Storm 499.

Donations: Nate Autical.

Exploration: I finally reach the Metz Tepui.

Gradi, Day 11 of Summer, 567.

PAG was looking for something interesting to do recently - interesting being anything not involving Arachnoids - and we decided to tackle Sarra.

We entered through the path at Rainbow Falls, and quickly established a safe base.

We followed the Rock walls around clockwise throughout the hunt, and slowly cleared each snell.

Since we did not see any or lose anyone to illusory pools, things went very well.

Until we reached the final snell, at the far Southwest.

Maybe we were tired and sloppy, or maybe just unlucky, but that last snell was a snell too far, and the hunt was quickly overwhelmed by hordes of Sarra'dons and Sarra'yrms.

The retreat was very disorderly, since no one seemed to know where to go.

I was on a chain by that point and no help in marshalling the group to gather at a defensible position, of which there were several nearby.

It was great hunt while it lasted, and as close as I'd ever come to seeing every part of Sarra cleared in a single hunt.

Right before the end, however, I realized that I had just as many coins in my purse after 8 snells of hunting as I had when I arrived, and made this pronouncement.

On another trip, we started out hunting in the Twilight Wendecka passes at the Northwest section of Metzetli Island.

Rather that head to the Arachne Temple there, we turned South and went down several cliffs to reach the cliff-wall overlooking the Western plain of Metzetli Island.

Curiously, one normally sees Basalt Greymyr up on these cliffs throwing rocks down at hunters below, but today we found these cliffs strangely quiet while the plain below had Basalt Greymyrs and Twilight Wendeckas trying to throw their rocks up at us on the cliff.

The rocks still hurt.

We then took the the cliff passage into the Gloaming Wendecka caves and fought our way through the caves to the river crossing and the Rainforest.

It was a very roundabout route, but a worthwhile one.

In the Rainforest, we hunted for some time before calling it a day.

I was pleased to reach the first Hellebore patch on my feet for a change, instead of being dragged fallen by my feet as seems to happen all too often.

We decided to chance the ground level pathfinder entry into the deep Rainforest, but it was a rout for the group when the Kudzu wall was planted incompletely and ebnnded up growing to trap more beasts than it kept out.

One by one, we lost many to Hellebores there (of course) and sadly ended up departing.

The other sad news was that about half of the Yorillas are now kills for me.

PAG decided to try the Deathroot entry to the Metzetli Island Rainforest recently.

After some initial trouble gaining a foothold, we persevered and eventually conquered the entry.

Marching onward, we explored the Deathroot Arachne Temple yet again.

We didn't notice any changes here, but it seems clear there is more to this ruined temple that we are unable to enter.

Continuing onward, we used vines in the treetops to cross the river into the main Rainforest on the South bank.

Since we were making good time, we continued into the deeper Rainforest, but wisely deided to forgo the pathfinder route on the ground for an arboreal route.

We fought our way through the treetops and the ground until we finally reached the Tepui.

This was my first time in the Tepui itself, and I was pleased to have finally made it to an area I had heard much about.

We set up a Kudzu fort on the cliff edge, and began thinning out the vast numbers of Sazaja and Yorillas.

The Tepui holds an amazing number of these terrible beasts, and we kept fighting for quite some time without even thinking of advancing.

As time wore on, and after the long trip to reach here, we decided to take our leave.

Two extremelly odd things happened as we used Ethereal Portals to go home.

First, in the EP snell I saw what looked like an inactive Kyuem just sitting there, which I had never seen or heard of before.

Second, when we returned to our plane, we landed not at the Portal Island but in Camp Dred instead.

Sometimes you get very very lucky.

I was out hunting in the Foothills passes, when the rumble of a rockslide startled me.

When the dust settled, I could see tumbled rocks all around me, yet I stood in a clear spot and not one rock had scratched me.