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I'd like to have the intro texts from the emails in here eventually, but for now lets just use the intro texts.
I had to remove a couple minor details from one of them that are in email. If you didn't get an email, that wasn't you!
There's bluetext inside each thing. Answer here, or answer tomorrow!
Cyndra
After the events relayed in the intro, Cyndra was meditating on the northern edge Little Sister, the large lake near Master’s Port, when her soul lit aflame. The pain was excruciating and nonphysical. She calmed herself, and decided to take a few days away from her meditations.
But twenty days later, it happened again, this time while gathering water. Did it have something to do with water? The next time it happened, twenty two days later, she was simply laying in a grass field. Each time it happened, the details grew clearer. First there was just pain, the second time there was the sense of a power source being drained or extinguished, the third there was additionally the sense of it being, not just lost, but driven somewhere, drank right up by some thirsty force. Each time increased the clarity of the event, eventually yielding a direction and a vague sense of a great distance.
Would it become worse the closer she got?
Cyndra decided to go.
It took her hours to make herself presentable enough, and it took most of her remaining funds to pay for a ship north. Once she was participating in civilized life again, she heard all manner of news- Bairnenmel, the Allied Kingdoms, and the Assembled Councils of Ghelmidais, were all militarily present in the equally far away Temlancia. A veragram- a great projection of images and speech unable to transmit falsehood- had told everyone this. Veragrams were rare anywhere, but were usually no more than a yearly occurrence in Master’s Port- as they are generated by one great artifact in some secret location in the Assembled Councils of Ghelmidais. So for multiple ones on this topic, plus several defamatory statements about politicians in Unity, a topic no one Cyndra had ran into in the city understood nor cared about- was extremely unusual.
As she was waiting in line to book passage to Nine Stones, she heard about ongoing issues in the neck of Aykaiton- the southeastern quarter of the landmass. She instead booked a ship to Naridam.
On the boat, a doctor (Irem Clarsen, human male from Harmony) offers Cyndra herbs that will lessen the visions and totally block pain the pain. He warns you that the cause of such things is not physical at all, something that Cyndra already knows well. He offers three doses, each effective for thirty days, for free, and writes a prescription for more that can be filled at any some large towns and any small city or larger.
Do you acquire the herbs he offers for free? Have you taken any?
Also on the boat, Cyndra realizes that her landing port is too far east- she needs to travel west, into Isaï Memory.
She takes one of the few caravans heading east, paid for by the Iron Wheel, destined for Flenala.
Dis’Kolandir
After the events relayed in the intro, Dis’Kolandir emerged from a portal into the Patterned Forest, located in the northwestern tip of Ghelmidais- in the kingdom of Sendralan, one of the Allied Kingdoms. Eladrin have a small nomadic settlement near this portal, which closes and reopens somewhere not terribly far from time to time. From there he made his way into Naril, a small nearby human city. Here he could easily earn his keep with his music alone, and after a few months he traveled south along the coastline, stopping in larger towns, and made his way to the kingdom of Ken, where he heard about events in the nearby landmass of Temlancia- the sudden and inexplicable deaths of all the vampires. Within a month from that event, he, and everyone else, heard of troop movements, opportunities, and calls for aid- both from across the sea, and also from across Nylsanna’s stone, in Aykaiton. Dis’Kolandir decided to help in Aykaiton, and set out.
Why did Dis’Kolandir decide to help in Aykaiton instead of Temlancia? (some possible reasons include: Aykaiton sounds like they need more help, with three armies entering Temlancia, Aykaiton events have an unknown cause, the promised rewards from the Iron Wheel sound great, and others)
Dis’Kolandir used either portals or an airship to cross this distance. The portal method would have required a longer walk to enter the Primal Wilds, and possibly a brief story of events whilst walking through the Primal Wilds. You would have emerged several days journey away from Flenala and walked there. You would not have a passport, though you could acquire one in Flenala as foreign mercenaries are welcomed in large numbers for the moment.
The airship method would have required more gold and you would have entered through Talsemi. You would have a passport in this case, be registered with the government, and have taken a caravan to Flenala. Did you take an airship or a portal?
Geddreng
Forumpasta:
After the events relayed in the intro, Geddreng arrived at Talsemi and was issued a visa. Rewards were promised, including the right to loot monster corpses for any purpose, a promise of specially commissioned artworks, gold for proof of destruction of certain monsters, and, unusually, the right to keep any magical item taken from an invader- duty free. But there’s also the sense of desperation and mystery of these calls- Isaï Memory is a powerful country, but they clearly were taking these rampaging monsters seriously enough to recruit irregulars. Does any of that interest Geddreng?
Talsemi is small for a city. Is it bigger than Geddreng has ever seen, or just bigger than he has seen in a while? From here caravans depart each day, carrying mercenaries, adventurers, citizens trying to increase their status from “material-bound” to “honor-bound” (and even the rare honor-bound looking to be considered for the aristocracy), all towards the eastern area, the “neck of Aykaiton”. Did anything happen in Telsemi, or on the journey, that was of interest? At the start of the story, you have arrived in Flenala.
Nyxara
After the events relayed in the intro, Nyx and Saint depart from The Nocturnal Sgail. This sounds like their departure happens shortly after they are proclaimed fit as ninjas of the lowest rank, let me know if that isn’t correct.
Nyx heads to the nearby Amkenda where she knows a recently graduated former upperclassman, Mran Sareko has taken up residence, suspecting he might have been in the confidence of Master Elkrana. He was not aware of anything that would involve such a hasty departure, but he does share what he knows. Saint, for her part, heads to the capital, Enmoshi, where she asks trusted clerics of the Twinned Church to scry on Master Elkrana. She doesn’t expect this to work unless he wants to be found, and indeed it does not work. She then pays certain groups that might have the resources to have heard of a ninja passing through- but to no avail.
Nyx then meets Saint in Enmonshi, and as they work together to gather information, they (along with everyone else) hear of monsters in the east, heading south and into Isaï Memory and Suri Memory. This event, combined with a rumor that Enro Mosumi, notable for both having made a deal with northern Oni for power and as a member of a group with interests on the eastern border, was seen heading east, made the girls split up, Saint heading to the small town of Zesrenen, and Nyx to the town of Flenala.
Skattebo
After the events relayed in the intro, Skattebo walked for days through the heartlands, seeing neither no life larger than a rabbit. He could recognize many of the prints, but it made no sense- why would dire wolves hunt with large cats? He’d never needed to know the difference between deer and boar tracks- there was good eating at the end of them both, after all- but he did know that difference, and why would they both be there too? There were even prints he’d never seen before- reptile in nature- and he knew that such things existed, but never here.
He then came across a foul scene of dead things, covered in fresh blood and gore- ten dead humans, their bodies battered, no clothing or gear, along with a huge lion (clawed to death), a lizard-beast with its throat torn out, a huge blackfurred monkey creature, its limbs twisted, and five pools of shadowy ichor, dissolving in the morning light. Leading away from this were mostly same prints as before, but examination showed that the lion, the monkey creature, and the lizard-beast had gone in with the beasts and been slain there. Another set of tracks lead in to the bloodbath, large prints from huge canines- dire wolves? and the characteristic tracks of field drakes. Faced with following the new mysterious tracks or continuing to look for answers from the beasts that destroyed his tribe, he continued following the beasts.
The trail was strong until all the animalistic prints went into a river.
He spent a day looking on the other side of the river, to no avail, and eventually a day of torrential rain left him with a growing pain in his stomach- he wasn’t getting any closer to finding his enemies, and he wasn’t even sure who they were.
A week later, Skattebo was still searching, or at least, telling himself that he was, when he found a caravan of orcs, mostly on foot, but a few with dire boars, heading south. Their thick furs and raven banners marked them as foreign to this place, but Skattebo greeted them. They were the Triendre, and they were fleeing for their lives. Undead had descended onto the clearing they had wintered in, in large enough numbers to have slain half of them. Those that remained scouted and found even more. They moved south, and on the first night were attacked by skeletal beasts, which they were easily able to defeat, and as they continued they heard stories repeatedly of other monsters attacking other tribes- and not just orcs.
Skattebo traveled under their raven banners south, and he heard more rumors- that past the border where the heartland ended, where the humans patrolled, they were responding to the same call, possibly fighting the same fight.
Skattebo left the Triendre, pushing even further south. He went through the border alone, and was met by one man on a horse, a border guard. Hearing his story, the guard issued him two visas- one as a foreign mercenary come to answer the call of the Iron Wheel, and one as “demihuman: sworn to not attempt to disrupt the border of Isaï Memory sword to not attempt to disrupt the border of Suri Memory sworn to not attempt to disrupt the border of The Valleys of Bravery ” with no expiration.
(You had to swear these three oaths to get this- if you weren’t willing to, you only have the first visa)
Skattebo is on his way to Flenala, but I suspect we’ll end up meeting him somewhere else on the map...
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