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="spyscribe" data-source="post: 2548468" data-attributes="member: 5808">Part the One-Hundred Fifty-FourthIn which: Pesshetaup… it’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.Not far from where the party has stopped is another half buried-obelisk.  Thatch decides to try to climb it that night and look for any signs of campfires.Overhead, the sky shimmers, thick with stars.  As Thatch reaches the top of the obelisk, the chill wind of the desert night pelts him tiny grains of sand.  He squints, shielding his face from the constant minor abrasion working inexorably to return Pessetaup to the earth from which it came.  Aside from the party’s own lights, the darkness of the desert night is complete. “So, I guess we wait here, and then see if we can find any sign of Manaal in the morning?” Eva suggests.The others look around helplessly.  Here they are, finally in the mysterious city of Pesshetaup, and they seem no closer to finding the archmage of Ebis than they were in Dar Pykos.The party sets their watches, and settles in to sleep for the rest of the night.###Thatch falls asleep quickly and soon finds himself dreaming.  He’s walking through tall grass on a vast plain.  The sky is blue and the air is cool.  He can almost feel the grasses moving against his legs as he walks…Thatch sits up with a start.Something is moving against his leg.  He kicks off his bedroll as quickly as possible and in the dim light of the campfire he just catches a glimpse of a snake slithering away across the sand.“Umm… Guys?”“What is it?” asks Reyu already awake and on watch.“Does anyone else have a snake in their bedroll?”That is enough to have the rest of the party scrambling, especially city girls Lira, Eva, and Annika.“Don’t move!” Reyu tells them, “If there’s a snake you’re just going to scare it.”Although that directive is enough to make Lira freeze, she’s not going to lie there waiting for any snakes that might be lurking in her blankets.  Euro? she asks.Yeah Boss?Anything in this bedroll that isn’t me and isn’t you?Let me check… (There is a brief interlude while Euro burrows down into the bedroll to investigate any interlopers.)  Nope, all clear.Lira gets up.  As it turns out, no one else has a snake in their bedroll, and Thatch is certainly none the worse for wear for his reptilian visitor.Although Reyu and Kiara steadfastly insist they have no idea what all the fuss is about, some of the other members of the party are concerned that the snake might come back.  Eva scoots her bedroll over beside Lira’s and the two women sleep back to back, just in case.Everyone has just settled down again for the night when:Hey Boss… There’s something here and it’s not me and it’s not you!This is followed almost immediately by Eva’s cry of, “Ack! A snake!”Lira abruptly finds herself in the middle of a rogue/weasel tussle.  Euro, it’s Eva!  “Eva!  It’s Euro!”“Oh.”Sorry ‘bout that.(“Never have I see a group get more game-play out of a one hit point non-venomous snake,” says the DM)The rest of the night passes quietly.###The following morning, Thatch, Kiara, Eva, and Euro all take turns climbing the obelisk again.  In daylight the city seems less tranquil, more obviously ruined.None of the buildings crumbing into the sand look as though they could be the home of anyone, let alone an archmage.Looking for a place where they can wait out the heat of the day, Eva finds an open area that appears to have once been the city’s marketplace.  No signs of merchants or their wares remain, but she does find the remnants of a campfire, as well as tracks indicating that a large number of people and wagons recently passed this way.For a city that’s supposedly been abandoned for more than fifty years—that most citizens of the Empire have never even heard of—it’s unusual to say the least.Eva quickly returns to the others to share her findings.Reyu confirms that the tracks are only a week or two old at the most, coming from the west and heading north-east.The party discusses their options for what to do next as they wait for sunset, but in truth their choices are limited.  Chi’i only said that Manaal lived near the city of Pesshataup, not within it.  And the tracks are the only indication they have found that people have passed this way in the last half-century.“If we’re going to pick a random direction,” Lira points out, “it might as well be that one.” The main question for the party is who the travelers might be, and why they are trekking through the deep desert.  However, since the party is not burdened by heavy wagons that must be dragged through the sand, they anticipate that they will soon catch up to the caravan and find out.They depart at sunset, following the tracks through the untouched sand.  ###The party travels deeper into the desert over the next three nights.  Every day is hotter than the last, and—most ominously—the nights grow warmer as well.Anvil theorizes that this is an indication that they are traveling into Chaotic lands where Ehkt rules over his brother, until Lira points out that the Ketkath—surely the most Chaotic lands in the Halmae—were deadly cold.No one else has enough energy to muster much of an opinion on the issue.Then, one evening, just at dusk as the party is preparing to move out, Reyu spots a flash on the horizon, directly ahead on their current path.  It is followed by another, then another more sustained than the first two, and then yet more in quick succession.The party watches, rapt, and forges ahead, although Reyu estimates the flashes are at least a day another night’s walk distant.  Some minutes after the first flare, the lights on the horizon stop.Finally, just at sunrise as the party prepares to stop for the day, Kiara spots some sort of structure, a few miles off across the sand.  The trail of the convoy leads straight for it.</blockquote>

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