Sent more people to the island to help Aato, the ongoing exploration of the labyrinth’s outer perimeter has been slow. Due to the rotating nature of the place we technically didn’t lose too many lives so much as we literally lost them. Hopefully the turn back up eventually. Though we are fairly certain the undead are originating from this place. Aato is fairly certain they were once guardians of the fortified location but a few keep slipping out now and then. Though once you go in there they are in his own words, “fucking everywhere.”

Our golem guest has been restored to Ansa’s idea of correct. Now we can’t tell them apart from anyone else without close inspection. Thus proving that Ansa can do it at the least. As a slight side effect, we have no idea where the golem girl went. Ansa calls it a ‘test run’ to see how long they can go without being discovered. I call it an omen.

Though we’ve also come up with some upgrades to our existing golems to improve their efficiency overall at least. So the mines are going well.

Greetings keeper, It is a glorious day for the Oda people! Iwanagi’s efforts to establish trade relations are going well, turns out people who are paranoid of leaving their own fort have a lot of stuff they want and they’re warming up to him as it were.

Unfortunately I cannot ask Kaylen about the mounted monks since she has returned to the badlands and is in an active war at the moment.

Built the ship though, and Kaze has found another lead though its taking him off deeper into the forests.

Alexandria’s forces are headed east towards the plains the orcs supposedly came from. Nyssa is also moving in that direction Albeit a bit blindly.

Ryo and the people of kirillobatov have arrived in Sybaris, while we do have a lot of unused space around here that was still…quite the influx. They are currently settling in around here.

Ankathi and I have started conducting rituals to create dragonborn, of particular note would be myself and Petrina who are some of the first test subjects. I feel funny, that is the extent of my observations so far. Though Ankathi had kind of left me to figure it out on my own as she’s taken off onto some other adventure now. I may need to hire someone to sweep up the coven temple, this place is huge.

Essi has made a few prototypes none of which seem very practical but at least all of which hurts single targets quite well. Not the most portable ideas so far though. At best maybe recruit some of the Oda as their fighting methods tend to do very well against singular opponents.

Aato’s army has incurred heavy losses while trying to clear out the island, though they have uncovered a mysterious underground labyrinth hidden in one of the mountains -more of a big hill really- on the east side of the island where the peculiar undead seem to be most concentrated. Though when I say labyrinth I mean completely insane massive underground super complex. The labyrinth is more of a pit that spirals down for so far no one can see the bottom, the walls move and rotate and gravity seems to go strange within there. This is some sort of massive super defensive structure that was designed to be impenetrable, fortunately all its occupants are too dead to fully utilize the place’s defenses. The real question is why does it exist? It is clearly pretty old. We’ll have to organize a proper excavation of the place, though it does seem that the undead are coming from within it. Iraeka managed to penetrate the deepest in, there is evidence of homes and perhaps a once great civilization. So its not entirely a fortification, a kingdom must have once lived there. That at least explains the size.

In discussing things with the badlands king in some sort of defensive alliance, he’s open to the prospect if you want to send an army to the badlands right now though more advanced terms of diplomacy are not currently available for review while Kaylen is busy. Since she would be the one to generally handle military alliances and affairs, but is currently trying to handle the orc incursion overall.

As for the resources needed to chase down Saeya Morgan, we’re going to need to put a bit more thought into this. We don’t fully understand the Eye as it were and all we know is just that it is very dangerous. To that end, we also don’t know if she is still there. A chance exists that Cayetano successfully captured her and took her back home with them. According to the golems killing her isn’t very simple as her power will find a way to pass on. Hillevi compared this to her notes from Lenahone and has a theory about some of the names. Her current hunch is that if the witch is killed, the primordial essence transfers to someone else in some way we don’t really have any guesses on. Though its her explanation for why some of the names don’t have Morgan in them. Which means the third possibility exists that Cayetano killed her and now the essence of the Fire transitioned to someone else that we have to find. So in summary, we either need to scout the eye, cayetano, or…everywhere I suppose. It might be worth preparing another expedition to reach the eye with the sole purpose of returning from its waters just to figure out what dangers are actually there and what we need to send to actually land on it. Though if we could set up another colony there, might be worth some good mana.

Greetings keeper, it is a glorious day for the Oda people! As for communicating with the dragon, it doesn’t seem terribly amused at being asked to spell things. Dragon pride maybe, though it ate the paper we tried it with. All things considered a fairly mild response at least.

Iwanagi made it around the bounty critter and to the city of Alasl Amina. Though they are very suspicious and wary of him, possibly related to the fact that they were also just recently visited by the nalkas. I suspect they aren’t used to so many visitors from far away land. He’s wearing them down though.

Kaze and the team continue their search through the forests. So far there is evidence that they’re on the right track though its a big forest and their search efforts seem to be a bit unlucky.

We’ve begun the construction of Chiheisen in the southern isles. Takei remains on guard over it, so far the monster population of the island does seem a bit abundant and prone to trying to bite.

We’ve attempted mounting the monks, the Kensei actually show some decent promise with the idea. Though without Yuzuki no one’s sure how to design a longer weapon more suited to mounted combat for them to use. Little hit or miss, but they’re not inept at riding or using polearms at least.

Eliana doesn’t appear to have much on ki arts that we didn’t already know. Though she does have more details on some of the ones we do. In the hunt for Kyobo, she is aware that the practice of what she calls ‘angry punching’ carried on for some while after the dying night as a clan of them were able to survive a bit longer. It appears the clan died out two centuries ago when they got into an argument with the druids. However, as usual, Eliana doesn’t have much information on current events.

Perhaps we were a bit jumpy based on past experiences though the orcs seemed to have turned north and gone between the mountains and Namanru. Sticking to their general plan to avoid the major cities even at risk of being flanked in favor of not having to fight the actual fortified locations directly. Alexandria seems annoyed at the lack of fighting at the gate just a little.

We also have some reports that the orcs have more waves incoming from the east, where the first two came from and the initial force is largely a shock deployment. Apparently, Euthar’s forces are not far behind either with siege weapons that are less likely to dance around the cities like the current orcs are. So that whole thing going on over there is bound to be fun.

In other news, the market is shutting down for now due to the incursion of the orcs and with Kaylen putting the badlands under martial law. Which is a bit unusual given they are not the most unified front generally speaking but I guess when a huge army of orcs shows up they are a bit more willing to tag team things. Given that Faelyn’s army has started moving into the heart of the badlands from the north to rally with Kaylen along with Salahe’s marauders I can only imagine the political clusterfuck that must have gone down to pull that off for them.

Stories of Lore 23

The Igloo? Really man you too? Anyways, Aato is taking a look around for more clues on the undead. He has found other designs of interest, several of them are built with specialized roles that creates a variety of complications. We were already familiar with some sort of mage hunting variety but he reports also encountering a lumbering monster that’s near impossible to put down with conventional armaments. It was shot by siege weapons and didn’t seem to even notice, they team decided to run away from that one.

It seems quite clear that this is the remnants or stragglers of some sort of organized undead army. Likely created for a larger scale operation and what we’re encountering are just whatever was either left behind or managed to survive this long. Though I am curious as to what they are protecting or what they were supposed to invade.

The golem arrived, though that was quickly overshadowed evidently.

Greetings keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. The hunt for Maeng has taken some interesting turns. Chinami continues the investigation but returned to Okushiri as otherwise ordered. Though this lead to an interesting development, we discovered Maeng has actually passed through Okushiri itself on his journey before continuing southward. A few of the fisherman recognized the eccentric description Chinami provided. It is likely that Maeng is not fully aware of his abilities or their origin in ki specifically. Alosne does not use the art in a formally trained capacity and it is likely he did not even recognize he had found a land of similar warriors and just continued on his way.

I sent a message to Vasia to see if they had any clues of him passing through their lands as well. He was actually one of their princes for a short while, and apparently a popular one. Though the Katara keep their princes trapped within the city for safety due to their value, so he snuck out and decided he preferred being a free man compared to free wine, women, and an early death. So we could say he seems to have quite the adventurous spirit since he keeps passing through places he could have settled down and kept on going. Notably he visits every tavern in all these places, so we’ve gotten good at finding out where to ask around.

Our ship arrived in Melun and managed to trade the information of the latest tome we acquired with Melun for some insight into this “village on a lake within the mountain” business. Eliana told us of an old village that might match the description though it has fallen to ruin. The place was once known as Sangak and it found itself a nice place to hide by building into the crevice of a mountain that had a surprisingly spacious hollowed out interior. The mountain walls acted as a natural defense and bordered on a lake they could use to help sustain themselves, during the dying night this was one of the more successful surviving populations due to these factors. It’s location has been marked on the map with a green square.

It is quite easy to talk at the dragon. They are fully intelligent and can understand our language, they just don’t speak it in return. Something about slim forked tongues, a lack of lips, and their jaw shape interfering with pronunciation, or they just don’t like to. The dragon for the most part seems content to loaf about at the haven monastery so far, though it seems wary of most people. Except, oddly enough, Shime. She is the only one it shows no signs of being wary of, granted she doesn’t interact with it much. They are often found lurking about near each other. Or more accurately the dragon is near her and she is wary of it instead. The rest of the monks are perpetually confused and enamored to its presence. One of our druids at haven reports that the dragon has a perpetual caution towards us because of likely traumatic events for it. I’m guessing that means the fact that it met both Ansa and Ankathi.

Well we sent Alexandria to the gate but the forces we raised have to reach her from the capital, so here is hoping she can hold out that long. We tried to recruit from the closer areas but those settlements are so new that they don’t even have the population to fill the forces as needed.

I’ve told Ankathi she can help with making dragonborn. That’s been… a trip. We’re still making preparations on all of that. On that related topic, Ryo has been escorting the people of kirillo..krillo…so those people are almost here too. We’ll see what input they might have before we let Ankathi just do whatever she wants.

Nyssa made it over to that town Ryo discovered awhile back to investigate just how isolated they’ve managed to remain. For the large part the answer seems to be they just didn’t try hard enough. Though many places we’ve met since we started expanding seem to have that problem. What makes it stand out though is the size of it, its a fairly large city and should definitely have the resources necessary to explore a little more. They’re a little confused as Ryo was the first they’d seen in their recorded history since the dying night, but then he just up and left and now Nyssa came to fill his place.

As for why no one else has found them, seems to just be a roll of the dice. They’re a little far from Cayetano and we know they prefer to travel by boat, the mountainous coast line definitely shielded them from any explorers on that end. They are closest to Kirillin town but they were also locked in isolation due to a fear of the orcs. Then there is Melun who just…doesn’t go places.

On the orc front, word from the grapevine is that the orcs have also started pushing into the badlands with a massive army. Though they’re staying clear of the various citys in their way to force the warlords to either engage them in the open field or just let them go straight to Maji. Meanwhile those approaching us are finding things somewhat slow thanks to the druid shenanigans once again.