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• We met with Parnth's son, Sigurvan, in an Inn in Dimmersdel
• He tasked us to collect a flower that would ensure Parnth's recovery, as she was severely injured during the nuking
• Flower grows in dragon poop, we'll have to travel a few days north of Dimmersdel to acquire it
  

• In Dimmersdel library, we discovered the area had fire dragons and the plant restores manifest powers (most people don't lose their powers and survive)
• We headed several days north to the mountains, the small towns on the way ask: who you are, where you are going, and where you are from as new protocol
• We went through a mining town on the way with a lot of Dwarves; iron mines nearby
  

• We searched in a valley between peaks for the flower, no immediate success
• Attacked by 6 Hobgoblins, Cassie took care of 5, Boyce took care of 1.
• Boyce used Space to trace a cave up to the top of a peak, seemed to have a dragon cave at the top
• Boyce teleported up there while the rest of us started climbing
• Boyce managed to land right in front of two heavily armed and armored Hobgoblins
• He spied the flowers up there, but was too occupied by the hobgoblins to get to them
• I sprouted wings and flew up to assist
• As I landed in front of Boyce, one of the Hobgoblins charged and I managed to trip him by raising the earth up, sending him rolling down the hill to his doom
• The dragon came out at that point, so I went to keep him occupied while Boyce picked flowers
• Boyce managed to pick 5 while I dealt with the dragon. Accelerated Healing helped immensely here.
• To shake the aerial pursuit, I flew into a small cave and collapsed it on the dragon, and escaped using Matter and Life magic
• I rejoined the boys and we teleported out of a cave constructed by Grey, returning to Alestia
  

• Boyce and I attended a box social after we returned (we had a week and a half before meeting Sigurvan again)
• I tricked Grey into building us a heated swimming pool in our house
• We hosted a pool party later in the week at the house, inviting Doak and Liri as well as a host of other nobles and such we'd met at previous parties
  

• Two weeks after the first meeting, we met with Sigurvan again at the Inn in Dimmersdel
• He told us to meet him at a specific location in the refugee camp where Seldermoor used to be
  

• We did meet him, his mother, and some of her attendants there three days later
• Plague was running rampant
• Parnth had been burned severely, and I offered her what healing services I could provide. She declined for now, saying it was easier to hide this way
• She noted that rumors of someone pretending to be her elsewhere helped keep suspicions off of her here. Gulp
• Gave her the same story of what we wanted as we had Sigurvan, but more detail
• Basically agreed to an alliance, as our goals coincided
• We explained about Veris stealing Azranael's powers, and using them to power her spells
• Parnth would get her spies on attempting to figure out how to determine if someone was of Azranael's bloodline, as cutting off Veris's power supply was a big step in bringing her down to the level of defeatable
• Parnth would also work to get her scattered troops and people together and ready to takeover once Veris was down
• We established a means to communicate, they now know where we live in Alestia and can contact us there whenever they need
  

• We headed back to Alestia
• I headed to the temple of Hathandar and spoke to my priest friend, and eventually the Bishop of Alestia, and then got them looking for someone within the ranks of the church of Hathandar to help us to better understand the nature of Kaz's gem and how we could (essentially) make him more useful to us and less useful to our enemies (his cult)
  

First things first in that I picked up my battle costume a day prior, and then we headed off to Dimmersdel by Gate to go meet this son of Parnth's. We purchased rooms at the Inn in which Boyce had his gate-Sympathy, and then headed over early in the day to scope out the meeting location. It was actually just about the most non-descript location I have ever seen. Which I guess was good, all told.

Since nothing seemed too amiss, we headed back and dispersed for a while until the meeting time. Boyce disappeared off to Hathandar knows where and I decided to just stay in my room and meditate for a while.

We re-convened just before the meeting time that night and headed over to the meeting place, the Broken Arrow Inn. We sat down, ordered drinks and waited, as we didn't see anyone around the common room as yet who really stood out as being the person we were looking for. After only a few minutes, a man walked in with two guards in tow. The guards both sat near the door and the man approached us and without much ceremony, said, “My name is Sigurvan. You wanted to meet?”

Sigurvan was in fact a manifest, and he was not attempting to hide it at all (at least magically). And being such, he was definitely very physically appealing. He was probably a very similar age to the four of us, although it was hard to tell, but perhaps a touch younger. His confident and somewhat… “pompous” carriage belied his youth. It was certainly clear by several little minor nuances of his behavior and appearance that he was nobility, or at least someone who considered himself important.

We did a quick meet-and-greet, and he had a seat at our table and waited for us to explain. His to-the-point attitude was kind of off-putting. It was almost as if he dismissed the whole thing, the meeting, as a waste of time before we'd even said anything. I tried not to get annoyed by it, after all, his family just endured a devastating atrocity and what were we, but just four people? What could we possibly have to offer over four other random manifests? I was beginning to wonder if we weren't over-estimating our own importance here as well. If Kaz could manage to become a little more useful to us, I might start to think that we did in fact have some definite advantages.

Ignoring his terseness, I set about explaining our goals without mentioning Veris's name directly. I pointed out that we wanted her dead and gone, and given that actually happens, someone will have to replace her current position and if we were able to pick and choose about that, we'd prefer it to be his mother. And that anyway, we were hoping that our goals coincided enough that we could work together to accomplish the removal of Veris at the very least. I also explained without giving too many details that at the very least we brought a lot of information to the table about how Veris was able to do what she can do, implying the nuking of Seldermoor.

After the explanation he told us that our goals overlapped sufficiently to make it worth pursuing. He then set us about a task, to collect a plant that was essential to enabling his mother a full recovery (apparently she had been severely wounded), that when accomplished, we would be allowed to meet her. He told us to meet him here at this same time of day and location two weeks from now with the item he requested.

Boyce, for whatever reason, then prompted him to stay and share a few biers with us. While it's fine to get to know our [hopefully] future allies and build some trust and/or camaraderie, it was completely unnecessary to start making perverted implications about Sigurvan and I. I was rather annoyed by this, although I didn't let it show. I mean sure, I like having a good time, but this was business, not fun. I'd rather not be mixing the two at this juncture. Negotiations were sensitive things, and I didn't want to do anything that might jeopardize this one. Even so much as giving the implication that I, or we, were weak and/or not serious about this Veris thing. And I was deadly serious about this Veris thing.

I let Boyce and Sigurvan chatter like a flock of women, and stared off at the far wall, thinking about the task he had dropped in our lap. Dragons, again. We had to acquire a plant that grew in dragon poop. I thought that it might be of use to do a little research in the Dimmersdel libraries before just rushing out to begin this task. Both the types of dragons that lived in the location that Sigurvan gave us, and what it was the plant he wanted did. I had heard of it, but didn't know any details about it. It was definitely worth looking into first, and we might even be able to find a picture of it which would aid our ability to acquire it.

After a few minutes of spacing out thinking, Boyce drug me back into the conversation (especially since Trent and Grey collectively had a negative amount of social skills between them). They were discussing swords (that figures), and were consulting my opinion about Katanas. “What do I look like, a Masayuman?” I said in a completely serious tone. They both stared at me pointedly without saying a single word. “Oh…” I realized, my face turning slightly red. Well, sometimes I forgot about being a halfie since I didn't really feel Masayuman at all. I quickly recovered and went on to comment about that type of sword, having hefted Akira's Katana a time or two. I explained that the Katana was a Masayuman medium-sized blade and very common, but that there was one oven larger called the Nodachi that was almost absurd in its largeness, although very rare to see.

The conversation continued in that vein for a while, then switched to bier, then women, and Boyce made a very specific point to ask Sigurvan about his cousin Folcina. I hid a smile during this discussion because I had noticed Boyce eyeballing her essentially the entire time she was in our company. Sigurvan, for his part, made some very implicative comments and I had a hard time telling if he was just teasing Boyce. It seemed like he was, but… well anyway.

After a while, an hour or so, Sigurvan had to leave. From there we headed back to our Inn and the next day we headed to the library to do that research I had been thinking about earlier.

So, it turns out the plant restores manifest powers to people who somehow (nearly impossibly) managed to survive whatever devastation that took their manifest powers away in the first place. Not much of a market for it I guess. Research into the region we were headed revealed we would have to face one or more fire dragons. Okay, well, since we weren't there to bother the dragons nor steal their hoards, hopefully we could get in and get out with out with minimal conflict.

And so we set out, starting from a gate to the Gravath's farm. It was a few days on the road, stopping at Inns for the night, before we made it into the foothills. Interesting, apparently a new edict had come down from on high that Innkeepers were required to ask questions of people staying at their Inns. Who are you, where are you going, where are you coming from. We told them we were heading from Dimmersdel to Damalaav (Regland).

The last town we stopped in in the foothills was a town that had quite a sizable Dwarf population. Apparently it was a mining town and they primarily mined iron here. Boyce and I chatted with a few locals to pass the time that evening and then we all headed on into the mountains the next day.

A few days later, we stood in a valley between two peaks, with dragons flying overhead, wondering where to begin our search.

We decided to split up and search the valley, as we assumed dragons wouldn't poop in their living spaces. I had Telepathy running as we trekked about, and after a while of searching I felt 6 humanoids converging upon me. I sent that over the telepathic link and began buffing. Boyce appeared next to me, while Trent and Grey started heading this way as fast as they could. But by the time they arrived, 6 hobgoblins lay dead at Boyce and my feet.

Boyce used Time magic to see from whence they came and traced their steps back to a cave-mouth in the valley here, and then traced that cave back and up to an opening at near the top of one of the peaks using Space magic. We decided Boyce should teleport up there to check the place out, looking for the flowers, while the rest of us began a climb up.

Over the Telepathic link, Boyce barked that he had appeared right in front of a much more heavily armed/armored hobgoblin and was now involved in a melee. We heard shouts from up the cliff, and so I sprouted wings and flew at a double move up toward the ruckus, buffing as I went. I landed between Boyce who was now behind me and a hobgoblin beginning a charge down a very steep hill with his ax held high. I quickly used some Matter magic and raised a patch of ground in his trajectory, causing him to trip and fall and bounce/roll all the way down the mountain, almost assuredly to his doom.

Just as the goblin cleared Boyce who watched it roll past him with bemusement, we heard some bellowing coming from the cave. Uh oh. I told Boyce over the telepathic link to go collect the flowers, several samples WITH dragon poop too since we were going to have to keep it alive for a week and a half before we could deliver it, and I would go keep the dragon occupied.

I wonder some times if I come across as fearless? Because while it scared me to death thinking about having to go engage a dragon in aerial combat, I did it without hesitation. I guess there is a fine line between courageousness and stupidity. I turned on Accelerate Healing and launched myself into the air, angling up toward the mouth of the cave, arriving outside of it just as the dragon blasted a line of fire from farther back inside the cave.

I got a little singed, but healed up what I could in the time I had before it burst out of the cave and leapt at me with far less grace than the shadow dragon we had fought in hell, but still with very obviously practiced ease. We both took off into the air, angling away from where Boyce was picking the flowers we needed, and really away from the valley in general. I called out some insults as well as letting loose a Psychic Assault on the thing to ensure I had its full and complete attention. Why yes, I did. It followed me for a bit, breathing fire on me again. Good thing I had my healing spell on because I was sustaining quite a bit of damage.

Finally, I stopped in midair and mustered up a full defense, and the dragon hovered before me and buffeted me with blows. I was able to deflect most of them over a period of a few minutes, and finally Boyce notified me that he was done collecting and back down in the valley with the others. So now I needed to lose the dragon.

Really, I didn't want to hurt the thing. Obviously it was agitated because we were snooping around its home territory, but unfortunately it didn't really realize that we didn't really want anything from it besides something it didn't even want anyway. As I flew back toward the peak I searched for a smaller-sized cave, one big enough for the dragon to fit in but not much room for it to move around in. I managed to spy one, and angled off in that direction.

Before I made it very far, the thing grabbed ahold of me and threw me. I snapped my wings out to catch me in the air and resumed my bank angle toward the cave I had seen. I flew like a bullet into the cave mouth and skittered to a landing in such an awkward way that I couldn't get the earthen wall up between me and the dragon that I had planned on creating to block the inevitable firey breath attack that it unleashed upon me as it landed. Man, I was burning through mana having to heal myself all the time from this engagement. As the dragon maneuvered in the cave toward me, I finally had a second to concentrate and I moved the earth above him, essentially collapsing the cave on top of him.

From there I shifted into a meerkat and dug myself out through the mound of earth that sat atop the flailing dragon, collected several of the dragon's scales (5) as I exited the cave, and headed back down to the valley to rejoin the boys. As I arrived, I could still hear the dragon roaring up above, furiously trying to find me. Boyce had already begun work on a gate spell to get us back to Alestia, and I stood guard outside until he finished and we all stepped through.

Well. So we had a week and a half before we were to meet Sigurvan again, and no way of contacting him to meet sooner, so we had some time to kill. We put the five plants that Boyce had collected in a safe place in the house, in separate planters with their soil of dragon poop, and kept them well watered and sunned them at least part of the day. I made sure to check on them often using Life magic to make sure they were doing alright.

Boyce and I, in the meantime, decided to attend some box social that we'd been invited to.

[ The Box Social ]

Following the adventures of the the Box Social, I decided to convince Grey, by acting like he couldn't do it, to build us a heated pool in the back yard. With the beginnings of the pool house to work from that Percy had worked on, Grey set off to tackle the rather large task before him.

And thus, our abode had the one and only heated pool in the dead of winter in Alestia.

So what to do with this fancy and fun new toy but throw a pool party, yes? Boyce was obviously totally game. And so we invited all the people we'd met over the last couple of weeks, and told them to spread the invite around to people they knew and liked, and we also invited Doak and Liri (and Boyce invited his cadre of other people like Rei). Trent and Grey, not seeming too interested in such things, decided they were more than happy to keep to themselves the rest of the evening.

[ The Pool Party ]

Finally, it came time to meet with Sigurvan again. We gated back up to Dimmersdel, and headed back to the same Inn at the same time of day. Again, Sigurvan entered as he did last time with two guards who sat near the door. He sat down with us, we explained that we had what he needed, and he told us to bring it to a specific place in one of the refugee camps where Seldermoor used to sit.

We told him we'd meet him there in 3 days, and so we all departed from the Inn and Dimmersdel, and planned our travel to the lake of glass that now resided where Seldermoor used to sit.

It wasn't particularly difficult getting into the refugee camp. There was a wall and guards posted everywhere; apparently there was disease running rampant throughout it and they weren't letting anyone exit for the time being. The guards let us in after a fashion, dressed like peasants as we were and begging to enter to see if we could find our missing family members.

We headed over to the location Sigurvan had given us, and knocked on the pole outside for entrance. Some older man came to the entrance and asked who we were and what we wanted. We told him we were to meet here by someone of the appearance of (very detailed description of Sigurvan), and that we had the item he requested.

The man disappeared for a minute and then returned, opening the tent flap for us and leading us inside, to a nice, spacious area in the rear.

Parnth sat before us. Sigurvan was standing to her side. Parnth's face, half of it anyway, was severely burned. It seemed her mind was fully there but her body was obviously suffering. I offered her my services as a healer, but she declined saying it was easier to hide this way, for now. She also mentioned that some rumors of someone masquerading as her to the east of here also assisted in keeping her hidden. Uh… heh heh heh, yeah. *whistles innocently*

Then we moved into more serious topics. She asked us about what our goals were, and we essentially had the same discussion now as we had had with Sigurvan a few weeks ago. Only she seemed much more interested and/or respectful of our offer of an alliance. Then again, I guess this was her job, negotiating alliances and pulling political strings. At this point, any assistance could be of use to her I would bet.

Anyway, while explaining what we wanted to do, she seemed a bit surprised that we didn't want to take over this god-forsaken place? I mean I understand the desire for power, it is what drove Veris to all this insanity after all, but I at the very least intensely dislike Upper Thalia and would rather never see this place ever again after my dealings with Veris are complete. I explained to her that I had no desire to be here much less rule this place, and would rather she do it instead.

She seemed a bit compelled to defend the “honor” of her nation, and I told her that Upper Thalia has built up quite a reputation for itself over the years. She really didn't dispute that fact. I didn't really get into anything about it totally destroying my childhood, but she seemed to be able to sense something more personal there anyway, unrelated to Veris and her recent antics. Her insight and empathy was uncanny.

In the interest of not getting distracted, we abruptly shifted the topic back to more pertinent things. The obvious next question from Parnth was: why choose her to support in the taking-over and ruling of Upper Thalia?

I pointed out to her that of the Dukes, she seemed to be the only one with a shred of integrity, citing her sticking to her guns in the conflict between Veris and Melfir, even up to and including the point of the nuking. And also, her people genuinely seemed to like her, which is always a good sign. She smiled wanly at that.

She then asked why such an interest in getting rid of our mutual foe. I explained, speaking only for myself really, that it got personal, then it got REALLY personal, and that at this point Veris had pushed things to the point where the world was no longer big enough for the two of us; one of us would have to die at the end of this conflict. Obviously I'd rather it be her. Parnth nodded and commented that it seemed we did in fact seem to have convergent situations.

From there we had more tactical discussions as it seemed the alliance was tacitly accepted at that point. I made a mental note of their extremely efficient and effective sort of political dynamic; Sigurvan, in our meeting a few weeks ago, had seemed more interested in what resources and capabilities we had at our disposal as far as any alliances were concerned (which was probably why he acted as if this was a waste of time, since we don't really have that much in the way of tangible resources), whereas his mother, Duchess Parnth, seemed more interested in motivations and how dedicated we were to accomplishing our mutual goals. Interesting. My respect for Duchess Parnth only seemed to rise, I just hope she actually was a decent person at heart too. I'd hate to be responsible for deposing a tyrant only to replace her with another tyrant.

But things had already moved in a direction that couldn't really be changed at this point. Parnth asked what she could do for us presently. I explained to her that Veris was essentially stealing the powers of a long-dead, exceptionally powerful devil, by killing and absorbing the essences of people who carried her (the devil's) bloodline. And one of the biggest handicaps we can exact upon Veris was to cut off that supply of extra power somehow. And that if she could set her spies to try and uncover information about how Veris was able to identify who carried the bloodline (obviously there was some way to tell), then we could perchance put an end to the kidnappings and this source of power for Veris.

We went into more details about how Veris was stealing the power, talking about Anzja and her devil pals and cult, the ceremony to transfer power, and huge cathedral in Pernicdel, etc. We filled her in on all the details related to this except for Kaz; he was still a big question mark at this point, and it wasn't worth mentioning him until it could be determined that it was actually of some use to be in possession of him and his rock.

After this, we exchanged contact information. Obviously Sigurvan had some way of traveling easily, so we gave them our address in Alestia if they needed anything urgently (or at all, whatever). Then Boyce headed out to a different tent to retrieve the dragon-poop plant from our house in Alestia and bring it to Parnth. She accepted it with thanks, and we departed, heading back to Alestia to plan our next moves.

As soon as we touched down in Alestia though, I headed straight off to the temple of Hathandar. I located my priestly buddy Ari, and started bombarding him with religious theory questions. He was a bit taken aback, and took me to talk to the Bishop about it instead since he wasn't really qualified to answer my questions.

The Bishop, for his part, indicated that they didn't have a religious philosopher in residence here in Alestia, but that they would send an inquiry into the upper ranks to see if they could find anyone within the church who could basically help us determine what Kaz's stone is, how to use it, how to enable Kaz to refuse prayers that come to him, etc. Basically, help us understand how to turn Kaz from a lump of coal into something we could actually make use of, turn him into that trump card we always thought he was but that has never really come to bear.

I made it quite clear that this was of the most confidential nature, and that the fewer people who knew about this the better, as it was very, VERY likely to put them (and others) in mortal danger. I leveled my gaze at the Bishop to make sure he truly understood the degree of risk involved. He nodded slowly, seeming to understand what I was trying to tell him.

Anyway, since I usually swing by the temple at least once a day while I'm in town, I told him to just catch me when I come through whenever they have any news for me. He agreed to do so, and I headed back out into the main temple to meditate on recent events, the contact with Parnth mostly, and then to ponder what things we needed to do next.

• Go to heaven and find Vandriel
• Find where Veris is storing her red-heads and free them somehow
• Find a way/place where the freed red-heads can be distributed where they won't just be immediately re-captured
• Find some way of using Kaz or at least preventing him from helping “them”
• Other ways to cut-off Veris's power supply?
• Some way to find comparable power for ourselves, even if temporary, so that we might stand a chance against her?