered to help. Zalph takes his leave and marches to the location and meets with Heartscry the windling illusionist/elementalist; Draevinn the elven archer; and Haden the nethermancer.

Not one liking to daudle over pleasantries, he keeps it short: "I am Zalph the elementalist".

He then quickly organizes the group and suggests they move along so as not to lose time.

A little while later they come upon a small hill that seems to have fire burning atop it as well as sounds of people moving about. Heartscry the magnificent, takes flight and reigns down greetings and salutations upon the people she finds there.. but not before informing the party of and odd sound....

yk yk..yk..yk..yk yk yk..

Shortly after her departure shouts of "Get her" or some such are raised and a human steps to the ledge. Whereupon Draevinn heartily shoots him straight through the shoulder and knocks him unconscious immediately.

Zalph then moves along a path leading up to the hilltop. Stopping just as he sees someone he throws an Earth dart and misses. He is then rushed by a war dog in armor, knocked down and bitten quite ferociously.. "What a monster".

The sound of yk.. yk..yk.yk..yk yk yk.. all the while coming from a tree on the edge of the hilltop ends briefly as an ugly 3 foot fleshy THING comes darting over stopping just short of heartscry. As the fight progresses a horde("dont interrupt me pesky interviewer..yes yes there were only 6 but that is a horde most certainly when they start blood sharing with each other") of flesh things.

What ensues is a veritable route as haden and myself stand our ground, with heartscry's help of course, and then slaughter the remaining yk's and drive off some bandits.

We then take a nice little lunch, heat some food.. and shared it with a bandit also. Heartscry gave him a choice to go back to the bandits or a new life.. he chose the latter. He gave us some useful information though: Grey lady was making the yks and their camp was "that" direction.

We then made our way there and quickly engaged another bandit, whom was lain low quite rapidly. Though within a few minutes we were gathering quite the following of angry yks. Haden and I stopped to dispatch them while heartscry and draevinn moved on for a bit.

Haden and I chose to move into a room where we then dispatched the rest. Soon draveinn and heartscry came back and we chased after a nasty Nethermancer I think she was, though i learned later she was an illusionist. We pursued and found her commanding a veritable army this time of yks.. this time with a few larger ones than the originals.. we shall henceforth call them least yks, lesser yks, and yks.

Draevinn took great aim with his bow that I had enchanted yet again with flame arrow and with his skill, and my enchantment he burned a whole right through that nasty woman and dropped her dead in a single shot.

We then got nearly surrounded by all kinds of yky things and made a short stand before I said "to the storage room". Which haden understood but the others did not it seemed so we ended up getting split. Though that worked in our favor as well. We destroyed much of the yks but just as we were getting the upper hand and unusually weird yk, came up and crushed some yks together that then formed a bigger yk.. we shall name him the yk master.. and upon seeing him and his additional forces we had no choice but to flee.

Taking leave of the city on a journey to the Servos Jungle in an attempt to gather alchemy materials as well as loate a kaer that he heard mention of from Haden, Draevinn, and Heartscry.

Prior to going he locates a great Obsidiman purifier (Kalapa), Troll thief (Kato), and a beastmaster Krel'an.

Taking a leisurely stroll for 6 days they then find themselves in the servos jungle. Along the way they avoid several encounters, one with some large animals that have huge horns.

It took several minutes before Zalph was able to get his bearings and figure out how to navigate through the jungle. After some time they found themselves looking up at a tree 50' in diameter.

It being almost night they decide to shelter up near the tree. Upon approaching and evil, nasty flesh dripping. "Ive never seen an obsidiman piss their "pants" but Kalapa sure gave me that impression that day". After a few minutes of combat we rid ourselves of it and then go to sleep.

The next morning we find ourselves being stared at by a group of large predatory cats. Before long someone starts a fight with them and they surround a few people and knock them unconscious.

Seeing that I have a very bad chance of fighting 1v8 I retreat and setup a defensive position. The next morning I wake to hear and see some of my companions miraculously still alive. I make my way to them and attend wounds as I can.

We are then introduced to a windling with a broken wing who seems to have helped Kato wake up. We then learn from this most pitiable of looking windlings that she is a sacrificial chosen one. We are a bit confused as to where this "thing" comes from but it is fairly certain that she has been horror marked and is being watched by it.

As a group we are badly injured, but in a sense successful as we found the kaer opening we came to look for. In addition I found many samples of useful alchemical supplies. We pick our broken, well their broken selves, up and head back to tentcity.

The Delver's Athanaeum thanks Zalph for these additions to their archives.

Rewards:
A New Threat: 70 silver, 35 legend points
The Ironbark Kaer: 88 silver, 44 legend points

Ironbark Kaer
880 LP, 155 SP

Hearing of Heartscrys sojourn to Throal for some pattern knowledge, Zalph offers to tag along for the journey. On this fine day he takes his first trip on a long boat ride down the Serpent river.

The ships captain asks each companion to share tales of their adventures each on a different night. Not one to waste words he sits back in his chair, sips his drink and shares his tale of the Ironbark tree and its guardians. Much to his expectations, no one really says anything regarding his recitation of the events.

A few days later they are attacked by some 4 foot long flying lizards that he learns later are acting very much out of character.

The following day this experience is followed by an attack of 4 harpies who all say some very foul things to everyone. Apparently their words actually have power and they manage to curse and then disease Moore. We spend that night using many different forms to augment his natural adept healing abilities and he is succesful in burning away much of the disease, though hes still not fully recovered making actions slightly harder than normal.

About a days travel by ship from throal we happen to spot another ship and it rams into us. The captain asks us to guard his ship while he and some others jump to the other one and engage the attackers.

While standing on deck we see 2 attackers jump over. More surprising though, 3 others came up from the depths of the river and climbed up the sides. A difficult fight ensues where I cast icy surface twice blocking the movement of the enemies on deck. I even managed to cast earth darts at their nethermancer so successfully that I knocked him down (my companions weakened him considerably making it very difficult to act, but still).

In the midst of all this however I took several hits, including one particularly nasty arrow that wounded me. Our own Nethermancer also took a lot of damage, as did Moore.

In the end we lived and they lost.

The River Boat
LP: 1640, SP: 375

I was part of a group that said we would locate the horror that was holding a windling kaer hostage, and on this day I return to say that we have done just that, and only that.

Several days ago we set out with the intention of locating this horror in the servos jungle and our journey started after a few days travel up the serpent river. We disembarked, made our way into the jungle, found the Ironbark tree, skirted the edges of it and began our search.

One of the party had knowledge of horrors and mentioned the description we gave made it sound like a Despairthought. We reasoned that since the windling we spoke to said it would come and take its sacrifice that it was most likely relatively close by. So we started a spiraling circle outwards from the side deepest in the jungle.

We ran across some animal wildlife along the way intent on nothing more than finding a meal (alright alright.. some ape-like creature, 2 large venomous snakes, and a spider). After about 5 hours of travel on foot the dirt underfoot seemed different, and the obsidiman agreed and said it was the kind one would find near a cave. We knew we were close.

We had a windling in the group that flew up and discovered that we were 2 hours northwest of the tree as the windling flies as it were. We then searched the area near this new dirt, and before going far at all we found the entrance to a cave.

Upon entering we were accosted by a bunch of Krilworms. After dispatching a few, the rest flew off and we went further in. 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes later, we ran across what looked like a ghost. It made some gestures and came close to us. Again, our windling came to the rescue, or attempted to, and began dancing with it?

After a short time it was apparent the thing was hurting the windling, as he fell out of the air hitting the ground. Immediately the rest of us began attacking the ghost. I continually hit it with earth darts, reducing its armor which made it easier to hit it. It took a liking to our obsidiman and kept attacking it, one such attack was rather brutal in which it made the obsidiman "live" part of its past pain.

In that pain he was able to relay that its community had performed a ritual to mark her or him, and that over the next year he or she became more and more isolated until finally the horror mark took its toll and she killed herself. All are things despairthoughts are known to do.

Pay My Dues LP 2715 SP 590

"I wanted to get more spells and thought to myself.. maybe the Elementalis guild can send me on a mission and give me some cost reductions on them. So I went there and asked the person behind the counter, Maggie by name, and she asked me to go a few days out and clear out a cave known to harbor some fugitives that stole some goods. She also wanted us to bring back a woman named Allie, I think it was.

I then went and asked for some assistance and got Trask the swordmaster, and thane the sky raider. We set off and had a pleasnt journey the first day. That night however, 4 ghouls attacked us and were quickly dispatched. After sleeping that night, and moving on for the next day we ran into 3 disgusting spiders. Dispatched them quickly as well. We slept again after that fight and then walked an hour the next morning and found the cave.

We walked in and got attacked by some big dogs that were familiar to the rest of my group called Gate Hounds. They have a dampening attack that made talents very difficult to use. We were able to kill them but they left us quite injured.

We pulled back and healed as much as we could and shortly after healing we saw movement within the cave. 2 figures came out that, 1 female archer named Stasha, and an elementalist named Tuanath. The archer began pulling her bow off her shoulder so we responded in kind. Trask sprinted in, I wove a thread and moved forward a little bit.

After getting my thread wove, I ran up behind Trask and enchanted his weapons with flame, whereupon he then ran up to the archer and skewered her like a stuck pig. At which point the elementalist knocked us down with wind, then moved back in and yelled murderers.

He told us that he has a deed from tentcity making this his home and that we were trespassing. He also said that we were being used to dispose of him for a group called the black fingers. He even mentioned that we probably spoke to the person called Maggie.

Unable to determine the truth of this we went back and took the stuff requested. This left much to follow up on.

The Flying Travarian LP: 3,360 SP: 780

"Trask came to me and Thane and asked for help searching for an air ship that had been lost during the scourge. We boarded an air ship and the captain helped us get to it where we jumped on its deck.

The deck was solid though it had a translucent look to it and sometimes parts of it would completely fade to transparent. As we looked around the deck we noticed sailors in pre scourge attire. Shortly after seeing them, eagles appeared around us and began attacking us. This was a hard fought and dangerous battle as both trask and thane we nearly knocked unconscious. I myself took a wound as well.

We were able to prevail and then moved down with caution to the next level. We were again set upon by ghostly ghoul-like creatures of various races. They had an ability that seemed to reach through us and damage us mystically. There could have been more to that attack but luckily we never found out.

The 2nd floor was guarded by a demiwraith that each of us got a round of attacks on, with trask or thane getting a 2nd and finishing it off.

Moving to the final floor with some minor damage, though all wounded, we saw a Crystal Entity occupying the entire floor. This would account for the oddity of the ship, as there were no air elementals helping keep it aloft. There was some connection to the astral realm for the entire ship and this was the cause.

Wasting no time Trask rushed in and began slashing devastating blows at the entity. Shortly after the shock of the entities size, Thane rushed forward as well and smashed it with his shield. Trask then gave one final thrust and the thing shattered.

The ship began to shake and we knew it would crash shortly, so we grabbed what we could loot wise and fled to the upper deck and got back to our air ship. No sooner did we do so than the ghost ship disappeared without a trace."

Cleanse the tainted land LP:2715 SP: 590

"Questers of Jaspree asked for my assistance in helping with a ritual to cleanse the corruption in the badlands. I looked around for some others to help and got Trask, Thane, and Ogobo to go along.

The objective was to guard the 4 elementalists while they spent 24 hours in ritualistic spellcasting. For the first 13 hours nothing happened. In about the 14th hour some undead looking apes came shambling up the hilltop and began attacking us. Ogobo stood his ground in front of one but it hit him with an incredibly powerful attack after he wounded it. It laid him low, nearly killing him.

After we killed these things some feral cyclopses came up and seemed to be possessed with a specific goal in mind. Thane hit one several times but it bypassed him and attacked one of the elementalists, to the degree of putting one of its tusks through his shoulder. I leveled a few lightning bolts against these monstrosities and took the killing blow from the others. A feat that doesnt often happen to us spellcasters.

About an hour later some more undead came out, this time they were bears. I had put up an icy surface near one entrance and slowed one but it did manage to hit me quite hard and then fell down on the ice. I got off a single lightning bolt on it then had to stand up and move away. I did my job though and gave the others time to dispatch the others before this one came up the hill.

We were standing near the elementalists licking our wounds and then an espagra came out of the sky and attacked us. Trask, ogobo and thane apparently had had enough and dispatched it in rapid fashion. I chose to take some of the remains as my own to use in enchanting endeavors later on."