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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jeffwik" data-source="post: 4603224" data-attributes="member: 9739">Day Seven, evening. By the dead gods, I just realized I have not updated this record in days. The night we returned home I fell asleep at my desk, to the disappointment of F------ my paramour, stylus in hand -- for I was, as I wrote at the time, exhausted. I slept until the late morning, and in the afternoon met again with Vladimir, Rhogash, Santiaggro, Cadre, Grog, Throg, and Kato (who seems to be Santiaggro's secretary or personal scribe, now) for a fuller debriefing. We recreated the layout of the Hive, as well as we knew it -- Cadre's knowledge was here invaluable -- and speculated and planned how best to deal with this obvious military threat. Vlad's knowledge of New Hope, the University, was likewise prised from him, pinned to the wall, and probed with scalpels (metaphorically speaking). Last night we enjoyed a great celebration, music and liquor and the like, and then today back at it. Eventually we came to a sort of conclusion, with the following points:1) Yang's utopia represents a clear and present danger to the security of Valley. It is vital that we immediately begin a military buildup to prepare for this threat. Frankly my people are not fools; we have my entire life been faintly aware that someday we would be forced to fight for our security -- after all, you own nothing you cannot defend. However, we must step up our preparedness. Santiaggro proposes pulling all the colony's children out of their current homes and into a central creche, not unlike the way I was raised, and ensuring that all the young people receive fully military training. The perimeter needs be properly fortified and defended; Frances and the others on full-time guard duty should be instructed in what to expect when mindworms attack as well -- after all, only a week ago a force of mindworms attempted to storm Valley.2) As the group with the most hands-on experience outside Valley, we -- meaning Grog, Throg, Rhogash, Cadre and myself -- are best-suited to this training. We are also best-suited to many other tasks, so we shall attempt to instruct a single unit -- I believe the sisters Balk, Belig, Bilik, and their brother Byuchyuch, fine goblinoids all -- in fungal survival before heading out (see below).3) Our -- and yet again I record for posterity that Throg deserves the lion's credit -- theft of the pinecones, and Vladimir's ritual, make possible a redoubling of our efforts at tending a proper tree farm. A ready supply of lumber, for construction, paper, bows and arrows (not to mention luxury goods)... it has the potential to transform life in Valley. This must therefore be a priority.4) Vladimir is a tremendously valuable resource. As a ritualist, he provides Valley with knowledge our savants have sorely missed, including rituals for the creation of magic weapons and other magic items, and for manipulating the properties of magic weapons and other magic items as well. He has already proved his worth by recovering the magical potency from the weapons we retrieved from the shadar-kai Planet cultists, and is even now working in our ritual laboratory to create new magic weapons and other magic items from the Planetpearls we've accumulated. Vladimir is deeply devoted to the image of his former paramour, Irina, Zhakarov's daughter, and insists she must be essentially her father's prisoner and that she should be rescued, preferably by him, and taken to the safety of Valley. While we cannot begin to probe Irina's heart, having never met her, we all agree we owe Vladimir at least a good-faith attempt.5) Furthermore all we know of New Hope and the University and their leader Zhakarov comes either indirectly from Yang and Shion, or two years' out of date from Vladimir. Vlad's hometown could, when Yang acts on his vendetta against Valley, prove a valuable ally... if the man who so callously sold Vladimir into slavery -- and who apparently turns a blind eye to the monster Yang -- can possibly be reasoned with.6) While we were in the Hive -- yet another small detail I did not bother to mention -- Shion mentioned in brief passing someone named Domai, and later Vlad explained that Domai is a sibeccai, one of Yang's drones who escaped the Hive years ago with something like five hundred of his people, and as far as anyone knows they're still living out there in the wastes somewhere. If we could make contact, our people and his would have much to offer one another -- it has been a long time in the wilderness for those "free drones," I think.7) Santiaggro considered sending a group to the monolith, to secure it and attempt to hold it -- as an obviously valuable strategic resource -- against the shadar-kai Planet cultists. Rhogash spoke eloquently against this, and I concurred; the shadar-kai are unknown in strength, and our superior in equipment and (currently) training; against even a numerically superior foe a well-trained and well-equipped group can project force many times greater than the simple arithmetic of battle would indicate. Therefore it is unwise to provoke the Planet cultists, at least until we are better-prepared. The longer they are ignorant of our location and intentions, the better.Tomorrow we will take Byuchyuch and his sisters out into the fungus for a training exercise, then -- armed with new and improved magic items from Vlad -- begin the difficult march west and north to the University, there to learn what we can, see New Hope firsthand, perhaps meet with Zhakarov, perhaps "rescue" his daughter. I worry that Irina does not return Vlad's affections -- absence makes the heart forgetful, as F------ has reminded me -- and this news will drive the poor man into a melancholia. His image of her seems, at times, to be the one thread which has kept him clinging to sanity in the hellish Hive.Dark days are ahead, I have no doubt. This morning, I was walking in Valley with my comrades, and we encountered a sight I have never seen before -- Patrin, a dragonborn I confess I do not know well -- bound in stocks, welts from a whipping covering his body, and Frances's friend Erytulk standing guard over him. Apparently Patrin had been speaking against taking up arms in the defense of Valley, declaring himself a pacifist, and exhorting all he met to join him in rejecting the sins of Toril-that-Was. But man has killed man since the beginning of time, and each age has brought new ways and new places to die... why should the future be different? To make clear her displeasure with the Patrinite message, Santiaggro had him bound up in this fashion. Myself I would have exiled him from Valley; they who refuse to protect what is theirs truly have no claim to it. But alone in the wastes he would doubtless have perished in days, and Santiaggro is perhaps more compassionate than I.</blockquote>

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