NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 346025" data-attributes="member: 726">Hi everyone,While my project at work isn't completed, I've moved off it and on to the Next Big Thing(tm).  That means I'm not in 80-hours-a-week crunch mode anymore.  Woo!  Back now among the living, I'm catching up on many things (not the least of which is playing lots of Warcraft III... mmmmm...), including writing Story Hour installments from the days of yore.  There still won't be updates every day, but I hope to slowly catch up to where the game is now.  You'll probably want to go back and read the last few installments, to remind yourself where we were... I know I had to!  Short version:  The Company has just saved the world from the evil plane-melding machinations of the Black Circle.  Now they're camped out in the Black Circle base of operations below the Ellish city of Kallor, cleaning the place out.  (The Black Circle HQ, not Kallor.)  Morningstar has just met a strange Ellish cleric named Evenstar in Ava Dormo...Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 143Morningstar nods, smiles slightly, and asks where is Evenstar is from – where she is right now, in the waking world.“I am in Kivia,” she replies, “in a hidden temple high in the mountains, on the border between Bederen and Delfir.  Like my mother and her mother before her, I have been in charge of this temple, and have been so for over 30 years.  We worship a Goddess of Night who is not like Dralla, who protects rather than threatens.  For three generations we have been visited, on occasion, by a dark avatar who has trained us.  We obeyed her, for we knew the Goddess sent her.  She was sent by Ell.”Morningstar’s eyes widen.  A temple of Ell, in Kivia!  Evenstar continues.“We have done our best to do as the avatar – as Ell – has commanded.  We have recruited sisters, and they have come to our hidden shrine.   Some of them, most of them, have received the calling to become Dreamwalkers, and I have been doing my best to train them to fight in Ava Dormo.  It has not been easy.  We have been training for a long time, but it is hard, and Ell is far from us.  Many of the sisters have left us over the years, and others simply show little aptitude despite long months or years of training.   Even I find it a struggle, but we have persisted.  “Through all these years, I have been told to wait for a messenger, who would tell me when the time drew near for me and my sisters to be put to the test.  Some days ago, that messenger arrived.  He was a half-orc who called himself Snokas, and somehow he discovered the hidden paths that lead to our shrine.  He carried with him a number of scrolls with a prayer we knew not of, called “Direct Dreaming.”  He told us about Charagan, a Kingdom across Posada’s Boundary, where the Ellish religion thrived, and Dralla held no sway.  And he told me I must contact you, for you would need our help.“At first I was outraged, that Ell had not told me that there was a whole land of fellow priestesses.  I had always felt that we were keeping the faith alone.  But I allowed myself to be calm, and I meditated.  I saw that the urgency engendered by my feeling of responsibility drove me to do the task appointed.   And I feel that I have done that task.  I do not know how strong we will be compared to those you have trained here in Charagan, but I have a hundred dream-warriors ready to battle in Ava Dormo, when you need us.”Morningstar is amazed, and delighted.  But Evenstar has grown weary, exhausted from the effort of dreaming from Kivia, even with the Direct Dreaming prayer.  They agree to talk further about their experiences.  Morningstar slips from Ava Dormo back into true sleep.Aravis has been watching from the Crosser’s Maze, trying to see what a Dreamer looks like from the unique viewpoint of the Maze.  But he sees nothing unusual (given the already-strange context) and slips back out of the Maze.  With a few words to the others, he goes to sleep for the night.  The next morning he finds himself refreshed, and there is no sign that anything is amiss……but Pewter is frantic, meowing piteously at Kay.   Aravis has not come out of his trance, and his breathing is shallow.  As has happened on at least one prior occasion, Aravis has become lost in the Crosser’s Maze, and it takes upward of half an hour of shaking and shouting to bring him back to the real world.  But despite the experience, Aravis shakes it off with his usual equanimity, commenting only that “it’s easy to see how one could become lost in there forever.  If one didn’t have friends.”Friday, July 19The next day Morningstar casts heal on the still-deranged Califax.  He becomes more lucid, but even more despairing.  “They’ve taken my soul,” he says despondently.  “Nothing can help me, and I am no longer in the favor of Delioch.  I have no soul, and am no longer holy.   The Black Circle burned all that away.”  Still, the party, and Dranko especially, is eager to help him, and vows to take him to the mother church in Hae Charagan.   An augury cast regarding Califax and the grease-filled pit to which he was attached returns a clear answer:  ”The oil is irrelevant.Cobb delivers the most recent news from above ground.  Most of the servants and guards of the estates have now fled, and have taken many valuables with them.  But a few stalwart staff members have stayed behind, and continue to do their jobs.   Morningstar goes back to the Temple for further debriefing, but Rhiavonne is indisposed.   A priestess named Corshanni is sent to hear what Morningstar has to say, and despite Morningstar’s misgivings (given how Stersa worked out), she gives a full report. (Corshanni does allow Morningstar to cast a battery of detection spells on her first, and all of them check out.)Back in the Black Circle compound, the party decides to have another go at the room with the unspeakable evil something in it.  But this time they are girded with protection from evil, and are ready for any sort of horrible thing to come lunging out at them.  Dranko opens the door.  Again, everyone in the hallway feels evil radiating out of the room like hot sunlight, but Ernie’s Circle of Protection bears the brunt, and the party is able to enter the room, albeit with great discomfort.  The first thing they see is the table, a long, sturdy wooden table that runs much of the length of the room.  Carved into it is an intricate map of the Kingdom of Charagan.  Black lines, burned into the wood, radiate outward from the city of Kallor to several other locations, and next to each of these is a number.  A large number.  Near the plains of northern Lanei – 21,000.  50 miles south of the town of Sampan – 15,000.   A spot just north of Sand’s Edge – 19,000.  Inside the city of Kynder Hold – 7,000.  Just outside the city of Sentinel – 24,000.  Inside the city of Oasis – 6,000.  In the forest near Gahan on the Gahantropalas Isles – 12,000.  And next to Kallor is the number “26.”  Other reddish lines head into the sea, mountain ranges, or deserts, and there are no numbers next to these.  There were 26 armored soldiers who nearly appeared in the Black Circle ritual room, before they were torn apart when the ritual was disrupted.  From that, the party guesses that those numbers were expected numbers of troops, who would have arrived on Charagan had the evil plot succeeded.  Taken together, that would have been many times more soldiers than all of Charagan could muster.  …to be continued…</blockquote>

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