Day 269, Year 437
I met some new friends! I was waiting forever at that cave entrance.. what was it called? I have my map somewhere... ahh whatever. I was almost sure it had a tiger in it! I heard some people at a bar saying there was a magical beast in it! Or did they say massive? It was too noisy in that bar to hear them clearly... anyway, I seem to be losing focus.
I went to go get some food from my bag, and took a break (one of many, I should say) from trying to get in. When I was about to start to try again a group of three people, two Strange Ones and one Human came to the cave, claiming that a special item that one of them needed was in there.
Intrigued, I let them try to move the boulder. If I couldn't do it, who could! They would've had to be magicians or something! I haven't seen anyone use magic for a long time. So the Human, who is named Adrek, used some weird magic to manipulate the boulder itself, and moved it! He could use magic! I didn't want to sound uncultured or something, so I didn't bring it up when I went to talk to them.
One of the Strange ones, Zairyn, he seems very rude. For some reason he doesn't like Imperials and likes taking credit for a lot of the things he doesn't do, like moving the boulder. How strange. There seems to be a lot of distrust between the two Strange ones and Adrek. From what I understand, Adrek saw them in a dream and is following them for that reason. I don't really care if it's true or not, but they need to lighten up on him. I'm surprised that he hasn't snapped and killed everyone.
We entered the cave. It was mostly useless. There were some things that were exciting though! First of all, we found some strange writing on a rock. I think it has something to do with what the other Strange one, Aidyn, is looking for, whatever that is. We also found the creature I was talking about! Wasn't a tiger though. A huge flesh golem. We easily took care of it and searched the cave a bit more. There was a giant pile of bones in a room. I accidently fell into it. Oops! Seems like Adrek fell in too. There were so many bones! Luckily Zaiyrn was there to pull us out.
Aidyn left the cave to get a stick for a fire. He started to talk in a weird language to some sort of mist. Atleast, I think that's what happened. He heard some story about a Deep Wood. After that encounter we copied down the symbol and decided to rest for the night. We decided that our next destination would be the city Mercran, which is pretty close to our location.
Day 270, Year 437
We were sitting at the fire where we were resting and Zairyn was completely passed out asleep. A strong wind started to blow around us and we felt a lot of pressure. It felt like something was pushing down on us. So strange. Adrek seemed to get hurt quite a bit by it. It felt like we were on a wild horse ride and it decided to jump off of a cliff. Then all of a sudden, everything felt a bit more normal, except the land looked different. It seems we were in Doommarch.
We heard a noise come from the forest. Then it came, a giant hydra. I was so sure we wouldn't be able to kill it, so I wanted to run. I couldn't let Adrek or Aidyn be the last ones into the cave, so I wanted them to run into the cave while I held it off for as long as I could. Aidyn had to drag Zairyn to the cave, which seemed to have waken the jerk up. He woke up and immedately sprung into full attack mode. He's like a robot or something! You'd think he'd be atleast somewhat groggy.
In any case, he decided that we just had to fight the damned thing. He started to attack one of the heads, and I wanted Aidyn to run back so we could run back as well, but he was the only one with a light. He didn't want us to fight in the dark, I guess. In any case, did good damage to the heads while my attacks immedately healed up. I started to attack the heads as well. Eventually everyone was attacking the heads, then burning the stumps in order to make sure the heads don't grow back. The battle did last a while, and Zairyn without his armor got hurt very badly a few times, but eventually we prevailed.
We decided we should head for Mercran to escape any further danger. Atleast that's what I wanted to do, I'm sure the others thought we were leaving for some other reason. In any case, after a certain point in the woods most of us got this terrible feeling of danger and wanted to turn back. Only Adrek thought that it'd be okay to keep on moving forward. After a lot of debate, it was decided that Aidyn would go with Adrek, and he'd do a Mind Link with us just to let us know if there was any danger at all. After about 5 minutes of them walking excruciatingly slow, and Zairyn nastily eating the hydra meat he harvested, it seemed like there was some... thing making them move slowly. It seems that to them, we were moving very very fast. At that point we started to give up, but the wind came back!
We started to fly up and up. It seemed fun at first. Zairyn stupidly tried to stay on the ground by stabbing his sword into it. He easily slipped off. A short while later of flying up, the wind just stopped. Luckily we all fell without a scratch. It seems we had made it back to Exis. After gathering our senses we decided to go to Mercran.
Nothing eventful happened on our 4-day journey. When we got to Mercran, the first thing Aidyn and Adrek did was go to a tavern to try to get some information about the ruins around the city. While Zairyn and I went to get some leather armor, it seems Adrek got himself into a little bit of trouble. We went back to the tavern and I thought I heard a yell. I walked over to where it came from and out came Adrek, running for his life! How silly. He was apparently following some lady who had information about the ruins and wouldn't tell him.
After that, we somewhat split up and went to a few more taverns, trying to find more information. We eventually got a tip about a man named Bear cheeks. Sounds sort of gross, doesn't it? It's not that bad, it just seems that his cheeks are really big. Not those cheeks, jerks! Anyway, Aidyn bought some really expensive drinks for himself and Zairyn. Adrek and I got some for free, which was nice. We had a talk with Bear Cheeks about the ruins. He told us that there was probably no more treasure down there, considering how many treasure hunters have already gone down there, but he also warned us of the large number of monsters that'd be down there as well. He also told us of the Silent Towers. Pretty interesting to learn what's going on in the Empire.. I don't follow that too much. We thanked him and decided to sleep for the night in his rooms, which he gave to us on the house! How nice.
Day 271, Year 437
Adrek decided to sleep in. None of us wanted to actually wake him up, so we left without him. We went to find some ruins that might have some answers. A few were just some walls or columns, and not much else, but eventually we got to a tower. We decided to go inside. We walked down a really old staircase, it seemed to be crumbling under each footstep. When we had about 10 feet before the ground, we had to jump since the staircase was getting so bad.
Good thing I had my lantern with me. I jumped down right beside a giant blob! I turned around and sliced right through the thing! Guess what happened! It split into two monsters! That sucked a lot. Zairyn and Aidyn came down eventually, and both tried to set the thing on fire. One time Aidyn got pulled into the thing! but I pulled him back out, thankfully.
Zairyn had a crazy idea on how to kill the thing. He wrapped his sword in a rope and set it on fire. When he would attack it, it wouldn't split! That gave me an idea. It must be only slashing weapons that cut it, so I hit it with the broad side of my sword. It seemed to be hurting, and no splitting, which is good!
After we destroyed it, Adrek came a long. We found a door leading further down. After some exploring, and some trap triggering, we walked into a very bad situation. Aidyn and Zairyn were trying to burn down a door that was locked, until they heard some scraping coming from the other side. They put out the fire and at that same moment, I opened another door. There were about 10 orcs in there. I closed it and we started to run back to an earlier room. Aidyn and Adrek stood in front of the two doors there, and were both eventually shot at by arrows. We let them into the room where I managed to kill 3 or so orcs with one blow! The battle was short and we eventually got out of that one, after I sliced the captain ogre right down the middle! That was awesome!
We went to the room that was initially locked and found some jewels and some more money. Adrek and Aidyn were both hurting really bad so we rested. Eventually Zairyn and I went to go find more treasure, and we did. We came to one room with two imps just sitting there. Zairyn charged at one of the imps and fell down a very very large hole. It seems that they wanted some shinies, whatever those were, in order to help him. We gave them one of the gems we found earlier and Zairyn, complaining the whole time, was returned.
We explored the level we were on further and found a room full of copper and another room with some platinum coins. After sharing the loot, and exploring what seemed to be everything on the level, we decided to take a break.