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The battle of Aganis Field. Finally, a location without Wolf in the title. The area is one of the unfarmable plains in the kingdom, boulders and rocks that they can't easily break up so the kingdom put anything that smelled bad. Leather tanneries, soap making and so on. The fumes in the area burn everyone's eyes. We didn't even plan on a fight here, we were passing through when one of the smaller Wolflake armies showed up, also passing through the area. They held their ground and so did we, then the fight was on. We set up two of the bomb catapults. Archers and casters tossing everything they have and then we fired the catapults. The enemy pulled into a Testudo formation. Really. It didn't help them a bit though, their formation was blown apart and cavalry wrecked them before the front line slammed into them. Avery sat out the battle on the hill with the other non combatants, but she came down afterwards to give her healing support. Prisoners taken, the nobles sent to be ransomed. We looted the area afterwards and got the hell out of there. Everything smells now. | The battle of Aganis Field. Finally, a location without Wolf in the title. The area is one of the unfarmable plains in the kingdom, boulders and rocks that they can't easily break up so the kingdom put anything that smelled bad. Leather tanneries, soap making and so on. The fumes in the area burn everyone's eyes. We didn't even plan on a fight here, we were passing through when one of the smaller Wolflake armies showed up, also passing through the area. They held their ground and so did we, then the fight was on. We set up two of the bomb catapults. Archers and casters tossing everything they have and then we fired the catapults. The enemy pulled into a Testudo formation. Really. It didn't help them a bit though, their formation was blown apart and cavalry wrecked them before the front line slammed into them. Avery sat out the battle on the hill with the other non combatants, but she came down afterwards to give her healing support. Prisoners taken, the nobles sent to be ransomed. We looted the area afterwards and got the hell out of there. Everything smells now. | ||
==Journal Entry 154== | |||
Before we can even get to our next camp location, another small force showed up and pressed to assault, in the hills no less. Just as normal, everything set up, and right when the expected first exchange of magic and archery is to take place, Wolflake goes into a full hoard charge. No formation, just a rushing, screaming line. Yeah, there's a reason why that's a bad idea. Without their own casters to defend, ours wrecked their rush followed by the archers. Half their forces were down by the time they got into melee engagement range. What the fuck is this all about? Most of us never even had to draw our swords, the catapults were never set up. It was a decisive victory. This isn't even desperation, it's suicide. Very few survived and their story was that they were following orders, got convinced that this was the way to beat our catapults. We didn't find any officers amongst the dead or living. I think they ditched the battle as soon as it started. We set up camp nearby. Avery is burning herself out healing the injured, but she's still preaching. At least she's helping. | |||
==Journal Entry 155== | |||
Marcus is writing up a song to commemorate the war and the mostly exaggerated heroic deeds of our side. I'd be more impressed if he wasn't ripping off Queen again for the melody. Well, I ran into another psion. Apparently the wild elves brought one with them to make sure they weren't being fucked over by the Orcs when the war is over. We had a polite conversation and exchanged ideas. I also got a better idea of the elf perspective in this fight. They were descended from one of the earlier groups to fight over this area over and over again and due to their long lifespans, several of them still recall times when they were in charge of Wolflake and losing the battle that left them scattered to the wilds. Surprisingly, they aren't all that interested in retaking their former glory and just want some equal footing and be allowed to do their own thing rather then worrying about pacification forces tearing through their settlements every few years. Understandable. In other news, I found out what Avery and Mike were going on about a few days ago. Apparently Avery said that there was a way to save his soul but he had to give himself to the church. Mike, took it pretty hard and retaliated by suggesting that Avery was also in a pact just like him, just with another organization. That Clerics were just Warlocks with another name. She didn't like that one bit. | |||
==Journal Entry 156== | |||
We're on the move again. Our scouts in the field noticed an airship flitting about in big circles and figured that the crew lost control of it. A few hours later it made about 20 passes over our main encampment. I'm pretty sure they're using the cargo airships as fast scouts now. The only question is why they didn't start doing this sooner, or fill it up with archers. We're packing up camp and moving to a more secure location and preparing for a surprise attack. If we don't see any sign of the enemy, we're going to sack Wolftail Mills. Why is it called Wolftail mills? No one knows, it dates back to the old original shifter colony, and they liked to put Wolf in the title of all the settlements. No one has bothered to change it. It's a good indicator as to how long an area's been settled or used. So this is the place where all the wheat from the outlaying farms are shipped to be processed along with other foods. There's even a massive brewery and winery. I'm starting to see that there is a big chain of production going on in the kingdom rather then having each farming settlement process their own goods. Is this more efficient or is this an effect of bureaucracy expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy? Either way, taking it down should be a nasty blow to Wolflake's supply system. | |||
==Journal Entry 157== | |||
Sure enough, Wolflake sent out a huge army, at least as large as the force at Wolfgate Fort. So, the Battle of Wolftail Mills. We set up the catapults quickly in case they did another hoard charge, but no. Something else happened entirely. I knew something was up when they arrived. They had 30 or so of the big caravan carts with them. We initially thought they were an unusually guarded supply train before they started getting in formation. Phalanx. The initial archer and magic volley's began, but their side never threw offensive spells, just the defensive ones. We launched our catapult bombs, all 8 of them this time. The enemy ranks were thrown into chaos and then we moved in. They put up a good fight this time, all our waves were deployed. Just as it looked like another rout, the carts started unloading. Skeletons. Zombies. Undead. The enemy spellcasters did their thing and the slain enemy soldiers started getting up as a fresh batch. It's the first time I've seen anything like this. I felt a chill go down my spine. I had heard stories but here it is. Every nation and religion that we had come across had banned this type of thing. What the fuck is going on here? Neither my skills nor my pistol are any good against undead. I had to rely on my weaker swordsmanship. The archers weren't much use either except for picking off the living enemy, which just made more undead. We started losing ground quickly. The undead don't care, they keep fighting even with half their limbs missing, any casualties on our side rose in service of theirs and they weren't letting us anywhere near the casters who rose them. Something happened with Avery. She had been sitting in the back with the rest of the non-combatants. She snapped I think. She walked right into the middle of the battle and lit up like a fucking beacon. She picked up a mace and went to town. I didn't know she had it in her. With her help, we managed form a wedge and push right through to the caster line. They pulled into a full retreat once we got near, taking whatever undead servants we didn't utterly destroy. We lost nearly half our forces in this fight. | |||
==Journal Entry 158== | |||
Well, after all that excitement, we burned down Wolftail Mills and hauled ass out of there. Though we won, we suffered major losses in this fight, and it'll be time and money before High Command can get our numbers back up. So what would drive a nation, well respected by the other kingdoms, to break out the necromancers? Is the king that afraid of losing? Every church that doesn't break ties with them now will be turned upon by the people, this type of shit doesn't fly. The people of this world are highly superstitious and marching around undead is one of their greatest taboos. High Command has deployed messengers to everywhere possible to spread the news. Avery's been in prayer since we set up our tent. Does her god answer her? I don't know how that works here. | |||
==Journal Entry 159== | |||
Avery got her answer apparently. She declared that she will now give her full support to the war effort by her god's permission. So wait, the sun god is officially supporting both sides of the war now? Dealing with this gives me a headache. Our scouts in the field have been reporting roving bands of undead, usually groups of 100, in Wolflake armor, moving location to location. Most often at night. Maybe the King is some kind of Lich. I didn't think much of it then, but he was hiding during that ball I attended under the Rheingrafs and his castle is impregnable and off limits to non officials. Then why is the church supporting him? Especially the church with a hardon for smiting undead (and terran psions.) I know you're reading my journal Avery, stop it! | |||
>I'd like to see you try and stop me. | |||
==Journal Entry 160== | |||
We got some more people in from the tribes, fresh warriors and some goblins. They came in with the supply caravan along with a supply of some kind of wards the tribe shamans made to help with the undead.. I don't know how effective these would be but there aren't enough. They're being given out to the front line forces. Sure enough, Marcus vanished until they left and came back with a smile. So yeah, we're all pretty sure he's got a half green sweetheart. We're set to pack up and march in a day or two to a new position out in the hills with a view of the main trade road. Supposedly it's very defensible. From there, we'll wait a few weeks for more recruits and then head out and see about ending this undead menace. | |||
==Journal Entry 161== | |||
One of our far patrols came in today. They reported that there's been no Wolflake military activity in the field. What's worse is that there's a massive undead army guarding the main gate to the city itself and it looks like parts of the city are on fire. Avery is particularly upset about news of the city, she knows people there. Jason seems to think a zombie apocalypse has broken out. Maybe it has. Maybe it's a rebellion. Maybe the Reingrafs are making their move. High Command has decided that we're going to start pushing forward, even with our decreased numbers. They want to know what's going on. We're going to make for Barrason Fort, a few miles from the capital and try and occupy it, and bring enough supplies for a siege. We start marching come sunrise and should be there in a day and a half. | |||
==Journal Entry 162== | |||
We took Fort Barrason without lifting a weapon. Only a small force was occupying it by the time we arrived and they surrendered when they saw us coming. According to the fort commander, their numbers have been dwindling over the course of the month, a handful recalled here and there and the last week, it's been one or two soldiers at a time until all contact with the city was cut off four days ago. He doesn't know what's going on with the undead other then orders to not attack them and treat them as any other Wolflake soldier. We can see the city from here. Large smoke clouds billowing from several spots hidden behind the massive walls. We have our cavalry archers out poking at the massed undead force at the gates. In the meantime, us Terrans have scoured the camp and have been making some more bombs. We have enough for 3 catapult bombs. Avery went and blessed the shrapnel we were putting in them. I don't know if that will actually work and neither does she, but it's worth a shot. | |||
==Journal Entry 163== | |||
Today we saw one of the supply airships come in from the east and circle around for awhile. We tried flagging them down and managed to catch their attention. They didn't land, but hovered up near one of the higher towers in yelling distance. They're from Hebiry and were coming in on a scheduled supply run, but weren't going anywhere near the airship port with the way things looked down there. Hebiry's not involved in this war and thought we were in the process of sacking the city. Apparently it's that bad inside. High Command paid them off to drop their cargo at one of the tribal camps since it's apparently stuff they can use. Clothing, spices, weapons, other manufactured goods. They went for it. They're in it for the profit and don't care who gets it, as long as they have their money. | |||
==Journal Entry 164== | |||
Jason, while on night watch, caught something going on at the city gates. His replacement eye/ruby gives him some kind of vision enchantment. The front gate opened a little and more undead streamed out, then the gates closed. When sunrise came, it looked like most of the fires inside had been put out. I have this sense of foreboding. We're adapting a new weapon. We found two barrels of lamp oil in the fort storage. Mike is trying to thicken it up some and we're going to make some molotovs using a few used glass potion bottles. The plan is that we're going to arm the cavalry with them and have them firebomb the undead army guarding the gates and then get the hell out of there. We only had enough bottles to make 14 of them. High Command is willing to give it a shot but wants the rest of the oil set up to use as catapult ammo. | |||
==Journal Entry 165== | |||
You know, I've been in this fucking country for far too long. If we never got caught up in this war, who knows where we'd be by now. So the cavalry rode out, got close enough to toss their molotovs and made a quick getaway. A few came back with arrow injuries but nothing serious. We watched the undead burn from the fort. They burned for hours, dead skin burning away, just standing there without a care in the world. The only time they moved was to keep the fire from spreading from the front gate. After awhile a good portion of the zombies collapsed, and an hour later, got back up as black charred skeletons. Fantastic. To make matters worse, a fresh group exited from the city a few hours after that. Jason decided to volunteer along with some other similarly skilled individuals to climb the wall during nightfall and see what's going on over there. | |||
==Journal Entry 166== | |||
Jason returned. He and his group saw no sign of any patrols on the wall. They were out there until sunrise. He snapped some photos with his ipod. Most of the city is decimated, especially the residential district. The market abandoned and filled with corpses. No sign of anyone living, just the occasional wandering undead. The church of the sungod is still standing but all it's iconography has been removed and he said that there are lights coming from it's windows. The noble's district and castle also seem to be completely untouched and is the only places they saw anyone living moving around. They managed to catch a group of undead moving from the military barracks to the front gate on their way out. High Command has decided that the city is a loss and we're going to pull back to the tribal lands until they can figure out what to do. | |||
==Journal Entry 167== | |||
We're on the move. Our wild elf mercenaries have been recalled back to their lands to warn and prepare. We should make the orc tribal lands in a few days. Then what? High Command seems to think the war for Wolflake is over, that the whole area is cursed. I guess they did accomplish what we set out to do, put an end to the pacification raids, but now there's undead building up. I think they're afraid. I'm sure I'd get my jaw broken if I called them that to their face though. Facing down undead seems to of hit some deep seated fear. So the plan is to get back to the tribal lands and fortify and hope the undead stay away. Marcus has suggested that with the possibility of gunpowder becoming wide spread, that they should build a trace italienne. A star fort. He's currently designing up some blueprints. | |||
==Journal Entry 168== | |||
I am so disappointed right now. We made it back to the tribal lands and set up camp. The next morning, all mercenaries were paid their dues and released from their obligations. The war is officially over. Just like that! With the undead waiting around the corner. They think fighting the undead is a futile task. I'm pissed, which is funny. We never wanted to get involve in this stupid war and here I am, disappointed that it's over without a proper conclusion. We gave them knowledge so that they can finish and instead they back out because of superstition. Sure, I could manipulate some of them, but I can't manipulate all of them. So what now? We have our horses, I think we're just going to get our asses to Hebiry while we still can. Maybe follow the trade loop and see if our compatriots are still in Wildlake. Fuck. | |||
==Journal Entry 169== | |||
We should be in Hebiry in a few days. Our time in the war taught us good places to set up camp and how to properly keep watch. We've run into several small undead patrols. Usually three or four zombies or skeletons, which we have dispatched with Avery's help, and cremated the remains to make sure they won't be getting back up. We'll be at the Wolflake border by tomorrow and I can't say I'll miss this place. I wish the best for the Orcs, but I do believe that their decision wrong. The undead menace needs to be taken care of eventually. | |||
==Journal Entry 170== | |||
We passed into the nation of Hebiry last night. The road we're on is set in a tight valley. It used to be heavily traveled until the war broke out and now the undead menace. We came acro ss a border guard not long after crossing. We got stopped and asked questions, but they were polite. We updated them on what's been going on across the border, the undead and the war. They didn't say much but they're worried. They will of course need to see for themselves, but at least they know what to expect if Wolflake decides to expand. We are camped at cave on the side of the road that's been furnished for trade caravan use. The walls are covered in graffiti, writings of names, dates and destinations. It looks like they date back hundreds of years. Not to feel left out, I added our information to the wall using Earth time. According to my calculations, we've been here either almost or a little more then a year. I looked back to my first few entries. I've come a long way. | |||
==Journal Entry 171== | |||
I got to sleep in a real bed! Eat a meal in a warm tavern! It's been so long. So, welcome to Hebiry. One of the main hub cities on the trade circuit. Brick and plaster construction with a large granite outer wall, the city is circular in design, set up like a hub similar to Aeyllin but not nearly as large. Cobblestone streets that are well maintained and pride of the city. Apparently each stone has a name carved in it dating back to the first generations who built the city and settled here. The main export from this city is wines, cheeses and tomatoes, supplied from the many farms. So, first thing in the morning, Avery heads off to the local branch church to check in. She wanted an escort but I'm not going anywhere near that place. It's clear that she doesn't know what to expect. Marcus went with her. He's the least likely of us to be branded evil and chained to something. Jason headed off to check in with his guild which left Mike and myself. We hunted around the market for anything interesting. I got a new set of armor, some new clothes and some supplies. Mike got a magic ring that he says has healing properties, clothes and a bottomless bag which is some kind of knockoff bag of holding. Even with subtle manipulations, those magic junk merchants are a pain in the ass to get a good deal out of. | |||
==Journal Entry 172== | |||
Well, Avery returned with news. The local sun worshiper church heads don't know anything about gunpowder or sanctioned deployment for Wolflake and are taking the news of what happened as an attack on their church. So they're doing whatever it is they do. We are going to stay around town for a few days before heading out. It should be a two days ride to Rosenbridge. It's been awhile since we've been there. The place where it all started. So we have been puttering around town, seeing the sights. The food here is excellent. So I was sitting in a cafe with the others discussing our plans when something caught my eye. Someone writing with what appeared to be a pen. It was larger then my ballpoints, but it was definitely a pen. Looks like my old artificer friend finally managed to make it happen. I'll have to pay him a visit and see about collecting my share and what else he's managed to make. | |||
==Journal Entry 173== | |||
Went through the market today again, some new caravans passed through yesterday. Something caught my attention. A recurve bow. I didn't think they had those here. It didn't look new either. I questioned the seller and it's apparently from a kingdom far to the south and quite rare. The price tag on it was absurd. Avery picked up some things from her church's store, Jason picked up a set of new steel shortswords and Marcus traded in his beat up old dulcimer for a guitar. We're planning on heading out tomorrow and following one of the smaller trade caravans across to Rosenbridge. The area is well traveled and I'm not expecting any trouble. We watched Strange Days again. I wish I had more movies with me. We know every scene, every dialog, all the music lyrics, but it's all we have. | |||
==Journal Entry 174== | |||
So here we are, camped out for the night on the road with a trade caravan that we were following. Marcus is playing some music when all of a sudden Jason starts acting funny. Suddenly this figure just appears out of thin air and before he can shove his knife through my throat, Mike tackles him. We dog pile the motherfucker and try to put on a beatdown. He slips free and gets ready to attack when Jason manages to shove one of his swords through the guy's back. We bring our lights over and I recognize him. It's the fucking Rheingraf spymaster. The one I killed. He doesn't appear undead. So I shoot him point blank three times. Before I can fire a fourth he's gone. Just...poof. Not there anymore. Fuck. This isn't over. | |||
==Journal Entry 175== | |||
Ah, wonderful Rosenbridge. It's been so long. It's different now, at least to me. I'm seeing it from a different perspective, as someone who is used to what this world has to offer and not a lost and confused offworlder. We visited some of our old haunts, the alleyway, the haunted house, the docks where we worked for our first coppers. I checked around for the artificier, but he's apparently in Wildlake. Avery went to check in with the church and make her report, and Jason ran off as well. Mike, Marcus and I did some checking around, anything about us foreigners, any news of the other three. Our leads led to the guard captain. We caught him off duty on the way to his residence. I dug deep. Rosenbridge is under control of a wealthy Baron, but the orders to hunt us down was given by one of his advisers. We're going to pay him a visit tonight and see what he has to say. I made sure the guard captain didn't remember a thing, but I also left a little something behind in the back of his mind. Doubt. | |||
==Journal Entry 176== | |||
Avery and Marcus stayed at the inn during our escapade. Avery made us promise that we wouldn't kill anyone. The adviser lived in the wealthier part of town, near the Baron's estate. Jason got us into the building through a back door and we snuck around. I managed to get a few people to ignore certain sounds they heard with some memory auditing and then we were there. Up in his room. We locked his door and got him up. It was time to explain, time to find out what he had done with Max, Ian and Austin. He awoke terrified, as would anyone who woke up surrounded by three armed people. Mike “disabled” his mouth, we didn't need it. It would only get in the way. He had heard that a bunch of homeless foreigners had shown up and some of them had wondrous “magical” things with them. He had wanted to know more. He tortured them for information. For days. When he decided that he had enough, he sold them off to the slave markets without a second thought and made a tidy profit. I promised I wouldn't kill him. Jason sure wanted to, or at least start cutting off things. I tried something new. I made him think he was in agony. Forever. Always. Maybe someone can fix what I've done, but until then... Anyways, we found some of their belongings in a chest nearby. An ipod mini, a droid cellphone, headphones, a broken tablet that was so mangled we couldn't even tell the make and a first gen nook. Everything had a dead battery. Well, we can fix that. | |||
==Journal Entry 177== | |||
We're on our way to Wildlake. It should only be a day by horse. We have stopped briefly where Dan was killed and paid our respects. No grave, the body long gone, probably eaten by some animal. We didn't even know him that well. He deserved better. So what do we do at Wildlake? What don't we do. I wonder if Baldy Mctattooface is still around. Definitely have to pay a visit to the artificer. The slave pits of course, that's a given. I hope Alex is doing alright. The last time I saw him, we were just leaving Rosenbridge and heading here. Back when Dan and Amanda was still alive. Fuck. | |||
==Journal Entry 178== | |||
Wildlake. We're set up at the same inn we used last time we were here. There's no sun church for Avery to run off to. Jason's off visiting his old guild master. We poked around the slave markets soon as we got in town, but our compatriots are not around. We will look into this more later. So there was something I had to get out of the way. I left the others behind, left them with most of my gear and headed out into town on my own. Sure enough, there she was, waiting for me. Almost on instinct, we both unleashed everything at each other immediately. It was like two fires engulfing each other. My head burned with power and for a brief moment, we were of one mind before I repelled her will. I'm not as strong as her yet, but she can't completely dominate me anymore. With our greeting out of the way, she invited me in and we talked. The other one was there, I know now that he's a telekinetic. The muscle of this organization. Either way, this conversation was not for him to hear. She made it clear that I need to be more careful with my moral abuses. If I draw too much attention, it will get much more difficult to do what we do. She was pleased with my Wolflake experiments, that I'm learning that you don't have to brute force to get your way. She still wants me to shave my head. I'm not shaving my head. | |||
==Journal Entry 179== | |||
So Avery is pissed at me. She thinks I snuck off and had creepy psychic sex with a rapist. How do I explain this to someone who can never see the world as you do? It's like Mike trying to explain how and where he draws his magics from. It's not going to make sense, you don't have the context to understand it. Besides, we didn't have sex, not in the physical sense anyways. She's driving me up the fucking wall. Anyways, I went in search of my artificer friend. He's dead. He's been dead since before winter. Murdered. A week later, the first ballpoint pens hit the market and are a huge success with the literate crowd. I checked his workshop and all our designs and his prototypes are missing. I'm pissed. Really fucking pissed. And Avery is pissed! And we're pissing off Marcus now too! It's a fucking chain reaction! I'm sure Mike and Jason would be involved as well except those two ran off with a group of adventurers to hit the dungeon under the city. | |||
==Journal Entry 180== | |||
So after we all cooled down, Marcus, Avery and myself hit the slave market. Did some talking. Nudged a few people, paid off some others. It seems those three didn't spend much time here. They were healed up and bought right up by a wizard who was most interested in the extra-planar tag they put on the three. The wizard was said to of been heading for Czebron. It's such a pain in the ass converting these city names into English, especially the ones without an obvious meaning or weird pronunciation like Aeyllin or Kinild. Czebron. Well whatever. The map says that's another town on the main trade circuit, we can get there from here or Hebiry, but there's a few cities along the way. Alright, we have a destination. We'll head out in a few days or whenever we're ready. In the meantime, I'm going to look into this murder of my cashcow. | |||
==Journal Entry 181== | |||
So the first thing to do in my investigation was to see who was selling the pens in the first place. Well, there were three merchants in town. Upon questioning them and then questioning them harder, there's a small cottage industry on the edge of town that makes them: a group of dwarves. So I paid them a visit. Of course it's never that easy. The dwarves were only paid to make the pieces and assemble the finished product, they didn't even make the ink, that was outsourced to an alchemist in Rosenbridge who sends shipments every week. So who is paying the dwarves? Well, the dwarves were being paid by a merchant guild dispensator. It wasn't some rival artificer. It's the merchant guild, who have their hands in every merchant along the trade circuit. I questioned a few of the higher ups in the organization that I could get access to, and they only knew that it came from on high. I'm also seeing that this guild is more like the Mafia. Great. Just fucking great. | |||
==Journal Entry 182== | |||
I needed to clear my head so I went on a dungeoneering expedition into the crypts with Avery and a group of fresh adventurers. We have a swordsman, a guy with a big hammer and halfling who won't stop talking about how amazing his magic knife is. We answered a posted request by some local who says that there's voices in his head begging him to retrieve some magic sword down there. Working for crazy people, but crazy people with money. Well, my solar battery flashlight still works fine. Avery was stuck with a torch and nearly set her hair on fire several times. So it's swampy as fuck down there because of the season, and surprise, lizard people, tribals. Why are they down here? They've been displaced by a group of druids who decided that they weren't Nature! enough to live there. The crypts are swampy enough to remind them of home, if not darker, and it's warm down here for whatever reason. So do our non Terran team mates wait to find this out? Nope! They draw their weapons and charge in to slay the monsters. For fuck's sake. No one was hurt, the lizard shaman did some magic thing to demotivate them. We talked and to my surprise, there was a magic sword down here. Something they've been guarding, a great evil blade that's possessed. As Avery was a cleric, they let her see the blade and she confirmed that it was radiating evil. I didn't feel anything but whatever. The shaman asked her for her help in trying to purge the weapon, and she of course accepted. So that left the rest of us sitting on a rock and chatting it up with lizard people. The adventurers were depressed that they didn't get to kill anything. After what felt like hours, Avery comes back with the now less evil blade and we get the hell out of there. We deliver it to the crazy guy who was relieved and then we got paid. Now I need a bath, I smell like lizard person. | |||
==Journal Entry 183== | |||
I found out who is head of the merchant guild. A gnome family has been running it for generations. Getting to them isn't easy, they always move with bodyguards. I can't just kill them, they are Baldy's main source of income and if they go down, so does the regional economy. They usually hang out at one of the high class cafe's in town and drink imported coffee while discussing how to increase profits. They have the whole cafe shut down in the meantime. So I got as close to them as I could, slipping into the second floor of the cafe, the owner's apartment, and did my best. I gave them all guilt. It should take some time to bake, but it's pretty deep seated. I also gave one of their body guards some delicious greed. Small pushes. We'll see how this works itself out. In other news, AVERY STOP READING MY JOURNAL. | |||
>It doesn't matter where you hide it, I'll still find it. | |||
==Journal Entry 184== | |||
So I had time to go through our recently acquired first gen nook. Mostly fiction including the entire Dune series, more Starwars then I even thought possible, The song of ice and fire series, Mistborn and of course, Shakespeare. He also had a huge encyclopedia on there. Well, at least we have something to keep ourselves occupied when we're bored. I don't imagine publishing any of these on this world would be worthwhile. The common people are mostly illiterate and I don't think anyone even knows what fiction is. What is fiction to a world with magic? A world without magic? Anyways, we leave tomorrow. Our route is to hit the trade roads to Eridale, then to Pinecliff, hop a boat to Valmere and then we should be able to get at Czebron. We have a long road ahead of us. Marcus and Jason are getting supplies. Avery is.. blessing the horses or something. I'm going to pay a last visit to my favorite skinhead and we'll leave in the morning. | |||
==Journal Entry 185== | |||
Alright, so we're riding along at a good clip and stumble onto a trade caravan in the process of being robbed by some bandits. It looks like the caravan guards were taken by surprise, two of five are dead, the dead don't look like they even managed to draw their weapons. We have about 15 or so bandits. Too many to easily deal with. Of course the bandits are seeing more money in their future and demand everything. Mike suddenly rides out front, turns jet black and starts throwing his fire around. He gets hit by two arrows which just bounce off. After recovering from our surprise, we join the fray. The guards get the idea, grab their weapons and join in too. It's a huge fucking clusterfuck. Mike's horse freaks and tosses him, fire going everywhere. I manage to keep mine steady and start firing with my Sig. Avery's horse flips it's shit and starts trampling and kicking anyone who gets near. Marcus manages to dismount and go in with his sword. When all was said and done, we've all been injured in some way, the caravan lost probably half its cargo and I'm down a magazine in my pistol. Avery's burned herself out healing everyone and the horses. I'm burned out keeping the horses calm and keeping the caravaners from deciding that we're responsible for their lost goods. The bandits had no money to loot, shitty weapons and pretty much nothing of value. Marcus claimed a bow and quiver and wants to learn to use it. None of us have any archery experience. Currently we're camped at a caravan rest stop and will head out in the morning. We'd of made it twice as far if it wasn't for those fucking bandits. | |||
==Journal Entry 186== | |||
Well, the ride took longer then expected, but Welcome to Eridale. One of the minor port cities and a hub on the trade circuit. The city is of stone buildings and tight claustrophobic alleyways. According to local sources, this town was built with small streets to make it easier to block them off should the population revolt. The area used to be under control of an asshole Duke. The population revolted anyways and the Duke couldn't escape because they blocked off the small streets. They're all long gone and the city is boarderline anarchy. The only thing keeping the peace is merchant guild paid guards. I would say that the guild runs the town, but they don't actually have an office here. So it's a guard run town. There are some really strange and specific laws and harsh punishments. To make matters worse, there are four guard captains and they're all psions, all mind-linked at all times and operate as one being with four bodies, and continually check in on their subordinates. Jason says there isn't even a thieves guild present. We're being careful here and have set up in an inn. We'll leave in a day, Marcus wanted to check out the Bards college that's supposedly here. Why do they have a Bard's college, here of all places? | |||
==Journal Entry 187== | |||
Well, I'm never coming back here again. We were all fined and run out of town, one at a time. I was picked up by a guard while eating breakfast at the inn. What for? Being a psion without a shaved head. Motherfuckers! Avery got kicked an hour later for being a cleric without ecclesiastic travel papers. She doesn't even know what that is. Mike got picked up soon after for abuse of magic devices. He was playing his ipod too loud apparently. Marcus was booted for not having a bard's license. What? The only one that wasn't booted was Jason. The thief is the only one that didn't get kicked out of town. How?! He fetched our horses and we left this shit hole. They tried fining one of the horses for having two different types of horse shoes but we were already outside of city limits. Anyways, we're camped out and on our way to Pinecliff. We should be there in three days. | |||
==Journal Entry 188== | |||
Okay, I have been reunited with my Journal. We get to Pinecliff at nightfall and settle at an inn for the night when some asshole wizard who somehow knows we're offworlders walks up. Some spell he has going. I figure he wants to talk and I can't easily penetrate his mind, he's got a strong will. I'm tired and don't think anything of it, it's happened before. Next thing I know, I'm on my ass with some paralyze spell and he's running off with my journal. The others are too surprised to do anything except Jason who gives chase. Jason eats a lightning spell for his effort. It's on now motherfucker. The spell wears off and Avery manages to heal Jason. We track him down to a tower on the edge of town after asking around. It's all locked up and has a mud golem parked out front for security. The lights are off. I know he's in there, I can feel it. There are some windows a few floors up, so we hatch a plan. Jason and Mike will go in while Avery, Marcus and myself try and distract the golem. So we go up to the golem and engage it in conversation. It can't answer back obviously but it's not attacking right off the bat, it's in the middle of a city, but we got its attention. Jason scales the wall and Mike does some thing where he just skitters up the wall like it's nothing. What the fuck. Suddenly there's some loud whistling sound and the tower's lights go on. The golem suddenly flips it's shit and turns to the front door. I think they tripped a magic security system or something. So we attack the golem. Swords aren't doing much to it except cutting off little pieces. Guards come running over, and I convince them that the golem's gone on a murderous rampage. They never trusted the thing. We have some help with this now. We're all covered in mud but we're cutting this thing down until it finally goes inert. We're all covered head to toe in mud, the whole area is filthy. Mike and Jason go leaping out of the window with my book and the wizard comes running out the front door with a big glowing staff and cursing. The guards immediately leap at him, thinking he's also gone on a murder spree. Accusations get thrown around and we all get arrested except Jason and Mike. We spend the night in jail except Avery, who is sent to the local sun church for them to deal with. We end up sharing a cell with the wizard. He thought my journal was some planes walker spellbook and was trying to decipher the language. He burned the edges of several pages in his attempts. He said it was the chance of a lifetime. I'm at a fucking loss. | |||
==Journal Entry 189== | |||
So the guard had us, wizard included, cleaning the mud up from the golem fight. We had some time to get to know each other. He's eccentric but not a bad guy really. When he's not stealing mysterious journals from strangers. He's originally from Aeyllin and knew some of the people we worked with there. We asked if he knew anything about our missing compatriots. He did recall a strange band passing through a while back, so I think we're on the right track. Afterwards, he invited us to a nice breakfast and bid us farewell. He has golems everywhere in his tower. So we picked up Avery. The church was pissed at her for being involved in criminal activity, even if it wasn't really. They had her doing some.. thing that she won't talk about, but it bothered her a great deal. She was certainly directing hate around the room when we picked her up. She won't talk about it though. Met back up with Mike and Jason. I'm pretty sure they read through it, but I don't mind since they were there for nearly everything described in it. Not like you Avery! | |||
>Fuck you, you ditched me in the fucking church with Alex to go on an adventure, what was I supposed to do? | |||
==Journal Entry 190== | |||
Alright, time for a proper introduction. Welcome to Pinecliff. It's a major port town posed on a cliff overseeing the ocean. The area is heavily forested and another hub on the trade circuit. Most of the buildings are wood and the primary export is wood and wood products, much like Brightly but on a larger scale and without infinite trees. Instead, they have a pack of druids that decide which trees are good to cut and where to plant the new ones. No clear cutting here. The city itself is around 150-200 feet above the water line, where the massive harbor is. There's a long line of stairs to get down there and a crane system for moving the cargo. Jason mentioned inventing a counterweight elevator, but we're not going to be here long enough. They have enough docks for 20 or so ships and most of them are full. They are also in the process of building an airship port. We're going to stick around for a few days until we find a ship heading for Valmere. Other then the wizard incident, our time here so far has been pretty good. Nice town to be in and Marcus is having the time of his life showing off at the taverns. Avery seems distant though. | |||
==Journal Entry 191== | |||
Well, a call went out for adventurers with help dealing with a nearby dungeon of some sort. Unfortunately, we're the only ones in town at the moment so we kind of got gang-pressed into it. It pays well I suppose, and we are running low on our money. The merchant guild wants this place cleared out. It's full of goblins who have been attacking caravans, harassing the druids and stealing anything left alone outside of town. We're getting prepared for it, got some dungeoneering gear. Rope, torches, emergency rations and we'll tear hit it up tomorrow. | |||
==Journal Entry 192== | |||
The Pinecliff dungeon. Where to begin. We found the location and went in. It looked like just a natural cave at first. Sure enough, we found goblins. Feral. No negotiations. They attacked like wild animals defending their home, which they were. They had spears and primitive knives. We had swords and magic. Avery kept us healed as we pressed forward. Jason picked out a few primitive traps and I mind-tricked them into triggering them for us. There were about 30 or so of them and they attacked in small skirmish groups. They probably would have had a better chance if they all rushed us at once. We took a break in their main camp after we finished, catching our breath and checking injuries. Around then Marcus notices that the walls aren't so cave like anymore, it's stone work, and the further it goes, the more developed it becomes. We make a decision and continue down to see what's there. We put up some chalk marks on the wall so we don't get lost. Jason picks out a few more traps that were far more advanced then what the goblins were using, some of them magic. One insidious pit trap with some kind of monofilament line across it. Mike did his wall crawling thing to get across and found some trigger that closed the pit with a mechanical door. Very interesting. So deeper we go, avoid some more traps and we're currently taking a break and having some lunch. Air flow down here seems okay considering how deep we must be. Might be magic, might be hidden vents or just the design of the place. | |||
==Journal Entry 193== | |||
We're not the first ones here. We finally make it to what seems to be the end of the dungeon, a big room with treasure chests. They were all empty, most broken open. We were about to shrug and leave when Jason notices that the small floor tiles have something carved into them. Words. In English. Here. It wasn't a message though, the words were random. Jason, of course, found the trigger. Pressing down on the Earth and Home stones. A new door opened in the wall and beyond, a small alcove. We found a jar of honey with a small block of some kind of wax inside. In the middle of the wax was a microsd card. When we touched the jar, a bright light burst went off. We thought it was a trap initially but nothing seemed to of happened. We made a rush out of the cave expecting it to of closed off somehow, but we made it out okay. So what was the light burst? Soon as we got out, we made camp and checked the card. It still worked. It was full of photos. 10 people in Earth clothing in locations that looked vaguely familiar. One was definitely Aeyllin, and one looked like Wolflake but it was under construction. The first ones looked like Rosenbridge without the city on the bridge. There were two hundred photos, and as they went on, people went missing from them, expressions changed, they changed over their time. Like us. This had to of been in that cave for a long time. Why is there no record of their exploration and why did they appear so long ago? We took a look at the dates on the earliest photos. March 3, 2014. | |||
==Journal Entry 194== | |||
We got paid for our dungeon work and retired to the inn. We kept going over the photos. I sent copies to everyone's devices and we dug around for a message in the photos, anything. Why is there no historical evidence of them? We tore through Aeyllin's university library! How long ago was this? What happened to them? The last photos were of the dungeon. Was there a group before them? Is there going to be a group after us? Who is doing this to us? So many questions, my head hurts. Avery's tearing up the more she looks at them. Mike's been messing with her Laptop to see if there are any recoverable deleted files on the card. Marcus caught something though. Their group had 10 people. We have 11. Why? Is there a reason behind this, or just random? I wonder if they ever found a way home, or if they died in obscurity. Did they introduce technology the way we have been? What were their names? Damn it. | |||
==Journal Entry 195== | |||
We held off the boat trip and went back to the dungeon. We brought digging tools and went to make damn sure that we didn't miss anything. Unfortunately we didn't. We tore at the walls, the floors, the ceilings. We repaired damage in the last room that we did and resealed the alcove doors with a message written in chalk on the wall. It listed all of our names, even the dead, the date we left and the current date. We resealed the microSD card in the wax and honey and put it back. We added a new directory to it full of our pictures, A summery of our misadventures , the local date and an explanation of all we know, where we've been and what we've done. If there is another group one day, I hope they find this. We resealed it and Jason reset the traps as we left. We spent the rest of the day in Pinecliff in silence. | |||
==Journal Entry 196== | |||
Well, we're on a ship heading for Valmere, another port city on the way to Czebron. It's a cargo ship, frigate size. It's an odd design to it, almost like a Chinese Junk but with more traditional sails, but not quite. We have been following the coast, and the waters have been calm. We have about a three day sail before we get to our destination. The crew is a mixed batch of races. The captain is a swashbuckling, civilized Kobold. It's adorable. Apparently, most people won't take him seriously so he does all his dealings through his first mate, a numbers obsessed elf who's always calculating the profit margins. Marcus picked out something in the photos while going through them. There's a few photos of one or more of the other Terrans posing in front of some of the churches, pointing back at it with an excited or silly expression. He seems to think they're under construction. That's one way to date the pictures I suppose. The ones I recognize are the sun church in Wolflake, the warrior church in Wildlake and one is definitely the peace and love church in Aeyllin. Maybe the university archives were the wrong place to look for the information. Next time we're in those cities, aside from Wolflake, I'll have to take a look. Assuming they don't brand me for evil or something. | |||
==Journal Entry 197== | |||
I had a long talk with Avery. We were alone, the others asleep. She finally opened up with what's been bothering her. It's all a fraud. The churches. She says the gods are there all right, and she is a strong believer in whatever the sun god stands for, but the gods are like tools, they can be wielded and they don't necessarily care how they're wielded, just that they are. The church, while it started as an organization to help people of the same following and spread the love, it has become a bureaucratic nightmare that exists solely to support it's continuing existence. The church and it's god have become separate. It's become a guild. She believes that if she separated herself from the church, she'd be labeled a rogue traitor and hunted down and purged. Why did she join in the first place? They have very convincing recruiters, and not all of them are bad. So what have they done to her? Word spread that she was an offworlder. Some took that to mean that she was divine in some way and have been trying to take her for their own; some have tried by force but her power has let her resist and block such attempts. Why did she do what she did to me in Wolflake? She was appalled at what I had been doing, but also she needed someone there she could fall back on. She used approved church methods to keep me there since she couldn't have an evil psion running around. And I ditched her. Twice. That's why she never escaped during the war and returned. Wolflake was a particularly bad church and she believes that it had been infiltrated and destroyed from within by a group taking advantage of the situation. | |||
==Journal Entry 198== | |||
Welcome to Valmere, the dwarven port city. One of the many cities on the main trade circuit and the main dwarven port in their territory. Luckily, they thought ahead and made their doorways human height, but all the chairs are dwarf sized. So the city is all polished marble and open air, encrusted statues of historical figures. It has a 20 ship port set in a massive stone carved bay that they regularly dredge by magical means, 2 airship ports on either end of town and a massive indoor trade caravan loading/unloading and distribution station. Oddly enough, the city's major produced export is fish and shellfish. The city has a huge fishing fleet that goes out daily; not what you'd think of from dwarves. The real wealth comes in from the fact that almost all dwarven goods pass through this city on it's way out, and dwarven goods are highly sought after for quality and design. The city's most well known feature however, is the mechanical defensive wall. The city has a 20ft steel reinforced wall that sits underground and can rise up mechanically on demand should the city be threatened. When not under threat, they keep it down to allow the winds to blow through. | |||
==Journal Entry 199== | |||
Czebron is about 6 days by horse or 2 days by airship. So we're going to try our hand at an airship ride. We've had a 50% success rate with those, so why not. The only problem is that it's going to cost nearly all our money. That's assuming we sell the horses at market value. Avery's pretty against Jason and me doing some b&e jobs, or me running around grifting people, or the classic taser in the alley trick. Either way, it's not something we have to worry about until we get there. In other news, this place has several bathhouses and we're all dirty and stink, so we paid a visit, got clean, got our clothes washed and now we're feeling fresh. I noticed that I have a collection of scars now from all my fights and apparently clerical healing won't get rid of scars, that's some other kind of regenerative healing. Anyways, Jason ran off to pay a visit to his guild, the rest of us slummed around town seeing the sights. This seems to be a nice town if you can get past all the dwarves running around. Nothing wrong with them, and they're quite friendly, it's just odd towering over nearly everyone in town. | |||
==Journal Entry 200== | |||
200 pages. How long have I been here again? God damn it. Now I miss home again. So we got our airship tickets. We leave tomorrow. Mike suggested that, since finding the photos, we should start checking around cities for any other signs of previous Terrans. So we paid a visit to the cities archives. They are, unfortunately, written in dwarven. A language I am not going to learn because fuck it, Common was hard enough with its two written dialects. We did get assistance from an adorable female dwarf librarian who was familiar with all the records. Of course the records don't keep track of everyone passing through, just important events or noticeable occurrences. No sign of strange foreigners who would fit the description, and we checked back for a thousand years. The only thing that caught our eyes was an occurrence around 400 years ago, the sudden use of the “modern” ship design. Sloops, Ketches, Schooners, Junks and the use of triangle sails. Before that, everyone was apparently using something similar to Longships and Triremes. It's possible that this is a case of Terran intervention or it could just be a natural period of sudden innovation. | |||
==Journal Entry 201== | |||
We are on the airship. It's more of an air barge. It's moving along at a slow but steady clip. We should be at our destination in a day and a half. The airship wouldn't be worth mention except for it's very interesting autopilot system. It's got a load of enchantments set to home in on certain items. There is one at Czebron and one at Valmere. The helmsman doesn't even bother sitting at the wheel unless we're near town. If we get blown off course, the ship reorients and continues on it's way. It can't land on it's own so it's not fully automated but it's damn impressive. It's crewed mostly by dwarves and some humans. The Captain is a female dwarf with a taste for gambling and alcohol. I'm okay with that as long as we don't crash into something. Anyways, we watched Strange Days again and discussed what we're going to do after this. We are going after our Terran friends, but truth be told, we don't know these three very well. We only knew them for a little over a week before they were captured. It was a life changing period, but still not very long. It doesn't matter though, we're still going to do everything in our power to rescue them. They're Terrans, they're our brothers. They deserve better then to be some wizard's slave. I just hope they're still at Czebron and still alive. | |||
==Journal Entry 202== | |||
We made it to Czebron. I first took it to be really weird mountain. Well, it was a massive volcano at some point. They carved the entire thing into a giant spire and hollowed it out. It has only one main entrance gate that's large enough to fit a village and has a series of massive mechanical doors. I believe I could call this an archology or a hive city. All internal lighting is almost all done through light shafts and mirrors and timed with the sun's movements and seasons through the use of mechanical devices. At night, or places that the sunlight can't get to, they use thick glass pipes pumping some kind of glowing liquid that is also part of the forge cooling system. It gives the whole place an otherworldly feel to it. It uses geothermal heating to keep it warm in the winter and a massive ventilation system to keep it cool in the summer. It houses several million dwarves. I didn't even know construction on a scale this large was possible This is truly a world wonder. The interior, the parts I've seen anyways, are all inlaid marble and red granite, etchings decorating nearly every surface. It has a massive underground where most of the dwarven smithing is done using lava powered and specialized magic powered forges. Most of the minerals they need are mined from the area which is supposedly one of the most mineral rich locations in the continent. So what do they do when the volcano decides it's time to erupt? Apparently they claim to have control of the situation through generations of specialized geomantic wizards and sorcerers. We are currently at one of the inns on the thirtieth floor. We have a balcony with a fantastic view. We are also now out of money. | |||
==Journal Entry 203== | |||
Well, Marcus has been doing the bard thing for money while the rest of us made our plan. We poked around looking for word of a human wizard with at least three human slaves or minions. This place is so big it may take awhile. Nothing yet, but there are quite a few wizards. We ruled out the geomancers first since they were the most obvious group, but they're all dwarves and don't have slaves. The locals frown on the whole concept but it's considered legal as long as no public or obvious torture is going on. The next obvious target was a small wizard school in the upper levels. They didn't know anything about it. Jason decided to check in with the thieves guild after he managed to find it. Avery was going to risk asking at the sungod temple, but there wasn't one. There is only one religion in the dwarf kingdom, the dwarf god. The god of hard work, alcohol and sex. It took me a few minutes to figure out why he covered an odd assortment but they all lead to each other. Hard work is rewarded with alcohol which leads to sloppy drunken sex. Speaking of which, we took bets on whether or not Marcus would bed a dwarf girl. By the time we got back to the inn come nightfall, it had already happened. God damn it Marcus. Next bet is on what Marcus won't sleep with. | |||
==Journal Entry 204== | |||
This city is pretty damn intimidating. Aside from it being so big for a world such as this, all the people. It's an empathic overload if I let my defenses down. It's almost as if I could lose myself. Anyways, we continued our search, went through the inns and taverns looking for any information and found none. Right when we were about to give up for the day, Jason spotted something. Graffiti scratched into the wall, recent and in English. Help. We know we're in the right place now. We scoured the level. The only thing we came up with was an Archmage no one knows anything about. We found his residence but I'm completely blocked from feeling anything inside. We went back to gather our gear, grab Marcus and prepare. This could go badly. | |||
==Journal Entry 205== | |||
Well, I knocked on the door and this plain looking guy in his 40's answers. He seemed annoyed for the first split second and then there was something in his eyes. I unleashed hell. He had enough mental fortitude to hold me back but could barely move. He starts doing the motions almost in slow motion when Jason slipped past and socked him in the face. That gave me enough distraction to lock him up. We pushed him inside and closed the door. Mike and Jason started checking rooms while the rest of us sat him down in a chair. Avery bound his hands while I started peeling through his mind. Sure enough, he's the one. So what has he been doing with our friends? He's been using them for extra-planar experimentation. I can't make heads or tails of what he's trying to accomplish, but I don't know wizardry. I do know that he hasn't had any success so far. To make matters worse, he's got a buddy that shows up occasionally for “organic samples” that he can use for some kind of monster research. Why does he need their samples specifically, we're the same as the local humans right? So Jason comes running back saying he found them, they're in some kind of magic stasis. That's when everything that could go wrong, did. | |||
There's a sudden blur in the room. The Rheingraf Spymaster suddenly appears out of fucking nowhere and makes a lunge for me. Now? Really? I was completely caught off guard and take a sword to the gut. Before he can land the killing blow, Avery blasts the shit out of him with her holy light and Jason buries his blades in his lungs. Then poof, he's gone. Avery manages to get me stabilized and my wounds closed. By this time the now very confused Archmage is freeing himself and is throwing up his magic defenses. I'm struggling to get on my feet, the ghost pains of being stabbed are still nearly debilitating me. Mike comes running out of a side room and just throws down with the Archmage. Fire, explosions, lightning all over the fucking place, destroying everything. Jason drags me into a side room long enough to get back on my feet. Avery sticks with Mike and does her best adding in her own defenses, Marcus is throwing around his Bard magic. I hand Jason my gun and send him off while I'm getting to my feet. I finally get back out there. I can't dominate him anymore, not with his defenses up, but I can throw distractions at him. We all manage to bring the fucker down and collapse in a pile. Then we realized half the room is on fire, so we ran around putting that out. | |||
The Archmage is still alive but he's out of the fight. I take the opportunity to dive in and start erasing his spells from his mind, something I should of done the first fucking time. Everyone's exhausted from the exertion. Jason hands me back my gun and we tie up the Archmage again, this time we cocoon him in the fucking rope, then we went off to see about the others. So a few rooms over and we have the lab. Sure enough, there they are. Ian, Max and Austin. Just floating there half naked in a blue light coming from some magic circle on the floor made of salt and blood. We pull them out of it and they start breathing again but they're unconscious. We set them down and I take a careful look at their mental states. Their recent memory's pretty fragmented from coming in and out of stasis for whatever reasons. Beyond that, the last full memories were their trip here and being questioned endlessly by the Archmage before being magically dominated and used in a few minor rituals and then shoved in stasis. Their emotional states are overwhelming. They're shit terrified and have no idea what's going on. I tried doing some memory editing to help in their recovery once they wake. We moved them into the Archmage's bedroom and letting them rest for now. | |||
==Journal Entry 206== | |||
They finally woke up. It took a good hour. They didn't recognize us right away. It took a lot to calm them down. We did our best to explain what's been going on, cooked up something for them to eat from the Archmage's kitchen and got them some clothes to wear. Jason and Marcus ransacked the place for valuables including his spellbooks. I got a lot of blame for leaving them, but deep down they know we couldn't of done anything. I wasn't going to fight about it. It was time to get out of this place. We all decided to go to the only city we had felt safe at, Aeyllin. Then there is the problem of the Archmage. What to do with him? Mike called dibs and dragged him back into the lab and began setting up for some kind of infernal ritual. When did he learn to do that? He asked not to be disturbed and closed the door. Avery didn't even object. There were some disturbing sounds.. and when it was over, no sign of the Archmage was left other then his shadow burned into the wall. We're currently waiting at the inn. Jason and Marcus are selling everything they looted and we'll see about getting the hell out of here. | |||
==Journal Entry 207== | |||
We got a pretty decent amount of money on hand now. I purchased tickets for 10 by airship. We leave tomorrow. We're heading along in the other direction and should arrive in Manden in two days, from there we go to Nespidax, Ainfield and from there we should be back in Hebiry. I'm not sure where the Hebiry airship goes since it's route with Wolflake was broken, but hopefully Ashvale or directly to Aeyllin. I hope the other three are ready for this. They haven’t had the travel experience that we have had. They can't even read common yet. Mike offered to tutor them. We did return what electronics we salvaged out of the Rosenbridge adviser’s place. Ian teared up when the first song on his mp3 player came on. They have a hard road ahead of them, I hope they're up for the task. Either way, we'll be there for them. | |||
==Journal Entry 208== | |||
Airship travel. I'm starting to get used to it. Back home, I hadn't even been on a plane since the 80's. Here I am, using airships to get everywhere. Austin gave everyone an hour long rant about how impossible a flying boat is from an aerodynamic perspective. Yeah, we know. Now that they're not scared out of their minds, we went over our adventures again with them. I let them read the journal. They were pretty shocked at what we've done, especially Max. I think they understand though. The biggest question on their minds, however, was how are we doing magic, we're from a non magic world. Even I'm not sure how to explain it. Each of us does it differently then the other. I figure it's because it's the world or dimension or whatever and not genetics since we're just regular humans. That isn't a suitable explanation though, psionics isn't something anyone can learn and neither is sorcery. Anyways, we watched Strange Days. It's still new to those three. | |||
==Journal Entry 209== | |||
Welcome to Manden. Not so much a city as a village, and just a pass through on the trade circuit. Legends say this is the first organized settlement of mankind, hence Man Den. Currently it's an elven city. Why? Some old territory war a hundred years ago. The city is half wood A-fame houses and the other half is stone building more common with dwarven construction. It borders on forest from one side and a few miles from the other, seems to start turning into a desert. Beyond the sandy wastes is apparently another civilization that rarely makes contact, but is where the recurve bow comes from. Interesting. Anyways, we're on layover until sunrise, and then head out to Nespidax. Took a walk around town with Ian. He's particularly depressed, especially upon hearing how we've had no success in trying to figure out how to get back home and have more or less given up. Well, I found out the reason. He's recently married and his wife was pregnant when he left. The child would have been born by now. That's fucking depressing. So why did he come? Same reason I did. We weren't entirely in control, some kind of hypnotic pull. He may of ended up bringing his wife with him if she was home at the time. I wonder who else left someone behind when we came here, no one's been particularly talkative about our life back home because we're reminded and it starts to hurt. Better to focus on the here and now. | |||
==Journal Entry 210== | |||
Well this sucks. We were on the way to Nespidax when the airship suffered some kind of engine or magic failure. We made a soft crash in the woods and the ship artificer's been working his ass off while the rest of us are watching out for hungry monsters, curious animals or bandits. The hull took some minor damage which the crew have been fixing, but we did get drafted into knocking down some trees to clear the landing space up. We're not getting a ticket discount for this either, I asked. All part of the adventure the Captain says. As long as it doesn't lead to another fucking barbarian hunt. The artificer says we'll be back in the air in two hours. He said that four hours ago. We're going to be stuck here for the night. Sucks. | |||
==Journal Entry 211== | |||
Something woke me up in the middle of the night. Strong aggression out in the wilds. Before I could alert the on duty guards, we came under attack. Gnolls, a scout party of 5. They were feral. The alert was sent and everyone comes stumbling out from below decks and the fight for the airship began. We outnumbered them but they were prepared. We managed to put them down with some minor injuries and the artificer got his ass back to work. Max got an arrow through his hand, and Avery is working on that. She's having some trouble healing these wounds. The gnolls apparently smeared their weapons with something. The Captain says it's feces. Fucking fantastic. We broke out the anti-disease necklace and are hoping that will help. Austin seems to have some actual medical training and has been cleaning out wounds with some of the crew's alcohol. It burns like a motherfucker. | |||
==Journal Entry 212== | |||
We managed to get back in the air and we're in Nespidax. Avery's been periodically checking on our wounds to make sure nothing goes bad. Max got use of his hand back, but it's a little puffy, even with the wound closed. So Nespidax. One of the larger trade hubs on the circuit. This city is pretty racially mixed for an actual Kingdom. The buildings are mostly wood and plaster with thatched roofing. It's main export is mineral wealth, from a series of mines, which flows south-eastward rather then Czebron's mineral exports which flow South-west along the trade circuit. We're set up in the inn for the night. Unfortunately there is no airship going to our next stop, Ainfield. We'll have to make due traveling with a trade caravan on foot. I hope Max, Ian and Austin are up for the task. | |||
==Journal Entry 213== | |||
We kind of lucked out. We hooked up with a trade caravan hauling iron and copper and we're getting paid to guard it. Three of us lack weapons so they're to stay with the caravan if we get attacked. Our trip should take 4 days through the plains. No known barbarian tribes out here so that's a relief. Max keeps asking me for my gun, since I already have a sword. I'm not giving him my gun. He should of brought his own gun. So we're all chatting away while on our long walk when it suddenly gets out that Marcus has been sleeping with non humans. Ian flips his shit about it, calling it bestiality and all that. Won't go near him. Marcus gave the “any port in a storm” response and they've been arguing about it ever since. Like there's not enough to deal with. | |||
==Journal Entry 214== | |||
We came upon a broken down caravan today. We had a short standoff until we could prove that we weren't hostile, and they the same. Their caravan guards were tribal lizard people. Pretty unusual. Their axle brace or something snapped and were stranded. Our caravan leader decided we should help. None of us Terrans had a clue how to fix it, so we stood around and chatted with the other caravan guards, the lizards. They're a distrustful bunch and after some poking around, I could see why. They aren't treated very well by the other civilized races, but most of the tribal groups aren't. This group has been doing the Nespidax to Ainfield run to bring in money for their tribe and keep because they're searching for someone, one of their own that ran off. They wouldn't say why they're after this one, but I sensed that he was an important figure in the tribe, so it's not like an escaped criminal or exile. I noticed that while Max and Austin were initially..distressed? At dealing with big armed lizard people, they eventually warmed up to them. Ian stayed pretty cold to towards them the whole time. Anyways, it took a good 5 hours to get the other cart fixed. They had to make a new one out of wood which meant cutting down a tree and cutting it down and all that. Pain in the ass. | |||
==Journal Entry 215== | |||
Welcome to Ainfield, one of the main distribution hubs on the circuit. No airship port unfortunately. What they do have is two rivers that split off in head in different directions and are being used as trade routes. The city is all wood building with a wood stake wall around it. Their main export used to be wood, but the area's been clear-cut. Now it's just a distribution hub that would probably cease to exist the second trade stopped. From here, we'll jump a river boat to Hebiry and see where their airship can get us. Avery and I had a long talk with Ian about his racial issues. Yeah, he's a little racist and he's having trouble adapting because of it. I can't exactly dive in and fix that so it's something he's going to have to get used to in his own time I guess. Anyways, the booze is cheap here so we're all getting hammered at the tavern and we leave in the morning. | |||
==Journal Entry 216== | |||
We had a minor emergency this morning. We couldn't find Austin for a few hours. He turned up in an alley with his clothes strewn all over. Luckily he didn't take any of his stuff when him when he wandered off for..this. Avery cleared up some of his hangover and we went off to get ready. Apparently he decided to try and “drink himself home” and may have been had sloppy drunken sex with a local, or tried to, or something. We're pretty sure he wasn't prostituting himself anyways. At least we hope. That's Marcus's job. So we're on a boat trip. It's pretty relaxing so far. It's a river junk loaded with cargo from other cities heading for Hebiry. It should take a day and a half depending on the weather. I've taken up fishing off the side with a rod that the crew lent me. I'm totally cheating and tricking the fish into biting. It's just not as satisfying though it is funny. | |||
==Journal Entry 217== | |||
Ah Hebiry. It's been a month or two since we've been here. The place has kind of an old Italian/Mediterranean feel to it. When we arrived, a fair was in full swing, so we joined in the festivities. Some town founding celebration. A cookoff, some booze testing, dancing, games. Marcus got on stage and played some U2 for a bit. The locals didn't seem to mind so whatever. We had fun. It seemed that our three newbies finally managed to unwind and have a good time. Picked up some gossip in town. There's been retreating tribals coming up the trade road from Wolflake on a regular basis. First shifters, then wild-elves, always in small groups. In response, Hebiry's set up a border patrol and are building a manned guard fort, anticipating inbound undead eventually. They've been petitioning all churches trying to get more help in, but it takes awhile for messages to get around. In other news, Winterfield has been sacked by the barbarians and they have been cut off completely. Their new airship trader has been skipping over them and going directly to Brightly until things get under control. None of the other nations want to get involved since it was a problem that could have been dealt with but was ignored by the king until he was disposed of. | |||
==Journal Entry 218== | |||
Where to begin. While Marcus and Austin were out seeing about airship travel, I was sitting in town square watching them clean up after the festival and checking over some things in my Journal when some Elf girl, young looking, early teens maybe? It's hard to tell with them. Anyways, she walks up and stops, then starts looking over my shoulder. She can fucking read English! Kind of. I grabbed her and made her start talking. Almost got the attention of the guards and I scared the shit out of her. So several generations back, some human got mixed in her family tree and they've been learning this “mysterious” language as tradition ever since and have even deployed it as a secret code in the family business, one of the wineries. All their recipes and anything else they don't want anyone else to read is done up in rudimentary English. She's off trying to set up a meeting with one of the elder family members who may have been alive back then. I've gathered up everyone and we're going to check in once we get word back. Oh yeah, airship news. The Hebiry airship isn't going anywhere right now since Wolflake is kind of out of the trade loop now. I'll see if I can convince them to hit Aeyllin or Ashvale later. After we're done with this more important stuff. | |||
==Journal Entry 219== | |||
We got our appointment and went to meet with this family. Well, one of them anyways. The sister of the woman who married the human. The actual wife had died a century ago due due to some kind of magic plague running through the area at the time. So around four hundred years ago, her sister falls for a human and they get married. Erik Lewis, a Druid. He claimed he's was from a far off land with strange ways and stranger magic. She didn't know much more about his past, she hadn't cared at the time and was against the union. He did introduce some new kind of fermentation method which they still employ. He settled down on the winery and worked, had kids and eventually died of old age. Well, at least someone had their happily ever after. She didn't have much more to offer aside from that. | |||
==Journal Entry 220== | |||
Alright, didn't get as much information as I would of liked out of that meeting but it was something. It also means that there may not be a way back home if everyone settled and lived their lives here. So Marcus and I paid a visit to the airship captain. We started some negotiations and manged to convince her about the possible profits of starting a trade run between Aeyllin or Ashvale and Hebiry since they've both been cut off since Wolflake's sudden undead isolation. She needs to talk it up with her crew and then we'll see if we can hitch a ride. If not, we'll have to take the long way around through the Wildlake to Brightly route. Or we could go on foot across undead infested Wolflake to Kinild. No, that's not going to happen. In other news, I think Ian is starting to adapt, I saw him holding a conversation with a half-orc girl. No agitation coming from either of them, so that's something. | |||
==Journal Entry 221== | |||
It was an expensive ticket, but we're on the way to Ashvale. From there, we can get to Aeyllin. Hopefully Alex is still there and hasn't run off. So we put all of this planning into getting there, what are we going to do once we do? I doubt the University is going to let us live on campus, not for the long term anyways. We've got some a few days to think it through though. Austin and Ian still wake up in cold sweat, terrified from their experience. Max seems to be doing better from it. PTSD is a pretty bad thing. Even I still wake up occasionally thinking I'm back in the barbarian hunt. I'll get back at those fuckers one day. So Avery has got it in her head that she's going to march into the Aeyllin sun church and start making changes now that we're aware of what's going on and she knows we have her back. It will get messy. Fuck, so many ways that can go wrong. I don't know if I should try and convince her out of that plan though. Anyways, I wonder how the Kobolds of New-Chicago are doing? | |||
==Journal Entry 222== | |||
We made it to Ashvale without incident for a change. God the place smells from all the leather tanneries and lant processing and whatnot. We are in the process of switching over to another airship that will take us to Aeyllin. We've been on this boat before, crazy shifter captain that wants to be an adventurer but isn't allowed and an insane navigator. We'll leave soon. I'd pop over to the tavern for lunch, but I don't think I could keep my food down in this air. It should be a two day trip. Austin's been asking the airship artificer everything he can about how airships work and then spent some time sketching something on paper I gave him. Maybe he found his calling. An airship that doesn't break down constantly or drop out of the sky like a brick when it does. Marcus in the meantime, has come to a startling realization. He's got an old girlfriend back in Aeyllin and maybe more. Yeah, no sympathy. You reap what you sow, and he's been sowing the fields across the continent. | |||
==Journal Entry 223== | |||
God fucking dammit. So we're all out on deck while Marcus is desperately trying to play Muse songs on his guitar when we see a light ahead of us. The navigator adjusts course and the light shifts over too. A few seconds later, we nearly have a midair collision with another airship! Seriously?! There's like one airship per town or less, so they're pretty rare. Only a handful of non merchant companies have one in the world. And we almost have a midair collision with one flying at night. Are we cursed or something? Does this happen often? How is this even possible? Where's the fucking fantasy FAA. Christ. | |||
==Journal Entry 224== | |||
We made landing in Aeyllin this morning. Guess who was waiting at the landing pad? A very pregnant elf. How did she know we'd be here today? She didn't, she's been coming here every single day the airship was scheduled to return since we left. Marcus was paler then Mike in winter when he went over to greet her. Oh, he didn't have a choice in the matter either. Avery was giving him her smite look when it looked like he was going to run. He's got a lot of explaining to do. We had to explain what was happening to the others, but they caught on pretty fast. So we did manage to get in the University's dorm. They're on break with most of the students out and doing personal research right now and a big group of offworlders with foreign ideas was just the thing to spread some excitement around. Our three newbies were apprehensive at first, having had their share of experimentation, but we reassured them. Alex was not around, he's out of the city with a group of adventurers who were going to check out rumors of some old dungeon in the east woods. They left a few days ago and should be back tomorrow or the day after. He's apparently become a very skilled sorcerer apprentice. It's occurred to me that it's been a long time since we saw him, will he recognize us right away? We've all changed quite a bit and I bet he has as well. | |||
==Journal Entry 225== | |||
So I ran into the master artificer. He's mastered his bicycle design and they're all over the city for those who can afford them. He fixed the traction issue but it's still awkward with the forward peddles and a harsh friction break. Then there's the issue of people having to learn to ride one. Lots of crashes. Bicycle safety gear was invented shortly after by an enterprising merchant. It's more or less leather padding. Anyways, we had a talk about some things. I have been promised payment for my part in this. Once that happens, I'll introduce him to Austin and see what those two can do together. Avery headed off to the sun church, but came back flustered. She went in with all of her righteousness and apparently got laughed out of the building. Better then getting stabbed I guess. Marcus returned. Apparently his girlfriend is crazier or craftier then he thought. They went back to her place and had a nice long comforting talk and then she gave him a ring as proof of her love and devotion. It was a magic ring and he can't take it off. She knows where he is at all times now. The best part is that she bribed the University mages to not interfere and remove it. I wonder what weddings here are like? | |||
==Journal Entry 226== | |||
I went back to the archives with Avery and Mike. We can read better then last time I was here so I don't need an assistant, but I got one anyways to speed things along. I believe that we may have been going about the search all wrong last time and we have a time frame now. So what happened 400 years ago? Well the University is only 200 years old but their archives date back further when there was a Wizarding guild. 400 years ago, this was an elven city still. It was a time of change. Religion was starting to get organized with the building of the churches where before it was groups of vaguely allied cults, the age of sail was taking off and wizarding went from superstition and pointless ceremony to being more mathematical and scientific in it's application. Were all of these brought about by Terran intervention or only some of them? We didn't find anything specific though, with names or who had their hands in what. We were informed that the old city records are currently in the care of the peace and love church. We'll have to pay them a visit. | |||
==Journal Entry 227== | |||
Well, I got paid from the master artificer. Not as much as I was hoping, but good enough I suppose. I introduced Austin and they had a discussion about some things. He was impressed with Austin's aptitude and signed him up for the next Artificing class when the break is over. And then the Rheingraf spymaster suddenly appeared and shoved a knife through my throat. I'm done, that's it. I don't know what happened after that other then I was on the ground and dieing. Then I wake up with Avery pouring everything she had in healing me. The spymaster somehow missed everything important or didn't cut the arteries right or something. So I'm stuck in bed, healed but recovering. I lost a lot of blood. This shit's got to end. So what happened with the spymaster? The artificer disarmed him and Austin started strangling him for everything he's worth and then he vanished. Fuck. | |||
==Journal Entry 228== | |||
I got my rest and went out with Avery and Marcus..and Marcus's girlfriend. We paid a visit to the peace and love church. Well, it's a peace and love... for money church. We manage to get into their city archives and start peeling through them circa 400 years ago. We run into a problem; since the city was elven at the time, so were all the documents. Well Marcus's girl can read elven so suddenly she's important to the cause. Well, 400 years ago, a huge group of a hundred or so people showed up, led by a group of eight, purchased land in the city and started paid construction on the church buildings. There were complaints from the elven builders because the design was extremely unusual to what they were used to building, having buttresses, vaulted ceilings and domes, so it was being overseen by one of the travelers who got things under control and brought in several innovations such as a new kind of crane system that could handle heavier loads, scaffolding and a new kind of mortar. For the longest time, the churches were the tallest buildings in the city. The techniques were adopted and used in further city development to make Aeyllin what it is today. Most of the churches use the same style so this spread around all the major cities at the time. There's more to it then that. As we were taking a break, Marcus's girlfriend pointed out something similar to what we were looking for. A thousand years ago, the elves suddenly moved from the woods and founded Aeyllin, started using the quarrying techniques that they're still using and began making paper. They didn't have regular contact with the rest of the world at the time. If I remember right, that's around the time Wolflake was being founded and when most people believe that the massive bridge that Rosenbridge is sitting on was made. If this means what I think it does.. I have a headache now. | |||
==Journal Entry 229== | |||
Alex returned today! He was dirty, bruised and in good spirits. He was with the adventurers he left with and they were successful with their expedition apparently. We all gather up to meet him. It takes him a few minutes and then he notices Mike holding a Nook and suddenly it all clicks in. He runs over and suddenly a group hug initiated. We spent the rest of the day in the tavern getting all caught up. The good, the bad, the losses. Alex had his own adventure. He left for Aeyllin a little before Avery left for Wolflake, fought bandits with magic he couldn't quite control and managed to make enough money for his airship trip and trailed along with a group of adventurers who were leaving Winterfield during its civil war and made it to Aeyllin, and he's been here since learning to control his wild talent. He had heard of some of our exploits from the university staff and managed to get his own recharge stone out of the master artificer. So, for the first time in over a year, we're all together again, and we're stronger then before. We aren't the lost and scared children anymore. We're Terrans. When the world pushes, we can push back. Avery, put the damned journal down! I haven’t been doing evil things lately. | |||
>You're so god damned melodramatic sometimes. | |||
==Journal Entry 230== | |||
So I was tested at the University today. They were trying to figure out how to get rid of that tracking spell the Rheingraf spymaster apparently put on me. After 4 hours of having everything imaginable thrown at me, they concluded that there was no tracking spell. Well how the hell does he keep finding me?! Sure, there are several ways he can vanish like that, Teleport or invisibility or the various other variations of the theme. They need more information. Well great. He's already manifested in the middle of the Artificer's office once. God dammit. Anyways, Max has signed up for a wizarding course. He seems to think he has what it takes. Ian on the other hand is checking into fencing. Good for them. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the University break is over tomorrow and everyone who is not a student or staff need to move out to make space. To make matters worse, all the inns are loaded up with people applying. Fuck it, we're moving in with Marcus's girlfriend until we can get a place of our own. It'll only be temporary. | |||
==Journal Entry 231== | |||
Marcus's girlfriend, Raina, has a weird house. It's got two small bedrooms, a kitchen/pantry and then one fuckall huge room with no furniture. Well, at least we had plenty of room. Avery got the second bedroom. Marcus stayed with his beloved. Since we're staying with her, we're chipping in and paying for food and cooking. Jason and Avery went out house hunting while I did the shopping and helped with the cooking. I don't trust Mike with the cooking. He might accidentally add infernal energies instead of the salt while preparing the meat or something. Marcus got to clean. Raina seemed bothered at first by the sudden appearance of 7 of her boyfriend's buddies asking to stay over but she's gotten over it and has been quite cheerful. So how long do Elven pregnancies last? 9 months. If it's a half-breed like this one is, who knows. So how exactly do they deliver babies here? Apparently with midwives. We wrote down a quick emergency map of the nearest 5 in town should “the event” kick off while we're here. | |||
==Journal Entry 232== | |||
Okay, so we don't have enough money yet to get a more permanent residence. Rather then get jobs like regular people, we're going to ransack a dungeon at request of the kingdom. The advisers were sending out calls for help. Since most of the adventurers in town were at the University, we picked it up. It pays well. There has been reports of strange lights and noises and they seem to think it's a cult or a feral race preparing to do something. Avery, Alex and Jason are going with me. Marcus has to stay home with his girl and Mike is assisting at the university with something. We have our mp3 players charged, some dungeoneering gear and emergency rations. Here we go. | |||
Revision as of 08:37, 22 February 2012
An awesome piece of writefaggotry from /tg/ - showing that on /tg/ the magic still happens.
Inspired by a derivative of the copypasta that gave rise to the 4chan Archipelago, and written by /tg/ writefag 008, Stranded in Fantasy started on the January 18th, 2012, and completed on January 31st, 2012.
The story is copied here, but you can read it on the sup/tg/ archives, which are listed at the bottom of this page.
Brief summary
It's about a group of humans from our world who get hypno-suckered into some plot-device portals that land them in a city in a world where D&D is reality. It is not glorified in any way - its ten humans in a world of elves, dwarves, orcs and other humans, and they have no money, no powers (to begin with...) and are shit out of luck. Some of them get killed, some enslaved, with a few lucky ones--including the narrator--just barely surviving.
Then shit gets awesome.
Later the iPod is accidentally turned into a tiny golem that blasts random music everywhere. All anons agreed: the tomb of that artificer will be guarded by similar golems that will leap out at looters and rickroll them.
Players:
Terrans:
- Alex: Wild Magic Sorcerer
- Marcus: Bard
- Jason: Rogue
- Journal Writer: Psion
- Mike: Warlock
- Avery: Cleric
- Dan: Dead
- Amanda: Dead
- Ian: Duskblade or Arcane fighter
- Max: Wizard
- Austin: Artificer
Other Party Members:
- Raina: Silver dragon, Marcus's wife
- Nathan Ka'tzakon: Half dragon, Marcus's son.
- Marika Hajna: Airship Pilot
- Cherri Carnett: Warlock, Mike's girlfriend
A formated archive of the story is available:
Part 1
Journal Entry 1
Well, here I am. I don't know why I'm bothering to keep this journal, only a handful of people in this place will be able to read it when I'm gone. For peace of mind I suppose. Where to start. It was another typical day of doing nothing, trying to get work and keeping myself entertained. I'm not sure what happened, but suddenly there was a voice in my head telling me I had to prepare. Before I knew what was going on, a doorway, a portal opened up in my living room. Round, glowing and beyond, a city of some sort. It looked positively medieval. Stone and wood buildings, strange people, some not human. A fantasy world. Somehow I knew I had 30 minutes before it closed. It felt like a dream and perhaps that's why I went through. I thought it was a dream, it seemed the logical thing to do at the time. I don't know why. At least I had the presence of mind to grab what I could and not just hop through. What a catastrophe that would of been. So here I am, where ever here is. I guess I should find out and see what's going on.
Journal Entry 2
What the fuck was I thinking? So here I am. In some fucking fantasy world. Magic and everything. Shortly after I arrived, that dreamy feeling fell off and the reality of the situation has hit. I'm stuck here and I don't know why. I'm not alone though, there are a handful of others in the same situation. We're all foreigners here, stranded and effectively homeless in this place with no idea why. Speaking of this place, It's called Rosenbridge. I have no trouble communicating with the locals, but I can't read their language. They use some squiggly shit that makes no sense to me. I think spoken language is just being translated for us at this point. Rosenbridge is apparently a town in a trade hub connecting several larger cities. Kind of a place were the different races of this world pass through. I've seen Elves, Dwarves or Gnomes, some lizard.. thing and some others that I'm not entirely sure of outside of the more common humans. I'm kind of creeped out to be honest. Anyways, we're all camped out in some alleyway near the outer wall of the city.
Journal Entry 3
Well, I just witnessed some magic. It was pretty spectacular, but I guess it's a common thing as the locals didn't seem to give mind. Some guy in robes doing some display in the town square. Burst of light, movement of hands and mumbling and boom. I'm not entirely sure what happened. Alex, one of the people that's in the same situation as me, was going to see if he knew anything about why we're here. Fucking wizards man. There's what I estimate to be several thousand people milling about the markets. I don't know why, but for the first time I feel intimidated by a crowd. I get an odd overwhelming feeling. I think it's stress. I may be starting to lose it. God knows Avery hasn't fucking stopped crying since we found her and gathered up in the alleyway.
Journal Entry 4
Well, Alex's wizard friend had no ideas and didn't seem the least interested according to him. Fucking wizards. Anyways, caught some kid groping at my ass, I think he was looking for a coin purse. The local's done seem to actually have pockets on their clothes, everything is carried in little pouches. Anyways, pistol whipped the little fucker off his feet and took off. I wish I had money, I'm starving and none of us have anything worth trading. Thieving or begging may be in our future, or prostitution if things get desperate. What the fuck is going on.
Journal Entry 5
So Rosenbridge. It's apparently mostly built on some massive ancient bridge that's over a river leading to the ocean. Part of the trade routes coming through are by boat, this is apparently the stopping point as it gets too shallow or rapids or something beyond this. Spent some time at the waterfront. Managed to swipe some bread. It was rock hard and tasted terrible but fuck was I hungry. This is the first time I've come to know real starvation. It looks like the others have found something to eat. Someone, I think Max, said that there was a church that gave donations to the poor. We'll have to check that out.
Journal Entry 6
There's some carnival in town today. Strange foods, acrobatics displays and showy wizards. Alex has been hanging around the wizards and observing. I think he's going to try and figure out this magic stuff. Best of luck to him. Anyways, checked out that church, it's a bunch of sun worshipers. They give some kind of oatmeal slop once a day to the poor. It had no taste but it was filling at least. The chick giving the handouts seemed surprised at the sudden influx of hobos in town. Namely us. We've decided to stay tight lipped about our origins for now. Don't need any more trouble. Hung around the carnival for most of the day but didn't have any coin for the real shows. Entertainment's been slim. My mp3 player battery has been dead more then it's been charged. The solar charger I brought with me is slow as hell.
Journal Entry 7
Jason got mugged today while he was pissing behind some tavern. Lost everything. Luckily we found most of it in a heap by the waterfront. Unfortunately the screen on his Kindle is cracked now. Alex has been gathering up some stuff from just outside town. Grass, leaves, some kind of flower. He says he wants to try one of those carny wizard spells he spent all day watching. Some kind of ingredients along with vocal and hand motions are involved. We're not sure if the hand motions and vocal parts are required or just something for the show. I guess he'll figure out in experimentation. He has some hardon for learning the local's magic. I don't think we can, we're not from this world.
Journal Entry 8
So some guard comes around our alley and starts bullying us around. Turns out he wants some people to work on the docks for a few copper coins. Most of us went for it. Money. I did as well. Backbreaking work moving crates and sacks and shit to and from boats and on to carts. My arms hurt and will probably hurt more tomorrow, but we've got money and it's not illicit money either. I think Amanda was just another day from whoring herself out to the locals. I think she's a bit too chubby for that to work out though. The locals are all malnutrition thin (peasants) aside from the rich/nobles/merchants which are a bit pudgy
Journal Entry 9
Oh god what am I doing here? I've been working my ass off at the fucking docks all week just for a pittance and it's barely enough to survive. Plus I'm dodging thieves and guards looking for a beatdown all day and night. I hate this place. What the fuck was I thinking?!
Journal Entry 10
So while I'm writing, sitting on the edge of the fountain in town, some guy comes up and seems incredibly fascinated in my pen. It's a bic ballpoint, blue. He said he was some kind of artificer and wanted to know all about it, so I gave him the basics. Ink in the tube drains out and on to the little ball. I'm not sure how they work beyond that. I sold one of my least chewed on spares to him for two gold coins. I think that's a lot.
Journal Entry 11
Alex is in a coma. He tried doing that magic shit today. We sat down to watch.. at a safe distance and he did the hands thing and said the words, had the materials and then.. he grunted and fell over. He was out for a few hours before we realized he didn't just faint. We dragged him to the sun worshipers temple and they're taking care of him for now, they have some sort of clinic going on. I don't know the details. I spilled the beans to the priest, that we're from offworld. He got this weird look in his eyes and put his hand on my head and yelled Smite. I felt something but I don't know what. He apologized profusely afterwords, saying it was some kind of misunderstanding. Is he a paladin? Anyways, Avery is staying to keep watch on him over the night.
Journal Entry 12
We're in hiding now. Apparently word got out about us. The local magistrate or vizier decided we should be rounded up. Ian, Max and Austin were nabbed and taken to the prison or dungeon or whatever they have here. I stole some clothes off a clothesline and we're going dressed as locals and hanging out in an old abandoned house on the other end of town. The locals think it's haunted and it does have a creepy vibe. It's a temporary solution though.
Journal Entry 13
Amanda says she was up all night talking to a ghost that resides here. Some girl that was murdered by a cult of some kind long ago. In other news, Amanda isn't the only one losing it. I robbed someone today in an alleyway. I ran out of money and old starvation hit. Snuck up behind them and taser to the back. Ended up with a handful of silver coinage. That should keep us fed for a few days.
Journal Entry 14
I haven’t heard from Avery in a few days so I went to see what was going on at that church. Alex is up and moving around, but he's still kind of out of it, having trouble speaking and whatnot. It's like he suffered a stroke. The priest person said they could heal it in time using their divine power, but that there would be a price for it, and not the kind of price you can pocket. The only explanation as to what happened that they gave was that magic was a dangerous thing to the untrained. So much for Alex's dream of becoming a wizard. At least the church is keeping him out of the hands of the guards.
Journal Entry 15
Ran into that artificer guy today. He wanted to know more of the land I came from. Have to be careful about anyone overhearing what with the guards on the lookout for us. I didn't tell him much but I did sketch out a bicycle and the basics of how they work. He was fascinated and ran off with the page after giving me a few silvers. Bicycles, here. Imagine that. I don't think they know what rubber is though. I could be wrong though.
Journal Entry 16
That artificer showed up again. He is running a caravan over to the next stop in the trade circle, some place called Wildlake and invited us all to come along as caravan guards. He knows the guards are looking for us and this is the best he can do to assist I guess. Most of us couldn't even defend ourselves but it gives us a chance to get out of this place. Avery and Alex are staying behind at that sun church.
Journal Entry 17
Well, we've been given some shitty used leather armor and a spear and we're off on this caravan job. We're getting paid too, a handful of gold to boot, so as long as nothing horrible happens, we should be okay. We're with 5 other guards who are locals. I had no idea how to put on the armor, it was all straps and leather so I watched the locals put theirs on and imitated. I know I fucked up at some point, it doesn’t feel right. Anyways, this trip should be about 5 days at cart speed. There are 6 carts in the caravan and 10 of us on guard duty total, 5 of us foreigners and 5 locals, plus some 10 merchants, cart drivers and so on. There's several beast people things with us and one rowdy dwarf, but otherwise all human.
Journal Entry 18
What the fuck am I doing here?! Why?! Why won't I wake up?!
Journal Entry 19
So much walking. My legs ache, my arms ache, my feet hurt. Almost twisted my ankle. Hate this place. Us Terrans have been having an entirely different experience from the locals on this trip. The locals are enjoying the walk, chatting and spending the nights around the campfire telling silly stories of drunken bravery and local heroes. Us Terrans are around the fire, all cramped up, in pain, dealing with blisters and mumbling about all the things we miss of home. I can feel the emotional difference between both our groups. It's the oddest sensation. Bah, I'm just tired.
Journal Entry 20
Dan's dead. He was one of us. I don't know much about him other then he liked to sing to his mp3 collection during the run. We couldn't even bury him. So we're wandering along when these green things come rushing out of the underbrush. Goblins. Panic. Everything goes to shit. Dan gets a gut full of sword before he can do anything. I manage to get out my gun and I don't know, I was panic firing I guess? I hit at least 3 of the little fuckers. I'm down 8 bullets. I have to be more careful. The goblins were driven off but there are other injured. We had time to loot the bodies but not bury Dan. Left at the side of the fucking road, stripped of everything, to be eaten by the fucking wolves or whatever.
Journal Entry 21
We, the Terrans, held a small memorial for Dan. The locals didn't quite get why we were bothering for someone we barely knew. We divided his belongings amongst the rest of us. We should make it to Wildlake in two days. I hope we made the right decision, joining this caravan. The next town may be worse. It may be better. I don't know.
Journal Entry 22
Had a bit of a scare today. Ran into a group of elven rangers on some hunt today. Almost mistook them for bandits, we're all a little jumpy. They seemed alright people I suppose, unless they really are bandits and just waiting for the rest of their guys. Anyways, we were going opposite directions from us. During all of this, I managed to get my tablet charged up with my solar charger and taught the artificer how to play Angry Birds during camp. He was entranced by it. I think he's starting to understand just how foreign we are. In the meantime, we practiced with some of the weapons we picked off the goblin corpses. The locals had a good laugh at us as we flailed around with blunted short swords.
Journal Entry 23
Well, I figure we've been here a month now. I'm not entirely sure, I haven’t been keeping an accurate count and since I'm not writing every day, it's hard to estimate. We made it to Wildlake around midday. Contrary to my expectations, there is no lake involved. Apparently there was one here way back, but it drained out in some dungeon or mine collapse. It's slightly larger the Rosenbridge with a wooden outter wall. I saw my first airship today. A flying boat, parked in eastern portion of town. According to the locals, it regularly shows up every few weeks to pick up and deliver shipments from another kingdom. That's not all either. We passed a slave market on the way in. This is the first time any of us have seen anything like this. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It's perfectly legal according to the locals.
Journal Entry 24
We got paid today. 5 gold. We're all staying in a local hostel/tavern for traders and their crews. We're bunked up with some odd people. They're all red and some of them look like they have a coral reef growing out of their chin covered in skin. Tieflings I suppose? Where the hell are we? As creepy as they look, they seem to be okay, and I'm not getting any bad vibes off them. One of them was a musician and played some tunes. Marcus got his hands on one of their instruments and started playing Stairway to Heaven. The musician took interest and the two of them spent the rest of the night exchanging ideas. On the other hand, the artificer kept asking me for new tech ideas. I think I'll show him the wonders of safety razor. God knows I'll need to get a replacement from somewhere when mine wears out.
Journal Entry 25
Nope, still here, not a dream. Why isn't it a dream? I was in the tavern today when some bald elf chick covered in tatoos sits down next to me and says in the most serious tone ever, that my mind was like a locked treasure chest and that she must get inside. That's the weirdest pickup line I've ever heard. I quickly left. Too much weird for me. I can only take so much, the headache that showed up just before she did didn't help either. So more information about Wildlake. There is a flooded dungeon under the town, that ran under a lake that was once a burial mound of some so and so king from centuries past. Parts of it are unflooded and the adventurous raid it on a regular basis. You'd think there wouldn't be anything left to steal after all this time. It's also used as a shelter for the a-typical races that aren't welcome in town. The little inhuman ones like those fucking goblins.
Journal Entry 26
With the trade run done, we're kind of out of work. Our money isn't going to last for very long. I poked around town looking for opportunities for awhile. What do I have training in that works here? Nothing. Marcus picked up a guitar at the market and is working as a bard in the cheap tavern and making a silver or two a night, and that's at least something. Amanda keeps wanting to go with him to sing, but she can't hold a note to save her life. I guess we're stuck doing remedial jobs any bumfuck shit farmer can do. We can't even read the damn writing, we're illiterate here. Maybe I'll be a professional thief. Ha, that'll be the day.
Journal Entry 27
Well, I got a job sweeping up at the fucking slave market. Wonderful. Nothing like mournful stares and whispered pleas of help from dirty, barely clothed captives to keep the spirits up. I don't know what to think. At least I'm making some money, the pittance that it is. Did I mention they randomly get whipped? They for some whip that doesn't leave marks but apparently hurts them like hell. Who makes up this shit? Mike on the other hand, has caught on and captured the attention of some girl who agreed to teach him to read in exchange for...something. I don't want to know. He is trying to teach us what he learns. Handed down knowledge.
Journal Entry 28
Airship is in town. Watched that for awhile. They couldn't come up with a better design then a flying boat. It apparently isn't sea worthy either so why bother? Maybe I could teach them aerodynamics. You'd think it would be obvious. Anyways, I'm starting to see slaves beaten in my dreams and it's only my third day. It's time for an occupation change. Anything else. I heard there's some call some help with one of the dungeon areas I might look in to. Why not? Maybe the guards will leave me alone. I made the mistake of showing them my drivers license when they asked for identification last night. Weirderd them all out. Speaking of which, why the hell did I bring my wallet and car keys with me?!
Journal Entry 29
Well, I got sucked in to some adventure thing going on. Hired with some locals to check out and clear a lizard creature, kobold, infestation of one of the dungeons. We're to head in within a few hours and see what's going on down there. Also on the team is a big burly guy who is also illiterate, a bored dwarf and a highly excitable elven wizard or sorcerer. I can't tell the difference yet. Luckily we didn't meet in a tavern because that would be too cliché. No, we met around the town fountain and got our “mission objectives.” I at least have the leather armor and shortsword from the caravan trip. That and my big knife from home and my Sig. I need more ammo. I need a source of ammo. I have 7 more magazines worth of ammo, 8 bullets each. Apparently there's going to be another guy joining us at the dungeon entrance. I guess we'll see what that's about. Anyways, I did ask the wizard about what happened with Alex. He just gave me the dangers of magic speech the sun priest did. Also of note, caught sight of that bald chick following me again. Kind of hard to miss her. She's good at causing headaches.
Journal Entry 30
So we met up with a Paladin of some warrior god and hit the dungeon. He was a very...boisterous fellow. Lots of bragging. So this was my first dungeon. Everyone brought torches. I brought a flashlight. It's a camping thing, green power and all that. Solar battery and all. It should last a good 3 hours. So we go in and sure enough, kobolds. Ugly, filthy looking things, making weird lizard noises when they weren't speaking pidgin english or common or whatever. The dungeon was more or less just burial ruins, pretty straight forward. Looking back now, it was pretty dangerous, these things were out to kill us and we were out to kill them. What the fuck was I thinking? Wasted two bullets and learned that my big stainless steel knife was a piece of shit when it snapped in half upon hitting bone. The short sword did better but I'll be damned if I'm not clumsy as hell with it. The paladin gave me some hints and tips in the middle of a fucking fight because this is nothing for him. Anyways, I didn't get any injuries except some scrapes. I'm still fast on my feet and my reaction time is good. Found some stuff, some kind of silver chain necklace I found in the mud and some coinage the kobolds were hoarding. Do people actually sell them stuff? They seemed a little feral for trade. Also got paid 15 gold for the job. I don't know if I can do something like that again. Such stress, I can't describe it properly. Terror and thrill combined together
Journal Entry 31
So I spent the last few days in the tavern, possibly getting lead or mercury poisoning. I'm surprised none of us have caught anything yet. I'm the only one who brought medical supplies, and all I had time for was a bottle penicillin. Stupid portal. Why did I ever listen to you? Anyways, Marcus got some apprentice deal under a Bard to try and learn Bard magic. As long as he doesn't suffer a stroke like Alex did, if it will even work. Who knows how different we are from the locals. Aside from that, I'm starting to learn to read the store signs from Mike's hand-me down teachings. It's a bit more complicated though, there's a simplified written language and a standard. We're apparently learning the simplified. I guess that's a good enough start.
Journal Entry 32
That bitch got to me and I think I had an epileptic seizure. She showed up suddenly and grabbed me from behind. I know it was her, I felt it. I made for my taser and suddenly I couldn't think straight and went into convulsions. Next thing I know I wake up in the local temple. Some love and peace worshiper temple. Nothing was missing but I've got the headache to end all headaches and random nose bleeds. She fucking mind raped me and then dumped me off at the temple. What the fuck? Fucking psions. I'll get her. I know exactly where she is, why the fuck do I know exactly where she is, what did she do to me?
Journal Entry 33
I got cleaned and rested up. Still got the headache. Paid a visit to Ms Psion. Brought my gun but in hindsight, I don't think I could of used it if I wanted to. We had a nice talk, not sure how much, if any of it, was real or manufactured. I'm pretty paranoid about it. I don't know what they can fully do. Going there was a bad idea. There was more then one. It's all kind of a blur. I do know a lot of talking was done but not a word was said. From what I can recall and managed to put together, they're part of some back door manipulators of the local guilds, manipulating towards their profits. I think the ideas I leaked to the artificer got out and that brought me to their attention and then they found something. Something I didn't know was there. Now I think I need them to learn to control it or go insane from increasing mental stress. Or at least that's what they want me to think. None of this makes sense.
Journal Entry 34
It's not a headache, it's feedback. So much but no solitude to be found in the city boarders. I slipped outside for a bit and the volume lowered to acceptable levels. I will have to return, maybe Marcus can play that song that puts me to sleep. He learned how. It was a mental ingredient that Alex was missing, he couldn't observe the state of mind he needed and the training was missing. I wonder how he and Avery are doing, or the others that were captured. I have to go back to her, she will teach me. I will make her.
Journal Entry 35
It's been a few weeks I think. I learned to block it. The noise. Them. From then on, it's mostly intuitive. The advanced tricks come later, so they say. Having a logical mental grasp of things has certainly helped. They said I was their first otherplanar “wild talent.” Already I learned to decipher the feelings. Empathy I guess. It's created other side effects. I have trouble nearing the slave market, it's a literal pit of despair, so thick it's almost physical. Luckily the effect doesn't spread. Uh, while I was coming and going out of sanity during the week, Marcus picked up some magical Bard music. Just some simple stuff. Between my experience and his, I guess we can learn. There's hope for Alex yet if he ever regained full functionality. The others, Amanda, Jason and Mike have been poking around and found out about some academy or university quite a distance away that may have some answers for us. They apparently have some info on extra-planar travel. Might be a long shot but it's all we got.
Journal Entry 36
We need quite a bit of gold for travel expenses. Much more then we have. I signed up on another dungeoneering expedition. Jason signed up as well. We joined up with a sorcerer and what I'm pretty sure was half the thieves guild pretending to be fighters. I didn't even know there was one. I suppose that's the way they want it. Apparently Jason is a pseudo apprentice to one of them. What the fuck. Anyways, we headed down to clear out some goblins and instead found a death cult. A dead death cult. They committed suicide, somewhat recently. There was a goblin, just the one though, and he wasn't a feral, he wanted to join. Whatever, I'm not the leader on this expedition. He smells though. Jason managed to pick out a few traps and got a few pats on the head for it from his thief masters and I'm pretty sure I got fondled at some point by every one of them while they were looking for my coins or something of interest. Suckers, I left it all with the others back at the inn. Overall load from the job.. The pay was cut in half since there was no Goblins. Loot off the cult was a handful of shitty quality daggers, a handful of coppers and a magical idol none of us wanted to touch. We rigged up some wood tongs, bagged it and sold it at the market for around 60 gold and some incense. We didn't pay the goblin, he can go fuck himself.
Journal Entry 37
We all gathered up after I got my Kindle charged up and watched Strange Days. It was the only movie I had on it when I came, and the only movie any of us brought. It's a good movie but when you've been living out on this world for awhile, you notice the simple things. Oh look, they have proper shoes and their clothes have functioning pockets. Hey, cars. And so on. There were some tears as homesickness kicked in full force and then I picked up the overflow from the others. What the fuck was I thinking? I think that portal bullshit had a hypnotic effect or some limited mind control was used. The more I think about it, after what I learned.. But why bring us, we're random people with similar interests. It doesn't make sense. Anyways, a bit after that, I..”helped” Jason with some b&e work his masters were requesting he do.. for the experience. Now I'm not the best person and I admit I'd probably be doing it too if I didn't get caught up in the mental adventures of temporary insanity with Miss Bald and her skinhead friend so I'm not even going to complain. I guess I'm sliding on down the alignment scale. Desperation, real or imagined I suppose. So my part in this heist was feeling out if anyone was inside and then he does all the work, and I try and alert him if someone goes for the door. Alert in my case is to nearly knock him and myself silly. I'm still new at this, it's like painting with boxing gloves on. I'm not sure what the total haul was worth, but his masters paid him a handful of silver. I'm starting to wonder of this coinage really is gold, silver and copper. Might just be what they call it or maybe they're using a really impure mixture. I don't know. Not important I guess.
Journal Entry 38
So two trips into the dungeon and I am apparently a dungeoneering pro according to the locals. Seriously? So I was approached while trying to grift some tourists about another run in another section of the crypt. Apparently it's the right season that the water level down there drops enough to allow access to some otherwise inaccessible areas. Jason and his handler are coming along with what I think is a gnome who wants to examine the construction techniques and a tiefling chick who was armed to the horns with whips. I'm going to have to get a torch for this, it's probably going to last longer then my flashlight's battery. Of course I'm not experienced in making a fire without a lighter. I'll figure it out. Maybe that's something else I can sell to the artificer. He's still working out the wonders of the ball point pen. Anyways, the expedition starts come sunrise.
Journal Entry 39
Dungeoneering pro my ass. So we're all stuck in a big cylindrical room, about 15ft diameter and 20ft high. I'll start from the top. We entered and immediately ran into a kobold scouting party that was seeing if the area was habitable for them. Why can't they just build a fucking town of their own? We managed to chase them off. Found a few traps, got some cuts and bruises by a few and some minor burns from the extra fun time magical ones. I have to wonder why anyone bothers. It's only a matter of time before someone breaks through, all you're doing is wasting money on slowing down an inevitable intrusion. Not cost effective in the least. We found the previously flooded section and entered. Most of the traps here were disabled from water damage except a few of the amusing surprise pits that were now filled with easily crossable water and silt. Picked up a few unknown gems and some random baubles and decorations. Our gnome friend took sketches of everything we saw, from walls to doorway arches. Very fast hands. Finally we entered this room. There was a lever on a pedestal. Typical. The gnome seemed excited and walked right over and pulled it before we could check it out. The door slammed shut and that's how we got to be stuck in this room. The tiefling chick nearly broke his little jaw after the first hour. Everyone seems calm but I can feel the panic. It's creating a kind of feedback effect, not easy to ignore.
Journal Entry 40
Still in the trap. Luckily we're not expecting the area to flood again for another few months. So we're all sitting around chatting it up. I got to regale everyone of the tale of the Quantum Lich who was trapped in a similar situation and went on imaginary adventures. Jason and I had a good laugh about it, the others were disturbed. So rather then sit around and wait for insanity or death, we tore apart the lever mechanism which went inert when the trap sprung and applied some mechanical engineering to it. Some of the rope that made it work broke. We figure this room was some kind of “airlock” leading to another chamber. We managed to repair the mechanism using one of the tiefling's whips and tricked it it into opening both doors with some luck. Tada. We took a vote and went further in. It's a good thing we did. While we didn't find mounds of gold and jewels, we found a small armory. Swords, daggers and armor, all in good shape, untouched by the flooding and rust. We cleaned the place out and headed back top side. Our market contact is selling off the loot and we got paid. Looks like we got a nice little mound of coinage and we all kept something from the loot. I traded in my shitty goblin short sword for a nice steel one. The gnome got his designs and seemed quite pleased, around the bruises anyways.
Journal Entry 41
Got caught up with the artificer today. He finished several prototypes of ball point pens but couldn't get the right consistency with the ink. Chemistry or Alchemy as they call it here is not his strong point, so he's working with one on that. In the mean time, he's working out which is easier, bikes or razors. The razor has lots of fine points, but the bike has moving parts. I suggested a Penny-Farthing style with the pedal mounted on the front wheel for ease. He's pondering it. I see many great business arrangements in our future. One thing at a time though. It's not like there's a patent office though, anything he figures out, anyone else can copy and there goes the profits. Learned a new trick. I can pull memories out of people now. It's very obvious what's happening though and it's quite tedious and leaves me exhausted. In other news, someone tried robbing me in an alley. Not one of the sanctioned thieves, just some asshole. Gave him a mind full and then a face full of taser when that wasn't enough. I ended up taking his money, his pants and one boot just to fuck with him.
Journal Entry 42
The airship is in town today. Amanda is going to see about booking passage or at least how much it is to their main stop, which is about halfway to that university. From there.. well, we'll figure something out. We're all planning on going. We have to stick together. In the meantime, I'm experimenting with Mike and Marcus with some zap stone he picked up cheap in the market. It's magic, produces static electricity at what seems to be a constant rate. I think it's for wizard pranks or maybe simple traps. We're seeing if we can't use it as a faster method to recharge our batteries. My taser must be getting low, and it takes hours to charge my mp3 player, even longer for the Kindle or Amanda's Ipad using the solar charger, or that hand crank thing we got from Dan.
Journal Entry 43
We have enough for the airship trip, but it's a no frills package and may be called upon to help move cargo around. We leave in two days. I haven’t actually ever been on a plane and here I am preparing for an airship ride. The trip should take 48 hours. Our experiments with the static stone didn't quite work out as well as we hoped. The electricity coming off it is in fact very random. We would need to set up some kind of transformer or something and I have no idea how to make one. Paid a last visit to Baldy. Why the hell did I do that again? Always a mindfuck with her. Literally. Also she keeps wanting me to shave my head. To hell with that. She did give me some tips on memory digging that should help, but practice makes perfect. It's like a muscle, it needs to be used. Translation: I gotta mind rape people to get stronger. What the hell have I gotten myself in to?
Journal Entry 44
So here I am, standing on the deck of an airship, an aerodynamically improbable shape propelled by magic. Fucking magic. As near as I can tell, it's a converted cutter with the sails removed and some magic propulsion added in. Some kind of engine powered by elementals or something. It's certainly not sea worthy anymore as the bottom's been cut up into loading doors for cargo. Us Terrans are sharing a tiny, stuffy cabin barely large enough for us all. We're sleeping on the floor more or less. The ship is noisy, the wood constantly creaking from movements. On deck is better but we have to stay out of the way of the crew. The view is amazing though. We're hauling ass over some plains. Mountains and forests in the distance, passing over a few horse riders far below. They are navigating by a combination of standard ship navigation techniques, compass and sextant combined with a magic map. Not too sure of the details on the map, probably helps with their versions of latitude and longitude guesswork. Something is bothering me though, I'm picking up a lot of apprehension in the crew. I let the others know and we've been digging for info but they're being tight lipped. It doesn't seem directed towards us though, so I don't think they're planning anything nefarious.
Journal Entry 45
A day and a half out and blam, the ship crashes. Found out what the crew was worried about. They were transporting some creature. It got free and set the whole underside aflame. The ship's enchantments started breaking one at a time. The captain managed to soft crash us. About 4 of the crew's total of 15 didn't make it. All us Terrans survived, but Mike has broken arm and the rest of us are pretty banged up. We're doing what we can to treat the injuries. Whatever it was in the below decks either died in the fire or died in the crash. We have a long trip ahead of us on foot. We're loading up with all the supplies that survived and even managed to throw together a shitty cart to load up and transport the wounded. The area isn't exactly a haunted nightmare forest, but it's not exactly safe as the ones back home either. The Captain, a fiery woman, seems to think we can make it to Winterfield in a week if we don't dawdle. My request for a discount on the travel price was of course denied. Whatever. As long as we all make it. We Terrans are a bit better off then when we did our first caravan from Rosenbridge to Wildlake.
Journal Entry 46
So we're kind of lost in the woods. The tree cover is too thick to take sun measurements for navigation, so we're kind of guessing. We at least know the right direction, between my and the captain's compasses. The woods are pretty quiet which probably means predators, but I don't feel anything out there. Marcus occasionally breaks out the guitar to play something inspiring. He's getting better at it and is managing to combine some Terran music with what I'm calling the bardic effects. It doesn't quite work right, so mostly we're heading local traditional stuff. We've all been taking turns pulling the supply/injury cart, and pushing when it inevitably gets stuck. A few of the crew are ahead, picking paths through the trees and looking for the best ground to traverse until we find some kind of road. The Captain is certain there's an old trade road around here somewhere. We're zigzagging back and forth looking for it as we continue on to Winterfield. I tried climbing one of the trees for a better look, but didn't see anything other then more trees. So much green. According to the map, we should be in the woods for at least two days before we exit out, cut across some foothills and enter the northern plains. The crew is pretty superstitious. They keep telling tall tales of dark elves kidnapping people to their caves living in the woods, or cannibal witches or Druids powered on hatred and my favorite, the Woods Lich. He raises the dead as dryad tree warriors. I'd think it was all fun and games, but some of them are terrified by the prospect. It's like kids telling horror stories around a campfire to scare each other except it's grown men and women. Tonight we're going to tell our version. We're going to convert Hellraiser over to something they can understand.
Journal Entry 47
Well, we ran into wild borderline feral forest elves. I picked them up when they started shadowing us and called them out. They weren't hostile, but extremely distrustful. They barely spoke English..common, but we did manage to get some directions out of them. They just want us out of their territory asap. We're a change to the status quo I guess. The whole thing could of gone a lot worse if one of the idiot crew were first to approach call them out. Fucking elves. I think Amanda has an elf crush to boot. My experience with them so far in general hasn't been all that good considering my time with Miss Baldy McMindrape. Anyways, by nightfall, we hit the trade road. It was further east then the map said, and it's in pretty bad shape. It's been flooded out several times and is heavily overgrown, but it's a straight route, if not disused. Apparently once the airship started moving cargo in days what would of taken months, the whole thing just shut down overnight. I hope they can acquire a new one, I doubt they had an insurance policy on it.
Journal Entry 48
We're camped out at the edge of the woods for the night and will hit the foothills tomorrow. It should be easier going, but we don't exactly know what kind of dangers to expect. We all sat around and watched my Kindle copy of Strange Days again, including the crew. They obviously had no idea what was going on but the pretty moving pictures kept them distracted from telling stupid horror stories. I just hope they don't decide to burn us as witches come morning. We also have been getting in some weapon practice during our woodland adventure. I'm not as clumsy as I used to be with the blade as when I first started. Mike's taken extremely well to his rapier.
Journal Entry 49
We got attacked. Hyenas. Gnolls and a few goblins. They initially charged in screaming, but gunfire sent them back. They continued with hit and run tactics for the rest of the day I'm down 6 more bullets. 48 rounds left. We lost a crewman and the Captain took a nasty gash across the arm and leg. She's riding the cart now. None of us have any medical training. I don't know how bad the wound is, but she's out of the fight. If she takes fever, I'll give her a penicillin and hope she's not allergic. Took a few beatings otherwise and had to repair the cart, but we're okay. We captured a goblin and he's pulling the cart for now. Picked through the mortally wounded after the raids. Got to practice my memory harvesting skills. I know more about that Gnoll tribe then I ever wanted to, and they all died in horrible agony, and I got a headache. I've come to realize I'm becoming a horrible person. Was this something Mistress Skinhead McTattooface planted in my head or is this just how I'm adapting to the situation? It must be adaption, I'm not the only one effected. Jason was laughing at their pain and was cracking jokes about it for the rest of the day to freak out our goblin slave. Speaking of him, he doesn't speak common so we named him Wendy. Overall loot from the attacks.. A long bow and some nasty looking arrows. One of the crewmen knows how to use bows, so he took it.
Journal Entry 50
Surprise, I'm apparently in charge of this whole expedition now while the Captain is out of it. She's sleeping most of the time and the bleeding has stopped.. kind of. I don't even know when to change her bandages, just when they look bad? We don't have enough material for a lot of them. No rotting smells though..yet. So with the Captain out of it and the first mate dead in the crash, somehow the chain of command falls to me. I think everyone's taking my secret rampant and unethical abuse of empathy as some form of leadership. Well, here goes nothing. No sign of the Gnoll party today, but we keep catching glimpses miles behind us. Probably scouts. I hope we're not being pushed into a war party. The hills aren't exactly giving us a clear view of everything, too many places to hide, too much cover, so we travel on. We should hit the plains tomorrow. That may bring luck or more misfortune. What the fuck am I doing here?
Journal Entry 51
No Gnoll attacks, they stopped following us when we hit the plains. One of the crewmen started getting real jittery. One of the big dumb guys. When pressed, he clammed up, but that shit don't work on me. This trip is taking longer then expected, even with the crash. I figure we'll hit Winterfield in four more days. At least there's that to look forward to. Hopefully we won't all get arrested upon arrival or worse. This isn't even the endpoint in our little trip, just the midway. We'll have to find a new group to travel with to this University place. The plains are nice, we can see if something is coming unlike the foothills. The terrain is flat enough that we can make good time over the trade road. I'm sure there's some kind of horrible magic snake or dire rats hiding in the grass somewhere. We'll see I guess. The Captain isn't doing much better, but stable. Bleeding's stopped but she has a temperature. I slipped her a penicillin. I hope this works, is this even the right time to use them? Figures that we'd end up with no one with any form of medical training. I'm sure Mike's arm isn't going to heal right. We'll have to get him to a temple healer asap. Same with the Captain of course.
Journal Entry 52
Found out what was bothering the big guy. Nomadic barbarian tribe. He's an exiled member of course, headed over to Winterfield and took up an occupation. I don't know what he was exiled for, but they're pretty pissed to see him, and us because we're with him. We managed to talk them out of killing us on the spot and we're under their custody until they decide what to do with us. There's around 150 or so of them that I've counted so far. They move in a huge migratory loop around the plains, following the wildlife and weather year after year. We did manage to get their healer to assist with our wounded so there is that. He's using a combination of some kind of magic healing and holistic medicine with lots of silly ritual that I'm sure isn't really part of it. At least I hope it isn't. From observation, I figured that they're ancestor spirit worshipers along with a skygod that may or may not be the same figure as the sun god in a different mask. It's hard to tell. I'm not about to announce my disbelief in the divine on this world, as things like that tend to go all wrong. Their young warriors dope up on some local plantlife and visit the ancient grave sites, experience something and then participate in a hunt. There's some kind of cannibalism involved as well, their greatest warrior gets eaten when he passes and the same goes for the medicine man and his replacement when the death comes. They don't seem to be experiencing the shakes, and is apparently a sin to eat anyone else.. so I'm going to try and not be too worried.
Journal Entry 53
The Captain is back on her feet and thanked me for not fucking up too badly, and Mike's arm is doing better from the healer's treatment. That's the good news. The bad news is that after today's negotiations.. we get to take part in the Barbarian hunt. The worse news is that we're the prey in this hunt. We have a 4 hour head start. We're ditching the cart and carrying what supplies we can. It starts at sunrise. We have 8 young warriors in the chase, and some older ones just behind them in case they fail. We're not expected to survive. Mr Exile is ready to accept his fate. I don't want to die tired. I won't. Not after all of this.
Journal Entry 54
Rained all day and we ran. Rained into the night and we ran. Didn't even know I could run this long. Desperation. Separated from the others but I kept running. When sunlight came, one of those assholes was on my tail. They have fucking horses. Fucking Cheaters! Nearly got trampled. He got off his horse to finish me. I let lose with everything. There's nothing left up there now, he's blank. I don't think he even knows what he is anymore. Can barely think, bleeding from nose, dizzy. Hiding in a crevice, my legs were starting to lock up. Need to get moving asap.
Journal Entry 55
-4 bullets.
Journal Entry 56
Met up with the others at night. 3 Crewmen are gone, Amanda's dead. Speared. We're taking a break. We can afford a short breather. Mike did.. something. He flipped the fuck out and started talking to thin air and next thing I know he's throwing around fucking black fire and took down one, injured another. I think he made a deal, a Warlock deal. He won't talk about it but he's ashamed and terrified of whatever he agreed to, but fear of barbarian death overrode whatever that was. We'll talk about it once we get out of this situation.
Journal Entry 57
We ran into a Winterfield guard patrol with the barbarians on the horizon. They pulled back and the guards had enough compassion to help us. We were escorted back to town and currently sitting in a tavern. I ache everywhere. Amanda's gone. Another one of us down, dead on the side of the fucking road again. We're all dead quiet, the surviving ship crew and Captain. We're numb. I'm not going to sleep well for awhile, and Mike's seriously fucked up. He still won't talk about it. We're going to hold a memorial tomorrow for Amanda and the other crewmen. I didn't even know their names. I feel like I'm forgetting about something. Wendy! What ever happened to that fucking goblin, we left him at the barbarian camp. He's probably dead.
Journal Entry 58
I keep waking up, thinking I have to start running, or that there's a barbarian about to kill me or not sure where I am. This isn't good. PTSD? Fuck. We held a memorial for Amanda. Well, welcome to fucking Winterfield. It's a large city, reminds me of medieval France in architecture. It's a bit chilly here, but it is farther north. The locals are a bit distant. Apparently the barbarians are a problem for the area and the real reason the trade road shut down, and they switched to an airship. Well, hope they can build another one. The local royalty is too fearful of sending an army out to hunt the fuckers down like dogs. No, he's fine with the way things are. Calls it balance from what I hear. As much as I'd like to just settle down here for awhile and recover, we can't really. We all agreed. The barbarians are set up to the south west and we need to move north east. If we wait here too long, they'll move further up their migratory path and it'll be too late. We have very little money. Jason is checking in with the local thieves guild, because that's apparently a thing he has to do now. I did some checking around and there is a caravan heading north to a town called Brightly. According to the map, we can get to the University from there. I'm starting to understand how this University thing works, and why it's so far out. If you get there, you've proven yourself apparently. Too late to turn back. We'll take a week to rest, gather supplies and then head out with the Caravan. Where to get the money? Looks like I'm back to tasing people in alleyways and helping Jason b&e. What am I doing with my life?!
Journal Entry 59
Those fucking barbarians. They dropped off the desecrated corpses of Amanda and the crew on the doorstep of town for all to see. They'll pay for this, for everything. Motherfuckers. They'll at least get a burial now. At least there's that. I'm so fucking pissed I don't know what to do. I accidentally lashed out at a few people mentally. We just wanted to pass through but those fuckers wanted to have their fun and now people are dead. Lives ruined. For what? I don't know anymore, I don't know. Anyways, I helped Jason nick some items he can fence and we'll see what else we can do to grab some money.
Journal Entry 60
We didn't get as much as I had hoped, so we're going to have to expand our horizons. This isn't really a town for adventurers, no nearby dungeons or anything, just asshole barbarians. Marcus is making some money, barding it up in the taverns at least. The people are too distrustful to be grifted easily. Mike is totally against a warlock magic show, and to be honest, it wouldn't be appropriate. I'm not exactly a criminal mastermind. We can always hold up a trade caravan. Say, the one we're traveling with. That might be too many people though. We're not murders and we're not bandits. We're just poor. Yeah, that's a great rationalization. I apparently have no moral issues with completely fucking over the locals. I think it's because I don't recognize them as.. us. “We're Terrans, we're better then you!” mentality. I don't know what to do. I don't, I just don't know. Would I of been like this if we stuck around Rosenbridge? What happened with Alex and Avery, or Ian, Max and Austin. Are they even still alive? I can't think and my mind is starting to leak. I need rest.
Journal Entry 61
Well, Jason came back from the guild with a job offer. We can make nearly twice the money we need with a single job. That job of course is to assassinate the king. He's not a popular man around here. Of course we're not exactly assassins. The fact I'm seriously considering this job shows just how far I've slipped. I've talked with the others and they're all for it. Marcus explained it best with Spock logic. The needs of the many (us, and our need of money) outweigh the needs of the few (the king and his need to live.) It's fucked up logic but on the good side, maybe his replacement will do something about the fucking barbarians. We got decided to take the job. Jason picked up a map from his guild and we're going to do some planning latter tonight. In the meantime, we're attending Amanda's burial. Partially to make sure they don't fuck it up. She's been through enough.
Journal Entry 62
So the castle has 124 rooms spread across 4 floors. The king's chamber is on the fourth floor with a single entrance and access from a forward and rear balcony. We figure the interior is loaded with the royal guards. Going through the front door is out, using a balcony entrance is dangerous. We poked around the market to see what resources we can get our hands on. No magic flight rods or anything like that unfortunately. The best we can get out of the thieves guild is some rope, but it's quite a distance to climb. We could use it for a quick escape though. Too bad we don't have a sniper rifle, his throne room is nearly level with the inn roof half a mile away and has a clear window. How to get in a heavily guarded castle. Can't imitate the guards, they don't use face masks and probably all know each other. There are no silly royal parties scheduled either. The king's schedule is pretty simple. He wakes up, eats, sits in the throne and listens to the local woes, around lunch he quits and putters around with his mistress and then official kingdom business until dinner, then sleeps, then repeat. The afternoon court is apparently an open affair, I'll see about doing some recon tomorrow.
Journal Entry 63
Okay, the castle isn't as bustling as I thought it would be. Went in with Marcus and observed court, which was a few hours of peasant complaints, hilariously one sided criminal trials and the local gossip hour. Apparently this kind of thing is not common with the other kingdoms, it's just that there are no nobles in town, so the king has an open court so he can pretend he's important. He's not even married and his mistress is an ugly half orc. Well, ugly face but she's got some hot curves. I bet he uses a cloth sack. Anyways, I think our best opportunity would be to go in during court, slip away at the end and hang out in one of the unused castle rooms until night and then do the deed. Marcus wanted to help, but he's our public face and he shouldn't get involved. Mike will be waiting near the castle in case we need assistance in escaping the grounds. Just me and Jason. Court starts in a few hours, so we'll begin project KingSlayer then.
Journal Entry 64
Well, it didn't go as planned but it didn't go entirely bad either. We slipped off on our way out of court and occupied a dusty room in the east wing. Poked around for a bit, found a few silver coins laying around. A few hours after nightfall we moved out. Made it to the fourth floor of this wing which is mostly unused. Only had to slip past a couple of off duty staff. We had to put down one nosy cleaning lady. She's still alive. I tried a new trick on her, a kind of memory loop. Not sure it worked but she casually walked out of the room and into a wall, knocked herself out. Good enough I guess. She didn't get a good look at us at least. Did some climbing around outside to get to the balcony and we were in the king's chamber. Just like that. Then we sat there for a half hour staring. I couldn't do it. Jason finally maned up and put a pillow over the king's face and slit his throat out before he could begin to struggle. Got kind of an adrenalin high after that. Grabbed some things from the room, some coinage, some magic looking baubles and rappelled off the balcony using rope. Then we got caught. Plowed right into a guard and the one of the gardeners making out. I put down the guard before he could fumble his pants back on to get at his sword, and Jason took down the gardener. I don't feel good about this job at all.
Journal Entry 65
We go paid and set up with a caravan heading out to Brightly tomorrow. I feel like shit. We officially crossed the line and are now murderers. Everything in town is in chaos. Guards are raiding all the shady hideouts and arresting anyone they think is shady looking. We're hanging out in one of the more popular inns to try and blend in to the crowd. We don't blend well. Anyways, there's no royal heir to assume the throne, so the advisers are working out what to do. Maybe they'll invent democracy. Who am I kidding, it'll be a military dictatorship until whoever names themselves Emperor. In other news, I've gotten good enough at reading to kind of read a book. It wasn't very interesting or very long. It was about some historical battle centuries ago in the area. Turns out the barbarian tribe is remains of a rival kingdom that was wiped out. Fucking barbarians. Anyways, time to resupply for the trip. I could use some new clothes. At least a new shirt, my jeans are holding up okay. My shirt has changed color several times now, from blue to brown to red and now it's gray and is covered in sloppily repaired rips and tears.
Journal Entry 66
So we're passengers in a caravan heading to Brightly. It's supposedly a safe route. I've heard that before. Figured out what the magic things we stole from the king's chamber do. We got a poison immunity necklace and what appears to be an immovable ring. Like an immovable rod but as ring. It's a plain gold and luckily, bound to this gravity sphere, otherwise, who knows where it would zoom off to. Why would anyone make this is beyond me. Maybe it was an accident. Anyways, the caravan is made up of about 15 carts and was hastily put together once the local trade guild found out about the airship issues. We have a crew of 40 or so people: hired guards, horse and ox drivers, merchants, their support staff and passengers. The caravan leader is a civilized orc woman. She's got to be at least 6 foot 5. Now I've never been into muscle girls, or green skin for that matter but damn. She's apparently made a name for herself with the locals and well trusted as some kind of trail blazer.
Journal Entry 67
It's been raining for the last few days. It's slowed us down considerably with muddy roads, carts getting stuck and fallen trees. Why don't they pave anything? The Romans did it. Spirits would be lower if not for Marcus's music. Did some chatting with the merchants. Seems Winterfield has no real exports, they just import everything they need, which is most things because of their barbarian problem. How do they afford it? Exporting their leftovers to Brightly for an even higher price. Brightly is apparently even more isolated. It's a lumber community, harvesting trees, producing wood products but lacking large farm space and anyone else to trade to, so everything they make comes and goes through Winterfield. With the airship down and the Barbarian problem, this entire arm of the trade network is cut off. Too bad they don't have trains. I'm not even sure how to make a steam engine. I know the science behind it of course. If we ever get back to Wildlake, I'll have to hit up the artificer. Or maybe find another one out here, invent a magical monorail. Wouldn't that be funny. Oh great, Marcus was reading over my shoulder and is now playing the monorail song.
Journal Entry 68
Well, the rain stopped just long enough for a kobold raid. A whole shit load of the little fuckers. 3 of the caravan guard are dead, many injuries. Twice as many kobolds were brought down and the rest scattered. They got away with several bags of clothing from one of the carts. From their mental state, they were kind of desperate for anything to help with the coming Winter in a few months. I used to wonder what would drive someone to do something like that, and now I know. I've been put in that situation but with even less important reasons. No point in dwelling on it though. So we should reach Brightly either tomorrow or the day after depending on the rain. Luckily I've been managing to keep my notepad dry the whole time. Caught one of the merchants trying to read it last night when I set it aside to eat. Yeah, he couldn't read it. That's one thing we got, a language none of the locals can't read. Speaking of the locals, I'm pretty sure Marcus did the bard thing and got lucky with one of the caravan girls. Not sure which. Maybe it was more then one? I hope that anti poison ring also does diseases.
Journal Entry 69
We made it to Brightly a few hours after nightfall. The city gates are closed, so we're camped just outside, partying like gypsies on making it with minimal losses. There is a massive forest around this place, and from what I gather, they're clear cutting the forest nonstop and processing the wood, but it's growing as fast as they can cut it. Magic woods of the unhaunted variety from what they say. Rumor has it that there are a bunch of dyrads inside that are churning out trees to keep the people from cutting deeper into the woods where their special trees are. Just rumor though. I'm willing to bet there's some horrible evil locked away out there. That's how it usually is. Or maybe the horrible evil and the dryads are working together to get rich off the lumber industry. Who knows.
Journal Entry 70
I must of drank more then I thought last night. Woke up with a fresh tattoo on my arm from one of the merchant girls. She says it's a magical symbol for courage. Yeah bullshit. We have that joke on my world too. It's not in common and just looks like a fancy shape and not bad looking I guess, whatever. So Brightly isn't what I was expecting. It's not a human town. Reptile people. Dragonborn maybe? Not the shouting kind, though they are loud. Boisterous. At least they're friendly. The trade caravan is doing their business and heading out tomorrow. Us Terrans in the meantime need to plan the next leg of our amazing odyssey. This university is part of a city named Aellyn and it is to the east, almost dead east. There is no trade route there. They are self sufficient and considered one of the larger kingdoms. And prefer not to deal with other kingdoms if they don't have to. Isolationists. I hope they like offworlders.
Journal Entry 71
Well, the caravan is gone. We're currently the only humans in this city which means we can't pull off anything shady. We're also getting the special treatment. Lots of attention, sometimes not always the good kind. So we're planning over a map, working out our next expedition. Aellyn is a week or more away on foot and we'll have to cut over the edge of a small mountain on the way of we take the most direct route. The locals helped fill in some of the blank spots on the map for this area but there are still a lot of unknowns. The cold weather is coming in a few months so we can't dally around. Since we'll be passing through the middle of nowhere, we probably won't have any trouble with some of the bandit races like goblins or kobolds and the terrain isn't suited to roving barbarian tribes. My best bet, if there is anything out there, wild elves or a crazy loner wizard. Otherwise, probably be dealing with large and possibly magic animals. Money isn't a problem yet. We still have quite a bit from the King job, and we made more selling that weird ring. Suggested to the locals how they can use it in their lumber business as floating o-rings or platform base of some kind. We're going to wait a day and then head out. Too many non humans is starting to creep me out.
Journal Entry 72
Well, we're on the road again. Not really a road though, more like a small infrequently used path used by crazy adventurers that could easily be confused with a goat path. What I wouldn't give for an atv. Camped out in a clearing for the night. Dinner consisted of dried meat dried fruit. It wasn't bad. Needs salt. Something that's pretty rare here. How we take such things for common back home. Seasoning is something only the rich have here. Sugar is another thing. I haven't had any sweets in god knows how long. Chocolate. Do they even have chocolate here? Mint is another thing. If I ever get home, I'll have to remember to bring some candy next time a portal opens in my livingroom. Candy and a shotgun. And bags of ammo. And a fucking ATV.
Journal Entry 73
Well, we've been captured by kobolds. The same ones from the caravan raid. They aren't entirely hostile this time, and I don't think they recognize us. Just more humans to them. I can tell it's them from the free floating memories. Kobolds are very... it's hard to explain in words, but they kind of project their minds everywhere in a non telepathic way. It makes reading them as easy as staring at a painting. Some of them speak common. They couldn't decide if they should ditch us and continue on their way, rob us and leave us dead or take us with them as hostages. They are kind of wandering aimlessly. They left their previous..village? Tribe? To expand. They got lost and don't really know how to survive on their own without banditry. We are trying to make a deal with them. They let us go and we teach them the basics of construction, engineering and farming. They can found their own village and not have to worry about getting stabbed in the face just to eat.
Journal Entry 74
Well, the kobold high command has taken to our offer and is now escorting us some of the way to Aellyn. We've begun telling them about farming and construction basics. Simple stuff that they've apparently never had to think about living in a cave. They are catching on pretty fast though, I'll give them that. You just have to find the right way to explain it to them, and in terms they'd understand. Their first few attempts are probably going to be a catastrophe, but they apparently don't give up easy when they get an idea in their head. Any information we tell them spreads throughout them at a pretty fast rate. I guess they like gossip. They still smell terrible.
Journal Entry 75
We're crossing the edge of the mountains now. It's so cold up here. We're probably a good mile off sea level. The kobolds are all wrapped up in their stolen clothes and some are carrying around burning home made torches for warmth when we're on the move. I'm wearing everything I own. Assuming we don't run into any trouble, we should be back down by tomorrow. Mountain climbing is a whole new experience for me. My hands are probably going to be covered in blisters tomorrow, if not from pulling myself up the rocks, then helping the damn kobolds. Since they've gotten to know us, they've gone from menacing bandits to friendly puppies in disposition. Things would probably be worse off if Marcus wasn't strumming along most of the time, keeping our spirits up. Mike's been pretty quiet, still won't talk about who or what he made his warlock pact with, or the terms of the deal. The emotions coming off him are troubling though. Depression. I've been giving him mental nudges to try and snap him out of it but all I'm doing is keeping him from sliding further down.
Journal Entry 76
Still in the mountains. No big issues, it just got darker out then usual due to cloud cover. We're held up in the remains of a crashed ship. A crashed ship in the mountains. It's been here awhile and doesn't have the extras that the other airship had. So how did it get here? Magic probably. Magic is always the answer. It's a slave ship. The busted remains of the hold is full of chained up, frost covered skeletons. We made damn sure they weren't magic skeletons at first. Just the regular kind. There's no loot here, whoever survived took everything worth taking with them, or it was stripped by passing adventurers. It's warmer inside so we're staying the night and should be on our way come morning. Tried my hand at writing and put a message on the wall in common stating our names, party size, date and where we were going, a note of our passing. It occurred to me afterwards that I used an Earth year and not the local year. How long have we been here again?
Journal Entry 77
We made it out of the mountains. We're camped at a small river, only four feet deep at crossing. We had to help the kobolds cross though, so we're all pretty wet. None of the gear got soaked though, luckily. They like the area and it is pretty good place for them to set up their koboldville experiment. Big open area, some woods not far away, a fresh water river and a lake less then a mile away. They weren't sure what to call it, so I suggested Chicago. Because it's funny. We're splitting off from them come morning and heading on our own. According to the map, we have a few more days travel through some woods and then Aeyllin should be in sight. This fucking trip better of been worth it. We've lost so much and gained so little for it so far. Anyways, we're spending the last night dumping as much info as we can on the kobolds and hopefully it works out for them. Sure they're creepy little lizard/dragon people, but they're nice once they ditch their distrust. Not that I'd want one living near me, they still smell, even after they bathe.
Journal Entry 78
So we've been tromping through the woods for the last few days and suddenly breach the forest edge and plow right into another group of adventurers. They briefly mistook us for bandits but luckily no one was injured. They were heading away from Aeyllin and on their way to some burial tomb/doom maze for loot. We updated our map. Ours had Aeyllin in the wrong place, it's further north. Apparently the city has hundreds of farms stretching for miles to the south, and there's a mine/quarry on the north end. We're in farm country. I'm not expecting any problems, we have a well traveled and patrolled road to follow with several taverns along the way for the farmers. It'll be nice to have some cooked food for a change. And some booze.
Journal Entry 79
We're in our first tavern for the night about half a day from the city. It's got a few rooms we can use. Beds, Yes! Picked up some local history. Aeyllin used to be an isolated elf city way back when, many centuries ago. Used to have a bit of an Aztec flavor to it from hearing the description. Then the place gets flooded with refugees from some war. All manor of races moving in but mostly humans, and the elves, in their short sighted compassion, granted sanctuary. Well, they got mostly outbred almost immediately and now it's a mostly human/half-elf city with spatterings of other races. The only traces of the old culture are some of the more ancient buildings in town. The old forests cleared away for construction and then farming. Sure enough, it has that university we've been looking for in the middle of it. My expectations have lowered since hearing about it though. Everyone has such great things to say about it but they themselves have never been there and they're always saying the same things. Propaganda. The good news is that there are airships there, so if we need to leave, it should be a much easier trip, if not more expensive. Well, either way, we're going to rampage the shit out of that university library if we have to.
Journal Entry 80
Welcome to the wonderland that is Aeyllin. Well, we're in the city. Probably a quarter of the population are magic users of some sort, mostly low talent. We're staying in one of the larger inns. Marcus is staying free as long as he's working as the inn's nightly entertainment. The city is larger then I expected. There must be hundreds of thousands of people here. Whole districts stretch on for miles. It's far larger then any city we've seen so far. There are about 12 distracts. We're in the old city, which is the central distract, it makes accessing the other districts easier as it's set up as a giant wheel and we're in the hub. Government buildings are scattered all over, non centralized. There is a king, it is a kingdom, but no castle or court. He leaves the running of the city to his advisers and only steps in when he wants something specific to happen. There is almost a public education system (only available to merchant class and up), a local postal service, semi-proper sewage and garbage disposal (the still dump it in the river, just not inside town and down stream) and church sponsored health care. Several churches are sponsored here and to stay competitive, they’ve lowered their healing rates to free for citizens. At least that's my guess. So we can see the university from here, it's off in the 2 o'clock district, pretty big and lit up with magic glows. We're heading in there tomorrow. Today we're just resting and getting situated. My only complaint about this place is that everything is gray. The roads, walls, buildings. Everything is gray stone from the quarry. Granite. That means the city is one giant radiation sink. Wonderful.
Journal Entry 81
So we're in the university. Getting in was easy, we just had to register with the administration. They wanted race, name and where we started from. Rosenbridge I guess. We got a long speech about the rules. No taking anything off campus and no wrecking stuff basically. They were expecting us to be students, but that all changed once it slipped out that we're offworlders. Suddenly we're subjects. So we have an agreement, they help us dig up any information that we can find in their library system and in exchange, they'll study us in non harmful ways. So that's what we did today. We got separated. Poked, prodded and aura sampled. I spent more time with my clothes off standing in front of weird magical devices and having strange diagnostic spells being thrown at me then anything else. I did find out what that tattoo on my arm says. It's in some Draconic script. It means “The.” It could be worse I suppose. Currently we're in the library. While we did manage to learn to read, we're still having trouble with the more complex books, we we have requisitioned an apprentice wizard to help. Nice girl in her early 20's, wit as sharp as a knife. So we are researching planes walkers, traveling, off planes visitors and mysterious talking portals. A written language expert did show up to see our written language, but it's new to him. I wrote up a sample for him, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, for him to look into. We keep getting random people visiting, apparently our arrival has created a stir. Not everyday they get lost offworlders I guess.
Journal Entry 82
So there have been many offworld visitors recorded across the centuries. Some came as tourists, some came to conquer, but they all came and left under their own power. No tales of anyone being enticed through a portal from any world remotely like Earth. No talking portals either. Why the hell are we here? There's still a shit load of stuff to go through so maybe we'll come up with an answer eventually. Anyways, had a talk with our assistant about what happened to Alex back in Rosenbridge. Apparently strokes are one of the many things that can happen when a spell is cast wrong. It could have been worse I guess. We could of really used Alex and Avery on this stupid adventure. Or Dan. Or the ones imprisoned. Fuck. We should do something about that. We'll go back to Rosenbridge one day and we won't be scared, lost and helpless this time. Then we'll deal with those fucking Winterfield barbarians. So speaking of that, we are invited to attend some of their courses. They have something for nearly everyone, kind of. They actually have some psions around, and some courses for the more magical aspects of Barding and Mike really wants to dig into that Warlock course, find out exactly what he's in for. Not sure what Jason's going to learn though. I don't think they teach grand theft here. Maybe he can resume his apprenticeship at the local thieves guild. He's already checked in with them.
Journal Entry 83
That was incredibly tiresome. Psion class involves sitting in a circle and just mindfucking the shit out of each other while the Professor or Master or whatever he wants to call himself observes and keeps things from getting out of hand and repairing any damage. It's to build strength, learn to adapt defenses and so on. Got tested for telekinetics but got nothing. Might not be ready for that, or maybe I can't do it. Marcus apparently taught the master bard some Earth music. Not sure what Mike was up to, but he was white as a sheet when we met back up. He won't talk about it, but his mind was screaming “demon summoning” at me. Fantastic. Spent more time digging through the books. There was a talking portal in some dungeon, but it spoke riddles and wasn't trans-dimensional. In other news, the master artificer showed up and took a good look at our gear. I gave him a bicycle sketch and hinted at so much more in exchange for figuring out how to keep our electronics charged. Whispers of steam engines touching his mind ever so slightly, mental glimpses of aircraft and cars appearing and fading like a dream. I'm getting better at this shit.
Journal Entry 84
So much philosophical bullshit involved in this class. At least there's no homework. It would be amusing if there was. “Go home and mindrape someone. Exam tomorrow.” Marcus is having the time of his life, and even Mike is starting to relax. Jason's been away quite a bit, says he's learning the craft. So we finished tearing through the archives. Nothing we can use, even the big directory of planes had nothing. Our assistant got some approval and with help, tried summoning a fucking devil to get some answers , but it snapped up tight at the sight of us and wouldn't give up anything. It didn't even want to deal. What the fuck? What does that even mean? I'd be in a worse mood except the artificer master reworked our little static stone a bit and we can use it to charge things! We watched Strange Days again and listened to music. Got Amanda's Ipad charged up and took a look through it. She had brought a shit load of farming information with her and never said a thing about it. I wonder how useful this information would be?
Journal Entry 85
Since we're kind of students, we were invited to stay in the university housing. We took it up because it's saving us money and meals are included. It's a huge underground apartment complex with enough rooms for all the professors, students and staff. Around 400 rooms of varying size. We're put with the students of course. Back in college again. We have such things to teach them. Beer pong for instance. At least that was what came to mind, but no, the place is dead quiet. No fun allowed. More class. Wandered town for awhile and saw some of the sights and then hung around the market. I think this is the first time in awhile that we didn't have some immediate goal to shoot for. This is it, we made it here. Now what? If we can't find a way home, if there is no way home, we'll have to settle somewhere and live out our lives. Radiation aside, this is the nicest place we've been in. What do I want to do with my life? I've certainly gained new skills. I'm sure I could make an excellent dungeon interrogator or mind thief. Blackmail artist maybe. Always with the evil. Maybe because it's all there is aside from peasantry. I'm not a fucking peasant and my skills certainly make lying, cheating and stealing easy. What the fuck.
Journal Entry 86
We gathered up and talked. I brought up our future and we made a plan. We're going to head back to Rosenbridge after we're done here. Did some checking around and the best way back is to circle around the other way. Take an airship to Ashvale and from there, hop a ship to Kinild beach and if we're lucky, take another airship to Rosenbridge, if not , ride up to Wolf lake. From there we should be able to hop on the trade network to Rosenbridge from there. About a month's journey. Not exactly fast, but it looks to be safer then the way we came according to some people we asked. My only concern is that the some of the area on my map says “beware, orcs.” I was told that has been taken care of, that they had been pacified in a war. Always using that word, pacified. I don't like the way that sounds. Some kind of war happened out there that no one is really clear on. Anyways, our classes should last a few more weeks, then we head out. We're already starting to save up some money, from Marcus's tavern playing, Jason's sneakysneaky and I've found an interesting new business. 5 coppers and they get to look at my porn collection on the kindle. It's been hugely popular in the dorms. Did I just accidentally invent pornography?
Journal Entry 87
This last week's been rough. Doing a full on mind attack in the middle of a fight without having to stop. I think I got it down but god damn. How to put it, having to split your full attention at two things at once. Hard core multitasking. Had to visit the healer a few times early on when I fucked up. Speaking of the healer, poked around to see if they knew about the radiation issue. They do know that people occasionally get cancer for no reason, and they can heal it. They believe it's either from the university's dark magics or a sinful lifestyle. When I told them it was all the granite, they thought I was crazy. I learned something else, something very important. It's possible to raise the dead. Resurrection. It's very expensive and doesn't always turn out right though. Should we? I don't know if we should bother bringing them back into this hell hole. They may be the lucky ones, sitting back and watching us from that elsewhere. This world does have a definitive afterlife. Possibly several, it's not clear. I don't know how to feel about this.
Journal Entry 88
Well, there was a festival going on today, a big one. The central district was all done up, song, dance and specialized merchant goods. They're celebrating the season change. They apparently do this for every season, a last hurrah for the last one. Kind of a weird way to go about it, but a party is a party. So let's see, where to begin. Well, that many people having a blast is overwhelming and I nearly succumbed to it and found myself to be bored. So I let myself succumb to it and had the time of my life. Most if it's a blur and I blacked out at some point. Let's see, I danced and got drunk, then I think I got lucky with a smoking hot tiefling chick. At least I think she was hot, I was blitzed at the time. After that it's just broken flashes.. I think I challenged a dwarf to a drinking contest at some point. What the fuck was I thinking at the time. Something happened during nightfall, I think I was leading some locals on a quest to find a goblin townie to see how many beers it took to get him drunk. For Science. I guess. I woke up this morning in a detox room at one of the temples with most of my clothes missing. Luckily I left all my stuff back at the dorm. Got cleaned up, gave my hangover migraine to someone else and here I am. I have to find that damn magic necklace, I bet I got lead or mercury poisoning. I haven't put it on in awhile.
Journal Entry 89
So the master artificer shows up today on a bicycle. Had the peddles on the front wheels like a Penny-Farthing but the wheels were even sized and leather padded. No traction at all, and breaking involved using your legs. Simple but it's a prototype. He was completely taken by the thing though. Took him a few days to figure out how to ride it, but he spent a good portion of today peddling around town and only crashed three times. Being the nice guy he was, and wanting more business, he decided to give me a bonus of a magic purse that duplicates any one.. and only one.. item put in it. Usable once a day. And the item must be small. He did warn me of some rules. No money duplicating, apparently it's illegal and they can find out somehow, and no duplicating magic items. It works on bullets, I tried it. It's a slow method of restocking but it does give me some peace of mind. I still have to be careful. So he's having his apprentices or students refine the bike, he's ready for something new. So I got together with Jason and we drew out some plans and introduced him to the Bessemer Converter. Neither of us knew the right chemical formula other then carbon was involved. I'm sure the master artificer can figure it out, they do make steel here, it's just a slow and tedious process. If he can get it to work, he seems to think we're all going to make a fortune.
Journal Entry 90
Spent time in the archives doing research today. Had a few ideas of some new topics to look up that may have leads. Nothing. It got me thinking though, were we the only ones from Earth that ended up here? Just the ones that showed up in Rosenbridge? Why here, why there? Why us? If we were summoned here, what the hell are we supposed to do? What did that fucking voice want us here for? To kill some king in Winterfield? To run rampant across the countryside? To die one by one? What? Anyways, we have another week before we're done here and we move on. We have enough money saved up. Now I just need my psychic diploma and do the hat toss and I'm good. Been taking some frustration out by practicing sword fighting with Mike or Jason. Jason's slippery as fuck in mock combat. What the hell are they teaching him?
Journal Entry 91
So some crackpot oracle in town, apparently well respected for some reason, runs out of his house in a panic and begins telling everyone he sees that doom is coming to the city unless “he” is stopped. So the guards panic and arrest the first known off-worlder they see. Me. So I'm sitting in a street cafe enjoying some hot tea while chatting up a pretty little half-elf chick about Hemingway when blam. Arrested. Arrested for suspicion to cause doom. Because of a crackpot oracle saw something in his chicken entrails or whatever he uses. Spent a few hours in the city dungeon. Damp, dirty, filled with assholes and rats. Luckily, prison sodomy is not a phenomena known to this place. It took a lot of effort to reach out to Marcus. He finally figured it out, thank god, and managed to talk them into releasing me. Could of I escaped on my own? Probably, but they know where I live. Somehow, we got slightly famous here, between Marcus's earth music, my kindle porn and the artificer riding around on his bicycle every day.
Journal Entry 92
So we had our graduation today. No big spectacle, just a handshake. Most of the students have to move out now, we can still stay because the staff occasionally comes up with something new to experiment on us, and the master artificer likes to keep us close. With that in mind, we're paid up with an airship leaving in two days to begin our amazing Odyssey part two, The Revenge. So with this in mind, Marcus runs up to me today and informs me that one of the girls he's been with may be pregnant. An elf girl. And she's all ready to settle down so he can be a farmer for ever and ever and raise a big family. He's broadcasting anxiety across the building strong enough for every psion in the dorms to pick up on it and he's not in his right mind. I warned him about getting too comfortable in that bard lifestyle. So first thing he asks me, if I can “mind blast” it into miscarriage. No. Just no, that's too far, way too far over the edge. No. I probably could if I tried hard enough but NO. He's not allowed to ask the other students either or I'll erase his childhood or something. So we went over his less criminal options. Man up and become a farmer, Man up and tell her fuck that shit and dump her or Run and hide and meet us on the docks in two days and we'll leave all of this behind. So he's off in hiding until our trip out of here. I let Jason and Mike know. This is going to come back and bite us in the ass again, I know it will. Fucking bards.
Journal Entry 93
So we're on the airship, the Celestial Rose. It's larger then the last one and not an obvious conversion of an ocean ship, but still styled after one. This one is also not sea worthy. Our quarters are better but not by much. At least we have a window this time. It's about 90ft from stem to stern, 20ft wide. I feel it's slower then the other one? Maybe because it's bigger. This one is leaving a magical green fire trail behind it as well. Marcus met us on the docks in disguise and we boarded. No issues leaving. While the people of Winterfield and Brightly thought Aeyllin was an isolationist city, it isn't. They do open trade, just not in that direction and it's mainly exports going out and the occasional adventurer coming in. So the captain of this boat is an adventurous..I think they call them Shifters? Beast person. Very educated. He clearly wants to be an adventurer but he's stuck in the family business. He's a glorified truck driver. On a motherfucking airship. Maybe if I were in his shoes I could empathize with him more. Or you know, mind rape. But I don't want to mess up the captain. The rest of the motley crew is a mix of dock workers and crate stackers, a wizard and their airship repair artificer. There are other passengers, a family of excitable halflings. I haven’t seen two many of them around, and they creep me out.
Journal Entry 94
We're cruising along the coast, a few hundred feet up. Endless oceans in one direction, seaside plains in the other. The occasional beach goer or sailing ship. We did stop briefly, the captain wanted to fish. Pulled out a fishing rod and everything, and while everyone patiently waited, fished over the side, with the airship 50ft over the waves. He didn't catch anything after an hour and we resumed course. Whatever. Hung out on deck past nightfall. Can't see shit out there, not enough light. The pilot is apparently taking the ship up to a few hundred feet and hauling ass and navigating by dead-reckoning, then corrects his course come sunrise when he can see anything. There has to be a better way then this. Airship guide lights? Glowing, floating navigational buoys? Anyways, Marcus is still bleeding anxiety everywhere. I think he's finally realizing what he's been doing, and that yes, running away or not, he's going to be a father and it's not going to be entirely human. There may be others out there to boot, he's been grabbing ass since Wildlake. Ha, what if this is what we were brought here to do, scatter Earth human genes all across the population. Fuck, I've slept around too. Not nearly as much mind you.. God damnit.
Journal Entry 95
Well, here are are. Ashvale. It's a port town, all wood structures with stone foundations and long docks heading off into the curved port. It's large enough to hold at least 6 ships. Currently 3 in dock. It has two airship docks, one of which is in use by the Rose. This town has no protective wall around it, no fence, no outer guard patrols. The guard are apparently just here to keep the drunk sailors from beating each other to a pulp. They don't even have a dungeon. No sewage system. They have a lante collection going around for a tannery just outside of town and everything else gets thrown where it's convenient. The smell is horrendous. We're getting out of here as fast as we can. There's a ship leaving in an hour for Kinild Beach, another port town two days ride away by sail and we booked passage. It's a low draft schooner that used to do longer range runs before the airships came around. It's named the Sea Serpent. Very original.
Journal Entry 96
Well, the Sea Serpent is, of course, a different experience then airship travel. I have experience on the ocean, just not in a sailing ship. Mike has been seasick since he stepped foot on this tub. Badass warlock can't handle the motion of the ocean. We're not even sailing that far off shore. I could easily swim it if I had to. So something had been bothering me. The Sea Serpent was in fact a military vessel originally, then sold for patrols around Ashvale and now it's a cargo hauler. So how does ship to ship combat work? I asked around, a few ex navy dogs were amongst the crew. No cannons. They use a load of easy to work wands and have a few magic users to throw around some force. Then they get up close and have a swashbuckling sword fight. Elven navy, on the other hand, loads up with archers and likes to kite the enemy ship around while pelting it with arrows and magic. They apparently use smaller and faster ships working as packs to accomplish this but can't do deep sea combat as easy when the seas get rough. There are apparently deep ocean trained mages who can whip up a small storm to gain the advantage. A Dwarven or Orcish navy is kind of a joke around the sea salts. I wonder if anyone invented a submarine. They have the magics for it, someone just needs to implement them. It might not be safe though, there's apparently plenty of sea monsters down there and mermaids, sea elves and so on. No one can actually confirm of any of those exist mind you, just a friend of a friend saw one once after having a dwarven drinking contest or somesuch.
Journal Entry 97
Dry land! Kinild Beach. This is a beach side town, half of it is in the ocean, built on stilts with hanging walkways between buildings. The chief occupation of this town is fish and shellfish. Lots of fishing nets, traps, poles, the works. There are no docks. Ships drop anchor and they send out big hovering magic disks to move cargo and people back and forth. Well, it certainly keeps unwanted people away from the ships. The ride was smooth. The material felt like glass almost. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of forcefield spell being put to good use. We're set up in the local inn and are resting for the night. Mike is doing much better and Marcus got baby troubles off his mind. Between the airship and the ride here, I got a suntan. The trip here has been pretty easy so far. So the locals are tan skinned with an odd accent, human. It's funny that listing race is now a common thing. I think I've gotten used to all of this. How long have I been here again? Anyways, the locals. Superstitious but otherwise friendly. The whole place is run by coven of sea witches who make keep the local giant kraken at bay. I didn't see any sign of any giant kraken but I'll take their word for it. They're also strict prohibitionist. Kinild is in fact a dry town. No alcohol allowed. They have a big list of reasons why. Instead, the taverns sell apple cider, Orange juice, tea and rare coffee from the far off lands. It's been forever since I've had coffee. It's pretty good too, hazelnut blend.
Journal Entry 98
Well, we're on the run. Turned out those assholes on the Sea Serpent stole most of our money at some point. By the time we found out, they were all on their ship and the locals weren't going to send a disk over to deal with it. Wasn't their problem as far as they were concerned. I got to the furthest out building and still couldn't reach them. But Mike could. So while they're taunting us from deck and me, Marcus and Jason are screaming back insults, Mike just up and sets their ship aflame with his black fire. It ignited beautifully. So the Sea Serpent is sinking in flames off the coast and of course this is attracting attention. We manage to make it to the inn and hide out while the Sea Witches men search for us. They aren't too happy that we clogged their beach with a sunken flaming wreck. I don't care, those asshole sailors had it coming and I'm sure none of them died, the shore was right there. So we make a quick plan to get out of town. We still need money so we hold up the innkeeper. He doesn't know what a pistol is so just tased him before he could reveal himself to be a retired adventurer and we took everything in the money box. It wasn't much. 20 silvers and a handful of coppers. Not enough to get us anywhere. So I mind wiped the incident out of the innkeeper's head and we get the hell out of town while the guards are elsewhere. So yeah, we're horrible people and I don't care because it was the best thrill I've had in awhile. None of us are even mad at Mike for starting the whole thing either. So we ran full tilt down the trade road. I'm not sure how long it will take to get to Wolflake by foot, probably a week.
Journal Entry 99
Two days on the path and we get jumped by a band of 20 or so Orcs. Right where the map said “Beware, Orcs.” Right where those assholes said I could ignore it. Pacified. They weren't bandits, but they were a war party. I started having Winterfield Barbarian flashbacks but their minds weren't entirely hostile, more worried. We got interrogated at sword and spear point. They're out here keeping reinforcements from getting to Wolflake. Apparently war between the “Pacified” Orc tribes of the region and the kingdom of Wolflake is about to kick off. Again. We ensured that that we were not reinforcements and had no idea what the hell was going on out here, and that we were just passing through. Left out the whole off-worlder/king-slayer/ship-burning parts. They were being mostly truthful, and so were we. So the reason for the war? The Orcs didn't like being pacified. They are a brutal warrior culture with their own honor system, and while they weren't committing acts of banditry and rape, the local Kingdom decided they wanted those lands and that the tribes could suck it. Thus the war. Wolflake won and started a campaign of “Pacification” on the survivors to “Cull the herd” of that silly tribal violence. It may of worked, but instead produced a more tactical minded breed rather then turning them into willing subjects. So we were handed an ultimatum, and it took some mental manipulation between myself and Marcus to pull it off. So mercenaries working for them, or slaves. It's still not what we were aiming for, to just be set free, but it's better then the alternative. So we're being gang-pressed into to the grand army of the united Orc tribes as mercenaries. We get paid too. If we survive. Better then slaves or dead.
Journal Entry 100
So, we've spent a few days moving from camp to camp with the Orc patrol. We finally got dumped off in some larger war camp. There must be a few thousand Orcs, some Goblins, Hobgoblins and even some half orcs here. We're the only humans here. We were introduced to the High command. Battle experienced warlords, a few wise old shaman, an orc paladin of some warrior god and even a druid. Every smile is a mouthful of bad dentistry. The first thing they told us was that deserters get tortured, then killed. After that, they got our skills down and then we got assigned a tent and told to stay out the way, they'll call us when they need us. No pinkskin jokes so far, so that's a plug I guess. The place doesn't small as bad as I thought it would. Sure, orcs have a different smell to humans, all the races do, some are horrible like kobolds or goblins. Orcs, orcs smell like war. Things were kind of grim until Marcus broke out his guitar and started playing. They allowed it. After awhile they liked it. Sure, he didn't know any traditional orcish songs, but he lightened the mood. Food on the other hand is another matter. Hard tack and raw meat. We had to cook ours. They don't cook theirs. This is going to take some getting used to.
Journal Entry 101
I got called out today. One of the young warriors wanted to see why we were here and decided the best way to do it was to challenge me to a practice duel. It didn't go well for me. I got thrashed pretty good. I think I got a concussion from it. Luckily there are healers around camp, and I got fixed up. I think he felt sorry afterwards? He showed up a few hours later again and decided to tutor me and the others so we weren't such an embarrassment. So working my ass off with a sword on a practice dummy while someone screams at me, often in another language, all day with the others. It's tiresome but I understand that this is stuff I should learn. We're going to be at this for awhile. Swordplay isn't something you pick up instantly. At least I'm not the novice I was those early days. Later, we gathered up and discussed exactly what the fuck we were doing. We're allied with what would typically be the evil races in fiction, versus the shining might of humanity. I can't really say anyone here is evil. Sure, they have violent tendencies but when it comes down to it, this is imperial versus tribal in a land grab. It's a gray situation if I ever saw one. So what can we offer to the war effort? Well, none of us ever served in the military back home and we're not exactly tacticians either. The best we could offer was trying in vain to describe horse stirrups to the master armorer. They don't have those here. In other news, my shaving razor has become useless and now I have to learn to shave the local way. The Orcs use sharp knives. This is going to be a fuuun learning experience.
Journal Entry 102
A prisoner was brought in from a patrol skirmish today. After spending a few hours beating the shit out of him and getting no worthwhile information, they remembered they had a mind taker on the team and called me over. Oh, I got what they wanted, I got more then they ever wanted to know. From tactical information to his daughter's birthday, his son's first wooden sword. Yeah, I made them feel ashamed. I burned it in their heads. Why? They've been suffering at the hands of the kingdom for so long, they've begun to demonize non Orcs. So yeah, I reminded them that they're people too, even if they're enemy soldiers. I also saved that prisoner's life. He's going to be held somewhere else until the war is over, rather then their original plan of just killing him and sending his body back as a message. The warrior paladin liked the idea and decided to take it a step further, to start a prison camp for surviving enemy combatants so that they can claim the moral high ground. Not optimal but whatever, respect points.
Journal Entry 103
So I am banned from gambling here. They have a simple dice game that the warriors play to keep themselves occupied between drinking and decided that I could make the dice roll any way I wanted. I can't, I'm not telekinetic. I bet I could make them think it landed on whatever I wanted though.. The only difficulty would be effecting all of them. So there are no women amongst the warriors here, but there are warrior women, just not here. They have their own camp half a day away on foot. That said, there are non warrior women around. They run the supply chain, moving goods in from the tribal lands to the main camp here and distribute them outwards from there. They're constantly on the move. Anyways, today we got our hands on some goblin beer. It was surprisingly good. Not as good as dwarf brewed, but a respectable second place. Marcus disappeared for awhile and came back saying he got lucky. That said, the supply train wasn't in town today. Just how much did he drink? We're going to have to have a talk with him when he wakes up. Mike has found a use for himself and has become some kind of assistant for one of the camp shamans. He's the only warlock in camp and I guess they have a need for his skills. Jason on the other hand has found one of his guildies in the camp and has been doing whatever it is they do when they aren't stealing everything. High command has decided I'm trustworthy enough to ensure we don't have any spies in camp. Easy enough to do. Spies would be secretive and the more you try to keep a thought a secret, the more you point it out to me. It's like trying to hide a car by standing in front of it and screaming that there is no car there over and over again.
Journal Entry 104
Opening to the camp emotion can be pretty rough, especially with this crowd. Lots of pride and fear. People missing families or having revenge floating around them at all times. More prisoners came in, a whole outer patrol. Things are starting to heat up I think. I pulled some tactical information from them, but not all of it was consistent. Either Wolflake doesn't know what they're doing or they're feeding their patrols incorrect information should they get caught or are overheard. High command seems to think it's the later. Either way, the patrol came close to the camp, so it's time to move. We're packing up and we're marching come sunrise. We watched Strange Days tonight. It's funny, this decade old cyberpunk movie has become a symbol for home. We know all the dialog by heart by now but we still get the need to watch it again. So we don't forget? So what happens if we do get to go home one day? We're going to be downright traumatized from our experience here; this world is changing us. What happens if I go home and accidentally kill someone in a confused reactionary moment? Will I be able to mindwalk there, or is this something I can only do here? I don't know. Why the hell am I here?
Journal Entry 105
Well, the last few days were pretty rough. Packed up and marched for two days without stopping aside from a single short meal. Set up camp and I promptly crashed into my bedding and passed out. I'm a little sore, but I'm feeling alright otherwise. More sword practice sure hasn't helped though. So Marcus got a fancy new dulcimer from some goblin tinkerer he impressed. It has a very different sound from his beat up guitar, but he adapted pretty quick to it. It made me realize that my sword is pretty beat up, so I took it over to the smith and he's doing what he does. In other news, High Command decided to send Jason off with one of the patrols. He thought it would be fun. I hope he doesn't get captured.
Journal Entry 106
As a headless man once said, Winter is coming. The temperature has been slowly declining, but today was the first time I really noticed it. Jason's patrol is still out, not expected to return for a few more days. Got my sword back, shiny as the day it was made and sharp. The smith did a good job, and not only that, he figured out what we were going on about and made the first stirrups. He made about 3 sets and is letting the cavalry mess with them. So far they've been getting a positive review. The supply caravan arrived today with some new recruits. A hundred or so hired human mercenaries and a hill giant who won't stop cracking lame jokes. He's loud enough to hear from everywhere and he won't stop. Marcus said he's going to go teach him some new ones. What do people that big even eat? Whole cows? So the mercs set up near us Terrans and I've been listening to their amazingly exaggerated war stories all night. Most of them are ex-adventurers who decided being homeless sucked or were taking up the family business. A few are criminals that are looking for a new leash on life or have something against Wolflake.
Journal Entry 107
I managed to get some info about Wolflake from the mercs today. Turns out that this whole area's been a warring shithole as long as there's been history. It's named Wolflake because the whole place used to be overrun with werewolves and then later shifters who settled here. Then the Elves came in and wiped everyone out and settled. Then the Orcs came and kicked the Elves out. Then the Dwarves discovered gold in the mountains and started a war. Then humans. Rinse and repeat in different combinations for thousands of years. The only thing that hasn't changed is the name, and the previous residents scattered out to become wild tribes. On the other side of the Wolflake boarder is apparently remains of the original Shifter community that's been successfully “Pacified”, and some Wild Elves in the woods to the east. The Dwarves on the other hand, decided it wasn't worth it and left the area long ago. I don't see why it keeps happening, the area isn't that great. The ground is rocky, so farming is a bitch, The only mineral wealth was mined out long ago, the lake is murky. I don't get it.
Journal Entry 108
Jason's patrol arrived today. Decimated but victorious. As Jason excitedly told me, while on an adrenalin high, they plowed right into a trap and were captured in some kind of magic stun net. Put in chains and led off to be interrogated. Jason managed to slip out of his over the course of the night and freed the rest of the patrol, armed up and fought their way out, wiping out the patrol camp at the cost of losing half of their numbers. He had the presence of mind to grab maps and papers from one of the tents and handed them over to High Command. The survivors then fought their way back, surprising and taking down another Wolflake patrol on the way back, at heavy loses. Jason's pretty beat up but he survived at least. After the adrenalin wore off, he kind of went in to shock once he realized what he just lived through and is sleeping for now. I hope they didn't lead anyone to the warcamp. Either way, High Command is impressed and praised everyone involved. I've been picking up a lot of anxiety since then coming from their planning tent. I guess that intel Jason grabbed did not have good news in it.
Journal Entry 109
Well, the Cavalry has been completely outfitted with stirrups and they're working on new routines and tactics. Did I go too far by releasing this idea? It's such a small, simple idea but the consequences are far reaching. To make matters worse, I released it to a bunch of warlike non-humans. Sure, they aren't really bad people but I'm sure the Mongols weren't either if you got to know them. I just get the feeling that maybe I started something that I shouldn't of. So High Command has decided it's time to take action, they want to do something before the snow starts falling. We're going to be taking a small outlying farming community that's been seized by the Wolflake army for supplies. We're going to strip it of everything of value and burn it down to deny the position to Wolflake, then move on to a secondary target while our main camp moves further east for a more defensible position in the mountains. In the meantime, the scout patrols have managed to capture the main trade skiff from the Kinild to Wolflake river run and destroy it. We're slowly cutting off their supply lines. I guess we then siege the shit out of the place. I wonder if they have trebuchets.
Part 2
Journal Entry 110
-6 bullets. I was in my first large scale battle today. We made it to Wolfdale today, the farming community. About 8 farms, a tavern, housing and so on. The civies evacuated when the Wolflake army spotted us and we moved in. The battle. It started with some magic being thrown around and then a charge. We outnumbered them but even so, the new cavalry destroyed their left flank. Mike stayed in the back with the other casters as did Marcus. I was placed in the third line wave with Jason. We were the wave that came in and cleaned up anything left. I helped flush out hiding survivors. We lost about 40 people on our side but we broke this defensive force. We're going to hold it for 2 days while the food is gathered up and transported to the main camp. Bodies have been looted, prisoners taken and interrogated. I've been in so many minds today, I'm having trouble differentiating my thoughts from stray ones that crossed over. I'm camped up in the tavern with a load of others. Marcus is keeping our spirits high with his music. I don't think I'm going to be doing much else tonight, I ache all over and my head is jumbled.
Journal Entry 111
While we were getting ready to move out, a lone rider shows up with a white flag and hands our Warleader with some scroll. A formal demand of surrender. Terms are surrender and they'll only enslave the tribes. Failure to do so and it's death for all by command of king under the might of whatever god. The messenger survived but he got his answer carved in the corpse he's chained to. Dramatic but effective. The trip back to the main camp should be about two days hard march. We're ready for it. Said goodby to Wolfdale the farming community, soon it'll be in flames. Once we get to camp, and with the resources we got here, we'll hold out for the winter and start attacking come spring assuming Wolflake doesn't send an attack force. Well, time to move.
Journal Entry 112
Only a day out and we come face to face with one the Wolflake armies. They were on the way to sack our encampment while we were away, but we caught up to them. We have to go through them to get back and they are ready. We're about a mile apart, preparing for the upcoming battle. I'm in third wave again. The numbers appear even. My rough estimate is eight thousand each. The Wolflake army is mostly wearing heavy chain armor and brigandines lots of greyish blue and are using big tower shields. Lots of long spears. I think that they're moving into multiple phalanx formations. Fuck. I wish we had more magic users on our side. The only place that had any great number of them was Aeyllin, each side only appears to have a handful. A handful of casters and one telepath. Marcus has been playing his best courage song to the tune of “We will rock you.” The Orcs have gotten into it. It's fucking inspiring. Mike is as ready as he'll ever be and Jason is getting hyped. I hope someone's watching over us because this is going to be insane.
Journal Entry 113
It's been a few days. Where to begin.. It began to snow at the start of the battle. It was almost cinematic. I used up both magazines of my gun. 16 bullets. After that, it was the sword. It's not easy adjusting midswing to try and hit the holes in their armor. Sometimes I would try and get a few seconds by making them see something else, or just mentally knock them silly. I felt a lot of people die that day. We lost. The cavalry smashed upon the phalanx's flank like the ocean and shattered their defenses. It looked good initially. Then they each were systematically separated and slaughtered, one at a time. They went in way too early. By the time the front line got there, the phalanx reformed. We must of killed half of their force, but we lost almost everyone. I met up with the others. Marcus had taken several arrows but was good enough to move still, Mike was out of magic but had avoided injury. Jason's blind in one eye, a spear got lucky. He was alive but bleeding everywhere. I was still unharmed but exhausted by then. We decided to make a run for one of the other warcamps to warn them and get medical treatment, magic or otherwise. We were caught by a patrol and I was run down by a horse, trampled and speared. There was fighting but then everything faded out. I only remember blackness after that.
Journal Entry 114
I woke up naked and tied to a rack. The survivors dragged me back. I guess I was still alive. I was healed and to be tortured, repeatedly. Not for information, just to make a point. For fighting for the enemy. Any information was just icing. There was only two of them. The cleric and some archivist? The archivist was taking notes it looked like in a huge book. The cleric never got a chance to turn the wheel. I made the archivist think he was with me. He murdered the cleric and set me free. Then stole anything of use from his mind, then erased everything. A mental format. I stole some clothes and managed to find my things nearby, spread across a table minus my sword. The Kindle was turned on. I wonder what they thought of it. I used one of the cleric's spare robes and managed to get out of the dungeon by making the guards think I was him. I left the hood up, so I only had to manipulate the one looking at my face. I escaped and now I'm in town. Welcome to Wolflake.
Journal Entry 115
So I have no money, Mike had the money. I'm hiding out in one of the seedier inns. I..manipulated the innkeeper into thinking that I had paid him in advance for a few weeks and that I was an old friend and certainly not the stranger the guards are looking for. I got a nice hot meal and a warm bed for my efforts. From what I got out of the archivist, the others were not captured and may still be out there. Meanwhile I'm here. Wolflake is a much larger city then I expected. It's certainly no village. It's as large as Aeyllin at least. All plaster and wood structures, stone walls. It's divided up into districts by use. The smithing district is in full production for the war. The market is bustling but a sense of apprehension is thick in the air. Residential is quiet and constantly patrolled. Lots of anti-orc propaganda. The town crier is constantly going off about them murdering babies for food and raping everything with legs. I did the old taser in the alley trick to get some money, not much, but enough for some new clothes. Trousers and tunics. Oh baby. At least they're clean.
Journal Entry 116
I recognized someone today. I was in the market, grifting someone, when out of the corner of my eye I see Avery, dressed in the robes of the sun church. What the hell, what is she doing here? I stayed my distance and followed her for awhile. She went into the local Sun church. I asked around some of the apprentice clerics hanging around outside about her. She arrived in town two months ago to help in the war with healing. A call went for help in the Orc war and she left Rosenbridge to volunteer. They don't know anything about Alex though. Apparently Avery's become a very devout believer in the ways of the sun worshipers. She has become an accomplished healer as well. She's still considered an apprentice but is moving up in the ecclesiastic ranks. I'm going to try and make contact with her tomorrow.
Journal Entry 117
So I met up with Avery today. I just walked up to her while she was out doing her rounds and Surprise, it's me! I surprised the shit out of her. She was ecstatic to see me. So many questions. We found a nice outside cafe and had a long talk. I told her of our adventures to Winterfield, to Aeyllin and back. I left out some things of course, she doesn't need to know our part in king slaying, grand theft everything and child abandonment. She said a prayer for Amanda and Dan. After so long, she assumed that we had all died. She joined the church after a vision, and because she believed she had nothing left. Alex recovered fully and after talking with some spell slingers, found he was more suited for sorcery then wizardry. I could be wrong, but doesn't that require a special genetic background to use? He got some instruction and can throw around spells now. Apparently has trouble keeping control of it and accidentally caused some property damage. He headed off to Aeyllin a little before she left for Wolflake, to learn to control himself better. If my math is right, he was arriving as we were leaving. Assuming something didn't slow down his trip. According to Avery, Alex had been hoping to find us there, he never gave up hope. As for the others, they were shipped to the Wildlake slave pens. Something will have to be done. Anyways, I let Avery recharge her laptop and ipod off my charge stone. She was giddy. Unfortunately, she doesn't have any new movies.
Journal Entry 118
Met up with Avery again for lunch. She put two and two together over the course of the night and realized that yes, I'm the “baby murdering orc lover traitor spy” that escaped from the dungeon a few days ago. She confronted me about it. I wasn't going to lie to her. So then a Paladin showed up and sat down at our table. I felt very uneasy around him. Avery said wasn't going to turn me in to the king, but I was going to be “arrested” under the church and held in protective custody until this war is over or they figure out what to do with me. So I went. I'm not going to fight her, there aren't enough of us left for us to be turning on each other. They let me keep my things. I don't think Avery even knows I have a pistol with me. She did take my journal though, and read through it. I just got it back. She can't decide if she should be furious with me or not after all I've done and all I've suffered through. I think she was more incredulous that I've been documenting it in detail. It's a good thing she doesn't know about the things I didn't document. She is adamant, however, that I need to pay for my sins. Maybe I do. Maybe I'm not done sinning. Anyways, we watched Strange Days and then she left. My “cell” is a plain stone room with a plain bed, a tiny window and some church iconography. It's not exactly tiny and I'm not imprisoned here, I can walk around, just not leave the wing.
Journal Entry 119
Well, I was in that place a grand total of 21 hours according to my mp3 player. The longer I was there, the more.. claustrophobic I felt. Avery came to see me in the morning and we talked about what I was doing with the Orcs. Told her my side of things and I may of convinced her that this was isn't about good and evil, it's a landgrab. Come lunch time, she was off doing church duty and I had decided enough was enough and walked out. Poked a few minds to get my way, but I didn't hurt anyone, for Avery's sake. I left her a note apologizing. I'm back at the inn. Not feeling so claustrophobic now. I need to figure what to do. I'm stuck in Wolflake with the guards and now the sun church looking for me. I bet the rest of my team think I'm dead on the battlefield. Thinking back, getting mindraped by Skinhead Mctattoo was the best thing that happened to me on this world. She opened some doors for me. Without that, I'd be truly fucked. At least I have some options. I'm going to poke around town tomorrow and see if I can find anything useful.
Journal Entry 120
Hey, this city has an airship port. I have an idea. I just have to wait for the airship to arrive. Anyways, managed to grift some money and browsed the market. News from the war. The surviving Orc hoard managed to sack a few supply caravans and a farm, everyone murdered, dead strung up, babies eaten, etc etc. Between the lines, I'm glad they're still fighting, they haven't given up yet. Picked up some rumors. Apparently the royal castle's been enhanced by a thieves guild turned traitor and even they haven’t been able to break in since. There goes that idea. The city gates are locked up tight, only allowing trade caravans in, and anyone not expected gets arrested. There's also the curfew. So yeah, this place is under marshal law. Whispers on the street is that there are some freedom fighters skulking about. I took a look into it that and anyone that knows anything is a toady for one of the noble families, the Rheingrafs. I can't tell if it's an elaborate trap, or a manipulative attempt at a backdoor coup. I'm going to take a risk and dig deeper.
Journal Entry 122
So while #1 is baking, I'm seeing about Target #2. A Madam of a brothel. High class establishment, all the girls are magically purged after every use, silks everywhere. She's been using her girls to gather info on dissidents. I paid a visit. Went for a ride around the block. I'm going to try greed with this one. Maybe she's not getting paid enough for the information. Maybe there are people who will pay more. Maybe she deserves some political favors for all the good she does for the nobles she supports. Nobles that she saved with her information. She looked pretty lost in thought on my way out. We'll see how that works out. In other news, it's time to move out of the inn. Avery left a note on my bed ordering me to return for my own good. No surprise paladins or anything this time. I've since moved in to an abandoned tower residence on the seedy side of town. Not a lot of room, but it has a clean bed I can use and privacy.
Journal Entry 123
I guess I won't get a chance to find out how my experiments are doing. An airship is in town, a small cargo hauler from Hebiry, one of the main trade hub cities along with Rosenbridge and Wildlake. Airships always draw crowds, so I went over to poke around a bit. The last two airships I've been on used a magic dongle was required for any of the navigation stuff to work. Flying one looked easy enough. Who would have the key? The Captain of course. Found him at the picking up chicks at a tavern after he was done unloading. He didn't have the key. It's locked in a safe on board the boat. I did get the combination though. So I am going to traipse over there, think my way aboard, take the key and fly away. Grand Theft Airship. Fuck yeah.
Journal Entry 124
Clearly I was drunk on success. So I get to the airship pad and SMITE. Paladins. Clerics. Avery. She guessed I'd try and escape. She read my journal again. I am in a lot of trouble. I'm back in the same room, but now I have this thing on my head, some kind of leather band that I can't take off. If I move then a few feet from the church, pain. Avery says it's only pain because I've become evil and it's the church's god influence burning away the at the evil. She says that once it stops burning me, I'll be good and can leave. I feel like a child that's been grounded. She confiscated my gun and my charge stone, so I need to see her now to keep my stuff running. To make matters worse, they're all, all of them, wearing glowing temporary tattoos that are blocking me off! Fuck.
Journal Entry 121
I talked my way into a meeting with these freedom fighters down at the slums. Not very organized. Their plans were odd, probably orders from on high with no context. They have a list of people that need to be dealt with, and I don't mean killed. Publicly humiliated, disgraced and so on. Replaced in a way that won't draw undue attention. Their methods leave something to be desired. Dirty rumors and name calling more or less. I have some ideas on how to deal with this, but is this actually going to help me in any way? Well, it keeps me occupied and I can experiment so I gave it a shot. Target 1. There's a tavern keep in the market district who runs The Wolf's head, that needs to be ruined. I paid a visit during his slow hours, cased the joint. He's a retired adventurer, hard core supporter for the king and his policies. Gives discounts to off duty military. They call him Screaming Howl of Wolflake. Some based around one of his adventures in the earlier Pacification war years ago. Know what else screams? Babies. I put in the niggling fear that it's an insult. That maybe everyone's been making fun of him behind his back this whole time and having a grand time about it. Taking advantage of his ignorance for cheap booze. I'll let that bake for awhile and see how it turns out.
Journal Entry 125
So my imprisonment in the church. Avery has been spending her breakfast and dinner with me, we sit and discuss and debate. She has admitted that if she had gone with us to Aeyllin, she'd be in a similar state. If she'd take off that damn tattoo, I could show her, right in her mind. But no, I can't be trusted yet. She's very naive about what's going on out there. Being locked up in a church and surrounded by like minded people all day skews perspective. Divine group think. So yeah I'm bitter. So a little after breakfast, a Paladin walks over and backhands me across the room. I think he broke my nose. Then he heals me and tells me to keep my hands off Avery. Calls me scum. The works. Leaves me there crumpled on the floor. I think he's jealous. I mean, I'm not going to mess with her, even if she's the reason I'm here. She's like a little sister to me. Either way, I need to get out of this fucking place. This is an intolerable situation.
Journal Entry 126
Know what there is to do around a church all day if you're not a member? Sit around and do nothing. Self reflection maybe. Not for me. I have made it a personal quest to find ways of fucking with the paladins. All the church members meet up in the afternoon for their prayer service. That's when I work. Moving things around, hiding things. Rearranging. Sure, it's stupid little pranks but what else am I going to do? I did get some news from my two experiments. The Tavern owner's gone over the deep end and has barred military and even guards from using his place. He may even be behind a minor poisoning of some guard captains. The Madam wasn't as successful. Word is, her backers decided to give in to her demands. How did I find this out? The freedom fighters found me when one of their members were in for magical std treatments. I may of gotten the attention of the Rheingrafs from my work.
Journal Entry 127
News from the war. It sounds like the Orc cavalry is getting its shit together. The town crier is starting to use the throw around the horse mounted demon card loosely now. On the other hand, it sounds like they lost another major battle. The orcs are winning the skirmishes but not the large scale battles. Heavy losses on both sides. Most of the church personnel have been called away for healing and the occasional resurrection for any dead war hero nobles. This would have been a grand opportunity and Avery apparently came to the same conclusion, so I've been leashed. I have a chain around my leg that's connected to my bed post. I have about 20 feet of slack. Just enough to make it to the “bathroom.” Chained up like an animal. This is going too far. This will not stand.
Journal Entry 128
I have escaped from the church. The idiot freedom fighters decided to break me out while the healers were away dealing with war casualties. I managed to get the things Avery took from me. Found my pistol under her pillow. What the hell is that all about? So they unchain me, get that stupid pain crown off me and we make our grand escape. Right to one of the Rheingraf holdings, a decorative cottage near the market. A guest house. One of them was there, all dressed in more layers of clothing that was necessary, even with the cold weather. They want me to work for them under their house spymaster. They didn't offer the position. They told me. People with my skills are few and far between apparently, and they think they can get a political advantage with me under their spymaster. Oh, and escape is nigh impossible. The spymaster can just up and disappear whenever he feels like and for some reason, I can't touch his mind. He's no telepath, he's just impenetrable. He put some kind of magic link on me, so he knows where I am at all times. So I'm still a prisoner, the chains are just invisible this time. I'm a commodity rather then an animal. Wonderful.
Journal Entry 129
So the Rheingrafs. They run half the trade caravans in this kingdom, started as an imports-exports merchant family that got lucky back during the last pacification war and earned themselves a noble title from secretive war profiteering that fucked the other side's logistics. They've tasted power and want more. They are one of the richest noble houses in the kingdom, but have the least amount of political power since they're relatively new to the scene. They have the money but not the connections that the other nobles have. Their secret backroom handshake deals have been few and far between. My new boss, the spymaster, was imported in from the afar and is obscenely loyal for some reason. He's one of the elf ethnicities. I bet he was programmed. People don't get this fanatic for nobles on their own. At least I hope not. Might explain why I can't touch his mind.
Journal Entry 130
So the spymaster took me in to the field today now that I got the house history down. This mainly consisted of puttering around the market while he checked his contacts and me making sure that they weren't holding back anything, and the both of us beating the shit out of someone when they were. Half his network is compromised in some way. He's stealthy as hell, but not too good at running a spy network. Ran into Avery. I'm under noble protection now, so the church can't legally touch me, as long as I'm not performing profane undead rituals. Within the city walls anyways. She's upset of course, but I think I got the point across that I am still in danger. I need to get out of this fucking place. I hope the others are still alive.
Journal Entry 131
After all this time, I still wake up some mornings thinking it's all been a dream. Nope. Still here. So we have begun a process of kidnapping compromised members of the spy network and instilling some loyalty. Through mind rape. Mind rape and beatings. I'm actually disturbed by some of this shit. I'm rewriting parts of these people's lives in a few of these cases. It's incredibly draining too, to the point where I started bleeding a few times. I haven’t done that in awhile. Needed a few rest periods to recover. I'm still looking for some way to escape this situation without drawing too much attention or ire. Wandering town is easy enough, the guard long gave up looking for the escaped prisoner and they didn't even have a good idea of what I looked like or any personal information. I'm still a fugitive from the church, but that's on hold as long as I'm under the Reingrafs. The church has kind of taken it as a personal insult that I keep escaping them. Initially I was just Avery's pet redemption project. Now they've convinced themselves that I'm some kind of criminal mastermind that's insulting their god and shitting all over everything they stand for. Yeah, their magic tattoos have worn off, but their motivations are too deep seated to wipe away in passing. It would take a whole mindrape session to clear that away.
Journal Entry 132
So I got brought along to some royal ball the King was hosting. It wasn't in the castle, no, he has a whole separate building for stuff like this well away from the castle. The Rheingraf's wanted me there for information gathering. Nothing too intrusive. They were all there, dressed in their latest fashionable imports. I had to wear some absurd outfit with multiple sleeves and feathers. There's music and fancy noble food, most of which I wanted nothing to do with. Stuffed mice, various bird tongues, some kind of bone pudding. At least they had seafood. I can deal with that. Lots of alcohol, elven wines, dwarf brews, some rare Margarita knockoff from the south. So the party took place in some huge ball room with lots of mirrors. Mirrors are pretty rare, so this is some kind of show of wealth. There's more to it though, I was sensing people behind the mirrors. Watching. The King never made a public appearance. He may have been one of the ones behind the mirrors. I did hear some gossip, picked some minds. Apparently Winterfield is a huge mess. With no royalty, the advisers tried taking power and then one of the Generals seized control and tried forming a military junta. Last word anyone's heard from them sounded like a civil war was about to kick off with the barbarians approaching. They did get another airship though. Someone else must of noticed the gap and filled it. Anyways, after the party I dumped all the info I got on the spymaster, and he's been sorting through it for anything relevant.
Journal Entry 133
I managed to escape! Freedom! I can feel the proverbial collar slip free of my neck. It feels so good! So the spymaster took me out of the city to run the loyalty test on the Rheingraf cattle and horse farm. Some of the news we picked up at the ball seemed to indicate that there was a skim going for one of the other houses. That place apparently was a recent acquisition and maybe old loyalties die hard. So we get out there, it's less then a mile from the city and pretty safe, has regular guard patrols. The workers all come out and look scared as shit. Word's gotten around. It suddenly occurred to me. The guard patrol won't be around for another hour. It's me and the spymaster, some farm hands and the farm accountant. Bang Bang. He took one in the head and one in the chest. He falls over and then just up and disappears. The workers scattered to the wind. I ran in the other direction. I have a general idea where the Orc war camps are, I'll head there and see what ever happened to the rest of my team.
Journal Entry 134
I'm camped out in a small cave in a ravine. I didn't think this through. No food, no water, it's starting to snow. Sure, I could try hunting with my pistol, but I have no knife. I managed to start a fire using some tree branches, dry leaves and my taser. I should have enough wood for the night, but it's so cold. I'm going to try melting some snow for water once enough falls. Hopefully I'll reach a camp tomorrow.
Journal Entry 135
I lucked out and stumbled into one of the Orc patrols. They had heard of me and I was dragged back to the war camp and put in front of the High Command. I was presumed dead and put out of mind, and now I had to convince them I wasn't a spy. That took awhile. I gave up as much information as I could on the situation at Wolflake. Afterwards, they set me loose on the camp. I found the others. I'm glad to see them, and they the same. They thought I was dead when they left me behind in their retreat. It sure felt like I was at the time. They're doing well. Marcus has some scars he seems to think will impress the ladies. Mike's doing fine but he's pale as a sheet. Jason ultimately lost his eye, but one of the camp spell casters gave him a replacement. More or less a Ruby jammed in the vacant eye socket. He says he can see better then fine with it. It's creepy as hell to look at though. I told them of my time in Wolflake, about Avery and her news on the others, about the Rheingrafs and my escape. We watched Strange Days. I'm about to sleep. I'll find out how the war is doing from this side's perspective in the morning.
Journal Entry 136
This is a war of attrition. The Wolflake armies are winning the battles but taking such heavy losses that they can't easily resupply, especially with most of their ground supply lines broken by the Orc raids. The Orcs on the other hand, have yet to have a decisive victory. The battles are usually routs with most of the survivors retreating. They can bring in replacements easier, mercenaries, but that can't go on forever. The cavalry is adapting nicely to the stirrups, but there aren't enough of them to make a big difference, and they've been taking losses from the enemy phalanxes and archer lines. Since I've last been here, they managed to get some artillery. Catapults. They've been using them to launch tar covered, burning hay bales in to the phalanxes during the opening salvos. Too bad we can't get our hands on some “alchemist's fire.” It's some variant of greek fire/napalm. It's apparently hard to come by out here. They also just got a shipment of specially trained war dogs. Big nasty things trained to go after anyone with the Wolflake symbol on them and follow verbal orders. I got a new sword, a longsword. It's seen better days. The blacksmith described it as “experienced.”
Journal Entry 137
It's been a few days. I have been sent out with a raiding party of about 30 mercenaries, mostly human. We're sacking a trade caravan heading in from Kinild by land. I almost feel like a bandit. We're camped out off the side of the road under heavy brush, snow, in ditch and waiting. It's pretty boring. A few of the guys are light sleepers and taking a nap, even though it's bleeding cold out. The rest of us are keeping ourselves entertained with war stories while watching the road. We have a few two man patrols making sure no one is sneaking up on us. No idea how big this caravan is, or even what it's carrying, just that there is one. One of the mercs has some heating stone, stays a new warm temperature he's been using to keep his hands warm. I gotta get me one of those. My Terran compatriots are back at camp. They're learning to ride horses. I feel all left out. It's kind of funny. Our big plan was to get to Rosenbridge and free our friends and they aren't even there anymore. Alex would of just missed us, Avery's gone native. The others are who knows where and probably in a bad situation, as they were slaves last Avery heard. I guess the next goal after this war is the Wildlake slave pens and then where ever they've gone. I'll be pissed if they got sent to Winterfield or Aeyllin. Running in fucking circles.
Journal Entry 138
We ransacked the caravan all right. 10 guards, 20 or so merchants, staff and passengers. Most of the guards went down, only two surrendered and they didn't even put up a fight. Our prisoners are being stripped of valuables and being sent to another camp to be ransomed back. Our cargo haul looks to be food supplies, smithing ingots, spices, what I thought was mage reagents, clothes and a chest of gold coins. Bribe money? Taxes? But why is it heading towards Wolflake? I felt I had to know. So I poked around in some of the survivor's minds. This caravan was a shipment for the church of the sun worshipers from one of their larger central cathedrals. They don't do their own caravans, they use third parties. Whoops. If they ever find out I was involved in this.. I can't let Avery read my journal next time she catches me. Part of me is worried, part of me can't stop laughing. So we're heading back to the war camp with our riches, should be a two day ride. We're certainly more armed then their original guard retinue. Wait, why was the church getting money? They operate on tithes, cleric services and don't pay taxes. The caravans drivers don't know anything about it. Something's funny.
Journal Entry 139
I'm learning to ride a horse. We're still on the way back. I've already fallen off twice, luckily didn't get injured. No stirrups of course. So I've been thinking of what else I can do for the war effort. Just to tip the balance. I'm sure Jason and myself could rig up some kind of scale model trebuchet for them to learn from, but that's more of a siege machine then battlefield artillery. Maybe the Chinese repeating crossbow, but I don't actually know how that works. I really don't want to introduce gunpowder. It's easy enough to make, they have most of the ingredients back at camp. Hell, we have the ingredients to make some here in the reagents crates in the caravan we're taking back. Anyways, the Orc cavalry is already starting to experiment with horseback archery, maybe the OH FUCK.
Journal Entry 140
I met with the others soon as we got back to the camp. I dragged them over to the caravan and we went through the materials. Between the ingots and reagents, we figure there is enough to build one simple cannon and fire it multiple times. Does that mean the gold is to pay a smith to make it? What's going on here? Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe Avery told them things she knows this world isn't ready for. If this was to be given to the Wolflake military to copy, that would be very bad. Okay, so what right do I have to decide what technology the locals can and can't possess? They have magic. At the same time, I've already been irresponsible with handouts. I'm conflicted. Anyways, I gave Jason the go ahead see if he can't help the camp bow maker invent the recurve bow while the rest of us figure out what to do.
Journal Entry 141
The recurve project went bust. The bow maker doesn't have the aptitude or creativity to get what we're trying to describe. Maybe we need a proper artificer. So we went back to the drawing board and had a long talk. If Wolflake is going to have explosives, then so should we. We aren't going to give them cannons, but we are going to give them gunpowder. We'll show them how to make a ceramic or wooden barrel grenade. Something they can fire from their catapults. Something simple. We'll let its usage evolve on its own from there. There's the high probability that someone is going to blow themselves up from this. Mike and Marcus are mixing the chemicals now to produce the first batch. I've had a lot to think about over the past few days. We're making a bigger and bigger impact on history as time goes on. Is this what we were brought here to do?
Journal Entry 142
Well, we held our first demonstration today. We made a small prototype using a clay jar, filled it with metal shavings from the blacksmith and packed it with black powder. We found a nice safe place and set up some of the training dummies complete with scavenged Wolflake armor. We had Mike light it from his maximum casting range and all took cover. It took a minute before it went off. The Orc's first reaction was that it was just a fireball spell anyone could use. Then they examined the area. The armor shredded from shrapnel, wood pulped, some rocks destroyed. I think they got the message. These aren't toys. We have enough ingredients to make 20 more of the hand variants, or 5 big ones for the catapults. They wanted us to make the big ones. High Command doesn't consider us just mercenaries anymore. We now have bodyguards.
Journal Entry 143
I'm pretty sure Marcus has developed a relationship with a half-orc girl in one of the Orc supply caravans. Every time they show up, he vanishes for awhile. Doesn't he remember what happened in Aeyllin? God damn bards. So we have our catapult bombs. We sealed them with wax and buried them in crates near the armory with clear markings so some idiot doesn't accidentally blow the whole thing with a torch. It'll take a directly aimed fireblast to trigger them now. Maybe. We'll dig them up when it's war time. In other news, still learning to ride a horse. I don't even know enough about horses to describe it's breed, or Earth approximate breed. All I know is that it's brown and named Medley. I have no idea why. It certainly doesn't sing.
Journal Entry 144
Winter is in full effect. We had a blizzard today. Everything's frozen. At least our camp was set up to avoid the harsher winds. Not a lot to do while sitting around the fire, shivering. So I started asking questions. I was wondering why the Orcs never use their own Phalanx formation in the war. Many different answers. Simplest answer? It's not their style. They don't care much for the long spears and big shields and tight formations. They rarely use shields and if they do, it's always something small like a buckler. Sure, they can withstand physical trauma better then a human, but really. Their tactics are more suited to smaller scale tribal conflicts, which makes sense. That's what I've observed so far. Not so good at war, pretty good at skirmishing. It fits their tribal mentality. If these guys ever get organized into a proper civilization, they'll be a real force to be reckoned with.
Journal Entry 145
Well, Marcus got drunk, sat down in the middle of camp and sung the entire 50 States Capital song followed by the most hilarious dulcimer rendition of Barracuda. We quietly dragged him back to his tent. I'm good enough on a horse now that I went out on a mounted scout patrol. Important or not. I needed to get out, even if it's freezing cold. I was kind of babied along by the others. Us Terrans have become well know. Just like in Aeyllin. Speaking of that, I wonder how the invention of the bicycle is going. Anyways, nothing new on patrol. We left sunrise and came back sunset. My hair was nearly frozen, even with a hat.
Journal Entry 146
It's cold enough that my pen ink is starting to freeze up. I've been having to hold it over a fire for a bit to get writing again. This may be the last Entry for awhile. We're hunkered down and practicing for war, holding mock battles and when we're bored, snowfort fight with the goblins. The trade caravans to Wolflake have apparently stopped for now according to our intel. This world doesn't have a Christmas. What a shame. This kind of hit me hard, because I realize how little I've thought of my friends and family back home. I'll never see them again. Us Terrans have pretty much become my new family. At least there's that.
Journal Entry 147
The Spring thaw is finally here and the ink in my pen has defrosted enough to use again. The war camp is packing up soon and we'll be on the march. It's time to get this war underway. So, in the interim, I've gotten better at horse riding and sword fighting as has Jason. Mike learned some new tricks and Marcus...got his dulcimer tuned. Both metaphorically and not. Anyways, it looks like our precautions on our catapult bombs worked, they're still dry. Good news with that. Our scouts report that Wolflake is already on the move and that they have people with them wearing the iconography of the sun worshipers on them. Fucking fantastic. I knew it would come to this.
Journal Entry 148
Our first major victory. The battle of Wolfgate, a tactically important fort right in the middle of the kingdom, right on the two main trade roads and supplied by the river and nearby farms. We met the enemy army and they immediately retreated to this area, a better position for them? So we're lining up and they're getting into their phalanx, we're about even in numbers, at least ten thousand. Spellcasters burning everything they have in the opening volleys, archers firing in high arcs. The sun worshiper paladins and clerics start going through their wounded and bringing them back up. Then we unleashed the catapult bombs. We did the math, checked and rechecked the angles. 5 fired, 5 explosions, shrapnel everywhere, right in the middle of their formations. Fear and Panic in the air. Chaos. Then the cavalry and the first wave hit with their war dogs. It became a one sided fight. Wolflake tried retreating but were cut off. Prisoners were taken, wounded taken care of. Jason and I spent hours going through the dead looking for Avery. She was luckily taken alive. The battle traumatized her. I'll visit her once she's recovered and we'll see what's what.
Journal Entry 149
We have taken Avery into “Terran Custody.” Marcus, Mike and Jason were excited to see her, and we all sat down and had along talk around a fire. Avery was furious that we leaked gunpowder to the Orcs. I countered with the captured caravan with the cannon ingredients. She claimed to not know anything about it, just that a new and important church weapon was being delivered. And she was telling the truth. We all sat in silence for awhile with that reveal. Someone else leaked cannon design to the church. Either Alex or the others. This is not good. So I informed Avery that she is a prisoner of war and in our custody, and that I was going to take the moral high ground and not chain her to a fucking post or shove a slave crown on her head like she had done to me. As long as she's with us, she's under our protection. Let's see how she likes it.
Journal Entry 150
Stop reading my fucking journal Avery!
>Then stop leaving it out for me to read!
Journal Entry 151
We've reaped anything worth value from the fort and it's surrounding lands and burned it all to the ground. We then made for the highlands to set up our new war camp while we prepare for battles to come. Avery has not taken well to hard marches. I don't suppose you get a lot of exercise when most of your day is spent on your knees. So we are trying to figure out why the sun church threw their hat in the war. Possibly for massive political favors and/or donations? Maybe a chance to become the head church of Wolflake? Avery has been completely blind to the politics running rampant through Wolflake and was shocked to find out she was being shipped to the front lines with her fellow clerics and paladins to lend support. Our camp paladin, follower of one of the warrior gods, wanted to listen in on this and even he agrees that it doesn't make sense for the sun church to of joined up like that. Even he isn't here on official business, he's here because this is what he does. The sun worshipers aren't warriors, at least that's not what they've been preaching.
Journal Entry 152
We have gotten new materials and produced 10 shrapnel bombs for the catapults. Carefully sealed them and have them in a safe place until we need them and have them under guard. Avery hasn't tried escaping, she's rubbing it in that she can take her punishment and won't go running off at the first opportunity like I did. Yeah, she isn't chained to a post either, or getting punched around by bored paladins, not to mention SLAVE CROWN. I'm not holding grudges, oh no. Not me. So she has spent her time wandering around the camp preaching the word and getting a lot of dirty looks. She then toom Mike aside and had a long talk about his pact. I'm not sure what was said but they both came out of it pale and quiet. So the war. Wolflake has refused to capitulate of course and High Command is deciding where to strike next. I'm always ready to suggest sacking of the Rheingraf holdings. There's always the chance that Wolflake will gather all of it's forces and come for us instead, so we are gathering our forces up. Our camp grows daily. We've already replaced the numbers lost in the last fight. More recruits. This time an elven band of archers from the wild elf settlements on the east boarder who have also experienced Wolflake pacification in the past and decided that maybe they should get in on this. They don't wear a whole lot and are surprisingly barbaric, but highly disciplined in combat, or so they say. Quite the multiracial band our side is turning in to.
Journal Entry 153
The battle of Aganis Field. Finally, a location without Wolf in the title. The area is one of the unfarmable plains in the kingdom, boulders and rocks that they can't easily break up so the kingdom put anything that smelled bad. Leather tanneries, soap making and so on. The fumes in the area burn everyone's eyes. We didn't even plan on a fight here, we were passing through when one of the smaller Wolflake armies showed up, also passing through the area. They held their ground and so did we, then the fight was on. We set up two of the bomb catapults. Archers and casters tossing everything they have and then we fired the catapults. The enemy pulled into a Testudo formation. Really. It didn't help them a bit though, their formation was blown apart and cavalry wrecked them before the front line slammed into them. Avery sat out the battle on the hill with the other non combatants, but she came down afterwards to give her healing support. Prisoners taken, the nobles sent to be ransomed. We looted the area afterwards and got the hell out of there. Everything smells now.
Journal Entry 154
Before we can even get to our next camp location, another small force showed up and pressed to assault, in the hills no less. Just as normal, everything set up, and right when the expected first exchange of magic and archery is to take place, Wolflake goes into a full hoard charge. No formation, just a rushing, screaming line. Yeah, there's a reason why that's a bad idea. Without their own casters to defend, ours wrecked their rush followed by the archers. Half their forces were down by the time they got into melee engagement range. What the fuck is this all about? Most of us never even had to draw our swords, the catapults were never set up. It was a decisive victory. This isn't even desperation, it's suicide. Very few survived and their story was that they were following orders, got convinced that this was the way to beat our catapults. We didn't find any officers amongst the dead or living. I think they ditched the battle as soon as it started. We set up camp nearby. Avery is burning herself out healing the injured, but she's still preaching. At least she's helping.
Journal Entry 155
Marcus is writing up a song to commemorate the war and the mostly exaggerated heroic deeds of our side. I'd be more impressed if he wasn't ripping off Queen again for the melody. Well, I ran into another psion. Apparently the wild elves brought one with them to make sure they weren't being fucked over by the Orcs when the war is over. We had a polite conversation and exchanged ideas. I also got a better idea of the elf perspective in this fight. They were descended from one of the earlier groups to fight over this area over and over again and due to their long lifespans, several of them still recall times when they were in charge of Wolflake and losing the battle that left them scattered to the wilds. Surprisingly, they aren't all that interested in retaking their former glory and just want some equal footing and be allowed to do their own thing rather then worrying about pacification forces tearing through their settlements every few years. Understandable. In other news, I found out what Avery and Mike were going on about a few days ago. Apparently Avery said that there was a way to save his soul but he had to give himself to the church. Mike, took it pretty hard and retaliated by suggesting that Avery was also in a pact just like him, just with another organization. That Clerics were just Warlocks with another name. She didn't like that one bit.
Journal Entry 156
We're on the move again. Our scouts in the field noticed an airship flitting about in big circles and figured that the crew lost control of it. A few hours later it made about 20 passes over our main encampment. I'm pretty sure they're using the cargo airships as fast scouts now. The only question is why they didn't start doing this sooner, or fill it up with archers. We're packing up camp and moving to a more secure location and preparing for a surprise attack. If we don't see any sign of the enemy, we're going to sack Wolftail Mills. Why is it called Wolftail mills? No one knows, it dates back to the old original shifter colony, and they liked to put Wolf in the title of all the settlements. No one has bothered to change it. It's a good indicator as to how long an area's been settled or used. So this is the place where all the wheat from the outlaying farms are shipped to be processed along with other foods. There's even a massive brewery and winery. I'm starting to see that there is a big chain of production going on in the kingdom rather then having each farming settlement process their own goods. Is this more efficient or is this an effect of bureaucracy expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy? Either way, taking it down should be a nasty blow to Wolflake's supply system.
Journal Entry 157
Sure enough, Wolflake sent out a huge army, at least as large as the force at Wolfgate Fort. So, the Battle of Wolftail Mills. We set up the catapults quickly in case they did another hoard charge, but no. Something else happened entirely. I knew something was up when they arrived. They had 30 or so of the big caravan carts with them. We initially thought they were an unusually guarded supply train before they started getting in formation. Phalanx. The initial archer and magic volley's began, but their side never threw offensive spells, just the defensive ones. We launched our catapult bombs, all 8 of them this time. The enemy ranks were thrown into chaos and then we moved in. They put up a good fight this time, all our waves were deployed. Just as it looked like another rout, the carts started unloading. Skeletons. Zombies. Undead. The enemy spellcasters did their thing and the slain enemy soldiers started getting up as a fresh batch. It's the first time I've seen anything like this. I felt a chill go down my spine. I had heard stories but here it is. Every nation and religion that we had come across had banned this type of thing. What the fuck is going on here? Neither my skills nor my pistol are any good against undead. I had to rely on my weaker swordsmanship. The archers weren't much use either except for picking off the living enemy, which just made more undead. We started losing ground quickly. The undead don't care, they keep fighting even with half their limbs missing, any casualties on our side rose in service of theirs and they weren't letting us anywhere near the casters who rose them. Something happened with Avery. She had been sitting in the back with the rest of the non-combatants. She snapped I think. She walked right into the middle of the battle and lit up like a fucking beacon. She picked up a mace and went to town. I didn't know she had it in her. With her help, we managed form a wedge and push right through to the caster line. They pulled into a full retreat once we got near, taking whatever undead servants we didn't utterly destroy. We lost nearly half our forces in this fight.
Journal Entry 158
Well, after all that excitement, we burned down Wolftail Mills and hauled ass out of there. Though we won, we suffered major losses in this fight, and it'll be time and money before High Command can get our numbers back up. So what would drive a nation, well respected by the other kingdoms, to break out the necromancers? Is the king that afraid of losing? Every church that doesn't break ties with them now will be turned upon by the people, this type of shit doesn't fly. The people of this world are highly superstitious and marching around undead is one of their greatest taboos. High Command has deployed messengers to everywhere possible to spread the news. Avery's been in prayer since we set up our tent. Does her god answer her? I don't know how that works here.
Journal Entry 159
Avery got her answer apparently. She declared that she will now give her full support to the war effort by her god's permission. So wait, the sun god is officially supporting both sides of the war now? Dealing with this gives me a headache. Our scouts in the field have been reporting roving bands of undead, usually groups of 100, in Wolflake armor, moving location to location. Most often at night. Maybe the King is some kind of Lich. I didn't think much of it then, but he was hiding during that ball I attended under the Rheingrafs and his castle is impregnable and off limits to non officials. Then why is the church supporting him? Especially the church with a hardon for smiting undead (and terran psions.) I know you're reading my journal Avery, stop it!
>I'd like to see you try and stop me.
Journal Entry 160
We got some more people in from the tribes, fresh warriors and some goblins. They came in with the supply caravan along with a supply of some kind of wards the tribe shamans made to help with the undead.. I don't know how effective these would be but there aren't enough. They're being given out to the front line forces. Sure enough, Marcus vanished until they left and came back with a smile. So yeah, we're all pretty sure he's got a half green sweetheart. We're set to pack up and march in a day or two to a new position out in the hills with a view of the main trade road. Supposedly it's very defensible. From there, we'll wait a few weeks for more recruits and then head out and see about ending this undead menace.
Journal Entry 161
One of our far patrols came in today. They reported that there's been no Wolflake military activity in the field. What's worse is that there's a massive undead army guarding the main gate to the city itself and it looks like parts of the city are on fire. Avery is particularly upset about news of the city, she knows people there. Jason seems to think a zombie apocalypse has broken out. Maybe it has. Maybe it's a rebellion. Maybe the Reingrafs are making their move. High Command has decided that we're going to start pushing forward, even with our decreased numbers. They want to know what's going on. We're going to make for Barrason Fort, a few miles from the capital and try and occupy it, and bring enough supplies for a siege. We start marching come sunrise and should be there in a day and a half.
Journal Entry 162
We took Fort Barrason without lifting a weapon. Only a small force was occupying it by the time we arrived and they surrendered when they saw us coming. According to the fort commander, their numbers have been dwindling over the course of the month, a handful recalled here and there and the last week, it's been one or two soldiers at a time until all contact with the city was cut off four days ago. He doesn't know what's going on with the undead other then orders to not attack them and treat them as any other Wolflake soldier. We can see the city from here. Large smoke clouds billowing from several spots hidden behind the massive walls. We have our cavalry archers out poking at the massed undead force at the gates. In the meantime, us Terrans have scoured the camp and have been making some more bombs. We have enough for 3 catapult bombs. Avery went and blessed the shrapnel we were putting in them. I don't know if that will actually work and neither does she, but it's worth a shot.
Journal Entry 163
Today we saw one of the supply airships come in from the east and circle around for awhile. We tried flagging them down and managed to catch their attention. They didn't land, but hovered up near one of the higher towers in yelling distance. They're from Hebiry and were coming in on a scheduled supply run, but weren't going anywhere near the airship port with the way things looked down there. Hebiry's not involved in this war and thought we were in the process of sacking the city. Apparently it's that bad inside. High Command paid them off to drop their cargo at one of the tribal camps since it's apparently stuff they can use. Clothing, spices, weapons, other manufactured goods. They went for it. They're in it for the profit and don't care who gets it, as long as they have their money.
Journal Entry 164
Jason, while on night watch, caught something going on at the city gates. His replacement eye/ruby gives him some kind of vision enchantment. The front gate opened a little and more undead streamed out, then the gates closed. When sunrise came, it looked like most of the fires inside had been put out. I have this sense of foreboding. We're adapting a new weapon. We found two barrels of lamp oil in the fort storage. Mike is trying to thicken it up some and we're going to make some molotovs using a few used glass potion bottles. The plan is that we're going to arm the cavalry with them and have them firebomb the undead army guarding the gates and then get the hell out of there. We only had enough bottles to make 14 of them. High Command is willing to give it a shot but wants the rest of the oil set up to use as catapult ammo.
Journal Entry 165
You know, I've been in this fucking country for far too long. If we never got caught up in this war, who knows where we'd be by now. So the cavalry rode out, got close enough to toss their molotovs and made a quick getaway. A few came back with arrow injuries but nothing serious. We watched the undead burn from the fort. They burned for hours, dead skin burning away, just standing there without a care in the world. The only time they moved was to keep the fire from spreading from the front gate. After awhile a good portion of the zombies collapsed, and an hour later, got back up as black charred skeletons. Fantastic. To make matters worse, a fresh group exited from the city a few hours after that. Jason decided to volunteer along with some other similarly skilled individuals to climb the wall during nightfall and see what's going on over there.
Journal Entry 166
Jason returned. He and his group saw no sign of any patrols on the wall. They were out there until sunrise. He snapped some photos with his ipod. Most of the city is decimated, especially the residential district. The market abandoned and filled with corpses. No sign of anyone living, just the occasional wandering undead. The church of the sungod is still standing but all it's iconography has been removed and he said that there are lights coming from it's windows. The noble's district and castle also seem to be completely untouched and is the only places they saw anyone living moving around. They managed to catch a group of undead moving from the military barracks to the front gate on their way out. High Command has decided that the city is a loss and we're going to pull back to the tribal lands until they can figure out what to do.
Journal Entry 167
We're on the move. Our wild elf mercenaries have been recalled back to their lands to warn and prepare. We should make the orc tribal lands in a few days. Then what? High Command seems to think the war for Wolflake is over, that the whole area is cursed. I guess they did accomplish what we set out to do, put an end to the pacification raids, but now there's undead building up. I think they're afraid. I'm sure I'd get my jaw broken if I called them that to their face though. Facing down undead seems to of hit some deep seated fear. So the plan is to get back to the tribal lands and fortify and hope the undead stay away. Marcus has suggested that with the possibility of gunpowder becoming wide spread, that they should build a trace italienne. A star fort. He's currently designing up some blueprints.
Journal Entry 168
I am so disappointed right now. We made it back to the tribal lands and set up camp. The next morning, all mercenaries were paid their dues and released from their obligations. The war is officially over. Just like that! With the undead waiting around the corner. They think fighting the undead is a futile task. I'm pissed, which is funny. We never wanted to get involve in this stupid war and here I am, disappointed that it's over without a proper conclusion. We gave them knowledge so that they can finish and instead they back out because of superstition. Sure, I could manipulate some of them, but I can't manipulate all of them. So what now? We have our horses, I think we're just going to get our asses to Hebiry while we still can. Maybe follow the trade loop and see if our compatriots are still in Wildlake. Fuck.
Journal Entry 169
We should be in Hebiry in a few days. Our time in the war taught us good places to set up camp and how to properly keep watch. We've run into several small undead patrols. Usually three or four zombies or skeletons, which we have dispatched with Avery's help, and cremated the remains to make sure they won't be getting back up. We'll be at the Wolflake border by tomorrow and I can't say I'll miss this place. I wish the best for the Orcs, but I do believe that their decision wrong. The undead menace needs to be taken care of eventually.
Journal Entry 170
We passed into the nation of Hebiry last night. The road we're on is set in a tight valley. It used to be heavily traveled until the war broke out and now the undead menace. We came acro ss a border guard not long after crossing. We got stopped and asked questions, but they were polite. We updated them on what's been going on across the border, the undead and the war. They didn't say much but they're worried. They will of course need to see for themselves, but at least they know what to expect if Wolflake decides to expand. We are camped at cave on the side of the road that's been furnished for trade caravan use. The walls are covered in graffiti, writings of names, dates and destinations. It looks like they date back hundreds of years. Not to feel left out, I added our information to the wall using Earth time. According to my calculations, we've been here either almost or a little more then a year. I looked back to my first few entries. I've come a long way.
Journal Entry 171
I got to sleep in a real bed! Eat a meal in a warm tavern! It's been so long. So, welcome to Hebiry. One of the main hub cities on the trade circuit. Brick and plaster construction with a large granite outer wall, the city is circular in design, set up like a hub similar to Aeyllin but not nearly as large. Cobblestone streets that are well maintained and pride of the city. Apparently each stone has a name carved in it dating back to the first generations who built the city and settled here. The main export from this city is wines, cheeses and tomatoes, supplied from the many farms. So, first thing in the morning, Avery heads off to the local branch church to check in. She wanted an escort but I'm not going anywhere near that place. It's clear that she doesn't know what to expect. Marcus went with her. He's the least likely of us to be branded evil and chained to something. Jason headed off to check in with his guild which left Mike and myself. We hunted around the market for anything interesting. I got a new set of armor, some new clothes and some supplies. Mike got a magic ring that he says has healing properties, clothes and a bottomless bag which is some kind of knockoff bag of holding. Even with subtle manipulations, those magic junk merchants are a pain in the ass to get a good deal out of.
Journal Entry 172
Well, Avery returned with news. The local sun worshiper church heads don't know anything about gunpowder or sanctioned deployment for Wolflake and are taking the news of what happened as an attack on their church. So they're doing whatever it is they do. We are going to stay around town for a few days before heading out. It should be a two days ride to Rosenbridge. It's been awhile since we've been there. The place where it all started. So we have been puttering around town, seeing the sights. The food here is excellent. So I was sitting in a cafe with the others discussing our plans when something caught my eye. Someone writing with what appeared to be a pen. It was larger then my ballpoints, but it was definitely a pen. Looks like my old artificer friend finally managed to make it happen. I'll have to pay him a visit and see about collecting my share and what else he's managed to make.
Journal Entry 173
Went through the market today again, some new caravans passed through yesterday. Something caught my attention. A recurve bow. I didn't think they had those here. It didn't look new either. I questioned the seller and it's apparently from a kingdom far to the south and quite rare. The price tag on it was absurd. Avery picked up some things from her church's store, Jason picked up a set of new steel shortswords and Marcus traded in his beat up old dulcimer for a guitar. We're planning on heading out tomorrow and following one of the smaller trade caravans across to Rosenbridge. The area is well traveled and I'm not expecting any trouble. We watched Strange Days again. I wish I had more movies with me. We know every scene, every dialog, all the music lyrics, but it's all we have.
Journal Entry 174
So here we are, camped out for the night on the road with a trade caravan that we were following. Marcus is playing some music when all of a sudden Jason starts acting funny. Suddenly this figure just appears out of thin air and before he can shove his knife through my throat, Mike tackles him. We dog pile the motherfucker and try to put on a beatdown. He slips free and gets ready to attack when Jason manages to shove one of his swords through the guy's back. We bring our lights over and I recognize him. It's the fucking Rheingraf spymaster. The one I killed. He doesn't appear undead. So I shoot him point blank three times. Before I can fire a fourth he's gone. Just...poof. Not there anymore. Fuck. This isn't over.
Journal Entry 175
Ah, wonderful Rosenbridge. It's been so long. It's different now, at least to me. I'm seeing it from a different perspective, as someone who is used to what this world has to offer and not a lost and confused offworlder. We visited some of our old haunts, the alleyway, the haunted house, the docks where we worked for our first coppers. I checked around for the artificier, but he's apparently in Wildlake. Avery went to check in with the church and make her report, and Jason ran off as well. Mike, Marcus and I did some checking around, anything about us foreigners, any news of the other three. Our leads led to the guard captain. We caught him off duty on the way to his residence. I dug deep. Rosenbridge is under control of a wealthy Baron, but the orders to hunt us down was given by one of his advisers. We're going to pay him a visit tonight and see what he has to say. I made sure the guard captain didn't remember a thing, but I also left a little something behind in the back of his mind. Doubt.
Journal Entry 176
Avery and Marcus stayed at the inn during our escapade. Avery made us promise that we wouldn't kill anyone. The adviser lived in the wealthier part of town, near the Baron's estate. Jason got us into the building through a back door and we snuck around. I managed to get a few people to ignore certain sounds they heard with some memory auditing and then we were there. Up in his room. We locked his door and got him up. It was time to explain, time to find out what he had done with Max, Ian and Austin. He awoke terrified, as would anyone who woke up surrounded by three armed people. Mike “disabled” his mouth, we didn't need it. It would only get in the way. He had heard that a bunch of homeless foreigners had shown up and some of them had wondrous “magical” things with them. He had wanted to know more. He tortured them for information. For days. When he decided that he had enough, he sold them off to the slave markets without a second thought and made a tidy profit. I promised I wouldn't kill him. Jason sure wanted to, or at least start cutting off things. I tried something new. I made him think he was in agony. Forever. Always. Maybe someone can fix what I've done, but until then... Anyways, we found some of their belongings in a chest nearby. An ipod mini, a droid cellphone, headphones, a broken tablet that was so mangled we couldn't even tell the make and a first gen nook. Everything had a dead battery. Well, we can fix that.
Journal Entry 177
We're on our way to Wildlake. It should only be a day by horse. We have stopped briefly where Dan was killed and paid our respects. No grave, the body long gone, probably eaten by some animal. We didn't even know him that well. He deserved better. So what do we do at Wildlake? What don't we do. I wonder if Baldy Mctattooface is still around. Definitely have to pay a visit to the artificer. The slave pits of course, that's a given. I hope Alex is doing alright. The last time I saw him, we were just leaving Rosenbridge and heading here. Back when Dan and Amanda was still alive. Fuck.
Journal Entry 178
Wildlake. We're set up at the same inn we used last time we were here. There's no sun church for Avery to run off to. Jason's off visiting his old guild master. We poked around the slave markets soon as we got in town, but our compatriots are not around. We will look into this more later. So there was something I had to get out of the way. I left the others behind, left them with most of my gear and headed out into town on my own. Sure enough, there she was, waiting for me. Almost on instinct, we both unleashed everything at each other immediately. It was like two fires engulfing each other. My head burned with power and for a brief moment, we were of one mind before I repelled her will. I'm not as strong as her yet, but she can't completely dominate me anymore. With our greeting out of the way, she invited me in and we talked. The other one was there, I know now that he's a telekinetic. The muscle of this organization. Either way, this conversation was not for him to hear. She made it clear that I need to be more careful with my moral abuses. If I draw too much attention, it will get much more difficult to do what we do. She was pleased with my Wolflake experiments, that I'm learning that you don't have to brute force to get your way. She still wants me to shave my head. I'm not shaving my head.
Journal Entry 179
So Avery is pissed at me. She thinks I snuck off and had creepy psychic sex with a rapist. How do I explain this to someone who can never see the world as you do? It's like Mike trying to explain how and where he draws his magics from. It's not going to make sense, you don't have the context to understand it. Besides, we didn't have sex, not in the physical sense anyways. She's driving me up the fucking wall. Anyways, I went in search of my artificer friend. He's dead. He's been dead since before winter. Murdered. A week later, the first ballpoint pens hit the market and are a huge success with the literate crowd. I checked his workshop and all our designs and his prototypes are missing. I'm pissed. Really fucking pissed. And Avery is pissed! And we're pissing off Marcus now too! It's a fucking chain reaction! I'm sure Mike and Jason would be involved as well except those two ran off with a group of adventurers to hit the dungeon under the city.
Journal Entry 180
So after we all cooled down, Marcus, Avery and myself hit the slave market. Did some talking. Nudged a few people, paid off some others. It seems those three didn't spend much time here. They were healed up and bought right up by a wizard who was most interested in the extra-planar tag they put on the three. The wizard was said to of been heading for Czebron. It's such a pain in the ass converting these city names into English, especially the ones without an obvious meaning or weird pronunciation like Aeyllin or Kinild. Czebron. Well whatever. The map says that's another town on the main trade circuit, we can get there from here or Hebiry, but there's a few cities along the way. Alright, we have a destination. We'll head out in a few days or whenever we're ready. In the meantime, I'm going to look into this murder of my cashcow.
Journal Entry 181
So the first thing to do in my investigation was to see who was selling the pens in the first place. Well, there were three merchants in town. Upon questioning them and then questioning them harder, there's a small cottage industry on the edge of town that makes them: a group of dwarves. So I paid them a visit. Of course it's never that easy. The dwarves were only paid to make the pieces and assemble the finished product, they didn't even make the ink, that was outsourced to an alchemist in Rosenbridge who sends shipments every week. So who is paying the dwarves? Well, the dwarves were being paid by a merchant guild dispensator. It wasn't some rival artificer. It's the merchant guild, who have their hands in every merchant along the trade circuit. I questioned a few of the higher ups in the organization that I could get access to, and they only knew that it came from on high. I'm also seeing that this guild is more like the Mafia. Great. Just fucking great.
Journal Entry 182
I needed to clear my head so I went on a dungeoneering expedition into the crypts with Avery and a group of fresh adventurers. We have a swordsman, a guy with a big hammer and halfling who won't stop talking about how amazing his magic knife is. We answered a posted request by some local who says that there's voices in his head begging him to retrieve some magic sword down there. Working for crazy people, but crazy people with money. Well, my solar battery flashlight still works fine. Avery was stuck with a torch and nearly set her hair on fire several times. So it's swampy as fuck down there because of the season, and surprise, lizard people, tribals. Why are they down here? They've been displaced by a group of druids who decided that they weren't Nature! enough to live there. The crypts are swampy enough to remind them of home, if not darker, and it's warm down here for whatever reason. So do our non Terran team mates wait to find this out? Nope! They draw their weapons and charge in to slay the monsters. For fuck's sake. No one was hurt, the lizard shaman did some magic thing to demotivate them. We talked and to my surprise, there was a magic sword down here. Something they've been guarding, a great evil blade that's possessed. As Avery was a cleric, they let her see the blade and she confirmed that it was radiating evil. I didn't feel anything but whatever. The shaman asked her for her help in trying to purge the weapon, and she of course accepted. So that left the rest of us sitting on a rock and chatting it up with lizard people. The adventurers were depressed that they didn't get to kill anything. After what felt like hours, Avery comes back with the now less evil blade and we get the hell out of there. We deliver it to the crazy guy who was relieved and then we got paid. Now I need a bath, I smell like lizard person.
Journal Entry 183
I found out who is head of the merchant guild. A gnome family has been running it for generations. Getting to them isn't easy, they always move with bodyguards. I can't just kill them, they are Baldy's main source of income and if they go down, so does the regional economy. They usually hang out at one of the high class cafe's in town and drink imported coffee while discussing how to increase profits. They have the whole cafe shut down in the meantime. So I got as close to them as I could, slipping into the second floor of the cafe, the owner's apartment, and did my best. I gave them all guilt. It should take some time to bake, but it's pretty deep seated. I also gave one of their body guards some delicious greed. Small pushes. We'll see how this works itself out. In other news, AVERY STOP READING MY JOURNAL.
>It doesn't matter where you hide it, I'll still find it.
Journal Entry 184
So I had time to go through our recently acquired first gen nook. Mostly fiction including the entire Dune series, more Starwars then I even thought possible, The song of ice and fire series, Mistborn and of course, Shakespeare. He also had a huge encyclopedia on there. Well, at least we have something to keep ourselves occupied when we're bored. I don't imagine publishing any of these on this world would be worthwhile. The common people are mostly illiterate and I don't think anyone even knows what fiction is. What is fiction to a world with magic? A world without magic? Anyways, we leave tomorrow. Our route is to hit the trade roads to Eridale, then to Pinecliff, hop a boat to Valmere and then we should be able to get at Czebron. We have a long road ahead of us. Marcus and Jason are getting supplies. Avery is.. blessing the horses or something. I'm going to pay a last visit to my favorite skinhead and we'll leave in the morning.
Journal Entry 185
Alright, so we're riding along at a good clip and stumble onto a trade caravan in the process of being robbed by some bandits. It looks like the caravan guards were taken by surprise, two of five are dead, the dead don't look like they even managed to draw their weapons. We have about 15 or so bandits. Too many to easily deal with. Of course the bandits are seeing more money in their future and demand everything. Mike suddenly rides out front, turns jet black and starts throwing his fire around. He gets hit by two arrows which just bounce off. After recovering from our surprise, we join the fray. The guards get the idea, grab their weapons and join in too. It's a huge fucking clusterfuck. Mike's horse freaks and tosses him, fire going everywhere. I manage to keep mine steady and start firing with my Sig. Avery's horse flips it's shit and starts trampling and kicking anyone who gets near. Marcus manages to dismount and go in with his sword. When all was said and done, we've all been injured in some way, the caravan lost probably half its cargo and I'm down a magazine in my pistol. Avery's burned herself out healing everyone and the horses. I'm burned out keeping the horses calm and keeping the caravaners from deciding that we're responsible for their lost goods. The bandits had no money to loot, shitty weapons and pretty much nothing of value. Marcus claimed a bow and quiver and wants to learn to use it. None of us have any archery experience. Currently we're camped at a caravan rest stop and will head out in the morning. We'd of made it twice as far if it wasn't for those fucking bandits.
Journal Entry 186
Well, the ride took longer then expected, but Welcome to Eridale. One of the minor port cities and a hub on the trade circuit. The city is of stone buildings and tight claustrophobic alleyways. According to local sources, this town was built with small streets to make it easier to block them off should the population revolt. The area used to be under control of an asshole Duke. The population revolted anyways and the Duke couldn't escape because they blocked off the small streets. They're all long gone and the city is boarderline anarchy. The only thing keeping the peace is merchant guild paid guards. I would say that the guild runs the town, but they don't actually have an office here. So it's a guard run town. There are some really strange and specific laws and harsh punishments. To make matters worse, there are four guard captains and they're all psions, all mind-linked at all times and operate as one being with four bodies, and continually check in on their subordinates. Jason says there isn't even a thieves guild present. We're being careful here and have set up in an inn. We'll leave in a day, Marcus wanted to check out the Bards college that's supposedly here. Why do they have a Bard's college, here of all places?
Journal Entry 187
Well, I'm never coming back here again. We were all fined and run out of town, one at a time. I was picked up by a guard while eating breakfast at the inn. What for? Being a psion without a shaved head. Motherfuckers! Avery got kicked an hour later for being a cleric without ecclesiastic travel papers. She doesn't even know what that is. Mike got picked up soon after for abuse of magic devices. He was playing his ipod too loud apparently. Marcus was booted for not having a bard's license. What? The only one that wasn't booted was Jason. The thief is the only one that didn't get kicked out of town. How?! He fetched our horses and we left this shit hole. They tried fining one of the horses for having two different types of horse shoes but we were already outside of city limits. Anyways, we're camped out and on our way to Pinecliff. We should be there in three days.
Journal Entry 188
Okay, I have been reunited with my Journal. We get to Pinecliff at nightfall and settle at an inn for the night when some asshole wizard who somehow knows we're offworlders walks up. Some spell he has going. I figure he wants to talk and I can't easily penetrate his mind, he's got a strong will. I'm tired and don't think anything of it, it's happened before. Next thing I know, I'm on my ass with some paralyze spell and he's running off with my journal. The others are too surprised to do anything except Jason who gives chase. Jason eats a lightning spell for his effort. It's on now motherfucker. The spell wears off and Avery manages to heal Jason. We track him down to a tower on the edge of town after asking around. It's all locked up and has a mud golem parked out front for security. The lights are off. I know he's in there, I can feel it. There are some windows a few floors up, so we hatch a plan. Jason and Mike will go in while Avery, Marcus and myself try and distract the golem. So we go up to the golem and engage it in conversation. It can't answer back obviously but it's not attacking right off the bat, it's in the middle of a city, but we got its attention. Jason scales the wall and Mike does some thing where he just skitters up the wall like it's nothing. What the fuck. Suddenly there's some loud whistling sound and the tower's lights go on. The golem suddenly flips it's shit and turns to the front door. I think they tripped a magic security system or something. So we attack the golem. Swords aren't doing much to it except cutting off little pieces. Guards come running over, and I convince them that the golem's gone on a murderous rampage. They never trusted the thing. We have some help with this now. We're all covered in mud but we're cutting this thing down until it finally goes inert. We're all covered head to toe in mud, the whole area is filthy. Mike and Jason go leaping out of the window with my book and the wizard comes running out the front door with a big glowing staff and cursing. The guards immediately leap at him, thinking he's also gone on a murder spree. Accusations get thrown around and we all get arrested except Jason and Mike. We spend the night in jail except Avery, who is sent to the local sun church for them to deal with. We end up sharing a cell with the wizard. He thought my journal was some planes walker spellbook and was trying to decipher the language. He burned the edges of several pages in his attempts. He said it was the chance of a lifetime. I'm at a fucking loss.
Journal Entry 189
So the guard had us, wizard included, cleaning the mud up from the golem fight. We had some time to get to know each other. He's eccentric but not a bad guy really. When he's not stealing mysterious journals from strangers. He's originally from Aeyllin and knew some of the people we worked with there. We asked if he knew anything about our missing compatriots. He did recall a strange band passing through a while back, so I think we're on the right track. Afterwards, he invited us to a nice breakfast and bid us farewell. He has golems everywhere in his tower. So we picked up Avery. The church was pissed at her for being involved in criminal activity, even if it wasn't really. They had her doing some.. thing that she won't talk about, but it bothered her a great deal. She was certainly directing hate around the room when we picked her up. She won't talk about it though. Met back up with Mike and Jason. I'm pretty sure they read through it, but I don't mind since they were there for nearly everything described in it. Not like you Avery!
>Fuck you, you ditched me in the fucking church with Alex to go on an adventure, what was I supposed to do?
Journal Entry 190
Alright, time for a proper introduction. Welcome to Pinecliff. It's a major port town posed on a cliff overseeing the ocean. The area is heavily forested and another hub on the trade circuit. Most of the buildings are wood and the primary export is wood and wood products, much like Brightly but on a larger scale and without infinite trees. Instead, they have a pack of druids that decide which trees are good to cut and where to plant the new ones. No clear cutting here. The city itself is around 150-200 feet above the water line, where the massive harbor is. There's a long line of stairs to get down there and a crane system for moving the cargo. Jason mentioned inventing a counterweight elevator, but we're not going to be here long enough. They have enough docks for 20 or so ships and most of them are full. They are also in the process of building an airship port. We're going to stick around for a few days until we find a ship heading for Valmere. Other then the wizard incident, our time here so far has been pretty good. Nice town to be in and Marcus is having the time of his life showing off at the taverns. Avery seems distant though.
Journal Entry 191
Well, a call went out for adventurers with help dealing with a nearby dungeon of some sort. Unfortunately, we're the only ones in town at the moment so we kind of got gang-pressed into it. It pays well I suppose, and we are running low on our money. The merchant guild wants this place cleared out. It's full of goblins who have been attacking caravans, harassing the druids and stealing anything left alone outside of town. We're getting prepared for it, got some dungeoneering gear. Rope, torches, emergency rations and we'll tear hit it up tomorrow.
Journal Entry 192
The Pinecliff dungeon. Where to begin. We found the location and went in. It looked like just a natural cave at first. Sure enough, we found goblins. Feral. No negotiations. They attacked like wild animals defending their home, which they were. They had spears and primitive knives. We had swords and magic. Avery kept us healed as we pressed forward. Jason picked out a few primitive traps and I mind-tricked them into triggering them for us. There were about 30 or so of them and they attacked in small skirmish groups. They probably would have had a better chance if they all rushed us at once. We took a break in their main camp after we finished, catching our breath and checking injuries. Around then Marcus notices that the walls aren't so cave like anymore, it's stone work, and the further it goes, the more developed it becomes. We make a decision and continue down to see what's there. We put up some chalk marks on the wall so we don't get lost. Jason picks out a few more traps that were far more advanced then what the goblins were using, some of them magic. One insidious pit trap with some kind of monofilament line across it. Mike did his wall crawling thing to get across and found some trigger that closed the pit with a mechanical door. Very interesting. So deeper we go, avoid some more traps and we're currently taking a break and having some lunch. Air flow down here seems okay considering how deep we must be. Might be magic, might be hidden vents or just the design of the place.
Journal Entry 193
We're not the first ones here. We finally make it to what seems to be the end of the dungeon, a big room with treasure chests. They were all empty, most broken open. We were about to shrug and leave when Jason notices that the small floor tiles have something carved into them. Words. In English. Here. It wasn't a message though, the words were random. Jason, of course, found the trigger. Pressing down on the Earth and Home stones. A new door opened in the wall and beyond, a small alcove. We found a jar of honey with a small block of some kind of wax inside. In the middle of the wax was a microsd card. When we touched the jar, a bright light burst went off. We thought it was a trap initially but nothing seemed to of happened. We made a rush out of the cave expecting it to of closed off somehow, but we made it out okay. So what was the light burst? Soon as we got out, we made camp and checked the card. It still worked. It was full of photos. 10 people in Earth clothing in locations that looked vaguely familiar. One was definitely Aeyllin, and one looked like Wolflake but it was under construction. The first ones looked like Rosenbridge without the city on the bridge. There were two hundred photos, and as they went on, people went missing from them, expressions changed, they changed over their time. Like us. This had to of been in that cave for a long time. Why is there no record of their exploration and why did they appear so long ago? We took a look at the dates on the earliest photos. March 3, 2014.
Journal Entry 194
We got paid for our dungeon work and retired to the inn. We kept going over the photos. I sent copies to everyone's devices and we dug around for a message in the photos, anything. Why is there no historical evidence of them? We tore through Aeyllin's university library! How long ago was this? What happened to them? The last photos were of the dungeon. Was there a group before them? Is there going to be a group after us? Who is doing this to us? So many questions, my head hurts. Avery's tearing up the more she looks at them. Mike's been messing with her Laptop to see if there are any recoverable deleted files on the card. Marcus caught something though. Their group had 10 people. We have 11. Why? Is there a reason behind this, or just random? I wonder if they ever found a way home, or if they died in obscurity. Did they introduce technology the way we have been? What were their names? Damn it.
Journal Entry 195
We held off the boat trip and went back to the dungeon. We brought digging tools and went to make damn sure that we didn't miss anything. Unfortunately we didn't. We tore at the walls, the floors, the ceilings. We repaired damage in the last room that we did and resealed the alcove doors with a message written in chalk on the wall. It listed all of our names, even the dead, the date we left and the current date. We resealed the microSD card in the wax and honey and put it back. We added a new directory to it full of our pictures, A summery of our misadventures , the local date and an explanation of all we know, where we've been and what we've done. If there is another group one day, I hope they find this. We resealed it and Jason reset the traps as we left. We spent the rest of the day in Pinecliff in silence.
Journal Entry 196
Well, we're on a ship heading for Valmere, another port city on the way to Czebron. It's a cargo ship, frigate size. It's an odd design to it, almost like a Chinese Junk but with more traditional sails, but not quite. We have been following the coast, and the waters have been calm. We have about a three day sail before we get to our destination. The crew is a mixed batch of races. The captain is a swashbuckling, civilized Kobold. It's adorable. Apparently, most people won't take him seriously so he does all his dealings through his first mate, a numbers obsessed elf who's always calculating the profit margins. Marcus picked out something in the photos while going through them. There's a few photos of one or more of the other Terrans posing in front of some of the churches, pointing back at it with an excited or silly expression. He seems to think they're under construction. That's one way to date the pictures I suppose. The ones I recognize are the sun church in Wolflake, the warrior church in Wildlake and one is definitely the peace and love church in Aeyllin. Maybe the university archives were the wrong place to look for the information. Next time we're in those cities, aside from Wolflake, I'll have to take a look. Assuming they don't brand me for evil or something.
Journal Entry 197
I had a long talk with Avery. We were alone, the others asleep. She finally opened up with what's been bothering her. It's all a fraud. The churches. She says the gods are there all right, and she is a strong believer in whatever the sun god stands for, but the gods are like tools, they can be wielded and they don't necessarily care how they're wielded, just that they are. The church, while it started as an organization to help people of the same following and spread the love, it has become a bureaucratic nightmare that exists solely to support it's continuing existence. The church and it's god have become separate. It's become a guild. She believes that if she separated herself from the church, she'd be labeled a rogue traitor and hunted down and purged. Why did she join in the first place? They have very convincing recruiters, and not all of them are bad. So what have they done to her? Word spread that she was an offworlder. Some took that to mean that she was divine in some way and have been trying to take her for their own; some have tried by force but her power has let her resist and block such attempts. Why did she do what she did to me in Wolflake? She was appalled at what I had been doing, but also she needed someone there she could fall back on. She used approved church methods to keep me there since she couldn't have an evil psion running around. And I ditched her. Twice. That's why she never escaped during the war and returned. Wolflake was a particularly bad church and she believes that it had been infiltrated and destroyed from within by a group taking advantage of the situation.
Journal Entry 198
Welcome to Valmere, the dwarven port city. One of the many cities on the main trade circuit and the main dwarven port in their territory. Luckily, they thought ahead and made their doorways human height, but all the chairs are dwarf sized. So the city is all polished marble and open air, encrusted statues of historical figures. It has a 20 ship port set in a massive stone carved bay that they regularly dredge by magical means, 2 airship ports on either end of town and a massive indoor trade caravan loading/unloading and distribution station. Oddly enough, the city's major produced export is fish and shellfish. The city has a huge fishing fleet that goes out daily; not what you'd think of from dwarves. The real wealth comes in from the fact that almost all dwarven goods pass through this city on it's way out, and dwarven goods are highly sought after for quality and design. The city's most well known feature however, is the mechanical defensive wall. The city has a 20ft steel reinforced wall that sits underground and can rise up mechanically on demand should the city be threatened. When not under threat, they keep it down to allow the winds to blow through.
Journal Entry 199
Czebron is about 6 days by horse or 2 days by airship. So we're going to try our hand at an airship ride. We've had a 50% success rate with those, so why not. The only problem is that it's going to cost nearly all our money. That's assuming we sell the horses at market value. Avery's pretty against Jason and me doing some b&e jobs, or me running around grifting people, or the classic taser in the alley trick. Either way, it's not something we have to worry about until we get there. In other news, this place has several bathhouses and we're all dirty and stink, so we paid a visit, got clean, got our clothes washed and now we're feeling fresh. I noticed that I have a collection of scars now from all my fights and apparently clerical healing won't get rid of scars, that's some other kind of regenerative healing. Anyways, Jason ran off to pay a visit to his guild, the rest of us slummed around town seeing the sights. This seems to be a nice town if you can get past all the dwarves running around. Nothing wrong with them, and they're quite friendly, it's just odd towering over nearly everyone in town.
Journal Entry 200
200 pages. How long have I been here again? God damn it. Now I miss home again. So we got our airship tickets. We leave tomorrow. Mike suggested that, since finding the photos, we should start checking around cities for any other signs of previous Terrans. So we paid a visit to the cities archives. They are, unfortunately, written in dwarven. A language I am not going to learn because fuck it, Common was hard enough with its two written dialects. We did get assistance from an adorable female dwarf librarian who was familiar with all the records. Of course the records don't keep track of everyone passing through, just important events or noticeable occurrences. No sign of strange foreigners who would fit the description, and we checked back for a thousand years. The only thing that caught our eyes was an occurrence around 400 years ago, the sudden use of the “modern” ship design. Sloops, Ketches, Schooners, Junks and the use of triangle sails. Before that, everyone was apparently using something similar to Longships and Triremes. It's possible that this is a case of Terran intervention or it could just be a natural period of sudden innovation.
Journal Entry 201
We are on the airship. It's more of an air barge. It's moving along at a slow but steady clip. We should be at our destination in a day and a half. The airship wouldn't be worth mention except for it's very interesting autopilot system. It's got a load of enchantments set to home in on certain items. There is one at Czebron and one at Valmere. The helmsman doesn't even bother sitting at the wheel unless we're near town. If we get blown off course, the ship reorients and continues on it's way. It can't land on it's own so it's not fully automated but it's damn impressive. It's crewed mostly by dwarves and some humans. The Captain is a female dwarf with a taste for gambling and alcohol. I'm okay with that as long as we don't crash into something. Anyways, we watched Strange Days again and discussed what we're going to do after this. We are going after our Terran friends, but truth be told, we don't know these three very well. We only knew them for a little over a week before they were captured. It was a life changing period, but still not very long. It doesn't matter though, we're still going to do everything in our power to rescue them. They're Terrans, they're our brothers. They deserve better then to be some wizard's slave. I just hope they're still at Czebron and still alive.
Journal Entry 202
We made it to Czebron. I first took it to be really weird mountain. Well, it was a massive volcano at some point. They carved the entire thing into a giant spire and hollowed it out. It has only one main entrance gate that's large enough to fit a village and has a series of massive mechanical doors. I believe I could call this an archology or a hive city. All internal lighting is almost all done through light shafts and mirrors and timed with the sun's movements and seasons through the use of mechanical devices. At night, or places that the sunlight can't get to, they use thick glass pipes pumping some kind of glowing liquid that is also part of the forge cooling system. It gives the whole place an otherworldly feel to it. It uses geothermal heating to keep it warm in the winter and a massive ventilation system to keep it cool in the summer. It houses several million dwarves. I didn't even know construction on a scale this large was possible This is truly a world wonder. The interior, the parts I've seen anyways, are all inlaid marble and red granite, etchings decorating nearly every surface. It has a massive underground where most of the dwarven smithing is done using lava powered and specialized magic powered forges. Most of the minerals they need are mined from the area which is supposedly one of the most mineral rich locations in the continent. So what do they do when the volcano decides it's time to erupt? Apparently they claim to have control of the situation through generations of specialized geomantic wizards and sorcerers. We are currently at one of the inns on the thirtieth floor. We have a balcony with a fantastic view. We are also now out of money.
Journal Entry 203
Well, Marcus has been doing the bard thing for money while the rest of us made our plan. We poked around looking for word of a human wizard with at least three human slaves or minions. This place is so big it may take awhile. Nothing yet, but there are quite a few wizards. We ruled out the geomancers first since they were the most obvious group, but they're all dwarves and don't have slaves. The locals frown on the whole concept but it's considered legal as long as no public or obvious torture is going on. The next obvious target was a small wizard school in the upper levels. They didn't know anything about it. Jason decided to check in with the thieves guild after he managed to find it. Avery was going to risk asking at the sungod temple, but there wasn't one. There is only one religion in the dwarf kingdom, the dwarf god. The god of hard work, alcohol and sex. It took me a few minutes to figure out why he covered an odd assortment but they all lead to each other. Hard work is rewarded with alcohol which leads to sloppy drunken sex. Speaking of which, we took bets on whether or not Marcus would bed a dwarf girl. By the time we got back to the inn come nightfall, it had already happened. God damn it Marcus. Next bet is on what Marcus won't sleep with.
Journal Entry 204
This city is pretty damn intimidating. Aside from it being so big for a world such as this, all the people. It's an empathic overload if I let my defenses down. It's almost as if I could lose myself. Anyways, we continued our search, went through the inns and taverns looking for any information and found none. Right when we were about to give up for the day, Jason spotted something. Graffiti scratched into the wall, recent and in English. Help. We know we're in the right place now. We scoured the level. The only thing we came up with was an Archmage no one knows anything about. We found his residence but I'm completely blocked from feeling anything inside. We went back to gather our gear, grab Marcus and prepare. This could go badly.
Journal Entry 205
Well, I knocked on the door and this plain looking guy in his 40's answers. He seemed annoyed for the first split second and then there was something in his eyes. I unleashed hell. He had enough mental fortitude to hold me back but could barely move. He starts doing the motions almost in slow motion when Jason slipped past and socked him in the face. That gave me enough distraction to lock him up. We pushed him inside and closed the door. Mike and Jason started checking rooms while the rest of us sat him down in a chair. Avery bound his hands while I started peeling through his mind. Sure enough, he's the one. So what has he been doing with our friends? He's been using them for extra-planar experimentation. I can't make heads or tails of what he's trying to accomplish, but I don't know wizardry. I do know that he hasn't had any success so far. To make matters worse, he's got a buddy that shows up occasionally for “organic samples” that he can use for some kind of monster research. Why does he need their samples specifically, we're the same as the local humans right? So Jason comes running back saying he found them, they're in some kind of magic stasis. That's when everything that could go wrong, did.
There's a sudden blur in the room. The Rheingraf Spymaster suddenly appears out of fucking nowhere and makes a lunge for me. Now? Really? I was completely caught off guard and take a sword to the gut. Before he can land the killing blow, Avery blasts the shit out of him with her holy light and Jason buries his blades in his lungs. Then poof, he's gone. Avery manages to get me stabilized and my wounds closed. By this time the now very confused Archmage is freeing himself and is throwing up his magic defenses. I'm struggling to get on my feet, the ghost pains of being stabbed are still nearly debilitating me. Mike comes running out of a side room and just throws down with the Archmage. Fire, explosions, lightning all over the fucking place, destroying everything. Jason drags me into a side room long enough to get back on my feet. Avery sticks with Mike and does her best adding in her own defenses, Marcus is throwing around his Bard magic. I hand Jason my gun and send him off while I'm getting to my feet. I finally get back out there. I can't dominate him anymore, not with his defenses up, but I can throw distractions at him. We all manage to bring the fucker down and collapse in a pile. Then we realized half the room is on fire, so we ran around putting that out.
The Archmage is still alive but he's out of the fight. I take the opportunity to dive in and start erasing his spells from his mind, something I should of done the first fucking time. Everyone's exhausted from the exertion. Jason hands me back my gun and we tie up the Archmage again, this time we cocoon him in the fucking rope, then we went off to see about the others. So a few rooms over and we have the lab. Sure enough, there they are. Ian, Max and Austin. Just floating there half naked in a blue light coming from some magic circle on the floor made of salt and blood. We pull them out of it and they start breathing again but they're unconscious. We set them down and I take a careful look at their mental states. Their recent memory's pretty fragmented from coming in and out of stasis for whatever reasons. Beyond that, the last full memories were their trip here and being questioned endlessly by the Archmage before being magically dominated and used in a few minor rituals and then shoved in stasis. Their emotional states are overwhelming. They're shit terrified and have no idea what's going on. I tried doing some memory editing to help in their recovery once they wake. We moved them into the Archmage's bedroom and letting them rest for now.
Journal Entry 206
They finally woke up. It took a good hour. They didn't recognize us right away. It took a lot to calm them down. We did our best to explain what's been going on, cooked up something for them to eat from the Archmage's kitchen and got them some clothes to wear. Jason and Marcus ransacked the place for valuables including his spellbooks. I got a lot of blame for leaving them, but deep down they know we couldn't of done anything. I wasn't going to fight about it. It was time to get out of this place. We all decided to go to the only city we had felt safe at, Aeyllin. Then there is the problem of the Archmage. What to do with him? Mike called dibs and dragged him back into the lab and began setting up for some kind of infernal ritual. When did he learn to do that? He asked not to be disturbed and closed the door. Avery didn't even object. There were some disturbing sounds.. and when it was over, no sign of the Archmage was left other then his shadow burned into the wall. We're currently waiting at the inn. Jason and Marcus are selling everything they looted and we'll see about getting the hell out of here.
Journal Entry 207
We got a pretty decent amount of money on hand now. I purchased tickets for 10 by airship. We leave tomorrow. We're heading along in the other direction and should arrive in Manden in two days, from there we go to Nespidax, Ainfield and from there we should be back in Hebiry. I'm not sure where the Hebiry airship goes since it's route with Wolflake was broken, but hopefully Ashvale or directly to Aeyllin. I hope the other three are ready for this. They haven’t had the travel experience that we have had. They can't even read common yet. Mike offered to tutor them. We did return what electronics we salvaged out of the Rosenbridge adviser’s place. Ian teared up when the first song on his mp3 player came on. They have a hard road ahead of them, I hope they're up for the task. Either way, we'll be there for them.
Journal Entry 208
Airship travel. I'm starting to get used to it. Back home, I hadn't even been on a plane since the 80's. Here I am, using airships to get everywhere. Austin gave everyone an hour long rant about how impossible a flying boat is from an aerodynamic perspective. Yeah, we know. Now that they're not scared out of their minds, we went over our adventures again with them. I let them read the journal. They were pretty shocked at what we've done, especially Max. I think they understand though. The biggest question on their minds, however, was how are we doing magic, we're from a non magic world. Even I'm not sure how to explain it. Each of us does it differently then the other. I figure it's because it's the world or dimension or whatever and not genetics since we're just regular humans. That isn't a suitable explanation though, psionics isn't something anyone can learn and neither is sorcery. Anyways, we watched Strange Days. It's still new to those three.
Journal Entry 209
Welcome to Manden. Not so much a city as a village, and just a pass through on the trade circuit. Legends say this is the first organized settlement of mankind, hence Man Den. Currently it's an elven city. Why? Some old territory war a hundred years ago. The city is half wood A-fame houses and the other half is stone building more common with dwarven construction. It borders on forest from one side and a few miles from the other, seems to start turning into a desert. Beyond the sandy wastes is apparently another civilization that rarely makes contact, but is where the recurve bow comes from. Interesting. Anyways, we're on layover until sunrise, and then head out to Nespidax. Took a walk around town with Ian. He's particularly depressed, especially upon hearing how we've had no success in trying to figure out how to get back home and have more or less given up. Well, I found out the reason. He's recently married and his wife was pregnant when he left. The child would have been born by now. That's fucking depressing. So why did he come? Same reason I did. We weren't entirely in control, some kind of hypnotic pull. He may of ended up bringing his wife with him if she was home at the time. I wonder who else left someone behind when we came here, no one's been particularly talkative about our life back home because we're reminded and it starts to hurt. Better to focus on the here and now.
Journal Entry 210
Well this sucks. We were on the way to Nespidax when the airship suffered some kind of engine or magic failure. We made a soft crash in the woods and the ship artificer's been working his ass off while the rest of us are watching out for hungry monsters, curious animals or bandits. The hull took some minor damage which the crew have been fixing, but we did get drafted into knocking down some trees to clear the landing space up. We're not getting a ticket discount for this either, I asked. All part of the adventure the Captain says. As long as it doesn't lead to another fucking barbarian hunt. The artificer says we'll be back in the air in two hours. He said that four hours ago. We're going to be stuck here for the night. Sucks.
Journal Entry 211
Something woke me up in the middle of the night. Strong aggression out in the wilds. Before I could alert the on duty guards, we came under attack. Gnolls, a scout party of 5. They were feral. The alert was sent and everyone comes stumbling out from below decks and the fight for the airship began. We outnumbered them but they were prepared. We managed to put them down with some minor injuries and the artificer got his ass back to work. Max got an arrow through his hand, and Avery is working on that. She's having some trouble healing these wounds. The gnolls apparently smeared their weapons with something. The Captain says it's feces. Fucking fantastic. We broke out the anti-disease necklace and are hoping that will help. Austin seems to have some actual medical training and has been cleaning out wounds with some of the crew's alcohol. It burns like a motherfucker.
Journal Entry 212
We managed to get back in the air and we're in Nespidax. Avery's been periodically checking on our wounds to make sure nothing goes bad. Max got use of his hand back, but it's a little puffy, even with the wound closed. So Nespidax. One of the larger trade hubs on the circuit. This city is pretty racially mixed for an actual Kingdom. The buildings are mostly wood and plaster with thatched roofing. It's main export is mineral wealth, from a series of mines, which flows south-eastward rather then Czebron's mineral exports which flow South-west along the trade circuit. We're set up in the inn for the night. Unfortunately there is no airship going to our next stop, Ainfield. We'll have to make due traveling with a trade caravan on foot. I hope Max, Ian and Austin are up for the task.
Journal Entry 213
We kind of lucked out. We hooked up with a trade caravan hauling iron and copper and we're getting paid to guard it. Three of us lack weapons so they're to stay with the caravan if we get attacked. Our trip should take 4 days through the plains. No known barbarian tribes out here so that's a relief. Max keeps asking me for my gun, since I already have a sword. I'm not giving him my gun. He should of brought his own gun. So we're all chatting away while on our long walk when it suddenly gets out that Marcus has been sleeping with non humans. Ian flips his shit about it, calling it bestiality and all that. Won't go near him. Marcus gave the “any port in a storm” response and they've been arguing about it ever since. Like there's not enough to deal with.
Journal Entry 214
We came upon a broken down caravan today. We had a short standoff until we could prove that we weren't hostile, and they the same. Their caravan guards were tribal lizard people. Pretty unusual. Their axle brace or something snapped and were stranded. Our caravan leader decided we should help. None of us Terrans had a clue how to fix it, so we stood around and chatted with the other caravan guards, the lizards. They're a distrustful bunch and after some poking around, I could see why. They aren't treated very well by the other civilized races, but most of the tribal groups aren't. This group has been doing the Nespidax to Ainfield run to bring in money for their tribe and keep because they're searching for someone, one of their own that ran off. They wouldn't say why they're after this one, but I sensed that he was an important figure in the tribe, so it's not like an escaped criminal or exile. I noticed that while Max and Austin were initially..distressed? At dealing with big armed lizard people, they eventually warmed up to them. Ian stayed pretty cold to towards them the whole time. Anyways, it took a good 5 hours to get the other cart fixed. They had to make a new one out of wood which meant cutting down a tree and cutting it down and all that. Pain in the ass.
Journal Entry 215
Welcome to Ainfield, one of the main distribution hubs on the circuit. No airship port unfortunately. What they do have is two rivers that split off in head in different directions and are being used as trade routes. The city is all wood building with a wood stake wall around it. Their main export used to be wood, but the area's been clear-cut. Now it's just a distribution hub that would probably cease to exist the second trade stopped. From here, we'll jump a river boat to Hebiry and see where their airship can get us. Avery and I had a long talk with Ian about his racial issues. Yeah, he's a little racist and he's having trouble adapting because of it. I can't exactly dive in and fix that so it's something he's going to have to get used to in his own time I guess. Anyways, the booze is cheap here so we're all getting hammered at the tavern and we leave in the morning.
Journal Entry 216
We had a minor emergency this morning. We couldn't find Austin for a few hours. He turned up in an alley with his clothes strewn all over. Luckily he didn't take any of his stuff when him when he wandered off for..this. Avery cleared up some of his hangover and we went off to get ready. Apparently he decided to try and “drink himself home” and may have been had sloppy drunken sex with a local, or tried to, or something. We're pretty sure he wasn't prostituting himself anyways. At least we hope. That's Marcus's job. So we're on a boat trip. It's pretty relaxing so far. It's a river junk loaded with cargo from other cities heading for Hebiry. It should take a day and a half depending on the weather. I've taken up fishing off the side with a rod that the crew lent me. I'm totally cheating and tricking the fish into biting. It's just not as satisfying though it is funny.
Journal Entry 217
Ah Hebiry. It's been a month or two since we've been here. The place has kind of an old Italian/Mediterranean feel to it. When we arrived, a fair was in full swing, so we joined in the festivities. Some town founding celebration. A cookoff, some booze testing, dancing, games. Marcus got on stage and played some U2 for a bit. The locals didn't seem to mind so whatever. We had fun. It seemed that our three newbies finally managed to unwind and have a good time. Picked up some gossip in town. There's been retreating tribals coming up the trade road from Wolflake on a regular basis. First shifters, then wild-elves, always in small groups. In response, Hebiry's set up a border patrol and are building a manned guard fort, anticipating inbound undead eventually. They've been petitioning all churches trying to get more help in, but it takes awhile for messages to get around. In other news, Winterfield has been sacked by the barbarians and they have been cut off completely. Their new airship trader has been skipping over them and going directly to Brightly until things get under control. None of the other nations want to get involved since it was a problem that could have been dealt with but was ignored by the king until he was disposed of.
Journal Entry 218
Where to begin. While Marcus and Austin were out seeing about airship travel, I was sitting in town square watching them clean up after the festival and checking over some things in my Journal when some Elf girl, young looking, early teens maybe? It's hard to tell with them. Anyways, she walks up and stops, then starts looking over my shoulder. She can fucking read English! Kind of. I grabbed her and made her start talking. Almost got the attention of the guards and I scared the shit out of her. So several generations back, some human got mixed in her family tree and they've been learning this “mysterious” language as tradition ever since and have even deployed it as a secret code in the family business, one of the wineries. All their recipes and anything else they don't want anyone else to read is done up in rudimentary English. She's off trying to set up a meeting with one of the elder family members who may have been alive back then. I've gathered up everyone and we're going to check in once we get word back. Oh yeah, airship news. The Hebiry airship isn't going anywhere right now since Wolflake is kind of out of the trade loop now. I'll see if I can convince them to hit Aeyllin or Ashvale later. After we're done with this more important stuff.
Journal Entry 219
We got our appointment and went to meet with this family. Well, one of them anyways. The sister of the woman who married the human. The actual wife had died a century ago due due to some kind of magic plague running through the area at the time. So around four hundred years ago, her sister falls for a human and they get married. Erik Lewis, a Druid. He claimed he's was from a far off land with strange ways and stranger magic. She didn't know much more about his past, she hadn't cared at the time and was against the union. He did introduce some new kind of fermentation method which they still employ. He settled down on the winery and worked, had kids and eventually died of old age. Well, at least someone had their happily ever after. She didn't have much more to offer aside from that.
Journal Entry 220
Alright, didn't get as much information as I would of liked out of that meeting but it was something. It also means that there may not be a way back home if everyone settled and lived their lives here. So Marcus and I paid a visit to the airship captain. We started some negotiations and manged to convince her about the possible profits of starting a trade run between Aeyllin or Ashvale and Hebiry since they've both been cut off since Wolflake's sudden undead isolation. She needs to talk it up with her crew and then we'll see if we can hitch a ride. If not, we'll have to take the long way around through the Wildlake to Brightly route. Or we could go on foot across undead infested Wolflake to Kinild. No, that's not going to happen. In other news, I think Ian is starting to adapt, I saw him holding a conversation with a half-orc girl. No agitation coming from either of them, so that's something.
Journal Entry 221
It was an expensive ticket, but we're on the way to Ashvale. From there, we can get to Aeyllin. Hopefully Alex is still there and hasn't run off. So we put all of this planning into getting there, what are we going to do once we do? I doubt the University is going to let us live on campus, not for the long term anyways. We've got some a few days to think it through though. Austin and Ian still wake up in cold sweat, terrified from their experience. Max seems to be doing better from it. PTSD is a pretty bad thing. Even I still wake up occasionally thinking I'm back in the barbarian hunt. I'll get back at those fuckers one day. So Avery has got it in her head that she's going to march into the Aeyllin sun church and start making changes now that we're aware of what's going on and she knows we have her back. It will get messy. Fuck, so many ways that can go wrong. I don't know if I should try and convince her out of that plan though. Anyways, I wonder how the Kobolds of New-Chicago are doing?
Journal Entry 222
We made it to Ashvale without incident for a change. God the place smells from all the leather tanneries and lant processing and whatnot. We are in the process of switching over to another airship that will take us to Aeyllin. We've been on this boat before, crazy shifter captain that wants to be an adventurer but isn't allowed and an insane navigator. We'll leave soon. I'd pop over to the tavern for lunch, but I don't think I could keep my food down in this air. It should be a two day trip. Austin's been asking the airship artificer everything he can about how airships work and then spent some time sketching something on paper I gave him. Maybe he found his calling. An airship that doesn't break down constantly or drop out of the sky like a brick when it does. Marcus in the meantime, has come to a startling realization. He's got an old girlfriend back in Aeyllin and maybe more. Yeah, no sympathy. You reap what you sow, and he's been sowing the fields across the continent.
Journal Entry 223
God fucking dammit. So we're all out on deck while Marcus is desperately trying to play Muse songs on his guitar when we see a light ahead of us. The navigator adjusts course and the light shifts over too. A few seconds later, we nearly have a midair collision with another airship! Seriously?! There's like one airship per town or less, so they're pretty rare. Only a handful of non merchant companies have one in the world. And we almost have a midair collision with one flying at night. Are we cursed or something? Does this happen often? How is this even possible? Where's the fucking fantasy FAA. Christ.
Journal Entry 224
We made landing in Aeyllin this morning. Guess who was waiting at the landing pad? A very pregnant elf. How did she know we'd be here today? She didn't, she's been coming here every single day the airship was scheduled to return since we left. Marcus was paler then Mike in winter when he went over to greet her. Oh, he didn't have a choice in the matter either. Avery was giving him her smite look when it looked like he was going to run. He's got a lot of explaining to do. We had to explain what was happening to the others, but they caught on pretty fast. So we did manage to get in the University's dorm. They're on break with most of the students out and doing personal research right now and a big group of offworlders with foreign ideas was just the thing to spread some excitement around. Our three newbies were apprehensive at first, having had their share of experimentation, but we reassured them. Alex was not around, he's out of the city with a group of adventurers who were going to check out rumors of some old dungeon in the east woods. They left a few days ago and should be back tomorrow or the day after. He's apparently become a very skilled sorcerer apprentice. It's occurred to me that it's been a long time since we saw him, will he recognize us right away? We've all changed quite a bit and I bet he has as well.
Journal Entry 225
So I ran into the master artificer. He's mastered his bicycle design and they're all over the city for those who can afford them. He fixed the traction issue but it's still awkward with the forward peddles and a harsh friction break. Then there's the issue of people having to learn to ride one. Lots of crashes. Bicycle safety gear was invented shortly after by an enterprising merchant. It's more or less leather padding. Anyways, we had a talk about some things. I have been promised payment for my part in this. Once that happens, I'll introduce him to Austin and see what those two can do together. Avery headed off to the sun church, but came back flustered. She went in with all of her righteousness and apparently got laughed out of the building. Better then getting stabbed I guess. Marcus returned. Apparently his girlfriend is crazier or craftier then he thought. They went back to her place and had a nice long comforting talk and then she gave him a ring as proof of her love and devotion. It was a magic ring and he can't take it off. She knows where he is at all times now. The best part is that she bribed the University mages to not interfere and remove it. I wonder what weddings here are like?
Journal Entry 226
I went back to the archives with Avery and Mike. We can read better then last time I was here so I don't need an assistant, but I got one anyways to speed things along. I believe that we may have been going about the search all wrong last time and we have a time frame now. So what happened 400 years ago? Well the University is only 200 years old but their archives date back further when there was a Wizarding guild. 400 years ago, this was an elven city still. It was a time of change. Religion was starting to get organized with the building of the churches where before it was groups of vaguely allied cults, the age of sail was taking off and wizarding went from superstition and pointless ceremony to being more mathematical and scientific in it's application. Were all of these brought about by Terran intervention or only some of them? We didn't find anything specific though, with names or who had their hands in what. We were informed that the old city records are currently in the care of the peace and love church. We'll have to pay them a visit.
Journal Entry 227
Well, I got paid from the master artificer. Not as much as I was hoping, but good enough I suppose. I introduced Austin and they had a discussion about some things. He was impressed with Austin's aptitude and signed him up for the next Artificing class when the break is over. And then the Rheingraf spymaster suddenly appeared and shoved a knife through my throat. I'm done, that's it. I don't know what happened after that other then I was on the ground and dieing. Then I wake up with Avery pouring everything she had in healing me. The spymaster somehow missed everything important or didn't cut the arteries right or something. So I'm stuck in bed, healed but recovering. I lost a lot of blood. This shit's got to end. So what happened with the spymaster? The artificer disarmed him and Austin started strangling him for everything he's worth and then he vanished. Fuck.
Journal Entry 228
I got my rest and went out with Avery and Marcus..and Marcus's girlfriend. We paid a visit to the peace and love church. Well, it's a peace and love... for money church. We manage to get into their city archives and start peeling through them circa 400 years ago. We run into a problem; since the city was elven at the time, so were all the documents. Well Marcus's girl can read elven so suddenly she's important to the cause. Well, 400 years ago, a huge group of a hundred or so people showed up, led by a group of eight, purchased land in the city and started paid construction on the church buildings. There were complaints from the elven builders because the design was extremely unusual to what they were used to building, having buttresses, vaulted ceilings and domes, so it was being overseen by one of the travelers who got things under control and brought in several innovations such as a new kind of crane system that could handle heavier loads, scaffolding and a new kind of mortar. For the longest time, the churches were the tallest buildings in the city. The techniques were adopted and used in further city development to make Aeyllin what it is today. Most of the churches use the same style so this spread around all the major cities at the time. There's more to it then that. As we were taking a break, Marcus's girlfriend pointed out something similar to what we were looking for. A thousand years ago, the elves suddenly moved from the woods and founded Aeyllin, started using the quarrying techniques that they're still using and began making paper. They didn't have regular contact with the rest of the world at the time. If I remember right, that's around the time Wolflake was being founded and when most people believe that the massive bridge that Rosenbridge is sitting on was made. If this means what I think it does.. I have a headache now.
Journal Entry 229
Alex returned today! He was dirty, bruised and in good spirits. He was with the adventurers he left with and they were successful with their expedition apparently. We all gather up to meet him. It takes him a few minutes and then he notices Mike holding a Nook and suddenly it all clicks in. He runs over and suddenly a group hug initiated. We spent the rest of the day in the tavern getting all caught up. The good, the bad, the losses. Alex had his own adventure. He left for Aeyllin a little before Avery left for Wolflake, fought bandits with magic he couldn't quite control and managed to make enough money for his airship trip and trailed along with a group of adventurers who were leaving Winterfield during its civil war and made it to Aeyllin, and he's been here since learning to control his wild talent. He had heard of some of our exploits from the university staff and managed to get his own recharge stone out of the master artificer. So, for the first time in over a year, we're all together again, and we're stronger then before. We aren't the lost and scared children anymore. We're Terrans. When the world pushes, we can push back. Avery, put the damned journal down! I haven’t been doing evil things lately.
>You're so god damned melodramatic sometimes.
Journal Entry 230
So I was tested at the University today. They were trying to figure out how to get rid of that tracking spell the Rheingraf spymaster apparently put on me. After 4 hours of having everything imaginable thrown at me, they concluded that there was no tracking spell. Well how the hell does he keep finding me?! Sure, there are several ways he can vanish like that, Teleport or invisibility or the various other variations of the theme. They need more information. Well great. He's already manifested in the middle of the Artificer's office once. God dammit. Anyways, Max has signed up for a wizarding course. He seems to think he has what it takes. Ian on the other hand is checking into fencing. Good for them. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the University break is over tomorrow and everyone who is not a student or staff need to move out to make space. To make matters worse, all the inns are loaded up with people applying. Fuck it, we're moving in with Marcus's girlfriend until we can get a place of our own. It'll only be temporary.
Journal Entry 231
Marcus's girlfriend, Raina, has a weird house. It's got two small bedrooms, a kitchen/pantry and then one fuckall huge room with no furniture. Well, at least we had plenty of room. Avery got the second bedroom. Marcus stayed with his beloved. Since we're staying with her, we're chipping in and paying for food and cooking. Jason and Avery went out house hunting while I did the shopping and helped with the cooking. I don't trust Mike with the cooking. He might accidentally add infernal energies instead of the salt while preparing the meat or something. Marcus got to clean. Raina seemed bothered at first by the sudden appearance of 7 of her boyfriend's buddies asking to stay over but she's gotten over it and has been quite cheerful. So how long do Elven pregnancies last? 9 months. If it's a half-breed like this one is, who knows. So how exactly do they deliver babies here? Apparently with midwives. We wrote down a quick emergency map of the nearest 5 in town should “the event” kick off while we're here.
Journal Entry 232
Okay, so we don't have enough money yet to get a more permanent residence. Rather then get jobs like regular people, we're going to ransack a dungeon at request of the kingdom. The advisers were sending out calls for help. Since most of the adventurers in town were at the University, we picked it up. It pays well. There has been reports of strange lights and noises and they seem to think it's a cult or a feral race preparing to do something. Avery, Alex and Jason are going with me. Marcus has to stay home with his girl and Mike is assisting at the university with something. We have our mp3 players charged, some dungeoneering gear and emergency rations. Here we go.