Orhan 5 Day 29 TE 6056

We follow the trail for the rest of the day and then camp.

Orhan 5 Day 30 TE 6056

Haeraan has a dream indicating that the loremaster is about to become an Iron Wind dude and forget that he's a loremaster. It's unclear if they get his knowledge, but they definitely get his loyalty.

Hmm, heading uphill into the highlands. Bah.

We come to the entrance of a valley. Tradewind scouts and determines it's filled with two legged things and there's a structure of some sort int he middle with more things on top of it. Haeraan finds us a less obvious way into the valley and we spend the rest of the day sneaking up on it.

When we crest, we find a large flat-topped pyramid on the valley floor with a set of altars on top with a person on one of the altars. In the middle is a strange spikey antenna thing which glows and zaps one of the bodies with black lightning. Imre thinks it's channeling from beyond the pale. We watch while they convert more corpses into their foul servants.

We sneak down the mountain after dark and head for the little hut where we tink the loremaster ring of the lost loremaster is.

We portal in and go to town. There are three of those cyborg guys. Two are working over a table hacking a body apart. The other has a body it's carrying. We attack. it's strangely cold in the hut. Like meat locker cold, so we take cold crits.

We kill the cyborgs and get the loremaster body/ring. But we're surrounded. Bah. We teleport back to last night's campsite. But as we fade out, our old enemy, Xiax the Ebon, mighty servant of Lorgalis, turns the corner. Bah! He's in with the Iron Wind.

Imre does death tales on the loremaster body, and finds that Xiax cast a bunch of spells at him.

Orhan 5 Day 31 TE 6056

We head back a few more campsites so we're within 60 miles of the Iron Wind HQ. Then Oathar summons a navigator.

Oathar mavigators to Griffin Colloge looking for Anton. Zariss is not pleased to see him but directs Oathar inside. He goes to a conference room where he finds King Mornan Zaon, Anton, and Alarin. "Ah, Duke Oathar!" Oh dear. Alarin tries to explode. (Apparently Alarin has threatened to put on the crown and stuff.)

Oathar core dumps to Anton. He gives Oathar a pouch of 800 gold. Xiax is likely to be extremely dangerous. Be careful. He'll contact us in Sel'kai if he hears anything.

He also gives us a little pouch of embroidered patches with a Griffin badge.

Oathar "navigates" back to the far north. He fills them in and passes out griffin badges. Oathar keeps the badges from Haeraan and Kyrik so they don't accidentally commit treason.

Orhan 5 Day 32 TE 6056

Haeraan gets a dream indicating that this is indeed perhaps possibly the only outpost of the Iron wind up here. Mean while Alynna is hearing voices in her dream saying "sister" and "come", but she totally fails to be corrupted thanks to her shield of inscrutibility, so has to ask Imre what it meant. Imre doesn't think it was really a regular dream, but some sorrt of sending.

Hmm, before we get on to making a good plan, Alynna hears the voice again, while awake. We determine "he's coming for her". Tradewind sees a group of the bad guys coming about a half hour out. We prepare.

Alynna barely resists a couple more times. Flying invisible mages. They march up with the twenty guys and we attack. Fight! Ouch! Ten of those mortar guys.

That's pretty pesky. We engage. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

We win, but Xiax escapes! We pulverize the bodies.