Jaykei - Elkei

Agar decided to share with everyone that he knew how to get to the temple of the Answaru, Jaykei-Elkei which made the decision process (take the priest or no) much, much easier: you just left on your own in the middle of the night.

By daybreak you had made it to the temple, which resembles a very large Scholars' Rock, shown above. Long story short: the temple was magnetic and surrounded by a double rung of other magnets, creating a sort of "levitating" force for the temple. Lodos was able to amplify the field effect, and Agar was able to rotate the temple. This aligned some of the subterranean lava tubes, revealing a hidden passageway beneath the temple.

The passageway had a door in it with a slot for - what else? - the bookmark/key that the priest had been carrying until sticky fingers Silus lifted it. You all blacked-out, had visions, and came to in time to see a dozen or so undead creatures crawling up the passageway's dark depths towards you. A couple of grenades took care of that threat, but you might still be worried about the "shockwave" of horror and despair that you heard rolling through the jungle.

Ever fearless and foolhardy, you journey down into the darkness and find a 5 r 6 foot long bone lashed to a wooden box of the same length. The bone turns out to be the radial bone of a near adult dragon. The box contains a sword carved of dragon bone, hilt and all. Mirella seems to remember something about this being an early practice that the Misarlon used to try to bind runic powers and render them less harmful or dangerous. Farallon volunteers to take the sword. Although inspection has not revealed any runes, the weapon is naturally magic, being made of dragon bone. Farallon was able to detect some sense of deep betrayal and some split between good and evil coming from some force in the sword.

But the passageway lead deeper, and so that is where you went. Three days of journey further into the darkness. Three days further in to the belly of an extinct volcano. The payoff is a three story, 80 room complex built by the dwarves. It appears that here may have been the final staging area for sealing in the greatest evil Palladium has ever known...

The Answaru

This week's major players were Rantoos, Bahn, Tahn, and Pfenig.

Rantoos approached Agar about “leading” the flock to the temple, deep in the jungle. The followers packed up, burning some of their old clothes and belongings as a symbol of their leaving the old life behind for the new light of Answaru. Rantoos invoked some elemental magic to create the proper atmosphere for the beginning of the journey as you all set out on a three day hike deep into the Yin-Sloth.

A talkative fellow, Pfenig, befriends the party and starts spouting off a bunch of non-sense that may have had some root in fact. In particular it was his mention of “catacombs” which seemed pertinent to the natural geography of the area. The assumption is that the catacombs are actually old magna tubes, although you haven't run across any yet. On a positive note, it would seem that you are heading in the general vicinity of a large, ancient , and most probably extinct volcano.

During the first evening watch of the first night on the trail, Pfenig comes over to chat with Agar and Silus. Soon he sees an exciting plant out in the jungle and he leaves the safety of the camp to investigate. On his way back, some large primate-like beast lands softly behind him...Silus attempts to thwart the beast with a poison dart, but to no avail. Agar encourages Pfenig to run, but it is no use. In two graceful leaps, the beast pounces on Pfenig, who is never heard from again. Agar exacts a sort of justice, bashing the brains out of the beast in a single, mighty blow.

The second shift goes even worse.

Farallon is wounded by an arrow in a sneak attack on the cult. A handy grenade toss saves Farallon's life and helps alert the camp. In a matter of seconds over thirty followers are killed, and likely more would have perished if it were not for the quick thinking of Treasda who used Lodos to command the jungle to smother all but one attacker. Who knows how many attackers there were? The one lone prisoner proves of little value himself, although it is interesting that a white man was dressed as if he were a native.

In the aftermath of the attack, Silus takes grave risk which pays off big. He sneaks into Rantoos' tent and finds an object which later turns out to be a kind of marker/map created by the Misarlon/M7. Although the object is gently radioactive, it seems to be of great value, particularly to Rantoos, who executes five random followers and then urges people with knowledge of the object to step forward immediately. Perhaps not the best way to make yourself approachable, but clearly he was agitated.

And now the question is: what to do? You are about 16 miles away from the anticipated location of the Temple of Answaru. It is the middle of the night. Bahn and Tahn are closely guarding Rantoos' tent. There are about 20 other moderately well armed “guards” in the group of about 250 that are left.

Heart of....

The ground crew decides to journey into the Heart of Darkness – your favorite place – the Yin-Sloth jungles. Specifically, you get dropped off near Ttumal, the largest settlement on the northern coast. Although “large”, it is really a shanty-town of sorts. Plenty of street vendors and a large bazaar, but no inns or taverns as you would think of them. Government is largely absent (there is no official King or any such affiliation with nations) and so there is a hierarchy of gangs that control the city.

After some snooping over grub you find a lead...

You see, the reasoning for coming here was that if you were some deific creature looking to hang-out quietly, get some minions, plot world destruction, what better place than here? Outcasts of the adventurous sort come here in search of spiritual meaning, and seems there is a new cult in town.

You figure out how to find these cult followers and there camp, but there things get a little sticky as the priest takes bit of blood from each of you and initiates you into this cult. Agar gets special treatment, is made to walk (unscathed) through a huge bonfire and seems to be of interest to these cultists. You all hang out all night, enjoying the revelry into the morning hours. That is when some 20 to 40 men lead a large mastadon into thecamp and the walk it right into the really huge bonfire in the middle. The men all go down with the sacrifice along with the beast. Now there's devotion!

Now we have to see what the cult will do next...

And then there were two...

Your recent adventures:

To recap: So you all went to what you thought was Khul-Than Forge. There you meet up with Ankar and his men and to make a long story short, you release some skeletal dragon from its prison, get Ankar's son killed (okay, not really your fault) and hightail it out of there and blast the place shut.

So in an effort to figure out what was going on, you went to the library of Alessia and then to the Misarlon Temple. Seems you released Esai-En-Dar, better known in old lore as Lord Essenar, an Elven Runelord - well, obviously not Elven. Although details are lacking, it seems that the popular belief is that Essenar and this Dwarf, D'Barok, had something to do with the Cataclysm.

There was discussion of what to do next; go after Echo's prize, Necros, or find Celeros? Celeros it was, which was in the possession of Ulves Falcon's son. You manage to “stealth land on his keep and then infiltrate you way inside to his inner sanctum. Quite a team effort! And Landros did quite a number on several of Falcon's men. Celeros nearly gives Falcon an edge, but nearly isn't good enough and so you rather quickly end the Falcon problem and acquire Celeros.

You re-board Theoninn and are confronted by a conundrum. If you all pursue Esai together - right now - you will probably find him, and you will probably get your collective asses handed to you. Maybe getting Necros and Vaka would make more sense, but that would give Esai time to gather strength. So M7's mission must be a simultaneous forked approach. And this means the party must split up.

One half will get on the ground and infiltrate Esai's effort on a grassroots level. Hopefully they will learn much about Esai while also keeping him on the move, which should slow down the process of his recovery.

Meanwhile, group two will go off (perhaps off-world) in search of other runic items that might prove useful against Esai. This includes kicking Echo's ass...at some point.

You will all play out both sides of this story and determine the ultimate outcome. More than likely, there will be alternating between storylines at certain points. For now, the majority has decide to get on the ground and pursue Esai, so that is where we'll start. That group is:

Agar Prime – (Matt)
Farallon – (Chris)
Treasda – Lodos (Rudy)
Silus – Rök (Lewis)
???? - (Tamiko)

Tamiko can choose to continue with Oki, or choose to be Mirella, Ginsberg, or one of the Skedic soldiers (create a new character).

At some point, everyone will also play members of the other group. For example, if Oki joins the ground crew, then when we have an alternate-night ,you will all take over for Mirella, Ginsberg, Landros (Rudy gets his primary back), and two surprise guests.

Need any updates?

Anyone need any updates? Desire any additional info on the website? Let me know and I will see what I can do. Otherwise, see you all on Oct 12th!

Land of the Damned

Following information from Avenar you all went to a meeting spot in Harkem-Viol. The city ruins were of some race about twice the size of humans. After a little while you notice some strange things, like the movement of the ruins themselves. Fearing an attack you retreat to Theoninn and take off. Soon after, sensors pick up an energy spike and then a creature of some sort which Landros flies out to chat with. The story Landros tells you is that the creature instructed you all to meet in Marhund in 24 hours with the ring or else you would be pursued.

Instead, you all head for Raven , hidden somewhere deep inside the Land of the Damned. You find a desolate city formed of countless numbers of petrified insects that seems to be deserted. Of course, you quickly learn that this is the nocturnal dwelling of Mantus and his cohorts; so you return during the day when it is safer.

You don't run into too much trouble getting to the area of Raven, but you do run into the Goddess who tells you that you are welcome to take Raven as long as you are aware that removing it will lift the curse that banishes Mantus from this world in the daylight. Naturally, you have some misgivings about this, but she assures you that Mantus has no intentions for this world. Allowing Mantus to escape here might help balance the powers of the demon lords' various quests for power; Mania has been looking to overthrow and destroy her husband and having him in the land of the damned might save him a while yet.

So, with Raven in hand you head to Khul-Than Forge, discovering along the way that this runic item works in consort with Theoninn to power its Albucierre Drive. The ship rifts into an interior chamber. From there you head down a very large hallway with statues of armies lining either wall. At the end of this corridor you find what you believe to be the forge itself.

Before you can do much, Skedic troops launch an attack on you which is quickly supressed by Theoninn. Shortly after Ankar shows up hoping to negotiate with you; he wants the forge lit and asks for your help in doing so.

Could this be the culmination of a lifelong search for runic knowledge?

NOTE:

Technically, I made an error regarding the warp drive of Theoninn. In fact you would not have rifted into this area - you cannot pass through solid objects using the ship. It is essentially a line-of-site travel path. Obviously, I allowed you to get in, and getting out won't be a problem from a logistics point of view. But no more warping through solid objects.

The Temple of Ptelas

Using Lodos you are able to find the Temple in the mountains of the Yin-Sloth jungle. The plateau at the entrance of the temple is littered with very large cairns made of boulders, so landing Theoninn there was not possible. Fortunately there was a clearing near the base of a set of stairs that ascends from the depths of the jungle floor to the temple plateau.

Silus immediately senses something watching you from the jungle and Treasda quickly neutralizes about 12 tribal warriors. Things go uneventfully until you reach the plateau where a sniper starts taking shots at you all. Silus, Farallon and ??? sneak around to flank the sniper while Agar and the others keep him occupied. Eventually Silus drops the snipe with a poison blow dart and you all tie the bastard up. Farallon correctly guess from the Skedic uniform that this snipe was from Eta, meaning that Sonjia was most likely here.

You pick you way through a couple of booby-traps, find the main worship hall of the temple, disarm a remote alarm device and finally come to a great battle.

You reach the central shaft of an extinct volcano and discover/disarm 8 other Skedic who are working for Sonjia. Unfortunately Sonjia has already obtained the ring Chronos and attacks you. Although some of you take a little beating you manage to kill her just after Landros arrives on the scene, plummeting down the shaft in a frogsuit. Avenar, Ankar's son, also shows up demanding to know what is going on. You quickly school him and gather the information that Sonjia and he were going to meet someone named Fermarcus at an ancient ruin call Harkem-Viol.

Farallon manages to convince the Etan Skedic to leave the employ of Ankar and you all pack into Theoninn to go to Harkem-Viol. The maximum comfortable capacity for Theoninn, in terms of bunk space, is 24. As it stands, Landros is "guarding" Chronos and won't let anyone have it yet. The ruins of Harkem-Viol seem to belong to a race of beings about twice the size of humans. You have landed in a sort of town square near one of the glacial lagoons that dot the area around this town/ruin.