6 Winter 537 (3/4/00)

A new year, and a bundle of news. It seems that there is a deeper cavern beyond the first undine cave, but you need a pathfinder to get in or out. I joined a rescue party, and when we got there we found it full of undine, everything from hoodsies to faithless to some new stuff I haven't seen before, orga skeletons and zo detached spirits. There was quite a bit of running about red leading crowds of undine (and running in to other people's crowds of undine), but eventualy we formed a line in front of the healers and gained control. Rumor has it that the new cavern is being called "Alchemist's Folly;" I think he was the first to fall there...

And I recently learned from Lady Baba that Bartok the Big Bad Orga has been seen in the Tanglewood; it seems that he has been plotting against us again, as the orga army staged yet another raid on the east gate and made off with our catapult. From the reports I've heard the defences were a bit disorganized, they were outflanked and outsmarted by the monocular hordes. There's a builder in town trying to gather wood and stones for repair of the town defences, he's over next to the bakery, but right now we are losing wall faster than we can rebuild, and our position at the east gate has been substantially weakened.

15 Winter 537 (3/6/00)

There was big mob of people in town last week, tempted no doubt by the extra training that was being offered, and naturally when that many people get together we just had to go try to take over the Orga Camp. There were so many people running about that things became rather chaotic, with exiles waiting for mystics to open the doors to get to the next camp while other groups called for help to deal with spawns further back. I finally managed to make it to OC3, where a big group was waiting to try for OC4, but there were a lot of locks in there and the entrance was a bit jammmed, I finally ran out of time and had to head back to the library (too bad, I've been wanting to see OC5).

Then the other day I was helping with a rescue in the Dark Temple (which wasn't so bad, mostly hoodsies and faithless), when I foolishly asked where the Dark Chamber was. Needless to say just a few minutes later most of us were fallen to a group of wailers right at the entrance, except for Yosh who made it out to the tree, where he then fell to a necro-induced swarm. I took a nap in the hopes of clearing out some of the entrance, but when I woke up I was back in the Temple in Pud, the Ancients had transported me there because there was simply no room for me back in the DC. When I got back to the tree I found that Degu had managed to get Yosh back up, but there was so much junk in the entrance area that we couldn't get in. My lesson for the day: stay out of the Dark Chamber!

30 Winter 537 (3/10/00)

There was a bit of a chaos storm last week, but not much seems to have changed, other than some of the beasts are behaving a bit strange now, they seem to be doing a bit more maneuvering. Soon after the storm blew through I went to help Geraldus and Thuja in the Dark Temple, there were two liches between us and Gareth's fallen body; but Geraldus had a clever plan, we each lured a liche into a corner and Thuja crept up the middle to raise Gareth, who then tiptoed back out the same way. I must say it took a lot of nerve to calmly walk right between two liches like that!

There has been a lot of discussion in and around town lately about how Pogue Mahone (or at least some members of that clan) wanted to appoint themselves Game Wardens in order to control the hunting of several of the tougher beasts; it seems they felt that too many exiles were just going off and killing pretty much at random, depleting the stocks of available creatures. Cygnus has since withdrawn some of the statments made by Klur and Wisher, but a number of people were really offended that PM was even thinking about restricting hunting in some way and considering enforcing their plan with extreme measures.

Naturally this got me thinking about how nobody seems very happy with things these days, and I decided that I should take personal charge and do something about it. I have therefore decided to form the Puddleby Society for the Preservation of Humor. I'm sure my clan will back me up on this, although I probably should have checked with them first.

48 Winter 537 (3/14/00)

I made my first visits to Dal'noth Island last week, it seems that anybody can find the entrance now, even without a mystic, although to get to the south beach area you do need a pathfinder. Both trips were as part of rescue teams, one of which ended up pretty good, the other...well, let's just say that another team was required to rescue us. Some of the 'noths hit pretty hard, but I was surprised to find that I could usually hit them back, especially if I snuck up behind and swung at their backs. They were fun trips, now I'm anxious to see a bit more of the island, but I'm going to make sure I bring lots of friends on my next trip.

Back in town a few days later there was a major Darshak invasion, and it quickly became clear that the pirates have been training their troops, there were Darshak "defenders," "invaders," and "intruders" by the bushel, as well as the more familiar blades and a necromancer or two. There was a wide variety in ability within the various types, some of the red-shirted intruders were pretty easy to knock off, others were very hard to hit and could hit me like a ton of bricks. Even strong exiles were falling to the swords of the enemy, but thanks to our brave healers we were able to get back up and keep fighting, eventually turning the tide and driving the priates back to sea.

56 Winter 537 (3/16/00)

Now that winter is wearing on I'm thinking about shifting my hunting grounds once again, crawlers aren't much good these days and even wendies are becoming a bit unsatisfying. In search of new experiences I took a trip to the Savannah with Sephroth and Hoover, we were doing quite well taking on the mahas one at a time, but when we got to the big mushrooms we were jumped by several in quick succession, and I learned that it's not a good idea to fight two of the big fellows at the same time. Several brave healers attempted solo rescues, but by that time there were half a dozen cats wandering around, so it wasn't until a big rescue party arrived that I was back on my feet.

There has been a lot of talk in Puddle lately about a town on a somewhat distant island called Peaceton, it seems that someone is offering ship passage to the place, some exiles have purchased tickets for the voyage at steep prices. I've heard it described as everything from "the land of milk and honey" to "nobody ever returns," so I'm not sure what to think. I suppose it's possible they have a library there, perhaps even trainers or an altar, but they may have unknown dangers as well, maybe I'll wait for someone to check it out before I take a trip.

71 Winter 537 (3/20/00)

I took part in one of the more desparate battles I've seen lately, the Orga tried to take over several areas in the Tanglewood, including the all-important TW3, which is the only known exit from the tangle. There were a whole bunch of 'locks there, along with zerks and spites, and the fallen were stacked three deep at the entrances. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to join the group attacking from the side nearer the meadow (meaning I was trapped in the TW), and I was able to make a few hit-and-run raids, but then I got trapped by a zerk and took a number of bolts (although not as many as some). Thuja made several daring raids to rescue fallen exiles, healing or pushing us out while massive showers of bolts were flying through the air, it was quite spectacular. Eventually the group coming up from the East Forest formed a viable rod and were able to take TW3; we dragged the fallen to the meadow for massed healing of the heavily bolted, then headed up to the Orga Camp, which had more 'locks both outside and in. The 'locks have this nasty trick of "locking on" their bolts, and if several fire at you at once you need to get out of the area immediately or all of the bolts will home in on you and fry you at once. Still, in the end we were victorious, and I think that we handed the Orgas a defeat that they will remember for some time.

79 Winter 537 (3/22/00)

I have been spending more time in the Lily Pond area lately, where some of the cave mahas are proving to be rather difficult nuts to crack, they are very hard to hit and do mondo damage when they hit you. The only effective tactic seems to be to surround them with a number of exiles, then pull back quick after you take a couple hits to get healed up. The fact that a LSW can sneak up behind you while you are doing this just adds to the challenge. The worms aren't so bad if you can surround them, they are fairly easy to hit, but they have this trick of double-hitting that can kill me in two blows, and they are awful quick to burrow away after they do it.

I've heard reports that a big chaos storm is in the works, although I'm not sure how soon it will arrive. I also continue to hear reports that there are unexplored areas about just waiting to be discovered, and that more paths may be opening "soon". I've been looking about for non-pathfinder paths a bit myself, but there are already so many places that they could be hidden that it seems a hopeless task. And if I wanted to work on hopeless tasks, I would have been a mystic. Speaking of which, Leonin told me that mystics are no longer able to open the path to the deeper Orga Camp, my guess is that the orga have found some new magic to hide their movements and are preparing something dire.

89 Winter 537 (3/24/00)

The threat of a big chaos storm seems to be receding, so life continues pretty much as usual. Spring is almost here, thank the Ancients, but that also means more daylight and more daylight means fewer beasts to hunt, the south forest and passes in particular have been practically empty lately. I have this suspicion that someone is running ahead of me and bopping all the beasts; and come to think of it I did see Sleipy sneaking around out by the passes the other day. It seems that he's gone and married Luce or something, it sure is confusing, I thought he was dating Baba. Even worse, people around town have been bad-mouthing dwarfs because some of their items have gone missing from the storage cave in Pud, and the operators of the cave just happen to be dwarfs. Seems to me that's like blaming Outcast, Narse and the other thooms that hang around town because there are puddles in the square, admittedly they are damp and clammy, but they don't drip that much. Speaking of thooms, Paramedic has started a really useful newspaper called the Daily Fishwrap, it has all sorts of interesting tidbits in it.

10 Spring 537 (3/27/00)

There continues to be a shortage of beasts in and around Puddle; I'm not the only one to remark on this, several other exiles have mentioned it as well. I'm not sure what the cause of the change is, but even things like large vermine seem scarcer than before, which has an obvious negative impact on my income. With less to hunt, people seem to be turning to other amusements; there was a big charity auction the other day, with lots of exiles selling themselves off. I've also heard that Rising Claw and OWE had a dance-off the other day as part of the Dun'ilsar competition, although I didn't hear who won. I've been forced to go a bit farther afield to find beasts, Spad led a group of us on a trip to the Savannah the other day that was fairly successful, and then yesterday after a rescue in the River Cave some of us went down to hunt for wurms and ran into a pink wurm that we just couldn't hit at all, we hacked away for hours just to get it down to green, then it healed itself back up while we continued to whiff. We eventually gave up and went to look for LSW's, for all I know the wurm's still there.

22 Spring 537 (3/30/00)

The hunting situation seems to have improved a bit, I was up in the North Forest the other day and there were quite a few ferals running about, and I even ran into a maha down in T'rool Town. Some mystics have been reporting "phantom" beasts for a while now when they use their spy-orbs, and now it turns out that those phantoms were taking up space that should have been occupied by regular every-day beasts. Anyway, the friendly spirits are now chasing away some of the phantoms, and we can hope that the long-delayed chaos storm will finally arrive and sweep away the remainder. In the meantime it's now possible to find swamp ferals in the lily pond again, they often have valuable pelts worth around twenty coins, which is up near the limits of my skinning skills. Some of the coins I've been collecting are going for the healer contest that will be taking place at the Arena in a few days, ZA clanmate Squirr'l is the organizer and victim du jour, with both individual and team events.

26 Spring 537 (3/31/00)

This will teach me to be careful what I wish for, the big chaos storm finally arrived, the phantom beasts have been chased away, we actually have a place to get rid of our garbage...and the altar was somehow damaged in the process, it seems that moonstones don't work at all now! This means that only healers with cads can heal others, and as for self-healing, just forget it! What I want to know is why isn't Master Hekus in there with his sleeves rolled up fixing that altar, we paid good money to get it repaired last time, I'm sure that it's still under warranty. The broken moonstones make everything more dangerous, if you fall you have to hope that a cad-equipped healer or a chain-equipped exile comes by. I dared to make a trip up to the Orga Camp yesterday, where we killed three zerks and got three chests, ten coiners too! They must have been on the way to the bank or something.

30 Spring 537 (4/1/00)

You have to wonder if Zonk had something to do with the broken moonstones, soon after they finally started working again he started making smart remarks over the sunstone network, and soon after that a greater death showed up in town, where it killed any number of exiles. It was behaving a bit strangely, it slowed down and Thuja was able to lead it on to Mai's lawn, where it started to decay. Then Zonk put on a personal appearance, it seems that this particular GD is his pet, and after making a few more snide comments he packed her off into his tower and took off for parts unknown.

35 Spring 537 (4/2/00)

Things have been going from strange to weird, there was a wandering rift in town the other day that led to this strange world where we were riding about in these funny boats on a black sea that didn't have any water. There were actually several worlds to explore, with jungles, deserts, forests and farms; one looked a lot like the old cold and snowy place, and another looked a lot like the Abyss, complete with demonic vermine. Gareth gave me the grand tour, most of which was pretty safe, but when I followed him in to the fire world I promptly ran right in to a flame burst and fell. Now the problem with this is that I was still sitting in the burning flame after I had fallen, and by the time Pyromaniac pushed me out I was burned to a crisp and then some. Axell, Gareth and Pyro pushed us out of the fire world, across the black sea, and back to good old Puddle, but Axell told me I was "perilously close" to death. At the time there weren't a lot of healers in town, so I asked Axell to push me off to the side where I slept until later. When I awoke there were a number of other victims of the flame bursts lying about town square, but now there was a group of healers attempting mass heals, and although I was close to death the collective efforts of the team was enough to bring me back from the brink.

51 Spring 537 (4/6/00)

Not much to report this week, I've been spending an awful lot of time in the library lately for a variety of reasons. I've come out a few times to see part of the healer contest that ZA clanmates Squirr'l and Moonbeam ran, Squirr'l has a ton of Histia training but even so some of the more powerful healers were able to turn in some pretty fast times. The ripture leading to other worlds seems to have healed itself, which is probably a good thing after the number of departs that it caused. I've been popping in to the Orga Camp a bit, not much action there, and squashing a few crawlers on the south beaches, but I really need to find a new hunting area.

72 Spring 537 (4/11/00)

I took part in a couple of good hunts recently, one in the Snaggy that involved a number of zerks and 'locks, plus the odd rage or fury; and another in Orga Camps 1 through 3, that involved even more 'locks, especially the last part where half of us fell on the way out through OC2. I have to remember not to try to solo a 'lock while a couple of zerks are hammering on my back. At least the upper OC's are open again, for a while there we couldn't even get in to them. On the other hand, I am still hearing reports that hunting is very bad in the North and South Forests, not even vermine swarms, which leads to speculation that there may still be "phantom" beasts scaring away the prey, and my own recent trips into the SF have turned up little in the way of vermine or cats to whack on. Perhaps the upcoming Chaos Storm will fix the problem...

79 Spring 537 (4/13/00)

The Chaos Storm blew through on schedule this time, and I can personally attest that there are now a lot more vermine, panthers and boloks in the South Forest, I got pulled down by a really mean bolok earlier today and had to wait some time before Madame H was able to come rescue me. Not much else seems to have changed, the brewery is still closed and the catapult is still missing. Before the storm I took part in a Savanna/Dunes hunt with a number of other ZA members, we were pretty successful at finding mahas, and even managed to survive some tight spots with multiple sand wurms on the Dunes. It wasn't really a clan hunt, we are too disorganized for that, but a good time was had by all, although we did perhaps spend too much time making fun of Phineas, I hope he didn't mind, but you have to expect that sort of thing when you hunt with the Zous.

6 Summer 537 (4/17/00)

It's hard to believe that it's summer already, and despite the bright sunshine and long days the number of beasts to hunt remains substantial, especially those swarms of small, medium and large vermine that we all missed so much. Almost all beasts now vary so much in strength that the danger of hunting has greatly increased; every wendie I run into seems to either be a "super" that hits like a night wendie, or a wimp that I slaughter, there just aren't any more run-of-the-mill "average" wendies any more. Green crawlers in particular seem to have gotten much more difficult to hunt, Axell had to play a game of "kick the dwarf" with one the other day, I was just a bit too fallen to raise and the crawler kept pushing me out of the way to get to Axell, who would then push my mangled body back in front of the crawler. Once Kisa showed up they were able to heal me up to the point where I could do in the lobster, but it was touch and go.

And then of course I missed out on the event of the year so far, Aki and Sutai were having their big contest to determine who should be guardian of the "phoenix egg." I showed up for the first contest, but it was way above my head, they were asking these really technical questions about birds and stuff, so I figured nothing much was going to happen and headed for the library to sleep...I mean study. Well it seems that shortly after I left a big phoenix showed up and started laying waste to the town, half the buildings in East Puddle were burned to the ground. Lucky for us it was east town and not west, or the brewery might have been destroyed as well. All things considered, it seems best that mystics stick to being useless and not try to hold any sort of contests in the future.

18 Summer 537 (4/20/00)

Babajaga and Chum were supposed to have their big drink-off the other day in the Bard's Field, so I went up to view the festivities. You can imagine the mood of the crowd when the appointed hour passed and...no Chum. We voted Baba the winner by default and she kindly shared her keg with us, only to have Chum stroll in two hours late and start making weasel-talk about how Baba hadn't drunk her keg and how no time limit had been set on his arrival. So then Baba pulls out another keg and tells him to put up or shut up, and the contest was on again.

The actual competition took a while, those kegs really hold quite a bit. They both started out pretty much even, but it seems that despite extensive practice Chum was having a bit of trouble holding his beer, he started staggering around a lot and even poured a couple glasses from Baba's keg in his confusion. Baba seemed to be pacing herself better, with a little less staggering, but it was hard to tell who was really ahead, I rapidly lost count of how many glasses had been poured. At one point there was an unfortunate incident in which a spectator poured a glass from one of the kegs (I almost did it myself once, watching the contest was thirsty work), but soon after Baba emptied her keg while Chum's still had at least a dozen glasses left, if not more. Chum snuck off soon after, I guess he felt that something wasn't quite fair about the contest, but it seems to me that if you are a trickster you have to expect to sometimes be the trickee...

39 Summer 537 (4/25/00)

Too much time in the library lately, and what time I have been out hunting seems to be spent running away from really mean beasties. Even my weekly coin-collection trips to the south forest are a risk these days, and I was chewed up pretty bad by a group of unusally fierce ferals just yesterday. On the rumor front not much seems to be happening, but Aki has been posting information about a strange chamber that is hidden in the deep Orga Camp (I think this is the same one that Diotima was talking about earlier); Aki has a theory that access is controlled by the phase of the moon and possibly by other factors as well, such as who is sharing with who and where you put your socks a week ago Terrdi. Aki also reports rumors that there is some connection between the 'Noths and the mirror in the Sourth Forest, which remains closed much to the annoyance of the general populace. And on top of all this speculation there's another chaos storm on the way...

51 Summer 537 (4/28/00)

I'm just going to have to give up even noticing chaos storms, they never seem to change anything any more, and in particular that darn brewery is still closed, it's getting to the point where I'm thinking about throwing all of my beer ingredients in the dump and letting them ferment there. Hunting continues to be dangerous, I'm falling much more often than I used to hunting in the same areas, and yet I'm slaughtering more stuff as well. Noids seems to have fallen a bit out of fashion lately, and I never seem to be around for a good OC/Snaggy hunt these days. I did manage to solo a 'lock in the Orga Camp the other day, thanks to help from Axell, but then got chopped down by a zerk while trying to hack my way out of a large crowd of admiring orgas. Lucky for me a group showed up soon after to rescue Axell, after which we flattened the remaining orgas.

59 Summer 537 (4/30/00)

I was complaining just the other day about missing out on Snaggy hunts, so of course this week I got to go on a couple expeditions to the Snag. The first started out well, but we soon ran into an extremely nasty fury in Tonle-wood that dispatched most of the group in no time flat. Someone managed to get out a SS plea for help, and a large group came to attempt the rescue, only to fall to the same fury just north of us, it was wall-to-wall fallen up there. Eventually Gurgi managed to dispatch the fury, after which it was just a matter of healing people until everybody was back on their feet again. I've never seen so many people in the Snaggy at one time, it was quite a crowd.

Then this week I went on an extended Snaggy hunt, this time we did pretty well up until the group started to break up (always a mistake in the Snaggy, I think) and make their way out by themselves, Tyndall and Groniad stepped off the path and fell to a rage. The rest of us didn't know where they had fallen, and went to look in the Orga Camp, and then we had to wait for a rescue party to form up as some of us had to leave (only to fall to another rage in the Tanglewood on the way out, it was that kind of day). Entil-zha came to let us in to Snaggy again, and Thuja came to provide healing, and we managed to finally locate the highly rat-chewed Groniad (Tyn had departed), only to have most of us fall to yet another rage on the way out. But with Thuja along the cause is never lost, she kept Kodo standing long enough to finish the rage, and we finally got everybody out of Snaggy, chained Groniad to town, and patched her up good as new.

75 Summer 537 (5/4/00)

I almost made it to Orga Camp 4 the other day, but it was taking a long time to lure out the large number of 'locks that infest the area, so rather than miss dinner I tried to scamper out through OC2 and ended up flat on my back. The big group did finally make it in to OC4, and then on their way out they stopped to rescue us unfortunates in OC2, so at least I dodged a depart. And while all of this was going on I was hearing sunstone chatter about giant t'rools in the south forest and brambles, it seems that some sort of big red t'rool fury was whacking exiles, and I later heard that there were a number of new types spotted, vor'kin and gob'kin so on. According to rumor the t'rools are trying to dig a tunnel all the way to Puddle town so that they can invade without all that tedious slogging through the Sourth Forest, and it seems that they now have new and powerful allies from the deeper caverns where no exile has ventured. This past week I've been making regular trips down to the t'rool mines in the hope of spotting one of the new t'rools, but with no success; it seems they have retreated back to their lairs for the moment.

88 Summer 537 (5/7/00)

Summer is over, the harvest season is upon us, and I must say that we have a bumper crop of orgas this year, the Tangle and Snaggy woods have been crawling with them. There is still a great deal of speculation about the fate of our catapult, but so far attempts to progress beyond OC4 in search of it have failed, I guess the moon phase isn't right or we're wearing the wrong color shoes or something. I've also been back in 'Noids a bit, and last week the 'noids were in a frenzy, there were a ton of them running around the deep cavern in a mob, making it quite dangerous; they would all come at you all at once, then retreat back from the entrance, luring you deeper into the cavern, where they would try to trap you by circling around behind. A big crowd of exiles showed up to view the festivities, many were trapped and fallen, and there was a fair bit of holding the entrance tunnel against the 'noid mob. I think the bugs are behaving more normal now, but it was quite a rush to have this big army of 'noids come rushing at you all at once. And then there was this big greymyr that came to town, it was walking about the east gate whacking exiles and chucking rocks; but with the healers working overtime we were able to wear it down, I even managed a lucky hit or two. Lucky for us it didn't try to tear down more of the wall, the rebuilding of the gate is coming along pretty well, it should be done soon.

15 Autumn 537 (5/11/00)

My friend Shrug told me all about the big t'rool invasion that took place a couple of weeks ago, it seems there were large numbers of blue, cyan, and red t'rool'kins swarming up from T-town, and some of them were pretty tough. I went down there yesterday to look around and didn't find much changed, although I did run into a couple of ko'kin that weren't very tough at all. I also didn't find any ore, maybe they have hidden it better, t'rools just aren't very good miners. Speaking of tough, the other day I came out of the libray and ran smack in to a valley panther, there were at least half a dozen of them running around town, most of which had already been zooed up. These things were murder, they could hit pretty much anybody there, and did a ton of damage; coupled with the fact that they were very hard to hit, this made for large numbers of fallen in a very short time. At first we just walled them up in a ring of fallen, and individuals would step forward one at a time to try and go toe-to-toe with the big cats, which quickly added another brick to the wall. Eventually the exiles improved their tactics a bit, we surrounded them one by one, took our swings, and were quickly pulled out by a fresh exile if we got hit. With healers working overtime we were able to wear them down and finally finish them off.

32 Autumn 537 (5/15/00)

Well all I can say is that I'm pretty steamed, here I'm finally getting close to being able to outlast that rage in the third circle fighter test and some genius healer goes and cheats on the healer test and now all of the testing halls are closed for repairs. I'm not sure what the deal is, but I think mystics are behind the whole thing, if not Chum; this is just the sort of thing he'd do for a joke. I've been taking out my frustrations by visiting the Orga Camp and whacking the little orgas while waiting for zerks to show up, but these days there are so many shamans hanging out there that I end up well toasted if I stay too long. I've been doing a few rescue runs in the forests and beaches as well; Ugo managed to get himself killed when a Tor didn't want to get out of the way when Ugo needed to leave the dead tree beach in a big hurry, one or two mahas were nipping at his heels. Lucky for us some other healers were over by the Scout, and they got him back on his feet again.

42 Autumn 537 (5/18/00)

I had a good time in the Coliseum last week, there was a good crowd there and I blew quite a few coins to battle the beasts. My favorite contest with three zerks is no longer much fun, especially since there are no more chests in the arena, so I did a blue 'noid, which I managed to vanquish, and three mahas, which went down to the last blow against the last maha (I won that one). Against the rages I wasn't so lucky, the first rage refused to fight, it just stood there snickering at me as I attempted to land a hit against its full balance, and I timed out; the second one decided to duke it out, and we both got down to red before it scored the final blow. With a little luck and a bit more training I should be able to make through the third circle fighter test now, but of course the test is still closed and is likely to remain so for another zodiac.

I also found out what's up with the nasty beasts in the center of town, it seems that some guy named "JoeGM" is bringing them to town to exhibit in the fairgrounds, and he seems to have trouble remembering to keep his cages fastened. The previous time I saw this it was valley panthers, and this time it was sasquatches, which look like really big wendies. I managed one hit on a young sasquatch, but then I got too close to the big mommy sasquatch and got hit by a rock or two. There was a big group of healers going around, and they were able to raise me again, but I could see that I just was not ready to take on these particular monkies quite yet.

55 Autumn 537 (5/21/00)

I went to 'Noth beach to try and help with a rescue, I'd been there before with a group and we had some strong fighters and healers along, and at first things were going pretty well, but then one of the purple 'noths starts tossing around super lightning bolts, turns out it was Qual the Wizard, and boy was he steamed. I soon discovered that I wasn't much use, ending up near death after a couple of bolts and a fireball, even with Koric and Lorikeet trying to raise me. Sleipnir tried to drag me back to town, but chains don't work well at sea and the tides made it impossible to push me out, so we ran out of time and I ended up having to depart (number 19, thanks a ton, Qual). This leads me to my new rule: avoid things that can zap you close to death (large rocks, wizards, stuff like that). I've heard rumors of more attacks on town, T'rools and Darshaks and even Leeches (I'm not sure about this last one, Worf was sort of vague about the details). And just yesterday I visited the mining camp for the first time, Enlil gave me a quick tour after a savanna rescue; it was a pretty scary experience, I saw some things I wish I hadn't seen...

72 Autumn 537 (5/25/00)

And who was it that was complaining that chaos storms were boring? I guess this one will teach me not to complain, a lot of people are upset to discover that changing equipment causes balance loss, and I can't say I blame them, although seeing as I spend most of my time with axe in hand it doesn't have much effect on me personally. I was also interested to see that the mirror's behavior has changed slightly, although we still can't pass through it to the castle. And then the other night there was this big noise and a flash of lightning, and Raldin reported a burst of energy from the south (I think only Mystics sensed it, I didn't notice any bursts). A group of us soon gathered near the mirror, and after disposing of a number of small and large cats we found a stranger there named Loovma Geer. He says that he is a toolsmith, and had been working in his workshop when the sword he was working on shattered and he found himself fallen next to the mirror. We told him there was a town to the north, but he seemed not to know anything about Puddleby. Kisa showed him her chain, and he said that we ought to be taking better care of them, he would be glad to show us how. I now hear that he's in the blacksmith shop, maybe he can help us to keep those darn chains from breaking quite so often.