Helped Siarrah with repairs at Tor's Cloud - patched a roof! Go me! Headed for Telperest. Uneventful trip except for attack in night by shifty purple cat-thing with tentacles [1]. Jumped around funny but was not immune to Barg cutting off large chunks with his axe.Met up with Kanton's mentor druid guy. Lucan foolishly offers "if there's anything we can do" on behalf of whole party. So either we've just promised to fight multiple aberrations or assault the locals for the horrible crime of expanding their city (pretty decent building from the looks of it). Or go through some kind of initiation to *join* the we-hate-civilization club. Great.
[1] Displacer beast.
Hm, that sounds like a kind of uneventful week, first hints about A Cataclysm not withstanding... someone else should do a writeup and see if it sounds more exciting to their character <grin>. --Amy
Left the heavy lifters to help Siarrah out in sprucing up Tor's Cloud, and Kanton, Ceder, and I went into Fenneldale to stock up on some supplies before heading off to Telperest. Trade up my old trusty short bow -- just a stick with a string at both ends, basically -- for a nice new composite longbow. I'll have to tell Anga -- I think she was going to get me one for my birthday.Happy to have it, too -- halfway between Fenneldale and Telperest this purple cat-tentacle-thing jumped me while I was on watch. Hesitated a bit -- these woods weren't full of monsters and abberations when Cor and I and the caravan came through the first time, so maybe it was just a cat? Dangerous in any event, though, I decided, and stuck an arrow into its chest. Only afterwards did I notice the tentacles, so a quick blast on the whistle and we all got a chance to beat on the thing for a while. Seemed able to... I don't know, appear to be in a different place than it actually was. Ceder says that's called "displacement." Huh. I've heard of beasts like this one. Wonder what they're called.
Anyway, Barg clearly got frustrated after he dropped his axe dead-center on the thing and by the time the axe hit ground the beast wasn't there anymore, and his next swing was even more vicious than usual. Lifted the cat off the ground, I think, and it was dead when it came back down.
I felt energized after that battle, like a buzzing around me. I felt faster -- er, no, *quicker* than I was before, but when I move, I still move at the same speed I always do. And I feel energy, sort of pulsing, up from the forest and into me. Don't know what to DO about it, though.
All right, get a grip on yourself, Lucan. Come on. You sound like a damned high-elf priest or something. You're a Ranger, your strength is the swiftness of your blade, not the way your aura glows. Let Kanton absorb the life-energy of the forests, that's what he's there for. Still, it would be nice to talk to the animals, befriend them... compared to the druids I sometimes feel like an interloper in my own woods.
Speaking of which: Taren Condor is just as wrinkled as I always heard he was. Looks like an old tree. Very nice, though, especially considering it sounds like Kanton's a bit of a black sheep among the treehuggers. I kind of put my foot in my mouth -- got a little swept up in the save-the-trees rhetoric and made that "whatever you want is fine" claim, which of course isn't really true. Killing more tentacled purple cats? Sure, hey, whatever, I like fighting monsters in the woods, that's what I'm trained to do. But I don't want to go through some sort of initation rite, and I don't want to try to put back the forests the way they were before people got here, which is what Cor seems to think they're going to ask. Note toself: don't get dwarf mad, if at all possible.
Important thing for now is that we go find Siarrans and see what they're up to, although earning the trust of the druids is also key. I'm increasingly convinced that if we're facing a full scale war, the strength of us five will be in unifying different groups and different city-states to rise up against the invasion. We've already got a dragon on our side, which is a good start. And probably the people of Fenneldale, for whatever that's worth.
At the same time, reports are that the Siarrans around here here aren't causing any trouble, which means that either they're being successfully covert about their evil, or not all the Siarrans in Correllendor are like Senet and Valen and their friends. Or something else we haven't thought of. Meantime, I kind of want to rest another day or so. I really feel like if I had time to concentrate, I would be able to contribute more to the fight afterwards. But we'll see.
As the farmer waits for the fruit of the earth, until the coming of the morning rain, and the evening rain,
Lucan
Here I am. Sitting, writing on a piece of parchment given to me by my commendable companion, Barg... sitting in a Druidic copse in a woods, one thousand miles away from home... and hopefully at least five hundred miles distant from the nearest bounty hunter or Methyl soldier hunting me.Interesting is this Talen Condor fellow. He has bonds familiars. I haven't seen another familiar since Elen Sheen. A pity she died in the final struggle when those bastards finally stormed Greensdon. Elen would have been a wonderful companion over the last many months. I have felt very distant from this group of travelers. But recently I feel myself somehow bonding a bit further. I don't want to get too close, however. I want to learn from these people, not become beholden to them. If I help them stay alive, if I become friendly to them, this helps me and it helps them. I go further toward finding a way to free Greensdon and the Three Kingdom Downs. But now I'm tangeanting... Condor seemed pleased at meeting me and acknowledged Trachael as an equal, something that no one has ever done. I respect and trust this man already.
But he mentioned something that turned my ear... cataclysm. I wish I'd had something to take notes at the time... but I believe he was speaking about a myth involving the Siarrans. I wonder if this cataclysm correlates with the ancient disaster that my people, the Delwen, originate from. I must consult my copy of The Delwen Histories.
Speaking of Delwen, I haven't made an issue of everyone and their mother's uncle calling me halfling. I don't really mind so much as I'm sure most of them are ignorant of my people's cultural name. To a more sensative Delwen, halfling would be equivilant to: "Hey s--t head. How are you?". I wonder if Lucan knows that it's Delwen, not halfling?
I have begun to write down the events of The Delwen War... being an amateur historian. Should I somehow be able to rally my people to freedom someday, there should be a record of what has passed.
So it seems these local Shiarrans have done nothing harmful, according to Druidic reports. Interesting. I am fascinated to learn what they're about, here. Perhaps they're enemies of the Shiarran's we fought in the hills? Maybe they're just laying low and setting up camp. Maybe they're Senet's minstrals waiting for his return.