Orhan 4 Day 59 TE 6065

Oathar goes to Karilon. and searches for lost armadas in the literature. He finds the Fleet of the Damned. It was sent out by Kadaena to attack her enemies and it was repulsed and when they came back and reported failure to Kadaena, she cursed them, and they turned into the Black Ships of the Damned. Needless to say, he doesn't find what he was seeking for.

Imre goes to Nomikos and looks up the same thing. He finds references to Aldoron sending a fleet to explore Folenn, but it was never actaully heard from again. It's really unclear what happened to it.

Sadly, Imre thinks that plan is doomed, doomed, doomed. Very very doomed.

OK, Oathar explains his alternate backup plan about grabbing Zorian troops just before the cataclysm. After all, no one will miss them. Imre considers this carefully and declares:

"The quest is on the edge of a knife, stray but a little."

Orhan 4 Day 61 TE 6065

The ships finally arrive and we teleport to the city of Anakatta NE of the sea of fate. We know the compass factory is near the sea of fate on the northern shore approximately, so we need ot go search out its specific location.

We get rooms in a reasonable mid-scale inn called Fishy Joe's. We eat fish. Then we sleep.

Haeraan has communes/dreams:

Is the compass factory near the base? yes

Do shards care about water? no

Do shards guard the compass factory? yes

Why do the shards guard the compass factory? Lions chase zebras. Zebras hate that. Then the zebras find some giraffes. They can see better. So the zebras get warning.

What does the night sky look like from the location of the base? sky picture.

Kyrik discovers a book of shard knowledge and spells in a random book-seller. Crazy. They are scrolls of evil made during the late second era. They were written by Lorgalis in Ulor. He also finds a powerful warded book written by Krelij. Kyrik buys them. He also buys a copy of "The Great and Glorious History of the Alliance" Well, they throw that in for free.

Orhan 4 Day 61 TE 6065

Imre goes seaching for an antidote to reduction poison. It is derived from a set of very rare frogs. It's a powerful anti-venom. Yup, hypnotoads. Sigh.

There's another local remedy that's a bit effective though. Nega-leaves. It slows the effect of poisons. It's fairly common in these parts. You dry it and brew it. Imre gets a bunch of stuff.

We head to a town on the north shore of the sea of fate. We travel along the shoreline as much as possible. The town is called Na-kor-ru. It's a trade town. Oathar studies a native guide.

We start heading into a jungle.

As we progress up the road, we notice that Manuel the native guide is following us. We send some shard sounds back to him to observe what he does. He pulls out a cloak, wraps it around himself and hides in the bushes.

We head on and he follows us some more. Oathar goes back to mind-ream him, but blows up his head. Manuel goes over to talk to him and convince him to hire these folks.

As we head up the road, shards show up. We hide in teh bushes with scentlessness and stink bombs. A pair of shards whooshes by and then leaves. We start heading into the jungle towards where the shards come from.

We attempt to climb the shard gradient. It's gets pretty shardy. A few more shards pass by, and we hide more. The jungle gets denser as we apprach the shard-infested area.

Sadly, we get to the top of the shard gradient and find a seven thrones of the leaders of the I-lat. Damn. Oathar GPSs, we sneak back and around, and then down the shard gradient around the other side.

We hide from several more shards. Then we come to another clearing. It's an ancient ruin with a cave that leads down into a metal walled structure. Very strange.

We Sleep, Manuel, Forget him, and stash him with Tradewind as a body guard. Then we head down into the cave and find an underground street with buildings buried. One is labeled "Restricted Storage Facility" in Althan. That's got to be good. We explore. A leve down in that building is a collapsed in area with a hole in the wall, excavated out. Inside is a circular room with thirteen pillars. It's very familiar. Sigh, it's the Thallen prison. We also find a completely looted armory. Nothing of value remains. It was some sort of military base.

Kyrik phases down through the ground and finds a little bit of equipment hidden down there. It's all broken and exhausted though.

We pay off Manuel and send him home with no memory of the cave.

We continue on without him. As we wander around, Imre notices a bird staring at us. Yup, it's watching us. It's not sentient though. Nor is it alive. Yup, it's a robot camera bird. We GPS mark the location and leave. We escape! Back to Selkai!

Orhan 4 Day 62 TE 6065

Imre requests Cornelia Mealora. We report to Cornelia. She goes to take that to the Navigators. Money will start flowing towards hiring people, but to tailor the team to the job, they need better intel on the actual target.