Lundar's Library

Day 117, Year 547 of the Ascendancy

One of the time-honored traditions of Puddleby is to jump into the
Abyss shortly before a Chaos Storm, and today a group of exiles decided
to do just that.

The thirteen of us gathered in the Dark Temple,
then made our way to the Astral Plane, where we tried to come up with a
survival plan. However, as the healer Suu’ub pointed out: “You can plan
all you want, point is: you die when you enter.” And he was right.

The original plan was to let Hidden enter first to
draw the monsters away, then follow him after waiting 10 seconds.
However, Hidden only managed to last 7 seconds, foiling out plan. This
forced us to move onto plan B, which was basically everyone running in
at once. We lasted for about as long as Hidden did.

Once everyone was down, we began the long wait for
the Chaos Storm to come. However, wait as we may, the Storm did not
come, and we were forced to wait while we were chewed by Fire Rats and
cooked by bursts of flames.

During the course of our long wait, several other
foolhardy exiles joined us in the Abyss, and several rescue attempts
were made as well. However, this only added to the corpse count, until
we had nearly 30 exiles fallen in the Abyss.

After about 10 puddle hours of waiting, a small
party entered the Abyss and actually managed to rescue myself and
Mephisto. However, by then we were both too badly fallen to be raised,
and we couldn’t be taken to town because there was a Greater Death
roaming the Dark Temple. Thus, we spent the last few hours of our wait
on the Astral Plane.

Finally, after more than 12 puddle hours of
waiting, the Chaos Storm finally arrived in Puddleby. Norm hooked
Mephisto and myself on a chain, and dragged us into the Abyss for a
final time before we were blown back to Puddleby by the Storm.

In town, the healers were hard pressed to heal all
of the injured exiles who had fallen in the Abyss, as well as others
who had fallen pulling similarly crazy stunts.

Once I was back on feet, I looked around town but
couldn’t find any new buildings that had opened, though I did notice a
new painting in the Museum. I still haven’t had much time to look
around, so I don’t know if anything else is new, but the Abyss raid
sure was an exciting way to kick-off the new Chaos Storm.

Day 108, Year 547 of the Ascendancy

“Mystic Battle”

Today there were quite a few mystics in the lands, and we decided to
have some fun in the Arena. Pluto, Hawkthorn, Neige, Xel, Tirilis,
Valtrim, Ragi, and I headed to Thieve’s Island to test our physical
skills against each other.

After a few bouts to get us warmed up, we decided
to have a free-for-all tournament, where the last man standing wins. To
make things more interesting, I put up 50 coins as prize money for the
victor of the match. Everyone went to their own separate corners of the
Arena, and the tournament was begun! (See Vision Stone.)

The battle was quite exciting, and everybody put
up a good fight, but when the dust had settled, I was the only mystic
left standing. Ragi and Xel put up a pretty good a fight, but in the
end the outcome was inevitable. Nice try guys.

Next we had two rounds of bouts which pitted the
full Mystics (Hawkthorn, Valtrim, and myself) against the rest of the
assembled mystics. At first we were confident that this would be an
easy win, but we ended up getting beat up both rounds.

Afterwards, we decided that for the last round of
fighting we should have another free-for-all tournament. This time we
agreed not to use any of our “boosts” during the match. Again, I
offered a 50 coin prize for the victor. This time, however, I would end
up losing my money. After a bout of intense fighting, Neige ended up
winning the boost-free competition.

At the end of the day we were all a bit stiff and
sore, but we all had great time. Tan’ki to all the healers who helped
us back on our feet inbetween the bouts.

The inpromptu mystic tournament was great fun, and
we will definately have to do this again some time. Next time, Neige
won’t be so lucky.

Day 105, Year 547 of the Ascendancy

Today I stepped out of the library to find myself in the midst of what
would grow to become one of the biggest Darshak Invasions ever to
menace Puddleby.

The invasion started off benignly enough with the
appearance of a pair of Darshak Scouts, followed by a raiding party
comprised of Thugs, Sailors, Marines, and Blades, led by a Darshak
Captain. Darshak Acolytes and Necromancers appeared as well, to give
the invaders magical assistance.

This initial force of Darshak was easily defeated,
but wave after wave of Darshak poured forth from their foul Warships,
along with several “elite” Darshak. We were able to hold the Darshak at
the west gate for a while, but when the Darshak Necromancers destroyed
our kudzu wall with their unholy fire, we were forced to retreat back
to Puddleby.

After two hours or so of intense fighting, we
managed to push back most of the Darshak from our shores, and took the
fight to the ocean. This turned out to be a big mistake.

The ocean was swarming with the rowboats of
Darshak pirates, along with no less than 5 Darshak Warships, including
the dreaded Darshak Corsair. Those of us who tried to face the Darshak
on the water soon found ourselves floating in our uppened boats, at the
mercy of the fickle currents.

I soon found myself in the company of these
derelict ships, and we floated around for nearly 6 hours while the rest
of Puddleby fought desparately to fend the Darshak off from established
beachheads on Centaur and Ash Island.

When we were finally rescued, we helped to finish
off the last of the Darshak pirates that menaced the ocean. We also
took the time to kill off the remnants of Darshak that hid in the
waters of Kizmia’s Isle and the Ash Island Cove. That done, we were
content that we had rid ourselves of the Darshak menace.

However, later that day when I returned to Ash
Island with my clan ELF, we found that Ash Island still teemed with the
armies of Darshak pirates. We decided to take the battle to these
Darshak, but on our way to the Darshak Outpost, I managed to slip into
the the Darshak Horde.

A massive rescue ensued, and dozens of exiles
battled against the horde of elite Darshak and Necromancers. The rescue
took a long time, but in the end we were all rescued, after several
attempts.

The last of the Darshak was slain shortly before
midnight, and we were all rewarded for our bravery and compassion. All
told, it was more than half a day of intense fighting against the
Darshak. Hopefully our efforts today will deter the Darshak from any
further invasions in the near future.

Day 91, Year 547 of the Ascendancy

What is an anagram? An angram is the rearrangement of the letters in a
word or phrase to form new and different words, like in the example in
the sketch above.

Long ago, human mystics believed that the
rearrangment of the letters in a word or name could offer a glimpse
into the soul or essence of that thing or person. Even today it is
believed that anagrams can provide insight into a word, and finding
anagrams can be a fun and challenging task.

Recently, I came across a web scroll called the Rearrangement Servant,
which helps make the task of finding anagrams much easier. With the aid
of the Rearrangement Servant, I’ve come up with a series of anagrams,
which I’ve listed below:

Playing around with anagrams is great fun, and if
you spend some time on it, you can come up with some really clever
ones. Creating anagrams out of your name, or your friends’ names, is
especially amusing.

If I come up with any good anagrams, I’ll be sure
to put them on my scrolls. If you have any good anagrams that you’d
like to share, feel free to send them to Lodge29@hotmail.com.

Day 57, Year 547 of the Ascendancy

Today AnnGM came to the Fairgrounds, and answered the many questions
that exiles had for her. Some of the topics that were covered during
the Q&A session were subclasses, potion kegs, whatzits, and the
south forest outpost. Aries even asked for AnnGM’s hand in marriage.

Afterwards, EldonGM arrived, and he and Ann
proceeded to summon various monsters, and kill off exiles in some
rather interesting ways, including AnnGM’s infamous “Monster Roulette.”
Read a trancript of the conversation here.

Day 49, Year 547 of the Ascendancy

There hasn’t been much going on lately, and the last few weeks have
been pretty peaceful. I’ve visited Melabrion’s Keep and the Ethereal
Tower a few more times, and even got to be a part of a small Foothills
expedition(which unfortunately couldn’t open the path to Camp Dread),
but other than that things have been uneventful.

Today, however, I stepped out of the library to
find myself in the midst of an invasion, a Chigger Invasion. Everywhere
I looked in town there were fallen exiles and the small but deadly
spiders.

The invasion was composed of two types of
Chiggers– golden colored Ona Scouts, and the more usual reddish-hued
Ona Chiggers. The Ona Scouts were quite viscious, felling me in only a
few blows, and even the mundane Ona Chiggers seemed deadlier than usual.

The spiders could be found all over town, but they
mostly seemed to be centered around the Mushroom Hut near Town Center.
Whether the Chiggers came from within the mushroom hut, or whether they
were seeking something within, is uncertain.

After a period of intense fighting, the last of
the Chiggers was vanquished. Luckily, the giant, Chigger-like Juliosaur
did not show up during the invasion. It is unknown what these spiders
hoped to accomplish during the invasion, but this was far from the
first time they’ve tried to invade Puddleby, and probably far from the
last.

Day 8, Year 547 of the Ascendancy

As most exiles know by now, the last Chaos Storm has allowed us to land
on the island west of Centaur Isle, which is tentatively being called
Melabrion’s Island.

The actual island does not, in fact, belong to
Melabrion, and is instead inhabited by deadly Valley Panthers and
Sasquatches. However, it is also the location of the wizard Melabrion’s
Keep, hence the name of the island.

Today I decided to explore Melabrion’s Keep, and
put together a small exploration party. We made our way through the
treacherous mountain passes of the isle, and into Melabrion’s Keep.

Once inside the Keep, however, we were surprised
to find that there were two other parties already there! We decided to
combine our forces, and explore the Keep together, cutting our way
through hordes of angry guards and deadly Mud Golems.

I’ll leave the details of the Keep up to you to
find, but we did find one interesting feature which is worth noting. In
one of the towers in Melabrion’s Keep, our party discovered a portal to
the mysterious Tower of the Ethereal Plane!

This is a very exciting discovery, and will surely
aid us in our explorations of the plane, and help mystics reach the
Ethereal Amulet trainers with greater ease.