Notices and Summary:
Ah... I remember you, Unraveller. It was a long time ago anyone last visited the home of this old Chronicler.
It was even further in the past where the events of the dual lands of Alteria and Dragolia takes place.
But, if you wish to know what it was that took place, i suppose i will tell you, as i remember it.
Do not fret, i have quite good memory... The blessing, and curse, of remembering every moment of one's life, and all the friends that have passed through here. I still think of each and all of them every day.
TURNS:
( Yellow Pixel : Year 360 to 362.6 )
The group of investigating white antar continues investigating the kidnapping of the Nurse Iryz, tracking various delinquents and ne'er do wells.
Corner and interrogate one of Nisvanis' mules.
Face off against Nisvanis' assassins.
( Naturegirl1999 : Year 361 )
Elgo, a young dragon, whose curiosity compels him to investigate Måh Ę-Gål, he does so, hears voices within it, and is transformed by it, into something that the voice within Måh Ę-Gål calls a hexafin.
(Elgo added to map.)
M'ova goes exploring.
( King Zultan : Year 362.6 + 1 day )
Great Scar University's mages examine their plans to mitigate damage to the university from the shattering.
RollsWhite Antars ambushed by Nisvanis' goons.
Hmm... it seems the scroll regarding this particular event has been misplaced...
Well, how about we just rewrite it, and with it, history?
Maybe it went something like this:
The five regal white Antars stood clustered tightly together, all facing towards their cloaked assailants and the old, run-down shop's entrance through which they had stepped in and through which now the ominous glow of the twilight shone, onto the backs of Nisvanis' favored assassins, shrouding the attackers in a cold and maleficent light. Time waited but for a moment, as the five large, sentient arthropods prepared themselves for the imminent shedding of blood to come, clicking and chittering while their enemy stayed as silent as the voice of death itself. For all their knowledge and practice of magic, the pale-furred antars were diplomats, dignitaries, scholars and spies first and foremost, surely not the bloodthirsty and practiced killers that their adversaries were.
The antars took the initiative, but the gap of experience in murder became instantaneously and irrefutably evident the moment one of the five antar dared to part his mandibles, to summon a torrent of piercing wind, did another dagger, gleaming and white even in the dim dying light, find its way between in between them, and the life left his eyes in an instant. his body still spasmed and thrashed but for a few moments, before stiffening rigid and keeling over onto the back, the last vestiges of his life extinguished.
Sadness, rage and dread swirled all throughout the minds and bodies of the remaining four antar. Yet their foes remained frighteningly calm and still, so much so that some would doubt whether they were living at all. Even as the enraged arthropods leapt at them in unison did not they so much as flinch. The fate that the next of the antars met was no kinder than that of the last, as the assassin he intended to harm deftly dodged him, ducking under his assault and thrusting a dagger into antar's ventral side, gutting the unfortunate antar through lengthwise like a pig in one swift motion and leaving the poor thing to take the last feeble breaths as he bled out, hemorrhaging pale yellow ichor onto the dusty, neglected wooden floor of the shop.
The next exchanged ichor with the third as she caught the assassin's spindly arm between her tough mandibles and with a quick, decisive snap like that of a pair of razor sharp shears, cut through the thin appendage and separated it cleanly from the torso. The dismembered limb dropped unceremoniously onto the floor with a thunk and a slap. Unlucky was the antar though, for the slugman held his weapon in the other hand and returned the pain in a flash, driving a dagger through the antar's throat between her head and thorax from the side. Like the second of the antars, she only got a few precious moments to realize her fate as she could draw no breath, clicking and chittering in panic as her vision faded to black.
Of the white antar, the death of the second to last was perhaps the most brutal and the one filled with the cruelest of irony. The uncannily nimble slugman assassin sidestepped the antar's lunge, finding a leg from a table that the antars' cyclone of clutter and furniture had torn from a nearby table now laying broken and split against the far wall. In the blink it took for the assassin to reach for the blunt instrument, the relentless white antar was already upon his foe and dug his mandibles into the slugman's soft, slimy flesh in repeated bites. The slugman wildly swung the makeshift weapon at the attacking arthropod, who soon succumbed to the repeated blows as his chitinous exterior cracked and dented under the violent assault. Crushed like a common bug, but not before mortally wounding his adversary as well. It can't be known why the otherwise proficient assassin chose to opt for such a crude and ineffective weapon, perhaps it was simple arrogance and boasting, but that arrogance would end up costing the slugman assassin his life.
With she being the last of the group of white antars, bruised and battered, and now set upon alone by six highly skilled slugman assassins, only two of them bearing any significant wounds, the one who first tracked the shop owner back to the shop and called her fellows to interrogate him, was now cornered and looking for a way out where there was none to be found. The henchmen descended on the lone white antar, ensuring that the committee that awaited eagerly the group's return and to see the results of their investigation never would...
White Antars 1d20=5
v.
Nisvanis' Goons 1d20=17
M'ova goes exploring.
Having, in his mind, seen everything the twice infected southern lands, of what would eventually become known as Alteria, had to offer, M'ova set out once again toward The Free Cities of Dalai in search of the Keystone.
Intent to follow through with his initial plan, M'ova headed out further north to reach the coast, so that he could then follow it west towards Dalai.
However, the trek north soon became anything but peaceful. Until now, the Moko chieftain had traveled through untamed wilds and lush forests, ravaged by the purple leaves which did not harm him.
Here, inside the lands of the Kingdom of Thairmar, the situation was much different: Abandoned villages dotted the land, overtaken by the leaves, both purple and red and filled with remnants, of both people and of civilization itself.
The inhabitants, those that still lived here, and had survived the purple leaf disease, by becoming infected with the red, were distrustful of outsiders and outright hostile to things unknown to them, such as a Moko. Many times on his travel northward, toward the coast of Thairmar, did M'ova try to approach the people living in the still-surviving villages with friendly and kind intentions, whenever he saw evidence of life in a settlement from afar, and each time without exception he was chased from the places he visited by red-leaved people with makeshift weaponry: pitchforks, knives and stones, with even the occasional arrow fired his way from a bow. Over the many encounters on his way north with violently paranoid inhabitants, M'ova accumulated a myriad of scrapes and dents on his form but at last he had reached the shimmering northern shores of Thairmar.
The dedicated Moko chieftain rested here for many days, where the waves of the seemingly endless glittering ocean beat on the weathered cliffs and trespassed onto the pebbled shores.
But even in that place of tranquility, M'ova could still sense the choking presence of the leafen diseases, feel the corruption consuming the land. But more so he felt something else; echoes of the human-made horrors that had taken place on these very shores. The peacefulness of the beaches was a deceptive and grim one, not unlike the sight of the open pits of despair filled with countless charred remains of those infected by the purple leaves' plague, that he had seen many times already on his journey through the lands of Thairmar.
"The curse of this land will not end until all life on it does." the chieftain thought to himself many, many times as he walked west along the shore toward his ultimate goal of reaching Dalai.
It would not take him long to see the signs of the deadly leaf infestation thinning and becoming more sparse, until at last he reached ground untouched by it or perhaps reclaimed from it.
At last, M'ova thought, he could have a conversation with the locals, without rocks being lobbed his way, however reality would prove itself to only be crueler as time goes on.
The Moko chieftain, being a strange thing waltzing cheerily from the east, from the infected lands of Thairmar, was quickly and baselessly assumed to be bearing the plague was not greeted warmly or cordially as M'ova had hoped but with a hail of burning arrows, torches and the uncommon ball of magic fire.
He was run off, then pursued as if by a pack of rabid dogs and suffering many more burns and cuts as he made his way through the land.
Even the shores offered no solace for many a port town and village could be found along it. Yet for all the times he had to divert his course, M'ova was as a tireless ox who would trudge on no matter how many times he had to do so. Any man would fall to exhaustion long before the chieftain would even so much as acknowledge the time spent traveling. M'ova would never tire of the journey but had long tired of the humans' paranoia and prejudice. He never quite stopped trying and hoping for a peaceful interaction with the locals but was always met with the same result, regardless of how far from the infected lands he had traveled. The humans had suffered under the curse greatly and for long, and were now looking for something or someone to blame for it.
Eventually M'ova did indeed make it out of the Kingdom of Thairmar, with all the damage to show for it. Past all the cordons and checkpoints along the roads to the west and beyond into the disease-touched lands once more. M'ova kept walking, seeing all the things he had already seen before. In time the forests gave way to hilly but plain lands of long bladed grass, where they could be seen stretching far into the horizon and beyond, with lonely trees and occasional glade breaking up the plain composition of the landscape. At night one could see the bright, glowing lanterns of travelers far off in the distance, sometimes entire trains, going either towards or away from Thairmar.
Having made it past both the agitated lands of Thairmar and the suffocating extent of the purple leaf disease, M'ova decided he had earned a well deserved rest, one lasting a few decades perhaps, as he slowly lumbered into a secluded wood, where he sat down on the ground, his damaged back against a large tree, and there he now lay, waiting for the world to walk on by...
(M'ova has traveled through Thairmar)
(M'ova has taken 6 points of damage.)
Success: 1d20=1!
Direction: 1d20=19
University's mages examine their plans.
For the last month, since the exact date of the shattering of Dragoila had become known,
How odd... The writing cuts off abruptly here.
Ah, we'll just continue from here.
The magi of the Great Scar University, have been scrambling to prepare the University and it's lands for the coming cataclysm for which the planned measures to mitigate the event are of suitably epic proportions in relation to the projected event itself. The core of their protective measures is formed of passive wards of physical absorption, intended to as the name would imply, absorb and bleed off the tremendous tectonic forces generated by the shattering, scattered all throughout the lands belonging to the university, that the magi of the university have been scrambling to get up and maintain. In addition to the passive defences, many magi of all disciplines have been posted long term at projected key points throughout the land, to complete the defensive plan of the university. Even with all of that the University realized that damage and causalities of such an cataclysm would be inevitable, thus many prototype magical devices and unfinished spells are to be fielded to mitigate and repair damage.
But with the rush to prepare, the magi have not had much time to actually take a look and analyze their strategy for protecting the University. However when a formal review is called, many of the reports feature notes of displeasure in their margins stating in essence
"Time spent on questioning the plan is better spent on implementing it. The measures are sufficient, if they're not, add more wards.". Disregarding that the University does not have enough personnel to cover the entire land in wards, most of the magi seem confident in the plan and the measures implemented thus far.
Although, some reports did voice concerns for the disruptions caused by the anomalous azure skies event originating from Elysium not being given enough consideration, while others insist the lasting disruptions are minor, even though at the time, the event threw off, subtly or not so subtly, most of their existing magical measuring instruments and magic circles, permanently altering what they would indicate in unpredictable ways. It was equally impossible to re-tune said devices because no point of reference existed; all of the devices were equally wrong in different ways.
Most of those inaccuracies have been resolved over the month, but a certain worry remains regarding the possibility of lingering anomalies from the event affecting their magic, but it's not a widespread or a very serious concern.
There are more stories for me to tell you... The events you wish to know about, Unraveller.
I shall tell them later... Please do... Stay a while and listen...
Year 364.7
Jotul, one of the children in the Bearwalker tribe, hears a beautiful song to the east. He is curious and begins heading towards the source. Roll for whether he makes it there. Roll for whether the source is dangerous or not
Children from the Slugman Duchies hear the song from the west and begin going towards the source as well, curious as they are. Roll for whether they make it and, if the source is dangerous, whether the slugmen children and Jotul manage to escape
(The source is between the Slugman Duchies and the Bearwalker tribes, somewhere in the…is it forest there or desert?
Oh... Hello Naturegirl, you are here too. It is so nice to see you again...
But... Are you sure that event will take place on that date? It is set beyond the cataclysm of Dragolia.
And are you sure it will happen on the western continent...? The fate of that land is... Quite uncertain as of now.
Nevertheless, i am quite happy that you're back...