Current Training: • You can no longer train with “The Tao of Trillbane”.

Donations: Cassia Allin (30-40%).

Exploration: Slate caves

Merdi, day 2 of Winter, 558.

With continued effort over the past zodiacs, I have finished reading all of The Tao of Trillbane.

With so much pathfinding training, I am constantly looking for new paths everywhere I go.

I have not found many new paths, but the ones I have noticed for the first time are always in very interesting places.

Some of these I have opened, while others still remain tantalizingly out of my reach.

The one major breakthough has been that I can enter a new Cavern system where lurk powerful Slate Arachnoids. The Pitch Assault Group has been trying our luck in what we are calling the Slate Caverns. So far, the Slate Noids are winning, but we are beginning to understand these powerful opponents and expect to make progress against them in the future.

I have continued my wanderings around odd and seldom-visited spots in the Lands looking for new paths, when I find a quiet time.

I have been concentrating on the Eastern-most accessible areas of the island, in hopes that additional routes to the far East side of the island might exist. No luck so far.

In addition to my usual haunts in the Greymyr Village, I recently visited the Waterslide cavern and the Night Wendecka Breeding Grounds.

It was fun to poke around in places like this I rarely go, but I turned up nothing new.

I was also disappointed to not even catch a glimpse of a Silverback Wendecka. A fine trophy he would make!

Several other Fighters have managed to become Rangers now, including Elenis Rayav. Congratulations!

Elenis seems to have learned a few new tricks in the Ranger Hall already.

One amusing ability is the ability to appear like a beast rather than an exile.

In this sketch, both Elenis and Relkin appear to be Vermine.

They can run about like this for a time before reverting to their natural appearance.

I am not sure how other Vermine treat them when camoflaged like this, but certainly Orga don't believe their disguises yet. Perhaps with more training their masquerade will be more convincing, and they will learn to mimic other beasts as well. It remains to be seen how useful this is in the field.

Elenis also showed off an ability to run extra quickly for a short time, leaving other exiles to eat his dust.

This burst of speed can be quite useful when being pursued and fleeing for your life!

One thing I noticed after the recent Chaos Storm was a nice refinishing job on the town dock, which now has a more weathered appearance.

One hopes that Nerry instigated this work in hopes that more ships might dock here, but I see no signs of it.

We could certainly do with more trade from distant islands or even the Mainland, and it never hurts to have more opportunities for slipping onto a boat heading elsewhare and so escaping exile at last.

I have spent a considerable amount of time in the Foothills lately.

If I am not hunting in Dredwood, I am wandering the Foothills proper or occassionally running to the Orga Village to rescue fallen exiles chanted there by Orga Zealots.

On one run through the Foothills en route to the Orga Village, Yor and I found and fought an impressive 20 Large Midnight Wendecka. The pick of the litter had a remarkable 106 coin pelt, which I was pleased to recover intact.

All the Dredwood hunting finally got to several of us, though, and we organized a small group to hunt in the Orga Camps instead. We cleared Orga Camp 2, but found it a bit difficult with our small group, so instead of fighting our way into deeper sections there, we headed on to Hatred Hollow.

Things went well at Hatred Hollow until we found a bona fide Orga Hatred and we had trouble trapping it in a Kudzu wall. Finally we got it right, and headed through to the Orga Outback. We cleared every snell in the Orga Outback and the Orga Village twice before calling it a day. It was a lot more fun than the pickup Dredwood hunts I had been frequenting.

And of course, I spent some time hunting on Kizmia's island recently.

It was a crying shame when we ruined this spectacular 243 coin Orgaberry Lyfe pelt!

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