Current Training: Evus.

Donations: Cassia Allin (20-30%).

Exploration: Adventuring in the Orga Outback and Drake Den, and exploring new passes, caves and paths on Kizmia's Island.

Soldi, day 19 of Winter, 556.

Rebel forces have been occupying Tenebrion's Island for some time, and threatening Puddleby itself. Despite a major battle in Puddleby that finally broke their ability to invade our fair town again, and despite taking the battle onward clearing most of their island of their forces, as well as the castle interior, a core group of Rebels has continued occupying the grounds of Tenebrion's castle.

Some days ago, I helped a group clearing Tenebrion's Island of Rebels, which went fairly well. We then moved on to trying to clear the castle grounds, which went very poorly. As soon as fighters entered the castle grounds, either from Flander's field or out from under the castle itself, they were instantly surrounded and felled by blows, rocks and flames. After many attempts at rescue only added to the pile, Phiros came to do what all the fighters present could not. He rescued all the fallens alone.

What he did was share 5 fallens, run into the castle grounds and teleport out instantly. Despite falling every time, he always returned to the field outside and usually had a full load of fallens with him. It was a remarkable demonstration of Mystic usefulness. In the end, however, he mostly collected folks who were far too fallen to heal easily, and when he himself was finally fallen too hard too, Talin towed a large group of us back to town.

Today, I helped the Puddleby Task Force group to finally clear the grounds about that castle of what we hope to be the last of the Rebel forces.

Using repeated fighter assaults, we slowly reduced the numbers of Rebel Commanders and Rebel Knights until all were defeated. At the last, all that remained were several powerful Rebel Warlocks. They proved no match for our large group that could isolate them, and between Kojiro's Fell Blade attacks and Raldin's boosts of the other fighters, they were each vanquished in turn.

Having secured the grounds, we proceeded to search throughout the entire castle for any last hiding Rebels. We searched the EP maze, the Keep tower and the basement.

Once the castle itself was found to be clear of Rebels, we also searched around the entire island, and found a few more Rebels hiding in odd corners.

Hopefully, we have found them all, and Tenebrion's Island is once again relatively safe for the prepared adventurer.

Earlier today, I responded to Tara's call for help in Melabrion's Keep, since many in her hunting party had fallen there.

On the way into Melabrion's castle as I was running toward the safety of the conference room, I saw White Wolf fallen and tried to grab him on my chain. What I got instead was trapped in a mob of Guards and Mud Golems, and I was quickly pummeled by mudballs.

Thankfully, Salubrious, Mork and Tyndall were able to collect everyone and get us t town to be patched up again.

Some days ago, I joined a fairly small group in the Foothills.

Initially, Zorton teleported a small group of us out (myself, Yor, and Tater), and we spent some time exploring off the beaten track for any paths or other changes in these passes. We wandered through many seldom-visited sections of the Foothills, but did not see anything new.

After a time, we recruited some additional members. To get them out here, I ran from the Foothills through the Orga Village and to the Meadow with Zorton twice so he could teleport more folks.

Once we had assembled, we first cleared Ash Valley of Tree Giants, and then set our sights on hunting in the Pitch Arachnoid Caverns. Since it was a much smaller group than we have on the regular Pitch Cave trips, we took things slow through Dredwood, and down through the Malachite Arachnoid caverns.

In this sketch, Kojiro wields his "pants of power" to damage a large number of Malachite Arachnoids in the third Malachite cave. Not seen: Natas, Yor, Talin.

We reached the Pitch caves in good order, but just didn't manage to get the first Pitch cave under control. Large numbers of Crimson Noids refused to be herded easily, and we just didn't have enough bodies to keep throwing more exiles into the breach. We eventually had to settle for merely retrieving our fallens, which we did successfully, and then we headed home via the Ethereal Plane.

It was a fun trip, and I was pleased to get a chance to really look over the Foothills for anything out of the ordinary.

Terrdi, day 84 of Autumn, 555.

I recently joined the Puddleby Task Force and some others to once again wander Kizmia's Island looking for paths and other curiosities. We entered at Fat Alice's beach in the morning, and headed straight to our trees.

While waiting for the group to reassemble, I scanned the walls around the Whirlpool area but saw nothing new. I was pleased to actually see the path leading to the Whirlpool Passes, however, even if I was still unable to open it. With the rest of the group, we did enter to take yet another look around this hazardous and unstable area. After getting caught in several rockslides, we were able to pass through safely and jump down into the cave. It turns out that one can exit that cave back up the hole by walking to the Southeast (it isn't obvious), but we saw no further way deeper past the lava hole. In any case, I took better notes and updated my maps of this area.

We then set out to explore the Glacier area. In the Catsbane cave, _I_ got to be the one to find the only new path of the trip. While everyone was playing in the lava, I noticed a telltale crack in the Western corner of the cave. When we went through, we found it led to the deep part of the first cave leading down from the Glacier toward Lyfe Town, near where it connects to the second cave. As far as we could tell, this is only passable one-way. It does make a nice shortcut for anyone hunting, since after stopping to search for catsbane, the group need not backtrack across the already-hunted Glacier anymore or dodge icy rocks to head onward down to the Lyfe Town.

We had one unfortunate mishap when searching about that second cave near Lyfe Town. Olmy stepped too far to the West and fell into the Lyfe Caves. This is a known one-way passage, so we were all pretty surprised when he fell in there. After he fell, Yor went to retrieve him, but he was already deeply covered in scavengers and a Starbuck Lyfelidae was nearby. So Yor ran all the way through those caves and out to come back around through his tree to rejoin us. We then pressed on with the trip, and would come back later to retrieve Olmy on the way out.

In Lyfe Town, we saw one Lyfelidae with a taste for fish trying to grab a snack from the pool there. He never did catch one though.

After killing all the other Lyfes, the pathfinders scanned the entire area, but saw nothing. We next moved on to Kizmia's hut, and the many unopened paths there. This time, I was able to see all the paths, including the two I couldn't see on my last trip here. No one was able to open any of them, of course. However, Darblak did scan them to see a glimpse of what lay beyond, and when he saw anything, he saw Cobras. Lots of Cobras. What joys await us!

When a half dozen Cobras nearly wiped us out, we finally decided to move on. We headed back to the Lyfe Town cave and everyone jumped down to where Olmy still lay. After killing the Starbuck Lyfe and digging Olmy out of the mass of Rats and such, we headed outside and to the hut between the rivers. From there Drablak teleported the fighters to Fat Alice's doorstep, and the healers headed home using their Purgatory Pendants.

All in all, a fun trip, and satisfying for me as I spotted the only new path first.

Sombdi, day 59 of Autumn, 555.

Yesterday, I joined Yor, Coeur de Leon, Sa'Wrap and Talin on Kizmia's Island to look for paths.

Folks have been busy exploring all over the island since the discovery of the Whirlpool passes. The best guess now is that the Whirlpool Passes themselves are really the exit from some other hidden cave area, rather than a way deeper into the caves. If there is a way deeper past the lava pit, no one has found it yet.

One of the areas that has generated a lot of interest is a place I knew about but had never actually visited before, since hunting groups routinely bypass it: Kizmia's hut. It turns out that her hut isn't even where I thought it was! It's actually through some trees and rocks in the center of the island, pretty much just North of the Lyfe town area. I see why I was confused looking at the map I have - it's a bit freeform, and although the arrows are in the right place, the snells themselves are not arranged in the proper register. My fault for simply glancing at it occasionally instead of studying it closely. I've started making my own map of this area. The Kizmia's hut area is here.

In other mapping news, I have also updated the map of Drake Den 1 and finally added Drake Den 2, as well as the Whirlpool passes and Whirlpool cave maps.

In any case, recently Connie Crete and Talin had managed to discover a staggering six new paths in and around Kizmia's hut, but were unable to open any of them. I came to stare and try my luck.

I was able to see four of the paths, and couldn't see the other two even after staring some time at the spots Talin showed me.

Of course no one was able to open even one of these intriguing new paths. Where might they lead?

One new path on Kizmia's Island that we do now know where it leads, is one Talin recently found in the Lyfe Town area.

She noticed that the river entrance in the rocks at the East end had a crack large enough to wriggle through. So we all headed there to take a closer look.

Inside, one finds a single room cave that is stiffling hot with live steam, as the water passes over the hot floor.

Spending any time inside is difficult, since it is burning hot and difficult to breathe, and so one loses health by being there. It is also hard to see anything amidst the fuming vapours, but we all scanned about looking for further paths - without success.

After a short time we ran outside, pleased to find the cool afternoon air.

What a terrible place!

Lesson learned: Kizmia's Island clearly hold many additional secrets that we may now begin to unravel.

Despite my going to the Foothills and Pitch caves regularly, the group almost never stops anymore at the ruined Pathfinder Library for folks who want to learn from Giayl's Guide to Hidden Ways.

Most regulars who were interested in advanced pathfinding had learned all they could there a long time ago.

However, there are always a few folks who want to stop and learn more Pathfinding.

Jeepers had been wanting that enough that he organized a special trip several days ago to do just that. Somewhat over a dozen exiles joined in, and we set out toward the Foothills.

While we were in Hatred Hollow, a very confused Forest Drake tried to land there - right on top of the group. He didn't live long enough to regret that choice, I'm afraid.

That's the second time I've seen a Forest Drake attack a group passing through Hatred Hollow ... very odd. What interest do Drakes have in preventing exiles from pestering Orga or Arachnoids?

The hardest part of any trip to the Foothills is the Orga gauntlet at the Dred Passage. A group that can survive this is pretty well assured of managing to survive easily in the Foothills. On it's worst days, the Dred Passage easily earns it's name and can stop even a hardened and experienced group of exiles cold in their tracks.

Today was not such a day, thankfully, and we advanced steadily through the lightning to kill the assembled Dredlocks, Hemlocks and Warlocks and pass into the Foothills.

Things went smoothly in the Foothills and we quickly reached Dredwood, and once again survived the lightning assault to reach the waterfall entrance to the Malachite caves. Fighting our way ever downward, we finally reached the lair of the Pitch Arachnoids.

Since the group was well-seasoned with exiles with Pitch cave experience, we quickly set up the Pitch cavern with lures, runners and zu walls. Usually we would bypass the pit where the ruined Library is found, but today we lured out that area and killed the Noids there one by one. I was pleased to escort several pathfinders into the Library for a chance to start or renew their lessons with Giayl's Guide.

When I saw that Stinkfist was raffling a Brion passkey (for only 100c a ticket), I just had to try my luck.

So did almost 200 others by the time the raffle ended. Almost 20k, wow. A passkey such as this one is apparently highly prized.

There's no doubt a passkey is a convenient thing to have if one uses the Brion's conference room Ethereal passageways to get around.

I didn't get extremely lucky this time, but heard that Maxibus won. Congrats!

Since it was a quiet morning a couple of days ago and very few folks had stirred from the Library or their slumbers, I decided to wander Gungla Island looking for Seta Lizards and Wake-Me-Ups and such. I thought the pickings would be good.

When I reached Colmert's Crossing, however, I was surprised to see the healer Alana right behind me making a beeline to the North! Apparently she was on her way to find the fallen Elrod in the Brimora sector. So much for easy pickings!

Unfortunately, Alana was the easy pickings, as she was felled by one Forest Cobra while I was dealing with another and some Tree Giants. I managed to find Elrod as well, and dragged both back to town to be healed.

I never did get around to searching Gungla like I had planned. It was already picked over ...

Sombdi, day 31 of Autumn, 555.

Kizmia has apparently been muttering about 'the old paths being reopened', so Kalian organized a small group recently to give Kizmia's Island a fresh and thorough look.

I heard about it when Yor asked me to come take a look at a path that no one in that group could open.

After searching the entire South side of the island without success, the group was scouring the area near the Whirlpool when Talin spotted a path in the rock wall. She was able to open this to find a mountain pass reminiscent of the Foothills of our own island, which was filled with jumbled boulders. After some effort clearing these, they found a second path leading deeper into the mountains, and eventually opened that to find a second pass area just like the first. After clearing that, they spotted a third path leading yet deeper. However, even some hours of staring did her or Sa'Wrap no good in opening this, and the group asked for some help.

I was unable to come at that moment, and it was still night, so I waited until daybreak. By then, everyone had left except Talin. I ran in alone through the East cove and Lyfe caves to my tree, and then down to the Whirlpool. Talin met me there and promptly disappeared into a crack in the rocks that I could not even see! I followed her right in to get my own look at these Whirlpool Passes.

Perverse as pathfinding is, I saw the third path right away and walked right through it into the third whirlpool pass section. There Talin and I were confronted with a landscape littered with hundreds of fallen boulders. After some serious effort with my trusty shovel, I cleared all around the edges to reveal a roughly circular area surrounded by steep rock walls, with a fuming lava hole in the center. We scanned carefully around the edges, but saw no paths there. However, other eyes might yet spot one or more.

While clearing rocks, I was twice crushed by rockslides. Talin was able to slowly slowly dig me out by scratching at the boulders one by one, since she had no shovel. The first time she was able to raise me with the aid of a potion, but the second time I was smushed to a very flat PND state. She herself was lucky when those rocks just missed her too! Tonoto and Sa'Wrap tried to join us to help, but did not make it through the hazards of Kizmia's Island, and likely departed.

Since I was fallen anyway, and the only possible way forward seemed to be down the fuming hole, I asked Talin to push me in.

Instead of burning up as some smoky sacrifice to the gods, I instead fell into a new cave.

Talin then hopped down to join me, and took some serious damage from the fall, but was able to heal up.

The cave has steep walls and two levels. After some scouting about, we saw that several stones in the cliff could be used as a stair to get us down to the lower level.

This took some time, because this cave, like the passes above it, was littered with fallen boulders that Talin had to scratch repeatedly to break up and move out of the way. That healer has the patience of a Mystic to break so many rocks like that!

In this way, with me in tow on her chain, we explored the cavern.

Again, we saw no obvious paths in the rock walls or other means of exit.

Eventually we saw that there was a lava pit in the far lower corner of the cave, and a curious dark ring past it, and an odd flickering shape beyond that.

With no other way out, we guessed that one might need to run over the lava to a path or opening, much like one spot deep in Melabrion's mines.

Talin steeled herself for the run, grabbed me on her chain and launched herself across the boiling lava!

And bumped her nose on the apparently impassable black area, and was quickly toasted to death. Oops!

Curiously, the hole is too deep to reach down. I'm not what that means exactly. What hole? And where does it lead?

In any case, we departed with some satisfaction at having been the first to explore these Whirlpool passes and cave, even if we likely have not seen the whole of it yet.

Sombdi, day 10 of Autumn, 555.

When I stepped out of the Library today, I heard that a Fire Drake had ravished town not long before, and flown off with Fantasia, Tonoto and Algernon in its claws. Fantasia had departed already, but the others were soon to be snacks at the Drake's Den.

White Wolf was organizing a rescue, and I joined to help with the pathfinding and navigating required to get a group to the Drake's Den on Devil's Island. This is a tricky place to find, requiring both strong pathfinding and an illusion-piercing Mystic, as well as tight crowd control for the many small areas that are easy to overstep.

I did get everyone safely through the maze-like McBolie's cavern under the Devil's Island lake and into the Voolcon enclosure, but not without a couple of wrong turns. It's tough to get a line of 12 exiles to back up slowly in the dark!

Once inside, we quickly reached the Devilish passes - and without losing anyone to missteps across snells. Shakam searched for illusions and then scanned these to see what might lay beyond. After a time, he pointed to one and asked me to try it ... and he was right on. Well done!

In the Crater, we had some difficulty getting the group into the Drake Den itself, since folks kept dying while running across the lava. I was sure I had enough health training to make it easily, but even I fell while running across the lava and down into the Den - although I did fall inside the Drake Den. After several tries, the group gathered to assess the situation. Unaccountably, at this time Algernon chose to depart!

In the Den, we quickly raised Tonoto, and found three Fire Drakes. They acted curiously, and would not separate so we could fight one at a time. After several attacks and withdrawals, we finally managed to slaughter one Drake.

Not seeing the point in working so hard to merely slaughter two more Drakes, we simply left. Hopefully the other two Drakes learned not to mess with our town, and will stay home.

The Drake Den is a most curious place, where kudzu won't grow, and caduceii, purgatory pendants, ethereal portal stones, Mystic boosting wands and even lowly chains fail to function. Very very strange.

Having gone back to the Den, I am reminded that I never did finish piecing together my map of the Drake Den snell proper, and so I will have to pick at it.

When I swung by the Auction House to see what was available on raffle today, I was stunned to see that I had won Raldin's Sword of Souls!

At 100 coins a ticket, this took in well over 17,000 coins. Amazing what scarcity will do to prices.

Not bad for a 100c investment. Still, with the amount of gambling I do here day after day, I wonder whether I have broken even overall or not?

Sombdi, day 3 of Autumn, 555.

Last night I joined Slasher and Fantasia to hunt on Melabrion's Island. Things took an unexpected turn when we ran into not one, but two Angry Mother Sasquatch. After recruiting White Wolf to help, we attacked the first one, but Slasher got rocked while running her. We ended up retreating back to town to get him mobile again, and then Sai joined us. When we returned to the hunt, I caught a rock in the face and went down hard, so it was good to have Sai along! With a bit of effort, we finally vanquished both AMS.

It was nearing dawn by then, but we thought we would try our luck at the East Cove on Kizmia's Island despite Fantasia talking her leave. We ran into trouble right away, as we jumped in amongst several gold Lyfelidae outside the cave, and pretty quickly all three fighters were down to either Thunder or Starbuck Lyfelidae. Sai managed to grab us back into the cave and raise us. I was very impressed. By the time we were ready to fight again, dawn had arrived. And good thing too! By the time we cleared the area, we had racked up 2 Starbuck and 4 Thunder Lyfelidae on one snell and 5 Tae-su on another, with several Hunter Lyfelidae and a couple Frost Giants mixed in for good measure. Quite a haul!

When I went to the Smithy to have yet another ruined chain reforged, I stopped to talk to Bob the builder about his renovation plans. He has some grand scheme to improve the work output by rearranging the forge, but whether a better working environment in the renovated shop will lure back that renegade shovel maker Dessis is unclear. I imagine Smythus thinks it will, or else he wouldn't put up with the disruption of his shop in the meantime. Cheapskate that he is, I see that he isn't putting many of his own coins into this venture. As if he isn't rolling in coins, from Bindra's fees alone if not from his other workers!

I also asked Bob whether his wife Dora had anything new to report from the far reaches of the island, but he gave me an odd kind of look and shut right up.

I suspect that he knows things that he won't discuss openly ...

Fordi, day 85 of Summer, 555.

Exiles have had a premonition that 'something nasty is brewing in the far reaches of the Orga Outback' so several days ago Yor organized a small group to try to take a slow look around certain spots out there, instead of rushing through as most groups do. We gathered a nice group in the Meadow and set out toward deep Orga territory.

We had no difficulty in marching through Hatred Hollow, but when we reached the Dred Passage, we knew we were in for a wild ride. As the fighters started to rush in to clear all the Orga near the entry, we were quick to notice that the lightning was particularly intense. Still, we quickly cleared the junk and entered behind the healer rod to rush toward the Foothills path. As we approached the South pit, the chain lightning was immense, and the rods and exiles standing anywhere near the healers were taking a lot of punishment.

In the pit, I found myself directly facing five Dredlocks and all their fury. I hightailed it for the Foothills path, but ran right into an Orga Hemlock standing directly in the way. That slowed me down enough to get me fried. The folks who entered behind me fared no better, and no one made it to the path, let alone through it. Indeed, several exiles were stuck outside the pit itself, as Death Vermine and Zerks appeared at that moment and angled to surround the rod there. Everyone fell.

A rescue group was started by Snowlion, and after a time the trusty Orga Zealots began their chants to send us all to the Orga Village. The rescue group had little trouble reaching us there, and managed to raise us all. No mean feat considering all the lightning thrown about that brought most of us down!

Today, I joined the Puddleby Task Force group to help them clear out the Dred Passage and kill those Dredlocks. We had a very tough group and enough healers for two strong rods. Even so, it wasn't easy getting through the Dred Passage today. The lightning was still extremely intense. Indeed, by the time the last of the six Dredlocks in the South pit was killed, there were few exiles still standing in the group other than the healer rod. We recovered pretty quickly though, and advanced to the Northeast to the other pit to clear it as well. I got my first look at the cave there (and saw no paths) and went into the Foothills by the old Northeastern route for the first time. So for anyone heading to the Foothills, the Dred Passage should be back to its usual annoying self, instead of some crazed and terrifying doppleganger of it.

While in the Foothills, we headed deeper in to Dredwood and killed Ironwood Giants there, and moved on through the Orga Barricade to take a look at the cave containing the enigmatic book, The Tao of Trillbane. Nothing new there, although I could not even see the path leading to that book! Thankfully we had a few well-trained pathfinders along.

On the way back, I stopped in the Camp Dred cave to stare a long time at the unopenned path there, but without success in learning to open it. I will keep trying though.

Also several days ago, I was asked to help rescue several fallens that had been mauled by Rebels on Tenebrion's Island.

Apparently, Tenebrion has left and chaos has erupted as factions among his guards have attempted to seize control of the island. Landing on the beaches, one immediately notices newly erected walls and fortifications, and these are generally staffed by large numbers of Rebel guards.

I joined a rescue group that already had already established a safe beachhead, and we worked our way slowly up toward Tenebrion's castle. The folks were were rescuing (White Wolf, Tara, and others) were scattered about on the way. After a number of lures toward the waiting fighters, we would advance another snell into the island and kill every last Rebel there before repeating the process. It took quite some time because the guards were out in large numbers, and the Rebel Commanders and Dark Knights are pretty tough fighters! Running ahead of the group was simply begging to be surrounded and felled.

After a time, we had advanced all the way to Flanders' field, and since Yor had a pass key, we entered the Castle via the underground tunnel to Tenebrion's conference room. Once there, we started assaulting the courtyard, where we were attacked by a stunning number of pebbles thrown by Guards on the walls above us. We made progress and cleared the courtyard, but some folks pressed on to attack guards on the walls too, and were surrounded and pounded to paste. We tried chain rescues, but lost as many as we saved. I managed to chain out three folks in one run, only to get trapped and fall on my next try. I was eventually chained out as well, and finally a long string of fallens were dragged back to town (through Melabrion's conference room, since TI was far to crowded to run through) to be healed. By the time I left, the rescue had taken on a life of it's own, as new exiles joined both the fighting and the pile to be rescued, in about equal numbers. For all I know, it's still going on!

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