A quick drawing of Sarvesh, so you guys will have a more detailed description of him.
The time is running out, I don't think I will make it to Silverywind, because I'm busy as hell. Even if I would do that, I won't have time to write a descriptive -story- about the journey.
So I guess I will retire my adventurer somewhere near Dinnerwandered and take another turn. I have a donation to the museum (I will write about it later), so don't worry.
A note to future adventurers: please, do not kill Sarvesh, I still have plans for him
But if you are going to Silverywind you are free to take him as well and write a story.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Diary of Sarvesh Worksound the Gloomy Gills of Crafts, entry 4....I'm awoken by Urist. Usually I'm the first to awoke them and command to continue on journey, but... damn, I haven't slept on a good maple bed in ages.
The dwarves that I found sleeping are long gone, the carved in hard granite room holds no one except us. We grab our possessions and enter the labyrinth of dwarven creativity. All those shafts and tunnels, rooms, locked doors - only dwarves and carnivores with strong sense of smell (like goblins or traders) can navigate their way through these mind-confusing webs of passages.
Armok's beard!
I accidently stumbled into a storage room, that is filled with finest steel armor sitting on armor stands. There are no any signs of wear on any of them, so they are clearly spare sets for dwarven soldiers. The desire to have one is rising, and if no one knows...
I feel like a kid in a booze shop.
I sign at Oce to watch out the entrance here and then start the long process of dressing myself in finest dwarven steel.
Entire steelclad set fits me perfectly! I take a look at my new finely-crafted steel gauntlets. They are adorned with hanging rings of citrine and menace with spikes superior quality bandfire opal. Fantastic. I also put a cloak, robe and hood over my new armor to conceal it - who would want anyone to find them on me?
My new appearance is meet with mixed reaction. Oce shows no interest in this and clearly wants to get out of this "god-forbidden stinking hole". Urist is a bit disappointed of my "lowly action", but overall deals with it.
...Finally, after a long hour of finding the exit, we found a room with lever and a floodgate. Such situation always spark a big interest in me: who knows, what can be outside the floodgate? Magma? Water? Forgotten beasts? Goblins? Mutilated human wereelves?
The list is going on, and the only solution is to pull the lever. I strike a triumphant pose, as my hand pulls the lever, the judge of our fates. No one knows, what we will find there - death or escape, for that moment as ancient dwarven mechanisms crack and boom and the floodgate is lowering...
Sunlight.
Trees, grass and bushes. We have found the secret exit, and we increase our paces to almost running level to get away from this scene of crime.
We were bypassing every river, every river that is deep enough so we couldn't just walk over it. I'm too traumatized by deaths and bogeymen to let another accident happen. And so, our tedious and prolonged because of excessive bypassing adventure was going.
Night. It is full moon, I'm a bit scared of this because I heard werebeasts assume their beast form this cursed time. Also it adds that we decided to stop in "haunted" forest, they are believed to be full of nasty, disgusting creatures of perverted minds. Eventually, I close my eyes and give in to dreams.
This time I'm awoken by strange crawling sounds. In the middle of night. I take my sword, and quickly tap, then shake my friends to wake them.
- Huh? What? - Urist mumbles as I see a horribly disfigured pack of rotten hyenas. They are missing limbs. even vital organs or parts like heads. No blood flows from their wounds. They smell foul.
- Zombies, that's what! - I yell at them, and it helps - driven by the fear of being eaten alive they prepare to battle before the hyenas charge at us.
I flail my sword around, striking and bashing those foul creatures as hard as I can. They... collapse from my powerful blows. What a anticlimactic fight.
Meanwhile, Oce and Urist have finished with them too. Still, Oce got some minor wounds, barely worth noticing.
The rest of the night we spent moving away from this god-forbidden place. And then, when the sun is ascending to sky from it's deep resting place, we see something magnificient.
Massive jungle. And by jungle I mean giant, huge, unbelievable high trees. And endless flowers of any colors, plants, bushes and other thick vegetation around them.
Well, I've never been into one - I've spent most of my live deep underground and something high as this... confuses my mind. I can barely stand still when looking at that height.
But we have to cross it, to get to the Sunkengem, where Dinnerwandered should be. Anyway, jungle means lots of animals, and lots of animals means lots of food or death. I think I can handle them now.
Still, caution is not that thing you should be afraid or ashamed of. So I've spent some time on lecture about why we shouldn't taunt hippos or elephants.
- How that jungle is named, Urist?
- Massive brave Forest.
- Why is it so?
- Uhh, because of some ancient tribe of jungle dwarves - dwarves that abandoned the coldness of mines and moved onto surface. They believed to be very brave and strong warriors, hence is the name for that jungle. But it didn't help them much, heh, they ceased to exist many centuries ago.
...I look at the map I've bought in that human city, puzzled.
There must be a river. And there is no river. What a surprise. I look at some pools of stagnant water, that looks awful - it's damn green and covered in insects. It also smells strange.
The worst part is that we are low on water, my waterskin gonna be empty soon, with all that heat and humidity. And damned mosquitos, I miss repellent slime covering my body.
We keep moving like this whole day though barely passable terrain - we had to bypass rivers that existed, and if we needed to refill our waterskin in nearby rivers - they just didn't exist. I'm also tired from cutting all those thick as elephant's trunk lianas.
... Until finally, I saw a huge gap between giant trees and flourishing vegetation. I run forth, to experience a nice breeze that comes from...
The sea! Or a lake that is so big so we can't see where it ends. I exclaim that we have found a huge body of water. Urist replies that it's Glad Seas, a huge inland lake.
I run to the lake, fill my waterskin with water and drink it. And immediately spew it.
It is damn salty. Damn it, after day long search of damn drinkable water in that damned insect-filled jungle, all I got is a huge, giant lake... that is saltwater.
It is still quite a nice sight, white sand, breeze, tropical forest with rich fruits around, dwarven rum and crab meat roast. A nice retiring place after long, long adventurous adventure.
...It still makes no sense.
Suddenly, I see a huge crab. It is unbelievable giant, Armok's mercy, a third of elephant's size.
+Crab meat roast+ instantly makes me forget about anything else. The problem is I'm as slow as a turtle, and this miracle of nature can escape into traitorous water, and I won't dare to enter it.
An idea flashes in mind. I take one of my trusty shields, and throw it at the crab with all might I have. The spinning shield hits the crab with loud crack as we charge at it.
That's a damn huge stack of crab meat. It will feed us for many, many days. We still have to move away from endless rivers that meet the sea there. And so, we are returning back into inhospitable, endless jungle.
But before this, I made some marks on my map. We are getting closer to Dinnerwandered, but it is still a long way.