Current Training: Silky (Detha).

Circle test this week: Whoo! My best showing yet. Maybe I really am getting close to passing. I killed the Banshee and had the Lava Beetle red, before it finally managed to hit me twice in a row and finally knock me over. That extra defense really does help a lot. I am anxiously awaiting my next chance in there now.

Donations: D'rraldrri, the chivalry hut builder. She claims they are making substantial progress, so it may well be completed in a blink or two.

Exploration: Pathfinders are in a bit of a snit because no one seems to be able to see the path into the fourth chamber after the recent chaos storm, although I and many others can indeed pass through it. Most curious.

I was pleased to see that someone with a green thumb has finally managed to coax some vines to start growing in Hulapop's long-fallow orchard just North of the town. Hopefully these new vines will survive and mature to produce reliable crops of berries. The town population keeps growing, bit by bit, as new loads of exiles are dropped at the docks, but no new farm fields have been cleared and plowed in quite some time. I would hate to go hungry because our farmers don't keep up!

I keep going to the Rocky Cavern to practice my Bloodwyrm killing techniques for the 5th circle fighter test. Today I got lucky and found two of these somewhat rare beasts there. Luckily only one followed me to the north side of the cave at a time, so I could give each one undisturbed attention. I was really hurting by the time I killed the second one, but kill it I did. I figure that if I can keep at least half my health after killing the Banshee and Lava Beetle, I have a fair shot at finishing off the Bloodwyrm before he finishes me.

I was very surprised and pleased when I accidentally slipped through the bear cave path once again, and in both directions too! In celebration, I decided to revisit Devil's Island and try my luck on McBolie's caverns and the Crater. Once again, I was able to use both the cave entrance and exit paths, and I was able to enter and exit the Voolcon enclosure at the crater as well.

I took the opportunity to check my crater area maps for any inaccuracies. I couldn't get near the drake den through that path, but did wander through several caves, including a lava-filled one that had lava walkers and fire vermine, that I had not seen previously. It seemed like this cave should connect to the 'lava cave' on the outer wall of the enclosure, but I could not find a way from one cave to the other, despite searching both caves (after clearing out the pesky fire walkers).

There seems to be a large increase in Drake activity around the island lately, and today was no exception. A Forest Drake was sighted in the South Forest near the Marsh (a favorite Forest Drake resting area, it seems), and by the time I got there, five exiles had fallen to it's superheated flames or had been so wounded by it that they fell to other critters native to that area. Several fallens made a nice trap for the Drake while I cleared the cats and vermine from the immediate area. Urgelt soon arrived and together we quickly killed the Drake (not that he needed MY help for that!).

With few healers awake in the lands and many of those fallen in front of me, these exiles weren't going to be raised anytime soon. I put one of my many chains to use and gathered up the lot of them for a quick drag to town, where the ever-present Algernon was able to get them all up.

One day the Catenae will recognize my chaining skills.

I had the unpleasant discovery today that I could no longer enter the fourth pathfinder 'test' chamber, and still could not see the way through. So I asked Freyja to come look with me, and she also could no longer pass through, although she told me she could see the sparklies marking the way. So I gave her a hard push, and she slipped right through again, and then she gave me a push, which got me in again as well! In the end, we both could pass through freely, and she could see the way but I still could not. Never a dull moment with pathfinding. Sigh.

A curious sinkhole appeared in the North Field today. Slipping down it dropped one in the center of the Myrm Hive Queen's Chamber.

She had a lot of out-of-town guests visiting though, as it was unexpectedly full of Scarmis! Quite a number of exiles fell in there to the swarm. I ran through three times and managed to chain out a couple of fallens, but new exiles kept slipping into the sinkhole and adding to the mess.

The chaos storm appeared to sweep away the cave-in, somehow.

Click here for my report on the previous storm.

Click here for my report on the next storm.

Click here to go back to the main scroll.