2/28/99

Well, I'm pretty steamed that the builder for the clan registration building has started counting again from zero logs; all my hard work searching the forests for wood has gone to waste. I been mostly killing wendies these days, since great rockos seem to be in short supply; there's ALWAYS more wendies. I've also been wondering why there is a beach in the south forest now.

3/3/99

Haven't gotten any good shots this week so far, and here it is time for the next chaos storm. Joe posted that he was going to try to track down the missing wood, but we'll have to see. Today I found some wood hiding behind a tree, it makes me wonder how many logs might be sitting around hidden.

3/8/99

The clan registration builder has found the missing wood, so we are up above 700 logs now; if you exiles will just pitch in we can get the thing finished before the gigantic chaos storm the seers are always warning us about. I have been trying to find my way back to the old cemetery, with no luck; the entrance from the south forest no longer seems to be there. I also ventured in to the south pass recently, and there was a massive spawn of night wendies, lucky for me I was near the edge and managed to get out fast.

3/13/99

People have been adding wood to the clan building, and it's now over 900 logs; with a little luck we can finish it up this week. On the other hand, some of the people who were going to be in the Patrol are now leaning against continuing in the lands, so it isn't looking good for starting the clan once the registrar is back.

I saw a pretty big spawn of giant vermine outside the orga camp today, it was pretty nasty. I also spent some time in the new noids area, it's big but I'm not sure that I like it all that much. It certainly is harder to ambush the noids one at a time...

3/14/99

The clan registration building has reached 1,000 logs at last! With any luck, this will mean that the clan registrar will be back in business after the next chaos storm, although it didn't work that way for the blacksmith or the potion lab (especially the potion lab)! I spent some time in the orga camp today; zerks are no prob now, I went toe-to-toe with one while yellow and finished it off with only a little damage, but rages are still too much for me to take on alone.

3/19/99

Well, as I feared the clan registry still isn't finished, despite having reached the magic number of 1,000 logs. Worse than than, my recent expeditions to find more logs have been failures; I only found one log and that one I ruined when I tried to chop it. (I wish the darn trees wouldn't get my hopes up like that...it's such a letdown when it happens.) Even worse is the discovery that a number of monsters now offer reduced bounties, in some cases greatly reduced; I was really bummed when I killed a Zerk only to find that the reward is now four coins.

3/22/99

Had a fun day recently fluttering around as a butterfly, boy is that strange or what! The best part was the trip to the orga camp to chase down shamans in butterfly-form (now one lousy coin)! I have learned now that it's a bad idea to try to fight rages by myself, and a really bad idea to fight several of them at a time. Wood has been pretty scarce for me this week, but I did manage to find three logs today; maybe the builder will finally finish that darn registry hall.

3/26/99

Well, despite over 1,200 logs the clan registration building is still not completed. Needless to say this is not making me a happy dwarf, and I am taking out my frustration by continuing to give all my wood to the builder, in the hopes that at some point the Powers That Be will take notice of our dedication and give us what we want -- clans! It seems a little harsh to take the clan registrars away because they didn't have their own building and then to not give us the building after we provide all the wood.

3/27/99

I have finally reached the point where Witkus would sell me a great sword, but his price is still a bit steep for me (I can't seem to hold on to money, too many healers to reward, and my income is down a bit lately). I'd like to get a shiny dagger, but I don't know where to find one. The new "fine" swords sound nice, but I'm not going to stop using the axe (I am a dwarf, after all); besides, I haven't found any metal lying around, and I don't like gambling with that darn Halfling, it just fills up my inventory with junk.

Speaking of junk, somebody handed me a green token as I was walking through town the other day, so now I can check the time. What really puzzles me is how they gave it to me, I didn't know you could do that.

3/31/99

I have been hanging out in the Orga Camp a bit more than is good for me, with mixed results; Zerks are no problem, and I can hit Rages (or as I like to call them "brownies"), but Frenzies or Furies are too much for me, I can't hit them and they take me out in a few blows. On the other hand, they tend to attract a big crowd, and then everybody gets a little bit of the treasure. Maybe I need to do a little more training with Master Atkus, especially since I understand he has become a bit more balanced in his instruction.

4/1/99

Big changes in the land this week, the Clan Registry building is open for business, even in it's current unfinished state, so that it is now possible to start a new clan (it we but had the membership). I'm not sure that it's worth trying to recruit people given the short time remaining before the Big One, but we'll have to see.

Most of the monsters now produce more coins than ever before, including a whopping 14 coins for a snake's scales and a not-too-shabby 3 coins for a slug's teeth, and there seem to be even more of them roaming around besides. At this rate I'd soon be rich enough for gold clothes and a great sword, if it weren't for that upcoming Big One...

4/6/99

Well, rather than try to get people to start a half-hearted clan, I decided to blow my wad and purchase a great sword...I mean, they were on sale and everything (only 7,200 coins). I have used it a bit, and it does seem to up my hit percentage, but the damage is really pretty low (I whacked a death vermine three times and it still didn't drop). With the recent upsurge in income (blue wendies are now 13 coins!) I expect it won't take long to earn a couple grand.

I have decided to throw my wood contribution behind the playground, although with just over 300 logs it doesn't seem likely that it will get built before the Big One.

4/11/99

As usual, the builders are having trouble keeping track of their wood; now they don't even pretend to give us a count of logs, just a general indication of how far they've gotten. This would be fine, except that my current wood target (the playground) is back to "barely started," even though we were up over 300 logs (a third of the way!) before the change. It's too bad, I have a bunch of wood to give too, but right now I'm going to hold on to it until I figure out what's going on with the builders.

4/13/99

I've decided that the builders are just very broad-grained in their responses, and that their response won't change until they have a fair amount of wood, so I am going to just give wood to the playground (as long as I can, of course). I had a really strange experience the other day, I was helping a dead guy when suddenly he popped back to full health in an instant. There had been a bunch of people dying in a new place (southern sandy place), and they all must have popped back too because they immediately started falling again. I didn't know the ancients had such power...

4/15/99

Well, things were a bit tense today in Puddle when undine decided that they could take any amount of damage without ill effect. The supercharged move and extra hitting power were pretty bad too. For some reason the Ancients took pity on us and made them vulnerable again, but it was pretty grim for a while. In the meantime I have been spending too much time in the Orga Camp, and giving away my money as fast as I make it (if not faster). After all, if I don't spend it now, it just goes away...

4/18/99

Strange things are going on with the undine and their darn orbs. A lot of people have them and are using them to zap creatures, something I don't much like the look of (the nasty black crawly lightning scares me). I picked an orb up by mistake in the Tanglewood the other day (I stumbled across it while crossing a boundary), and though I've heard rumors that they can be destroyed I haven't actually seen it happen so I'm not sure how to do it. I've been told that if you use the thing a new one is spawned, and that if you touch it to an undine you might break the orb, but the one time I tried it my health, balance and spirit all started to drop rapidly and I decided that I didn't want to fall that particular way.

I keep giving wood to the playground builder, who keeps saying that she is "getting started," which is a crime if I ever saw one, I think that she is selling the wood on the sly to one of the other builders. I also found some ore while taking a stroll in the eastern passes looking for blue wendies, but they turned out to be the non-metal kind and now all I have left is a rock. Such is life...

4/21/99

Thanks to the help of the redoubtable Iho I was able to break the orb I picked up by mistake, although the blast when it burst was so large that it killed him and me both. A bunch of people showed up to help us, and then Jkleh burned his orb in world-record time (no more than a few seconds). I was so steamed about this whole orb-and-undine business that I went to the Dark Temple to kill some faithless, which was going OK until I ended up in the lava pit. It seemed like no matter what we did there was always one person sitting in the middle of the lava.

And now I hear reports that there is a void growing in the east forest, near the spot where all the funny flame bursts and magic sparkles show up, and that it devours all who approach it. Me, I plan to avoid voids, if you'll pardon the expression. The only good news is that the playground is finally gathering steam, I hope that someone is keeping an eye on that builder (I don't trust her).

So far I'm 0-for-4 on ore samples...

4/25/99

Well, rumors are going around that the upcoming Chaos Storm will finally be "the Big One" that we have been expecting so long, and the portents and voids are just a distraction to keep our minds off the fact that everything is going to change (and not always for the better). I have mostly been lying low, although I did pop in to town in time to run about fighting Darshaks the other day (and then running from the Greater Wraiths that got sprung from foolish Orbers). Only time will tell if this is really it, but things are getting pretty darn serious.

4/27/99

I'm up to two crumbled sunstones so far, which makes it darn hard to keep track of what's going on in the world, let me tell you. I'm not even sure that I have enough money to buy a new one now, what with the inflated prices that are getting charged. So far I haven't managed to be around for any of the major battles in the Ripture War, but I keep hoping I will have a chance to fight. In the meantime, the Big One has been postponed for a few days, and I have been hunting snow cougars on the glacier when I'm not looking for wood (scarce recently) and whacking wendies (still plenty of them).

4/30/99

Thanks to my old buddy Da Buddah Buh I have a sunstone again, at least for a short while. Too bad he's decided to leave the islands and try his luck on the mainland (at least I talked him out of visiting Death). I finally made a trip to the Outer Abyss, with not much success, but once at least I did make it out to Adytum, which has great potential as a tourist site but lacks development. It was really weird to end up in Purg without having to depart (although I made up for that later with a couple of trips to the lava pit). And finally, after about ten rocks, I found one with some metal. That and 500 coins and one more metal will get you a chain...

5/2/99

There was a big crowd in Adytum the other day, all trying to figure out how to "turn on" the two standing stones there. I hung around for a while, but as nothing seemed to be happening I headed back to the library and hit the books for a while. I later heard that a large group succeeded in activating the things, but what happened then I'm not sure. My recent trips to the Abyss haven't worked out too well, and I still can only hit Greater Wraiths on alternate Gradis, so my inclination is to hunker down and wait for the Big One.

Noids have started coming out of their deep cavern again, and they have some new little friends, "web arachnes" that circle about a bit like ferals but bite a good deal harder. I still look for wood from time to time, but it seems really scarce right now, so I haven't had much luck. Looks like we're going to have to wait a while for the playground to finish getting built.

5/4/99

OK, by now everybody has heard that the Dialyths are sucking people out of the void and depositing their crumpled remains in Adytum. I discovered this the hard way, wandering in to a new (to me) void in the South Pass the other day. Boy was I surprised! Lucky for me there was a healer hanging about in Adytown who healed me right up. Now, the next question is how this is going to help us win the war against the Rifts, and the answer seems to be: nobody has a clue.

There are rumors about that there is going to be a big showdown with the undine later, with some people saying that this is the final battle, and others saying it's just a joke. All I know is that I was having fun today rescuing people from the Wraith's dark cave; you just sort of wander around mumbling your name and pull people to the exit, then push them out, all the while whacking corpses and skels that you can't see. I only wish I had made a sketch...

5/5/99

This is it, the Big One, the end of the Ripture War. I finally managed take part in five of the Rift battles: Thieve's Island, Deep Cavern, South Forest, South Puddle, and East Field. Well, winning three out of five ain't bad. Most of my effort involved sniping at Wraiths, Faithless, and those annoying Revenuers (looking for moonshine I guess). When the battle is won, most of us die in the earthquake; when the battle is lost, we all die in the void.

We all had a good time whacking undine earlier, we cleared out the undine cave with relative ease and headed to Ash to do some more damage; I never made it to the Abyss, but I did get to see the Pentagram Room for the first time and even managed to get in a few whacks on a Greater Wraith (a very few whacks).

After East Field fell the town was overrun with Revvies, who made short work of a lone dwarf; but before I even had time to get comfortable in Purg the big hand came up and snatched me to Adytown. So we are all sort of sitting about in Limbo waiting to see what happens. I'm not sure that even the Great Powers know what comes next...