From the diary of Silvan the Dryad
Session date: 8.2.2004

Afterwards, we found out that we had used the Royal Letter to take control
 of the mine and give it to the Master, as per his orders.

We continued along the road. The weather was good for traveling.

We encountered an orc slave caravan.

On the evening the PC began to complain about being tired.

Three days passed without incident. On the fourth we noticed a group of
 orcs approaching and tried to hide, but with no luck. We were spotted. The
 orcs searched the money purse we gave them, and were suspicious of us
 having so little money. Tonica said that we'd already been robbed by so
 many orcs that there was no point in them robbing us. The orc chief
 snorted and let us keep our money. Tonica had disguised our coins to look
 worthless.

We had camped when we heard noises. Somebody showed up, and it looked like
 a robed traveller. We couldn't be sure if he was an orc or a human. His
 speech sounded pretty cultured. He was heading towards Dorandor and wanted
 to exchange news. We told him he could expect to face an orc patrol and a
 Dorandor recovering from an orc attack. Tonica left the camp while we were
 talking.

The stranger told us he was coming from the Trade Town. Some sort of major
 orc leader gathering was going to take place in TT, and there were lots of
 people there. He suggested we take the middle branch of the road to avoid
 orc toll points, because the orcs on that road had all gone to guard the
 Trade Town.

After we'd traded news, he left. Tonica returned, and looked somewhat down.
 By the time the others began to go to sleep, I went to talk to her. We
 talked for a while, I managed to cheer her up a little, and then she went
 to sleep.

We continued down the road and noticed a wagon. The horse seemed pretty
 tired. There were dead humans around it, no enemies seemed present.

Me and Longfoot went to look at the bodies. They seemed pretty horrified.
 Longfoot said that Wright undeads might have had an effect of horrifying
 people to death. On the other hand, the people were equipped like they
 weren't complete wusses. Mind Control magic was also able to scare people
 to death.

Buran thought about taking the wagon, but others were against it. The wagon
 was looted. We set loose the horse.

On the fifth night, we were woken up at night and heard that there were
 people moving around us. It seemed like they were trying to avoid us. They
 seemed to be pretty agile, judging from their movements.

Buran suggested we abandon camp and move within a seeing distance of it, so
 we could see in case they attacked it. We waited for about half an hour,
 and nothing happened. Buran asked if I'd want to go and look, which I
 thought would be more fun than just waiting around. I went where they had
 been seen, but discovered nothing. The ground seemed to be pretty swampy
 there.

We returned to camp, and nothing happened. Apparently they had really just
 avoided us. We looked for tracks in the morning, but found nothing of
 interest.

Sometime in the afternoon, the terrain began to get more forested, and we
 figured that we'd arrived to the map we had.

We encountered another traveler, one with quite a resemblance towards the
 one we'd seen before. First he began to pass us, and then commented that
 we'd apparently followed his advice, and we'd talk more when the sun would
 set.

We decided to press onward, with Buran unwilling to meet the man again,
 even though I wasn't sure why - he'd seemed nice. My protests were pushed
 aside, however.

We noticed a group of people ahead of us. The PC said they looked spooky,
 and suggested we take another route. We decided to retreat somewhat.

After walking a bit back, it began to seem like we weren't getting anywhere
 - each time we looked back, they were just as far as when we'd started. We
 began to consider what to do, and noticed that they were approaching us.
 It seemed like they were floating in the air. They were approaching pretty
 fast, in fact.

Suddenly we heard speech from behind. It was the met we'd met before, and
 there was a faint pale reflection from where his head should be.

"Well good, only one of you ran away. The last time, the whole bunch ran
 away, and we had to stop their escape."

The others approached, while still keeping their distance. They didn't seem
 alive to us.

"We need some help for our mission. The Book of Necreegh is no longer under
 the control of the Sentinels. I was a little late in recovering it, and
 now I no longer know where it is. That is why I need people like you to
 help find it." He refused to tell us his name. First he had to test us to
 see if we were good enough to serve as his agents.

He seemed to have a skeletal head and red, glowing eyes. A few characters
 began to approach. They would be our practice opponents - should we be
 able to defeat them, we'd be good enough.

The undead was the first one. He was told that he'd be considered to win if
 he'd get a good hit in. He managed to do so, with the bullet passing
 through the opponent and destroying something.

"Pretty impressive," the undead said. "Though this was supposed to be a
 melee combat, but I guess that'll do."

It became Buran's turn. "Defend yourself", the undead said, and the
 practice opponent, who'd materialized himself a new shield, charged.

Buran was about to defend himself, when the undead shouted "stop!".
 Suddenly everybody charged towards Buran. Buran turned and thrust his
 sword to the undead leader. His skull seemed to fall into his clothing,
 and then his clothes collapsed into a rag, wrapped around Buran's sword.

I thrust my axe towards the "practice opponent" that was attacking Buran.
 Buran turned to thrust kill his own opponent as well, and now that there
 were no rags in the way, we could see that the undead was sucked into the
 sword. Longfoot's and the demon's flame didn't seem to have any effect on
 them. The whole demon army charged Buran, and he ran them through. The
 rest began to retreat. Buran could now see that his sword was glowing.

Tonica wanted to know what sort of a thing the sword was, but we refused to
 tell her. "Perhaps this isn't as close of a bunch as I thought," she
 commented. She told us that those weren't any ordinary undead we faced.
 They seemed to have been some sort of spirits.

We set up a fire now that the most obvious danger had been overcome. Tonica
 wondered why there hadn't been any rumors of this so far.

Buran's sword now held nine spirits.

We began looking for the PC, who had bravely ran away. After for a few
 minutes of searching, we found him shaking under a tree. We managed to
 calm him down and returned to camp.

The next day, we reached the end of the forest. We could see buildings far
 away. We thought it probably was the Blood Altar, and decided to go around
 it. We headed east, and saw a forest that didn't look too inviting.
 Following Tonica's advice, we began walking by a lakeside.

On the north side of the lake, near the road, we saw one short and one tall
 person. When we approached, we noticed that it looked like one of them was
 kneeling and the other standing next to him. They weren't moving, so it
 looked like they might've been statues.

We passed the statues, and noticed that they looked like a woman with long
 claws and a kneeling, headless orc. The statues looked very dirty, like
 people had been vandalizing it.

According to the undead, the writing on the statue said it was depicting
 the founder of the Severed Head clan and Ulenlan was the other one.
 Apparently this might've been the very lake where it happened.

We reached the Trading Site. The buildings didn't seem to have any walls.
 We looked around for a while and saw a few places where the orcs seemed to
 be gathering. Tonica left to find an artificial hand, and Werner went with
 her.

We found an inn. We stopped an elder woman. She warned us not to ask too
 much, and said there was a major gathering between different orc clans
 going on.

We went to look around in town, and a merchant pulled me by the hand. He
 said he was selling them very cheap, healing potions, strenght-boosting 
 potions, and night vision potions, for 20 silvers each. He claimed that
 equivalent potions would cost a 100 silvers a piece in a mage school. He
 was selling them so cheap because he'd made them himself.

We bought from him five potions of healing, three of dark vision, and three
 of strength boost.

We noticed a lecture about spellcasting. It cost 40 silver to attend. Me
 and Longfoot attended.

We ran into an elder storyteller. He told us a story of how he was in
 Dalandor and was elected to become a mage's, Marlin Firequill's,
 apprentice. Marlin was rare because he'd collected many apprentices, at
 least five. The storyteller's name was Norlin Icepeak, a remainder of the
 apprentice times. Norlin was the youngest of his master's apprentices at
 the time, and hadn't been told everything. Marlin had been a pretty
 competent mage, one of the strongest in the Dalandor region, and one of
 the few who had control of Time Magic. They traveled often in time using
 it.

One time, however, Marlin ended up several decades in the future. According
 to Norlin, that future would be true within a few years from now. After
 this journey, Marlin changed considerably, and began to collect an awful
 lot of wordly possessions and power. He built a large mage's tower and
 hired lots of mages to defend it. In the end, the rest of the mages in the
 region accused him of abusing Time Magic, and assaulted the mage tower.
 Norlin was the only one of his master's men who survived, and Marlin was
 burned on a stake. Due to whatever magic Marlin had used, he could not
 die, and he remained alive even after the fire gone out, albeit horribly
 burnt and having lost all his knowledge of Time Magic. Marlin was taken
 for dead, and escaped when the others had left him there. In horrible
 pains, he went to meet Norlin and told him that he'd head to Aleandor to
 find necromancers.

Norlin did not hear of Marlin after that, but once, thirty years ago, he
 got a letter from his master, saying two potential necromancers, Renald
 and Ornon had been found from Aleandor. Marlin and Renald's brother,
 Keildan, were looking for Renald. Norlin had not heard of Marlin after
 that, but news had reached him from Aleandor saying god-hate was being
 incited in Aleandor. Marlin had once told him that these events would once
 take place, and for that purpose Norlin was now gathering money. According
 to Marlin, within one or two years, some gods would unite into one and
 orcs would invent a superweapon against the elves, which they would use to
 badly beat Dorandor. Norlin was now gathering an expedition to find his
 master, and since he'd heard that Renald was going north, Norlin was going
 to head north, since he knew that Marlin could not die.

Norlin promised that if we were to find information about his master's
 current resting place and bring it to him, he would reward us handsomely
 for the knowledge. Great unfortunes would befall the world once the gods
 united their forces.

Norlin also told us that there would be a great war in which all dwarves
 would die as they'd be left between the forces of the humans and the gods.
 The elves could not help, for they would be tied up in their war against
 orcs.

Marlin's master had also had another apprentice, named Radius. This master
 had taught Marlin Time Magic, and Radius might've also been taught it.

Tonica commented that if she'd heard such a tale two months ago, she
 wouldn't have believed a word of it, but now it seemed like there might be
 some truth to it. She'd heard the name Keildan being mentioned in Aleandor
 before, and Reinald, that name she'd heard before, too. She thought she
 might've seen a wanted notice for the man.

The part about the dwarves made Werner a little worried. We refused to tell
 him more about the godly artifacts, which seemed to offend him, and he
 retired for the night. Tonica left to do some information gathering, since
 we thought that the orc gathering might have something to do with the
 superweapon mentioned in Norlin's story.

We woke up in the morning. Apparently Tonica had some trouble with the
 local orcs, and was now nowhere to be seen. We decided to continue our
 journey. Tonica rejoined us soon after we'd left the village. She hadn't
 found out much, but what she did know was that a fellowship had arrived
 from the direction of Aleandor, and they were selling some sort of
 elf-kill weapon to the orcs. The name of the gathering was Operation
 Metcalf.

Werner appeared to be sulking.

In the evening we encountered a traveling merchant. He said he was
 primarily selling potions, but we weren't interested.

Session close: 19:38 8.2.2004