The Journal of Andrew the Bard - Entry 1

Alex319

Artisan
I have begun to keep this journal as a record of my adventures, and I will read it to anyone who is interested. I suppose that it is time for me to introduce myself. My name is Andrew, and I am a bard. I do not play an instrument – rather, my instrument is my voice, with which I sing songs and tell tales of adventure. I travel the lands of Fortannis looking to participate in exciting battles, and toe tell stories of adevnture. I spent the first two years of my adventuring career in the lands of New Acarthia, where I became known for my keen intellect and insightful stories. I solved puzzles, broke codes, healed allies on the field of battle, and when things did go wrong, told the tales so that others would know not to repeat my mistakes. Yet all good things must come to an end, and eventually I found myself walking the mists once again.

I landed in Maelstrom, a land of turmoil, where people were forced underground after a cataclysm devastated the land above. There were tough and powerful monsters, but this was good – after two years of honing my combat tactics, I found many of New Acarthia's monsters to be laughably easy to defeat, and a story of how one eked out a victory against overwhelming odds is a lot more exciting than one about how you wiped the floor with a bunch of rats. Yet the Maelstrom offered a bigger problem - I was a newcomer there, and knew not of the story so far. And in a world torn apart by chaos, where there is little written word to go by, and no guilds or similar elements of civilization to provide guidance, I was reduced to participating in other's adventures – I had no real way to know how to strike out on my own. Frustrated with this world, I took a break from it, disappearing back into the mists.

Yet now I have decided to return to the world of Fortannis once again. Though I know almost nothing of the ways of this land, since I left I have received training in the arts of improvisational theater – the art of weaving stories out of nothing. And now the mists in this area have opened up to a new land, Enerret, which I have heard is more civilized than the Maelstrom. Thus just a couple weeks ago I traveled for the first time to Brimm's Watch, the capital of Enerret, and here I will report what happened.

I first started by talking to the populace, hoping to get a brief overview of what was going on. I learned that, like New Acarthia, this land did have lots of guilds where one can buy stuff and apply to become a member. I also learned that apparently there was trouble brewing – an evil orc clan known as the Redtusk Orcs was planning an attack! In the tavern that evening, I used my fortune-telling cards in an attempt to divine the nature of the threat. The cards told me three things: first, that we were likely to be going up against undead as well, second, that there may be mind magic afoot, and third, that the enemies may be using poison. (Two of these predictions proved accurate: we did end up fighting undead near the end, and the leader of the orcs was using mind magic to marshal his forces, although they weren't using the mind magic on us.) I also met some of the other adventurers there. One of note was Captain Finnegan, who came from a land from across the mists where they have no magic spells or potions, but do use weapons that work by propelling projectiles using controlled explosions. I wrote a song describing this land and what it might have to teach us. I also talked to one known as Terin, a healer whose specialty is surgery using mundane tools rather than using magic to heal. One would of course wonder what is the benefit of such a skill, when magical healing is so much easier to use. Apparently the answer is that certain conditions cannot be treated by magical healing. She also said that if you keep getting wounded in battle a lot and then get magically healed up without being checked by a mundane healer first, then it's possible for lingering damage to accumulate and lead to health problems down the line. I mentioned that I hadn't heard about that before, and it might be a good idea to set up a public health campaign to warn the adventuring populace of this danger, but she didn't seem to be very interested.

While we're on the topic of public health, I also learned something interesting about how resurrections work in these lands. In New Acarthia, where I came from, everyone has the capability to resurrect at a resurrection circle if their body dissipates (once you die, you have 5 minutes where someone can cast a “life spell” on you, and once that's up your body dissipates), although that can happen only a limited number of times before you become permanently dead. However, here, only a small fraction of the population (those with “stalwart spirits”) can resurrect in this way – everyone else, once their body dissipates, stays dead. Apparently only 0.1% of the general population (of humans and the races allied with humans) have stalwart spirits, but of the Redtusk Orcs we were fighting, 30% have stalwart spirits. I don't know how they found that out, unless they sent epidemiologists under cover deep into enemy territory to collect statistics on the rate of successful orc resurrections. (Now that I think of it, there might be an easier way: since a body re-forms where it died if it failed to resurrect, after a battle you could count how many orcs died and then how many orc bodies were still left 10 minutes later.)

Anyway, there was a battle that first night where we went to some orc tunnels, fought our way in to the tunnels, and planted bombs to collapse the tunnels. As usual, I was there to be the healer. We only had a couple healers, so we had to advance carefully, rotating people out of the front-lines in order to repair damaged armor as necessary so we could take as much of the hits as possible on our armor and avoid needing healing. This battle was successful, although the monsters didn't have that much treasure. After we got back to the tavern and distributed the loot, I met Val, a young adventurer who was looking to start his own adventuring company and was visiting this land to see the local customs. Based on what I saw, he had just learned one custom – that randomly swinging your sword around and hitting people isn't a good idea.

The next morning, I went to the tavern to get some breakfast, and found a strange sight on the table – a scroll of Elemental Blade. I wasn't sure why someone would leave a scroll just laying around on the table, but I did check to see if anyone would claim it, and they didn't, so I just kept it. Then, I started my plan to explore more of the world. I went into town to visit the guilds in hopes of finding regular employment, but found that all the guilds were closed because they were dealing with war-related stuff. Then I tried to form a scouting group to go out into the woods and see what I could find. One of the first people I met was a Wayfarer, one of the races in this world, and he warned me not to go adventuring without a Wayfarer because it was bad luck. I went around town trying to recruit a party, and soon realized that we had to start the adventure right away so we didn't miss the next big battle – and rushed off but forgot to pick the Wayfarer up. We didn't realize that until we got to the woods, and decided to continue adventuring anyway – to test the hypothesis that adventuring without a Wayfarer is bad luck. We kept going, and were soon attacked by the Tenebrous – mist creatures that formed out of thin air! The first few Tenebrous creatures were beatable, but soon an even bigger one came – his swings were infused with death magic, and he dodged three of my spells in a row! Realizing we were in trouble, I ordered a hasty retreat. We barely got any treasure, but we did get confirmation of the bad-luck hypothesis.

When I got back to town, the whole town was ready for the major battle of the day – an assault on an orc stronghold. We went through a magical rift to our destination, and had to hide from the enemies until the whole group got though the rift (there were at least 30 of us, and one person came through the rift every 30 seconds). Then we had to fight our way to the stronghold, killing orcs on the way. At first it was exciting, but soon the orcs started coming one at a time, and weren't that powerful, so they were easy to defeat. For a lot of the time I didn't have much to do as the healer, since nobody was taking much damage, as far as I could tell. We eventually came to a sheer wall we had to scale – once one of us was on top, I helped out by throwing an Endow potion up to him, to give him a burst of strength so he could pull a ladder over from the other side. After we got on the wall, it was time for a lunch break, then back to fighting. Near the end, the excitement started to pick up as we got to fighting some red dust creatures in addition to the orcs. I had the chance to be heroic and heal some people, and then we finished clearing out the area and went back to the tavern.

After dinner, it was time to distribute the loot and treasure from the battle – and there was a lot of it. Of particular interest to me was a large quantity of healing and curative potions – as a healer, I use those a lot in case I run out of spells. Now, the loot distribution protocol that is a custom in these lands is as follows: a pile is created of all the loot in the battle, any special magical items and ritual scrolls are auctioned off and the proceeds put into the pile, any so-called “production items” such as potions alchemical gases can be purchased from the pile for their production cost, and then all the money in the pile is distributed equally to each adventurer that participated in the fight.

One will notice here the fact that the goods can be purchased “for their production cost” - this refers to the cost of the raw materials needed to make this item, which is usually half the “market price” of the item if bought from a shop. Thus, I saw the opportunity to score some cheap potions to refill my supply. I was low on coins at the moment, so I looked around and tried to sell other items that I had on me but didn't need in order to get more coins to purchase the potions. A merchant named Vivienne purchased some of my spare battle magic scrolls and alchemy – she needed them to strip them down for raw materials. I also showed her the Elemental Blade scroll to see if she wanted to buy that. She looked at in and informed me of its true nature: apparently, scrolls of Elemental Blade no longer function and can no longer be crafted – they once could be, but the winds of magic had shifted so as to alter the nature of magic itself! That is, though the scroll was no longer magical, it was a rare collector's item – a memento of a time long past, of which no more can ever be made. She wasn't interested in buying the scroll, though, but I did sell enough items to get the money I needed to get all the potions I wanted.

Also at dinner, I had the chance to meet Baron Victor and the Winter Queen, the leaders of the town. I introduced myself, saying that I was a traveling bard with skills in healing, puzzling, and decrypting, and that I was looking for ways I could better serve the town. I sang one of my songs to them, and they were impressed – I also gave them a resume detailing my previous accomplishments in New Acarthia and the Maelstrom, so that perhaps I could get a job at one of the guilds. Finally, I presented the Winter Queen with the rare collector's scroll as a gift: I had tried to sell it in the tavern earlier and nobody wanted to pay money for it, but I figured making a good first impression with the Queen is probably a good investment: it always helps to have friends in high places.

Later that night it was time to muster our forces for another big battle, this time against the undead – but I learned that there could be a traitor in our ranks. Two dryads approached me and said they needed my help – they had learned that one of our number may be have secretly been transformed into an undead himself! While trying not to arouse suspicion, I used my skills in the healing arts to check as many of our people as I could for injuries – healing arts can't be used on undead, so if I got a “no effect” result, rather than an indication of whether they were wounded, I would know they were undead. All the people I checked came back clean, except for one, who wouldn't let me check. I told Calderon, one of our group's leaders, about the situation, and he said that probably he just didn't want to be checked because it was an invasion of privacy, and that it was highly unlikely that an undead could infiltrate secretly in this way. We went off to battle, and though we were victorious in the fight, when we got back to the tavern we discovered a shocking surprise...

Val had been killed and had to go back to resurrect during the fight, and he couldn't remember what had happened – he must have been given an Amnesia effect! How had he died, and who was responsible? And why hadn't anyone else seen him die during the fight? Val went to me and asked me for a fortune-telling reading to get information. I laid out the cards, and they said that a traitor was afoot! I told him that this could have something to do with the undead – perhaps the undead had corrupted one of our number. I didn't really believe that one of our own people could be the traitor, so I figured that being corrupted by undead is kind of like being a traitor, I guess.

In the meantime, the rest of the town had started asking people to tell their stories, to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to Val's death. I said truthfully that my contact with Val during the fight was limited to dragging him back to safety and healing him when he went down at one point, and later performing field repairs on his armor while under fire from enemy spells, and others were able to back up my claims. I followed the progress of the investigation with interest, eager to see if my fortune-telling would prove accurate. I noticed one thing of interest while listening to the investigation – someone stated that he may have seen Val's body dissipate much sooner than the normal 5-minute interval after death, and speculated that a “Shatter Spirit” spell may have been afoot.

Yet I knew of another possibility. Throughout the day, I had had much contact with Val healing him in battle, and I found strange things happening – he seemed difficult to examine properly using healing arts, and on one occasion while examining him, it appeared that he was dead for a few seconds before I realized that he was not dead. I recognized this as a phenomenon that sometimes occurs with new adventurers – their bodies do not always respond to injury and death as expected, as they have not yet fully acclimated to the rigors of combat. Was this why his body seemed to dissipate early? Would the investigators not realize this and make a false assumption, and be led off-track?

(OOG note: It was Val's player's first event, and it was clear that he wasn't familiar with the injury and death rules – for instance, at one point he assumed that a “Slay” ability was an instant kill, when it's actually just a lot of damage, and I asked him and he didn't know about the 5-minute timer for resurrection. I speculated he might have thought he was supposed to go back to resurrect before he was actually supposed to, and needed to come up with an “in-game” reason to explain a potential out-of-game rules mistake.)

But it did not appear that this ended up being an issue, as the investigation soon narrowed things down to a prime suspect – the two dryads from before, who were supposedly friends of Val and looking after him in the fight! The suspects were offered the opportunity to have their minds read to clear their names, but they declined – having your mind read is always voluntary, so that in itself is not proof of guilt. The charge was “Murder by Ensuring Resurrection” - the suspects were accused of waiting until their friend had fallen in the fight and then hiding his body to prevent him from being healed or Lifed. There was a brief trial, where the citizens testified about the sequence of events and the possible motives of the suspects – for instance, they had apparently made up the whole story about someone potentially being turned into undead, just to sow dissension among the populace. When the issue of the timeline came up in the trial, I stepped forward as an “expert witness” to testify about the potential resurrection-timing discrepancy, but also stated that that shouldn't excuse the suspect's actions – regardless of any discrepancy, the victim could likely have been saved if the suspects did as they were supposed to and shouted out as soon as their “friend” went down. The suspects' only defense was that during the fight, they tried to drag their “friend”'s unconscious body out of the way of an enemy that was trying to “engulf” it, and then got “trapped by monsters” and were unable to yell for help. But that defense wasn't very convincing, as there were no monsters in the fight with the power to engulf, the incident didn't happen until the very end of the battle when there were barely any monsters left, and they didn't have any innocent explanation of how he came to be affected by the Amnesia. So the suspects were found guilty and sentenced to death – the same fate that Val had suffered, so hopefully they would learn their lesson once they resurrect.

The murder plot taught me a valuable lesson: when telling fortunes, don't let your own preconceptions affect your interpretations of the cards. The cards were clear – a traitor had done it. And that was true in the most obvious of ways – Val was murdered by those who he thought were his friends. Yet I had not believed the cards, and had instead tried to shoehorn in my preconceptions – that it was an undead who did it – into a more convoluted explanation.

Those were my experiences in Enerret, and perhaps I will try my luck in the Maelstrom once again. Yet if I do, I will seek guidance. The Maelstrom is a harsh place, and it will be difficult for me to achieve things on my own, but perhaps if I had an ally that I could stick by – someone who has been in the Maelstrom for a while and knows what is going on – then perhaps I can learn how to be involved in more of the action. Thus I ask here if anyone would be willing to provide such guidance. In exchange for such guidance I can make sure to stick by your side and provide my services in healing and other things.
 
(A voice with a slight Dwarven accent speaks in a friendly tone)

Greetings Andrew the Bard,

It is a pleasure to meet another bard like myself. To be honest I believe we meet when last you where at Maelstrome and fought many an Ooze creature.

I have many few questions, comments and a also a few things I should clarify.

Firstly I reside currently in the lands known as the Maelstrome and I am part of a group known as The Resplendent Quail Merchanting Company or as I like to call us The Quails. Our group would be more then happy to help you acclimate to these lands and it would be an honor to have an accomplished bard such as yourself with us at the next gathering.

I just want to ask a few things before we adventure together,

Firstly I want to make sure you are okay with adventuring with a family of adventurers? (OOG we do have a baby which means lots of crying and that sometimes, a few of us will be taking brakes to take care of her.)

Secondly we or more specifically I am an Essence magic caster. Are you comfortable with around such magic? (OOG Essence magic has no in game effect)

Our group is what others may describe as goodly and honorable. Simply put we always strive to do goodly deeds and have a strong aversion to tricking, stealing from or harming the innocent. While we are not opposed to roguish battle tactics in combat that is the only time we will strike an unguarded being. Does your morality align with those ideals?

If not will you respect us enough to take action in such a way that will reflect our moral code?

I also hope you can teach me or at least allow me to view your reading of fate cards. This sounds very much like essence magic and I'm very curious about it.

If you feel up to it as well I would love to hear you sing, unfortunately due to certain circumstances I can only play the drums at the next gather. But if need be I can harmonise or whistle along if you'd like, unless your a solo performer that is.

Also I would love to learn any tales you may have. I am versed both in spoken word and written works and am willing to share what few tales I have if you wish.

There are a few things I would like to clarify. Firstly Terren thought very boyishly good looking is most definitely a man. A very young clean shaven one but we can't all be blessed with a glorious dwarven beard. *Sigh*

Also it is my understanding that Brimms Watch is actually a small town. Though I've never been myself I don't believe it is a capital city or if so Enerret must be a very small land indeed.

I believe that is all I needed to speak with you about for the moment.

Please think over what I have proposed and the questions I've asked and if you feel like you'd like to adventure with us at the next gathering, we would be happy to have you.

Sincerely,
Embrawk Hematite of the Quails













Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk
 
*a good natured, if slightly embarrassed laugh*
I-i-t wouldn't be the first time someone has made the mistake. Calderon took after our father in most ways, manly appearance included. I, sadly, did n-n-not. Rest assured Bard Andrew that I am well and truly male- I s-s-should hope my medical training has given me at least the ability to identify that.

To clarify, surgery is a technique that was taught in the schools of The Empire of the Iron Hand, part of the land now called the Maelstrom. I received my formal training in the Medica of the Embassy of Halcyon. For the most part it is an extension of the more commonly known first aid, and combined with the correct application of magic can be significantly more effective or more closely directed than just magical healing.

With regards to long term damage, please allow me to clarify what I mean. Magic, especially healing, is mostly undirected. Minor wounds, where the edges of the wound are closely located next to each other, heal together with few problems. However, imagine this; A man has his limb nearly severed. If you do not move the limb back into place before healing it, your magic will still work but the bone will be slightly malformed- the tissues will be slightly scarred. The average farmer may receive m-m-magical healing once or twice in their lifespan- not enough to cause any trouble, even under the worst of circumstances but adventurers? Soldiers? They constantly receive far worse wounds and are typically healed on the battlefield where there is no time for sutures.

You can see the results of this on the skeletons of elderly adventurers or soldiers. Sometimes their bones will be malformed or fused together, particularly in places like the sternum and ribs. If you ever meet a elder decorated soldier and he complains of stiffness, pain in their bones, and difficulty breathing, you can be fairly certain they are suffering from this condition to at least some extant (though it may not be their only affliction).

A decorated retired solider with a fairly extreme example of this condition generously donated his body to the Medica upon his permanent death and I have attempted to include my memory of his skeleton in this dream. I have hidden it behind a veil of dream though, so as to not force it on those with more elegant dispositions. If you are interested in seeing my memory, it is here. ((OOG the link is to a photo of a skeleton. Follow the link at your own discretion))

That all being said, this is not something to be particularly afraid of. It is brought on by a lifetime of battlefield magical healing, and even then does not effect everyone. Even if they do contract it, it only manifests late in life and it only becomes life threatening in extraordinarily few cases, you're more likely to be killed by your coffee this morning. In most, it just means stiffness in joints and aches in backs. I mean it only as an example of how magical healing is not perfect (and as an interesting anecdote. Or well, interesting to me) rather than a reason to fear battlefield magic. I mean, we get stabbed dozens of times a day- it would be foolish to think that we can do that without some long term effects.

The benefits of my training come out where magical healing isn't an option. Magically resistant injuries, injuries that are too extensive for magic, plagues, some illnesses, parasites, corruption, that kind of thing. Indeed, if a child swallowed a rock and it became lodged in their duodenum you'd be hard pressed to find a s-s-spell for that. My training does not replace Earth Magic (I am a life-capable caster myself) it merely adds to it and creates options in unique circumstances.

If you are interested in horrible stories of magically resistant plagues, please come find me. I like telling my stories though I usually keep them to myself since they are, after all, somewhat gross.

My a-a-apologies if I seemed disinterested. I was recovering from some fairly serious injuries (magically resistant, as it turns out) and was not doing particularly well. What I intended to convey was that there was nothing to campaign or spread about, the positives of magical healing way, way outweigh the drawbacks. It would be like warning people that you could choke on a spoon- it serves no purpose, and only makes people wary of their spoons. I would rather not have people be wary of healing.

With regards to Brimms Watch, my understanding is that it is a smaller town (though it is growing since the destruction of the city of Balmurdavich- I am taking a guessing at the spelling there) within the Kingdom of Tharros, which is one of several lands located within the land of Enerret.

In humble service,
Assistant Terren of Knight's Ferry
 
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Embrawk:

All of that is acceptable to me. I am interested in learnings more about Essence magic, as I am am always interested in learning about different traditions, magical or otherwise. A for the fate cards, I have written some instructions on how to use these and I am looking forward to showing you in person at the next gathering. (If you're interested in getting your own set of fate cards, see here.)

Terren:

Thank you for the information. [But see OOG information in PM.]
 

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