I know many people have gotten used to the extremely long journals that I have been writing of late. However, this weekend in Ae’ranor, I was on vacation, so this journal will not be of the extremely long variety. For that, I would imagine that some people are probably thankful.
Most of the people who traveled to Ae’ranor this weekend came to attend
the wedding of Ash the Mystic Wood Elf (not to be confused with my friend Ashe
the half-ogre from Ashbury) and the gypsy Rumor. Because of this, the gathering
was filled with mostly mystic wood elves and gypsies. I found this to be somewhat
unusual, as usually there are more humans and elves than anything else, but
either way is fine with me.
Personally, I was staying with the Mystic Wood Elves, as quite a few came up
from Therendry for the festivities. I stayed with Lady Pyroxia of Calais, Leviathan,
Sugar, and Spice from Therendry. Other Mystic Wood Elves in the cabin included
Ash and Adrellis, both from Ae’ranor as far as I know. There were also
several gypsies in the cabin, including Zook, Jessenia, and Rumor. Topping it
off were the dark elf Zartex and a fellow elf, Celeste.
Not too much happened on Friday night of the gathering. There were some random
goblins attacking, and there were strange creatures with silver eyes. The silver-eyed
creatures were decently tough, largely because they could cause diseases with
just their swing. Fortunately, we managed to beat back several waves of them
as they came out, and they never really presented a serious threat on Friday
night.
The goblins were much more of an irritation, mostly because they kept stealing
things as they ran by. On multiple occasions Zartex and I had to run off into
the woods after the goblins to get back chairs and other things that had been
stolen. One goblin in particular grabbed a chair right off our porch, and as
I ran after him he slipped and fell in the mud. I managed to down him, but unfortunately
the chair ended up getting covered in mud in the process.
Wow, I just realized how un-heroic this story sounds so far. Somehow, I don’t
think chasing after goblins that are stealing chairs off porches is the stuff
of great drama. Don’t worry, though, because eventually the drama gets
better.
Saturday morning was, of course, the wedding. Ash, Leviathan, Sugar, and Spice
all attended the wedding without clothes on, as is apparently a Mystic tradition.
Ash and Rumor received several gifts, most of which were either alcoholic or
sensual in nature. Cindar and Argent sent a list of items that I don’t
think would be really appropriate to discuss in this space.
As afternoon approached, I joined Ozen and the Blackbird gypsies on a couple
of adventures. Mostly it involved a lot of crawling through tunnels and rushing
out into waiting ambushes of Silvereyes.
Then, as we hit the time when our skills were about to renew, we were rushed
by an army of Silvereyes, and we had to fight hard to hold them off. I personally
got dropped when I got surrounded away from the line, but I was thankful that
I got rescued. I had to make a few mad dashes through the line to get to people
that were down behind the line, and fortunately those all went off well.
Eventually, though, we managed to stem the tide of the Silvereyes, and I went
on to the porch of our cabin to study spells with Lady Pyroxia and Kymri.
Now, for those who do not know Kymri (and I did not know him myself before this
gathering), he is a fine merchant of hooch. He brought many, many bottles of
the stuff with him, and it was really quite good. As you can imagine, at a gathering
filled with Mystic Wood Elves and gypsies, he did a very good business. His
bottles were definitely worth the two gold he charged for them.
During the early evening hours, I went with Ash, Leviathan, Sugar, Spice, Zartex,
and Celeste to go play some poker. We played with a 5 gold buy-in, and winner
took the whole pot. Well, Ash went out pretty quickly, and then Leviathan followed
him not long after. At that point, Zartex and I were already in pretty bad shape,
and we followed them out. It came down to Celeste and Spice in the end. After
a couple hands, they both bet everything, and Spice wound up winning the entire
pot, which was a pretty good haul for just an hour or so’s work.
We continued to get attacked by the Silvereyes throughout the evening, and every
time they came out, they seemed to become more powerful. Most of the earlier
models had been unable to break my protection aura, but the later ones were
usually able to do so. They managed to disease just about everyone in town,
and even though I had a cure disease poem written that allowed me to manifold
the spell, it was still inefficient to cure disease everyone in town, so most
everyone just walked around diseased.
That was pretty much the way it went up until some creatures came into town
to take us on the final adventure of the evening, where we were going to assault
the fortress of the Silvereyes. Apparently, if we failed in this mission, the
Silvereyes would overrun the entire Kingdom of Ae’ranor by the next morning.
So this was high stakes kind of stuff.
We essentially had four groups in town: the Blackbird gypsies, the Golden Unicorns,
the Mystic Wood Elf team, and some random stragglers that didn’t belong
to any other group. If we were going to succeed, we were told we would all have
to work together and be willing to expend any resources needed.
The problem was that most of the members of the Mystic Wood Elf team were tapped.
I had a discussion with Sugar where she told me that she would not be useful
because she had very few spells left. Leviathan and Spice felt the same way.
But to their credit, they came along anyway, and they all ended up playing key
roles in the fight.
In the first few rooms, I didn’t do much. I cleaned out some monsters that
were attacking from the side, but wasn’t needed for backpacking on the
front line, because Christos and Leviathan pretty much had that covered. Leviathan
was backpacking by being extremely resourceful. He was using potions, spells,
healing pools – anything that was available. Eventually, though, when he
ran out, he asked me to substitute for him up on the front line, and so I took
over backpacking Cade Blackbird and Sasha Blackbird.
At one point in the battle, though, the front line got overwhelmed and taken
down. While Christos and I were desperately trying to get them back up, Spice
stepped up and blew up the monsters we were fighting with a series of lightning
storm and ice storm spells, thus proving that lesser experienced adventurers
can be even more valuable than experienced adventurers if they know when the
right moment to unload is.
A few minutes later, Sugar proved the exact same thing. You see, in the second
to last room, Ozen Blackbird and I surged in and then got cut down. I was cut
down in front of the enemy line, but Ozen got cut down behind the enemy line.
Unfortunately, the town line then got pushed back, and so Ozen and I would have
been left stranded. Sugar, though, tossed a cure serious wounds spell and hit
me with it. I continued to play dead, and then I tossed a cure mortal wounds
spell at Ozen. It got him, and then we both jumped up and started wailing on
the Silvereyes. The surprise and ferocity of the attack left them defenseless,
and we easily cleaned out the room. Thus, even though she was almost tapped,
Sugar managed to save the day in that room.
Before we went into the final room, I managed to set up a hearth and manifold
out some shield magic spells, and my hope is that after everyone in Ae’ranor
saw the beauty of manifolding this past weekend, perhaps some other people will
learn the skill. It really is amazingly useful.
In the final room, the hallway we were fighting in was just big enough for four
people across, and so I was backpacking the two fighters on the left while Christos
backpacked the two on the right. Unfortunately, Christos ran out of cantrip
levels, and so a call was put out for another healer to come backpack up on
the front line. The person they sent was Sugar, who was too tapped to be able
to backpack a front line fighter, so I told her to just backpack me, and I handled
the backpacking on all four people on the front line for a few minutes.
Fortunately, Daemon Vespiel eventually joined me on the front line, and he helped
out with the backpacking. In this manner, and with much help from Kymri and
his element’s fury spells, we eventually got up to the leader of the Silvereyes.
Unfortunately, he was super powerful. He swung for a flame bolt worth of damage
every time he hit you, and his strikes tainted your blood when they impacted.
To make matters worse, there were lots of minions throwing imprisons, although
Leviathan saved the day with a fistful of dispel magic scrolls.
To me, the most amusing thing the Silvereyes did was attempted to use the calm
spell on people. It’s a lousy takeout spell, because all I had to do was
lightly tap people with my blade and the effects of the calm spell were broken
on them.
However, despite these occasional mistakes, they were still grinding us down.
We were out of purify blood spells and dispel magic spells, and so the only
way we had to deal with the taint was to killing blow people and life them,
which would not have been a solution that would have worked for very long.
When the Silvereye leader rifted in amongst the townspeople and started attacking
like crazy, I really thought we were done for. Almost all our fighters became
tainted, and most of our casters, too. I really thought that everyone in town
would wind up in the earth circle. However, Sasha Blackbird came up with the
idea that saved the day.
I threw a disarm spell at the Silvereye leader, and he dropped his sword. Then
Sasha, myself, and one other person beat him like mad. He picked his sword up
again, and I disarmed him again, and then we beat him like mad again. Someone
then shattered his sword, and we proceeded to beat him like mad until he fell
to the ground.
In the end, the battle was one of the toughest I have ever fought. Only Sasha’s
ingenuity saved the day. Of course, to me, the toughness of the battle made
the victory all that much more rewarding, as it isn’t really satisfying
to win easy fights.
I guess that in the end, I can say that I enjoyed my time in Ae’ranor,
and I didn’t think I chose a bad vacation spot. In a couple weeks, I am
back to work when I travel to Blackstone and then Therendry. I hope to see everyone
there, and farewell until then!