Stories of Lore 18

So we’ve made progress on the horse thing you had us start looking into. We can probably start breeding them reliably now, though it should be noted due to the climate it may be more expensive then its worth overall.

Aato mentions that reaching the northern island will definitely take a concentrated naval effort. Judging by the scout reports of the area, the shore is actually very dangerous. As you know, aquatic based monsters tend to be bigger and meaner then most, and the same could be said of northern ones. So here on this northern island, happens to be a nesting ground for one of the only true semi aquatic monster species we’ve seen. Basically, taking that shore is going to suck. Even after its taken these species are likely to keep sneaking up on the coast line from the water trying to return to its nesting grounds. While the dawnbreakers can make short work of that for securing a landing zone, the problem is when the one’s who aren’t on that particular spot of the shore come back from whatever they are doing in the water whenever we happen to arrive. This colony idea will require a near constant naval station in order to harvest the mana from the sea just to keep those things under control…until we make them extinct at least.

All that being said, we don’t know what is further inland. The scouts who sold the report never landed on it for all the reasons mentioned above. Aato estimates we’ll need a force of at minimum 2500 strength for both the land and sea efforts. He was very clear that was ‘the minimum assuming nothing goes wrong’. He then estimated the odds of something going wrong to be about ninety two percent. Aato also assembled something of a profile report on who he wants to go with him and why. Secretary girl wrote down what he said verbatim so…

Essi – “Because she’s nearly unkillable and will be needed to engineer the defenses of the colony.”
Nalky – “Maybe it can assert itself as the alpha. Also its a mana eater so it can find a good spot to set up without us having to send a team of scouts with test tubes who are likely to die without being escorted by the whole army. So it’d just be a good use of resources to have a pig find the truffle instead of an army of people with shovels.”
Iraeka – “practically born for this kind of job. Also she can see at night and that’s usually when everyone dies in these circumstances.”
Chinami – “Self explanatory.”
Iwanagi – “The most experienced sailor in the entire alliance who has somehow not died.”
Ansa – “If we’re going to encounter whole new species of monsters on their home nesting ground, this seems like something we might need her for. Without her talents we could wind up not knowing something important that gets us eaten. While normally not as big of a concern – we are investing a lot into this, we will be far from home, and this is requiring a full military invasion just because of monsters alone. She could save us a lot of pain.”
Literally any druid – “Just fucking because. I’ll take Shime too if that’s the best I can get, but someone write the elves a letter for me.”
Literally any pathfinder – “It’s in their fucking name.”

Iraeka has started skulking about the northern village and found quite a large tribe of aggressive fur wearing folk. Here is the weird part, despite attacking everyone else who has ever gone there they actually think Iraeka is some sort of ghost. More on that in a moment, but they were at least quite willing to talk with her even if a bit tentatively. The northern savages consider themselves part of an alliance known as the Skjöldal. We may have already enslaved a few of their alliance when we took the village near Uudistar. They are in an active war with Alosne, who they see as invaders of the northern lands. Okay, history time.

The true Skjöldal is a civilization that predates the dying night who once inhabited these northern lands. Through the during night they tried to keep ahold of it, doing surprisingly well despite how harsh this place is, especially without sunlight. Due to its abundant mana they were able to at least sustain themselves with various magical ideas. So I think you can see where I’m going with this. Their actual capital is a ruin of a civilization built on top of a ruin built on top of a ruin built on top of one of our ruins. A place we used to call Valkeakoski, though they call it Hellengdom now. This is why they were somewhat perturbed by the presence of Iraeka, they think she is a nalkas because she looks like the paintings. Perhaps more accurately, she looks kind of like Ansa – in terms of a broad racial profile at least. Dark tinted skin, pointy ears, white hair, really intense eyes.

From their point of view, the north belongs to them since they stuck out the hard times here and made it their home. Alosne are a people who just wandered in and decided to start taking over the place in their moment of weakness after the effects of the dying night. The problem has been that Alosne is much more advanced and organized so has been constantly taking ground. Not to mention they have entered into treaties with Faelyn, which gives them access to the badlands military technology. The north is vast, and there are many more villages however Alosne has never gone to the Skjöldal home. There exists an island to the north east, and this is where Hellengdom is. This is also where the barbarians are coming from, they came back to the mainland to try and colonize some of the land but ran into Alosne.

So here is the thing with that, neither of them are actually native to this exact stretch of snow. Skjöldal comes from an island and after the dying night came here to colonize. Alosne were nomads without a home who arrived in the north to find a place to settle down and colonize as well. They were both too invested by the time they made first contact and it escalated into a war. A series of raids into Alosne territory by the savages provoked Alosne into a more militant policy regarding them and that was how it all got started.

This is where I have heard an odd theory that holds up a little too well, but is none the less just an unproven conspiracy theory. It comes to us from our embassy in the badlands. See Alosne only started trading heavily during the escalation of this war, until then they were very independent. Also the Alosne were very well defended, it was hard to understand how a series of raids took place on them the way they did with so little facts in the aftermath having any real evidence. All the raiders disappeared and left no trace behind, which doesn’t actually fit the stereotype of these barbarians. So the conspiracy theory I’ve heard, is that the entire war was actually provoked and sustained by the badlands so they could profit off of it.  The rumors suspect it was Faelyn who did it as obviously it has made her very wealthy, not to mention that is her area of operations. Atop of that it is known she has influence over both of those factions, even having an Alosne and Skjöldal warrior as members of her elite guard collection.

Though I disagree. I get this nagging feeling as if my wisdom check noticed something a lesser man might have missed. Faelyn doesn’t play that way, she’s very direct and makes sure people know for certain when she is involved. Sort of the draconic pride I think, she wants people to know exactly who is fucking with them. When she found Gideon, she sent an army with banners in her name to us. Her antics in the underdark were also very overt. Recruiting in huge numbers, planting her flag in the corpses of the old matrons, selling them technology and so forth. In the badlands her puppet Laura is well known to everyone, she keeps Laura standing right next to her as a pet just like all the other people of interest she has collected. She just doesn’t strike me as someone who would use tactics so heavily rooted in subterfuge when everything about her seems to be equivalent to slapping her metaphorical dick on the table and offering you to measure it.

So make of all that what you will.

Started building the cannons and such, those take a bit of construction time but shall be ready soon. Might want to tell Alexandria to wait up if she wants the cannons though.

In regards to selling Anirace based stuff, actually that seems to be going well. Though they would like to see our field to see what we’re really offering and are sending some people to take a look. It should be done by the time they get here at least. Also our embassy finished setting up in full over in Maji.

Greetings keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. In order to build a proper trade outpost in the southern isles we will need to send some boats. While there are plenty of resources we could process there, as all of colonization thus far has proven – you need to be able to protect any colony you try to start. That and also we just need to get the people to build the colony there in the first place, which means a long sea voyage. Which is also dangerous.

Our scouting boat has arrived near Sanctuary to scout out the area. It seems for the most part neither the archdruid nor Cayetano outpost minds too much if we were to set up in the area. However, in terms of the viability of the land itself it is serviceable if the location is of interest though it has no stand out qualities in its resources that might warrant immediate exploitation. It could do with more trees though.

With heavy heart I must inform you that tragedy has struck. One of our scout crews has disappeared into the depths of the ocean while scouting close to the northeastern isle, victims of a monster attack.

Iwanagi found another settlement…this is clearly a very large island. They are a little less friendly though, outright hostile even. They wore a lot of skeletal garments of humanoid fashion and didn’t seem to speak the common language. Fortunately he was able to escape their grasp though had to subdue at least a dozen before he could get his boat back out to sea. They pursued in smaller canoes, though he was able to deal with those as well. So they are apparently quite committed to not engaging in diplomacy unlike the other two we have found. It is worth noting that it was quite a large settlement for a people so violent.

In regards to Yuzuki and Shime’s ongoing scuffle, I wouldn’t say there is much risk of them killing each other. Though Yuzuki is upset that Shime has been so disapproving of the Sohei techniques, it all started when Shime made a comment about weapons not equalling better when kinesis alternatives are available. However, unlike her conflict with Serizawa, Yuzuki proves to be much stronger. Shime lost that fight by a significant margin actually, even when fleeing into the woods to demonstrate alternative solutions to actual fighting, Yuzuki ran her down and, in her own words “beat Shime into the dirt until she stopped twitching”. They’re not quite enemies over the matter, in fact Yuzuki is still Shime’s translator, but Yuzuki has displayed no interest in learning kinesis techniques. Instead she wants to refine the sohei further, and has requested that once the monastery is rebuilt that she be given funding to do an experiment. It might cost about 1g all things considered, quite an expensive project for the monastery to embark upon, though Yuzuki seems adamant. Shime for her part has returned to Haven to train others in her particular style, and continues to disapprove of Yuzuki’s path in turning the monastery away from enlightenment and peacekeeping towards militaristic warfare. Notably Shime has been training very hard at Haven, intent on being able to defeat Yuzuki once she has fully mastered kinesis to rival Yuzuki’s mastery of the sohei techniques.

Also I have a suggestion for the envoy to the elves. We could send Konya on the joint venture by the Nalkas and Katara towards Moncayo pass and have him just hop off the boat at Lennecas. This would ensure he reaches it swiftly and would have sufficient protection for the voyage. He could then just wait for their return trip to bring him back.

Also reconstruction is going well! We hope to be done within the next cycle, at least done enough that we can resume life as normal.

Eliana is here visiting now. She seems quite interested in taking note of how we abandoned the practice of witchcraft so recently. She maintains her “don’t care” stance towards everything, or at least she did. But see…she happened to arrive on the day that Alexandria was burning cultists in the street and it was…awkward. Petrina had to stop Alexandria from doing anything to Eliana it seemed, who is definitely not amused over that. I have Eliana staying here in the palace with us obviously if there was anything in particular you wanted to talk to her about while we have the opportunity. If…your earlier plan to uh… commit necrophilia as you put it still stands then um…you know what you’re on your own for that.

As another bit of news, the Knight’s Sanctum has finished its first wave of training under Petrina now that she’s had time to focus on it since the cult problem has come to a close. All the cavalry under her command have been converted to Knights.

So we picked him up from the badlands, well financially speaking at least. He still has to walk over here. The mercenary goes by the name Ivan Sabantseva and his former city was destroyed by the orcish warpath some time ago. We had to assure him that the curse wasn’t still lingering over our city. Then we found out he’s an actual dragonborn and is a native of Kirillobatov who wandered off to the river city that got destroyed.

Basically he is even stronger then Areti physically speaking and judging by his age he has quite the experience to go with it. A veteran of many battles and skirmishes. He is somewhat refined and reserved in his mannerisms, very professional.

Also we sent up Christina though you may wish to put a more elaborate thought into what you want her to do up there given the complexities of the political situation in there as we’ve seen with their first contact with the nalkas.

Ryo has arrived at Kirillobatov and talked to the elders there.

Also some elves moved back into Tethalyn so the population has gone up a little there, it appears that the people who were fleeing from the orcs are more scared of orcs then mad at us and didn’t trust something that is going on in Aywin’s politics or something to that effect. Also with Ankathi gone even Neyth is a bit less wary of us. So…here is the problem. They came back to Tethalyn to reclaim the druidic temple there and have sort of set up an elven ghetto in that neighborhood. Which means they still have some reverence for the wilds and that temple. Which means they don’t know about Alexandria…and Alexandria is about to pass through there on her way to Moncayo pass. Not to mention she will also pass through Lennecas. Where there are actively practitioning druids. We just gave her an army of snipers.

Oh and the roads are done.

Also our girls made it to show up for their first Anirace game in Ahedama! They did not win. At least it wasn’t an outright humiliation, they did pretty well for their first real game. Juma says going up against the Ahedama team is a tough first match as their team is composed of professional marauders. Though since we own the team we got some of the revenue anyways. We got about 1724g for it. Apparently there was a good turnout as it was the first game of the season and people were curious about our girls.

Stories of Lore 17

Okay so maybe I didn’t go with everyone else. I had to grade some papers. Anyways they had some clever plans too. Though for the most part Okushiri is still standing, so that’s all good. Matleena and Pasi didn’t make it though, and we lost almost the entire army we sent down there. Only ten units of knights and twenty units of soldiers remain. Though all the manifesters lived since they were on the boat. Aato also retrieved a peculiarly powerful enchanted item that makes its wearer almost unkillable with a looping heal spell. Though it exceeds its passive mana abilities and has to be charged manually or it would take a few years for it to recharge on its own. You could probably sell this in the badlands for a few thousand mana, I’ve never seen anything like it. The recharge cost of it is only ten mana if you wanted to have someone use it. Though on the bad side, Ankathi showed up and took both of the orc artifacts present at the battle for some reason. She seemed very interested in it. I am sure nothing horrible will come from this. We still have Bagrak’s though.

Also as a sort of note from the battle, we’ve learned just how Aato uses mana different then other manifesters. He tends to super charge his own soldiers instead of summoning a proxy army. He has put in a request for a study on his own armor design to take this technique to its logical extremes if you’re interested in funding Essi’s lab to conduct said experiments. Would be about fifteen mana for the testing at least.

On to the tech division. The crystal the katara sent us is very interesting. From a material perspective the amount of mana it can hold is particularly relevant, which means either big enchantments or just…can transport it from place to place really conveniently. For initial ideas from the academy, this thing can be used as the core piece for a particularly powerful ship. The advanced wood of the Oda dawnbreakers allows them to even utilize the scorching ray ballista for more then one or two shots. If you put this thing in a ships hold you could make a massively more powerful weapon. Especially if you make the ship out of the fancy wood, basically the most powerful ship ever conceived of. Largely with some help from the katara’s new dreadnought we got to take a look at. Alternatively you could make a more land focused monstrosity if you let Essi have it, it’s one of those moments where you’re wondering what crazy idea she’ll have and then she just does something ridiculous with it. She promises it would be really cool though. For my own notes, this is the only material we’ve ever gotten our hands on that could be used to make a third gate stone. As I mentioned I can replicate the spell but just didn’t have any material that would sustain the enchantment. You can also come up with any specific requests if you have any ideas, that was just to get the gears spinning. Do note though, any of these designs would still cost a lot of mana to build and maintain but at least with the crystal they would be plausible.

So in regards to the guns and stuff there are some ways to go with this. We can produce fairly useable soldiers very cheaply and efficiently by handing them a gun, takes very little effort to train them to use it. The alternative idea is to just hand it to a soldier trained in multiple forms of combat to create elite units who have both ranged and melee training and weaponry. There is also the obvious “lets put all our eggs in one basket” type of soldier where we hand a knight the gun and stick them on the hoverbikes.

Ansa reached the city of Alosne, I’m starting to notice a recurring theme all these empires are named after the first city they managed to settle and expand from. Alosne is ruled by a sort of theocracy, worshiping what Eliana referred to as their ‘thingamajigger’. To be a bit more clear, they worship a specific person.

This adrogynous mess is named is Sakae, and they are very uncomfortable being worshipped. That doesn’t seem to deter their people any though. Ansa did a close up study and this is where it gets a little…okay completely stupid. The people think Sakae is a demigod descended from the primordial wilds and the primordial light as a sort of hybrid, despite his own admission that he’s just a normal person they won’t believe him. To be fair though, he’s eighty years old and clearly doesn’t age. According to the people Ansa talked to, he has been witnessed to survive being executed…by the people who now worship him. I warned you this was about to get stupid.

So basically he was executed for being too effeminate and making men feel uncomfortable. As well as making all the nobles wives fall in love with him on sight or something stupid to that effect. The official reason was theft but Ansa notes you don’t execute people for stealing fruit off a tree that’s hanging over the public street. So after a formal execution they found him sneaking off towards the badlands. Upon realizing there was only one person in the whole village that looked like Sakae, they did the math that he survived after his body was unceremoniously dumped into a frozen river. So of course the first response to this by the peasants who discovered him? He must clearly be the messiah, let’s take him prisoner and make him king.

The noble originally responsible said that if he’s really a demigod they should get to execute him a second time just to make sure. Saying that if Sakae lived a second time he would offer his whole estate to Sakae as penance. The peasants said that was sacrilegious to even suggest it and burned his whole estate down and then executed him. This whole time Sakae was kept prisoner by the peasants who supposedly worshiped him because he kept trying to sneak off to the south. Seriously they had him in chains while claiming he was a demigod that they needed to bow down to. They were afraid he would run away to bring divine judgement back on them if they didn’t repent while he was still there or something idiotically superstitious.

Okay so now lets get into what he really is and isn’t. Turns out Ansa’s mastery of this field makes her pretty good at figuring it out before anyone can tell her otherwise. He is not a demigod. He is a….dragonborn aasimar? A dragon fucked an angel and he popped out. He’s half dragon half angel. For that kind of mix you would expect something on par with a demigod right? Turns out no, he’s quite frail and kind of sickly. Ansa points out that if you don’t have a humanoid as the midpoint, crossover genetics tend to be…not great. Instead of inheriting the strength of a dragon and the power of an angel he’s just lucky to be alive. He is nearsighted, allergic to almost everything, his bones are brittle, and apparently he is always sick. He’s not good with magic or with ki or with draconic magic or anything. He’s just some kid who can survive being stabbed and thrown in a river at least once and has a very long lifespan.

This is Alosne’s demigod. Because its peasants are fucking stupid. That being said, he’s actually a competent ruler. Alosne went from being a medium sized village to a civilization that spans the north under his guidance. While he’s not that powerful, his parents are. This is about to get even more moronic so hold on to your seat. See the reason they worship him is that neither of his parents talk to each other anymore. Kind of a bad divorce you could say? However, they are drawing powers from both. As long as Sakae is there neither will straight up destroy Alosne to spite the other and instead try to outdo one another as both want the favoritism of the kid.

I shit you not this is happening between an angel and a dragon. Except on this scale that means instead of buying him candy, they give his country massive boons. The smart priests figured this all out, and realized as long as they have Sakae his parents won’t try to fight by way of making the followers enter civil war. So they worship Sakae instead of either of his parents to prevent a schism. It is literally illegal to build a temple to either the dragon or the angel, it all has to be dedicated to Sakae who is just trying to not die from a cough.

I can’t…I can’t deal with an entire kingdom coming to power based on this scale of dumb luck. They were lucky he didn’t die when executed given a slight breeze looks like it might do him in, they were lucky his parents really liked him, they were lucky he’s actually a good king, they were lucky that the clergy were smart enough to figure out the long con and prevent total civil war. We saw what happened to Katara when they tried to mix two things at once, and yet they somehow managed to escape that based on the fact the peasants just happened to be dumb enough to think Sakae was a messiah with such fervor that they forced him into being king even if they had to chain him to the throne.

As a final note, the Archdruid sent us some gift for helping in the war. We’re out of her normal reach so she just sent some seeds to us. They’re glowing so I’m pretty sure they’re neat.

Greetings keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. We’re still alive after all. So war report, in my defense it was the best plan to cut the fighting short and the losses just as short. It just happened to mean we broke a lot of the city in the process. The nalkas manifesters took over the bulk of the troop work, though we still lost most of the recently recruited soldiers. The orcs also managed to kill Motsqueh who decided to try and punch the whole horde to death. Serizawa met an unfortunate end alongside him as well.

We managed to kill both commanders though their artifacts were taken by Ankathi of all people who showed up just towards the end to snatch the things. Though we might not have been able to kill the warchief without her so…make what you will of that.

The city is extensively damaged as a result of all this. But the Archdruid has overgrown the empty fields outside of our city so we have easy access to the lumber needed for repairs. She also chose to make it all the special wood from Tonarooka we were trying to harvest since that was what we happened to have planted. So our trade route is looking great and we might have some very fancy houses soon. As a final reward she left us with this thing.

This is Nemnas, a sea monster that is apparently fairly intelligent. Though it definitely improves our control of the seas. No one would even think to look under our fleet for such a thing. It’s also quite good at dealing with other monsters. However, there is a bit of a catch. Only certain people are capable of commanding it since we aren’t exactly druids. Chinami’s hydromancy allows her to, it is also suspected that Shime could as well.

On to other news, we’ve finished reconstructing the village in the badlands. Though it will take some time for it to really get moving because we’re currently fixing the capital up and there was just a big battle with the orcs. However, its colonists have decided to invest their efforts heavily as a trading post. We can expect great returns on this I feel.

Iwanagi continues to sail the island’s coast to see what he’s come across. There’s another island right next to it that he spotted as well.

Kaylen pointed out there aren’t really maps to the orc lands simply because they are a nomadic people. Its just known that they are most frequently located in the plains south east of the badlands.

Okay so lets start today off with the anirace team. We’ve managed to pay off all the gear to get them set up, and they’ve taken to hiring Juma as their full time coach. He might have originally intended to be a competitor but apparently the cushy job of yelling at a bunch of half naked women to do things with his anirace balls is good at making him consider new options. We haven’t told him the curse is broken yet. I’m debating telling them to never inform him about it just to see how long it takes him to cave because some of our girls are a bit…lets say ravenous.

As for the home field, do you want to use the actual forest and just laugh as people try to use those mounts to cross through it or do you want to register it in the abandoned outskirts of the city itself? We easily have enough abandoned urban environment to make a field of. I mention it because the forest is full of monsters and it will definitely take a lot of resources to keep it safe for use and play during the games for spectators especially. Clearing out every inch of nine square miles can be a bit of an invested effort.

Since we’re throwing this much money into a sports team I figure maybe I should mention the team captain. Elpida Remelis is formerly a blacksmith from Sybaris who more or less had a pretty well adjusted and normal life. I was going to make a joke about that being exhilarating and shocking, then I got depressed when I remembered that actually is kind of unusual around here. She used to work in the eastern section of the city and was primarily just hired by the people for day to day things like nails, tools, and so forth. Not quite Iliana from the south side but still a useful part of the civilian economy.

Perhaps due to her rather normal life she is a fairly upbeat and optimistic girl. She wound up going on the trip to Maji to play in the games just as a break from her somewhat monotonous day to day life. She became team captain slash manager because she’s one of the few there who can both read and write. She’s not the best player on the team, but the best player is a cranky former soldier who just keeps to themselves and you can repeat that story for pretty much every player better then her that we have. So she makes a better captain for the public to focus their attention on.

Also now that the war with the orcs is concluded, the Archdruid has come by to help with our spirit problem. Yaaay and of course someone had to go and fuck it up. The demon and coven cultists decided, the instant she got here, to try and kill her. So…that didn’t make us look too good. I have spent all of yesterday apologizing and trying not to piss her off before she destroys the entire city as her method of fixing the problem. On the upside they failed to hurt her at least. On the downside they are actively fighting back against the exorcism and making things hard for her…so she is leaning towards that mass destruction thing out of irritation. Amare has been working with Petrina to try and eradicate the cultists. Notably Amare vouches for just murdering them as they’re found instead of taking them prisoner as Petrina prefers. Especially since Eliana is supposed to visit next week and the cultists might do something stupid again.

Oh also, we still have Bagrak, and she is still blind and chained up.

While we’re at it, though Petrina is busy trying to keep Sybaris under control she has declared herself the knight-commander. We weren’t really in much position to object and now the trainees are here in Sybaris with her helping hunt down the cultists. Bit of a hit the ground running training style I suppose.

If there is any positive news regarding local affairs its that Thyra still has all those slaves we got from the badlands awhile back. So once she’s done stopping off at Oda’s docks to let them examine the dreadnought we can start fixing the prince problem assuming the spirits are gone by then.

In relation to the orc news, Ankathi was seen at Okushiri to take the orcish artifacts. I mention this because I can’t help but recall she is the one who originally figured out how they work and how the mindless orcs were being made. So…she’s going to have an army soon one way or another it seems. Just not sure what she wants it for or where she would build this army.

So with the guns we got from the badlands the military division figured out two routes to go with it. The first of which being we just give some girls guns and tell them how to use it. This is vastly cheaper then normal as it requires far less training for us to reach a level of competency with a gun as opposed to all the physical conditioning and difficult training our warriors normally face.

Though one of the lieutenants came up with another concept she calls the pathfinders. Training scouts to extremes as a special force and equipped with magic trinkets to prevent things like scrying so they can move with a level of sneakiness she said. Essentially the stealthy template stamped next to it means that they are not normally possible for enemy scouts to notice. Causing them to either have no idea where the units are or how many are really in the army if its a mixed force. To be noted, druids can still find them in forests because druids are extremely good with spotting things in a forest. The pathfinders would be trained in guerilla tactics as well as close quarters weaponry to fulfill a variety of tasks.

((Mechanics note. Guerilla template gives them the ability to surprise attack a hex then make an opposed roll to disengage before any further combat rounds can begin. The 2 is a bonus to the roll because they have long range weapons so they have a bit of a head start on running away))

We sent the crystal up to the nalkas, also we received the other strange artifact. As far as any of us can tell its some sort of religious historical artifact, that or just a really weird and ornate design. It’s a small statue like thing but its so worn down and cracks have flaked off over the years but its embedded with gold and jewelry, notably a chunk of them are likely missing if this was a symmetrical piece due to the earlier mentioned things.

Finally, Ryo noted that he can see orcs in the area he is passing through. He’s not quite sure where they’re coming from and is making a distinct effort to sneak around but it is worth noting those are the plains we heard about the orcs coming from.