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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1235977" data-attributes="member: 7240">Episode #4As Norfinn flipped through the object he now understood to be a book, he experienced an extraordinary epiphany: the tiny painted symbols on these skins were some kind of language, some means of communicating. So, while his companions looked on in amazement, he began to communicate with the strange featherless bird by scratching strange symbols on the cave floor in response to the symbols the creature drew with its claws.The creature, which did not know its name, was very curious about whether the group had seen anyone that looked like it. Reluctantly, they reported their encounter with the smaller, more opaque creatures whom it identified as its cousins. While the various party members began shouting over one another to tell Norfinn what he should write next, Fatima and Shotanari continued rifling through the boxes. But, after a short time, the creature demanded that Norfinn stop them from damaging its possessions; while they were free to scrutinize them, it would not tolerate any removal of or damage to the objects. Chastened, Fatima turned her attention to searching other areas of the room, while avoiding the small hole in the floor that the creature seemed to be guarding but found nothing. So, she and Gatain headed down the hall to see what lay at the end of the other fork. During her search of this apparently empty room, she noticed that an area of the rock wall was, in fact, not a solid cave wall but a pile of rocks, stacked to block a passageway.To everyone's surprise, the creature had no knowledge of what might be behind the rock-fall when Fatima returned to report the results of her search. Having hatched only a few months ago, it had been busying itself with reading the books that it believed its parents to have left for it and fighting with its opaque bellicose cousins. But, its curiosity piqued, it consented to Gatain and Zofelar clearing the rockfall to discover what lay beyond it.After half an hour of labour, the rockfall was cleared and the party, abandoning their new acquaintance, entered a new passageway to continue their exploration. But immediately upon crossing beyond the rockfall, they were set upon by a Spirit Bear which suddenly materialized. Try as they might to hit the creature, they were unable to connect with its incorporeal form as its cold spirit bite hit them again and again. Not until Shokirin was able to rebuke the bear were they able to explore the newly-cleared passage, which, after a very short distance, opened onto yet another cavern.And this cavern contained another surprising inhabitant: a creature, which according to Shokirin has devoid of a spirit, stood guard over a depression in the floor. The creature was almost man-shaped but looked more like a standing stone, finely fashioned from wood and metal, brandishing an enormous metal hammer (an automaton). At Shokirin's urging, the group set upon this blasphemous monster and hacked at it with axes and knives until it collapsed into a pile of mutal and stone, the shadowy animating force scuttling away before it could be attacked. But just as the companions began squabbling over the odd skins in the hole that the abomination had been guarding, the spirit bear re-materialized and resumed its attacks. Terrified, they fled the room with what they could carry, relieved to discover that the bear could not cross the threshold of the formerly blocked passage. This relief was tempered, however, by witnessing the dragon shriek in terror and flee the bear as it watched it pursue the characters towards its room.That night, the companions camped in the dragon's chamber while Norfinn puzzled over the texts they had discovered, only some of which were readable even with Norfinn's newfound skills. These texts included Annals of Jolia and Principles of Arcane Magic, a book whose utility would have been much greater were the companion volume to which it frequently referred, The Book of Changes available.</blockquote>

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