AAR: [8H] A Spirit of Understanding 2020-11-06 2359 GMT

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Xzandrate
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Re: AAR: [8H] A Spirit of Understanding 2020-11-06 2359 GMT

Post by Xzandrate » Tue Nov 10, 2020 4:07 am

From the writings of Moe'uhane, T'skrang Illusionist, 9th Circle, Boatman 6th Circle, Messenger Rank 6

I've returned from river journeys to Throal at the request of Zivilyn. The adventuring mood within this cavernous city is sombre, more so than expected in a large crypt within a mountain. A number of months ago, a group of up and coming adventurers stumbled across at experiment by madman and were wiped out. Among those, were the father of my companion Vralino, as well as Zivilyn's apprentice Nib. I can tell that this has worn at my tiny windling friend, and for all his magical knowledge he can not understand how someone could unleash such horrendous magics, nor the best way to combat such magics. I had heard the creator was part of a group I have encountered before, The Scourge. We initially believed them to be a loose organization of madmen, but we have obviously underestimated them.

In an effort to better battle the machinations of The Scourge, Zivilyn wishes to accelerate his understandings of magic. He has requested that Sandrin, Norg, LaShana, and myself accompany him on a quest to find a teacher of Nethermancy. He knows of an unnamed troll within the Scytha Mountains. The plan is to request conveyance upon Arngeir as they perform supply runs to retrieve the mineral Sandrin, LaShana, and I had assisted in locating. We would be dropped off near the moot of the Scorched Tusks. As the moot had been the target of a previous Scourge plot, Norg wished to check upon them. He also wanted to show the airships of the Scorged Tusks to Sandrin. I must admit, for a boat out of water, they were suitably impressive. Black ships with ornately carved dragons upon the prow. All was still good with the moot, so we continued up into the mountains.

When we arrived at our destination, we were greeted by a dilapidated three story building. After knocking and calls of greeting went unanswered we were beginning to believe the teacher was not home. However an offhanded comment by Zivilyn received an instinctual response that was cut short, as if the speaker realized the mistake they had made. After a fair amount of banter between Zivilyn, Norg, and the buildings occupant a old hornless troll opened the door. We never got the name of the nameless Troll, probably why Zivilyn referred to him as such. Zivilyn explained the purpose of our arrival, and the old man was quite inquisitive as to the reasonings Zivilyn had for seeking the path of Nethermancy. After some further discussion Zivilyn gave a suitable answer, relaying the fate of his apprentice. The old troll sniffed the air and had a further objection of Zivilyn's pursuit of magic. A short sighted complaint, I understand the belief that you should dedicate yourself to your craft, but the patterns of greatness weave more complex than we understand. Sometimes the calling only fulfills a small part of your pattern, an a new piece of your pattern can become more heard, and another path must be forged to satisfy your full pattern. I speak from my own experience, not as an Illusionist, Boatman, or even Messenger, but as Moe'uhane; that is the name that will come with my legends, my disciplines will be a piece to that legend, but not the sole thing.

Eventually the old man agrees to set Zivilyn to a task to locate an instructor, though not by him, by a female he knows. He advises that we should start by retrieving a suitable introductory gift. He knows just the thing, an engraved skull found within the Field of Mourning, in a valley upon the third highest peak of the mountain range. As we inquire for more information, he is taken aback when he realizes another winding is with us. Dismissing LaShana, he appears to have a discussion with her bow, Whispers, instead. Eventually we get as much as we think we can from him and consult our navigational charts.

It takes minimal time to find the Field of Mourning, though it is quite high and cold. Luckily, Zivilyn has just the right spell to help us push forward. As we start searching in the snow, we come across remains scattered across the field. Each of the remains had a bone that was engraved with markings. Norg's analysis of the remains indicated that the markings on the bones were somehow placed prior to decomposition. I took this information in and analyzed the pattern and spread of the remains. There was an obvious pattern here, the bodies were all in concentric circles with the focal point off a bit from where we were searching. We cleared the center of the circle and sure enough, found a skull covered in designs.

Returning to the nameless Troll, he then directed us to the location of the teacher. We headed down into a valley, with directions to meet the teacher at the cross roads at midnight. We found the location and setup a perimeter around Zivilyn. As the moon approached it's apex we began to detect movement, and then we were fell upon by a horde of constructs. The battle was hard fought, as the magics of our party worked to protect us. Without the protections of Zivilyn and myself, we would have succumb to terror and overwhelming physicial prowess. We continued to fall back into tight groupings, allowing Norg his selection of targets, while I attempted to soften the enemies with Phantom Fireballs. Sandrin provided encouragement as he slashed through enemies. Eventually the Crone Queen was defeated and her minions fell with her. There was not teacher and no answers, but there we knew where to get answers.

We returned to the nameless Troll and found him sitting outside his home circled in bodies of creatures similar to those we had just fought. He was much more lucid now as well. We received the explanation of how the old timer lost his horns. He had a vision of a horror being summoned and destroying to moot, the problem was the person he saw doing it was the chieftain's daughter. Obviously this got him expelled from the moot, and the daughter worked twice as diligent to try and keep the vision from coming to fruition. She focused on astral space, trying to make sure that nothing was coming. But, she tried too many experimental things, and drew too much attention. The prophecy seemed self fulfilling. Three of the trolls of the moot were cursed to continue as Crone Queens, the old timer did not have the power to defeat all three, so he used us as a distraction to deal with one, while he dealt with the rest.

In the end Zivilyn learned what he needed from the old timer and the more direct applied experiences of nethermancy. Hopefully it will help provide him the answers he needs.

Xzandrate
Posts:382
Joined:Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:28 pm

Messenger Report

Post by Xzandrate » Tue Nov 10, 2020 4:07 am

**As the magic flows across the page the words come into view**

It has been reveled that increased activity of a terrorist organization has lead to the demise of a group of promising adepts. This has caused panic and concern in the population, especially the adventurers closest to the fallen.

As such, adventurers have begun to investigate magics parallel to the organization, reaching out to sources of questionable sincerity. In an effort to track down the any possible recruiting avenues, as many of these proceedings as possible have been monitored.


After Action Report:
An old troll referred to only as 'the nameless troll' was approached regarding training. The individual was a powerful caster who manipulated the potential pupil into dealing with a threat that the teacher could not deal with alone. Unknown if the expectation was to have the group of adventurers overwhelmed to further weaken Throal and surrounding areas, or the hope was to soften the adepts for recruitment.

The nameless troll has not been associated directly to the group, however his motives are suspicious and he is looking to work incognito.


Reporting Senior Agent: Bearded Dragon

**The words vanish as the magic dissipates**

sigfriedmcwild
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Joined:Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:59 am

Re: AAR: [8H] A Spirit of Understanding 2020-11-06 2359 GMT

Post by sigfriedmcwild » Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:25 pm

From "The Skies of Barsaive", as penned by Norg, Brother of Earth and Sky, Corsair of Throal

I was catching up with Sandrin, hearing stories about the "wood trolls" he had met while retrieving the new cannons for the Arngeir, when Zivilyn dropped by asking if I could assist him in convincing the troll outcast in near the Scorched Tusk moot to teach him nethermancy.

Given the recent events I felt it was my duty to make sure a Zivilyn was not trying to do something stupid, well stupider than the usual antics we adepts get up to. Zivilyn firmly denied wanting to try and bring back Nib and had apparently never met Daldorer who, I am still convinced, would have been a much better teacher, or really any kind of teacher at all. Thorkell and LaShana also joined us on this trip.

The Arngeir was still not ready, something about having to calibrate the cannons, but we managed to hitch a ride northwards on another ship that was out to collect supplies for said calibrations. Someone in the club was having way too much fun and not letting me play. The ship swung by the Scorched Tusk moot where we just dropped off without mooring, what is the point of being able to fall without it being to your death if you never take advantage of it.

The moot was understandably slightly surprised by our method of arrival, but they let us stay the night and fed us. I even manged to give Sandrin a tour of their drakkars.

In the morning we left and made good time to the outcasts place, where we had a repeat of our previous annoy him till he talks to us conversation. After a bunch of discussion about why Zivilyn wanted to learn nethermancy, with a significantly more power mad slant than my earlier one, the outcast said he would not train Zivilyn but would point him to another teacher. All we had to do was find a suitable offering.

Of course the offering was not something simple like a sock puppet made from an espagra, or the slightly crushed remains of a skeorx. No, it had to be one specific skull with some specific carvings found in a specific place. Luckily for us the specific place turned out to be one of the peaks in the scythan mountains and Sandrin had a map.

We set out towards this "field of mourning" and we made good time until we had to go up some cliffs. At that point Zivilyn gave me the ability to fly, the other piled on Moe's carpets and up we went. The field of mourning turned out to be really high up, high enough that we were having trouble catching our breath. It was also extremely cold, but Zivilyn pulled out another spell from his seemingly endless repertoire and we stopped having to worry about frostbite in our private parts.

The field itself was a small snow covered plateau in a cleft in the mountain, at first sight there was no sign of bones, but some stomping revealed they were hiding under the snow. Sandrin climbed a tree for some observation and spotted a pattern of mounds in the snow, some quick digging found bones under them and the skull in the middle. All the bones had some kind of geometric engravings on them, which looked like they had been applies when the bone was still living. This was obviously the remainder of a ritual where all the participants had died, but we could not really fathom the purpose other than maybe an attempt to connect with the ruinations.

Since we all expected the skull to be a trap we prepped for a fight and Moe used his magic to lift the skull into a bag. The moment he did this several ghostly apparitions showed up to nobody's surprise. The constructs used the very cold to strike at us, but other than Sandrin taking a fairly nasty lash from an icy whip, we took them down with little trouble.

We went back to the outcast, where it smelt like he had gotten in a scent marking contest with Howler and eventually got given direction for a ritual that would offer the skull to Zivilyn's prospective teacher. Definitely nothing suspicious there.

We made way to the location for the ritual, and again expected something nasty to happen the moment we enacted it. Turns out we were right. Again. A bunch of undead troll women with snake tails instead of legs, two large constructs made of bones and the worst looking troll woman I have ever seen attacked us.

Other than the constructs being obnoxiously able to detonate the spells protecting us and the crone looking like a powerful spellcaster of some kind the fight did not threaten us too much. We took some wounds but pounded them back into the ground, at which point Zivilyn realised that the "ritual" was a load of hot garbage. I restrained myself from checking if windlings really are snack sized, which I think shows that I truly have learnt restraint.

We made our way back to the outcast for some answers, some of which came in the form of several re dead trolls on his lawn. I still made my annoyance known on his door, maybe I had not fully mastered restraint after all, while Zivilyn asked questions. What we got was the story of how the outcast became so, involving prophecies, overprotective fathers, and a large dose of irony. It also left me wondering exactly how old he was since the events would have happened well before the opening of the gates.

In the end Zivilyn did not get a teacher, but permission to cram all of the outcasts writings into his brain.

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