Zivilyn asked for assistance in his new endeavour: set up a trade route between Irondelve and Skyreader Island. Had a long spiel about access to materials, something about weaving houses, and more but I will admit I tuned most of it out and went along because I was itching to deal with something I could punch instead of the spirit nonsense, as Dvarim would put it, that I had encountered in Trayckid.
I you are wondering why I would go along with a trade mission when I wanted to punch things, you should know the answer by now, oh reader of my journal: Crystal Raider diplomacy is always an option and all too frequently the only option.
Zivilyn had also conned Azurea, Langren, and Temur into this trip. Temur has a new ghost horse he calls Tulaany Egch and unlike his previous one this one talks. Directly into your head. I would like to say that was disconcerting, but sadly it is not the first time or the most unexpected.
As we were leaving Throal, we saw the Arngeir moored and Helga calling us over, the Aeronaut Club was throwing me a surprise name day party! I was so happy someone remembered, sixteen years old is an important point in the life of any troll. The carousing went on for the whole flight from Throal to Skyreader, there was much singing and drinking, boasting and eating. I made sure to consume as many honey rolls as I could to make it an appropriately sweet sixteen, and since I neither Sandrin nor Icarus were present I was pretty much the ranking Air Sailor on the ship and got to hold the helm for a few hours.
Once we arrived to Skyreader we were still sober enough to realise we should not seek out the elders in our condition, which arguably means we had not partied hard enough. What can I say, it is hard to fit enough mead on for a proper party for the whole crew on a drakkar. The next morning we were considerably more sober and most of the food stains had been cleaned from our gear, so Zivilyn took us to an acquaintance of his, Kananaea, who holds some authority in the village.
Skyreader Island hosts both t'skrang and windlings, a good thing, I came to realise once we reached the windling section, as everything looked tiny and fragile. I spent most of the time there feeling like the proverbial dyre in the alchemy lab, worried I would step on someone's house or worse. Kananaea seemed hesitant to commit resources to a trade mission, but agreed to do so if we helped with some vermin the local farmers were having issues with.
The vermin turned out to be dire wolf sized beetles with wings strong enough to knock down a troll with their wind. The fight dragged on for an irritatingly long time as the beetles kept throwing us off our feet and then skittering away. Can someone the size of a dire wolf even skitter I see you asking? Turns out they can, looking far too smug for an overgrown arthropod. The others ended up getting beaten up quite a bit, but the Rune-Carved Citadel did its duty as always.
We made our way back to Skyreader with the news of our deed and Kananaea honored their word. The next day we set off escorting a small caravan toward Irondelve, where we arrived a few days later. Once again the leaders seemed dubious even after Zivilyn broke out the thesaurus and spent twenty minutes extolling the virtues of additional trade. Meanwhile I had a look at Azurea's bath house, which is most impressive.
Eventually the leaders of Irondelve gave in, probably just so Zivilyn would shut up and agreed if we did them a favour: several of the settlers had disappeared in the jungle and we had to figure out what happened to them. Thankfully Langren is a skilled tracker and so we did not just wnader blindly in the Sevros. No we wandered the Sevros with direction and conviction!
A few people from Irondelve joined us on the journey, which was helpful when we stumbled on a pride of Stone Lions. Howler, poor puppy, got horrifically mauled, which sent Zivilyn into a rage and he started trying to kill a lion with his dagger. A sight that would have been comical if I had not been worried about both of them ending up as Stone Lion food. As we were about done with the lions, two more jumped out of the vegetation showing clear signs of metal infusion. Just a we started trying to deal with this new threat, two of the adepts that had joined us from Irondelve turned on us which was the last mistake they would ever make, my fists ensured that.
The real troubling part though was that they seemed to have some unnatural powers, and once we examined the corpses they both had a 2ft stinger growing out of their body. Temur recognized this as some kind of horror spawn, that reproduces by killing namegivers and injecting the corpses with their stinger, so that the corpse comes back to life as one of them.
Needless to say we "politely" asked the other two settlers to demonstrate a lack of stingers at their earliest convenience, by which we mean right then and there, we do not care you are in the middle a jungle full of horrible insects, snakes, and worse. Wisely they complied and demonstrated that they had in fact no attachments a namegiver should not have, so we made our way back to Irondelve to deliver the grave news.
The settlers seemed to take our warnings seriously, and I hope we managed to contain the problem before it got out of hand. I would hate to have to destroy something Azurea holds dear.Statistics:Posted by sigfriedmcwild — Sat Aug 15, 2020 7:10 am
]]>