Matthew Hunter

Session map

As soon as we stepped foot into the room below, a magical mouth appeared, shouting a word in some language none of us knew. It was obviously some kind of alarm. We hurried explored to the west, finding a staircase down and another alarm. We opened the door to the south just as some kind of creature entered the room, from the other staircase. With horror I recognized it from the tales of fellow guards: an armadillo with twin antenna, otherwise known as a rust monster. u-Heury started doffing his armor while I held the torch, letting Stria and Kiba take the front lines. Though Kiba’s attacks did nothing, Stria’s crystal dagger struck true, and u-Heury’s oiled thews grappled the strange beast, eventually strangling it. But not before it had managed to eat his sword and a number of other minor items.

Session map

The strange skeletal lampray latched on to u-Heury’s balls and bit down hard. Blood went everywhere, and the kid yelped like a eunuch. Before I could draw my sword, the thing detached and fled. Apparently u-Heury doesn’t taste fishy. I carefully offered prayers to Clocea to clense his body of injuries and his mind of impure thoughts, while laying my hands on his shoulders. It stopped the bleeding, but I wasn’t going to look closer to see what, if anything, was left. The boy was feeling his oats and asked Kiba to check. She also declined.

Session map

Oscar arrived in Thatchem by ravenback, still looking frazzled. His robes were scorched and burnt, but he had acquired a book of magic that seemed valuable to the mages in the tower of the leaning goose. He asked me to take his raven back to Highfell and help the others bring back more. With my promise to return Verminbane to Forrest fulfilled, it seemed a reasonable way to spend my time.

Session map

We set off for the correct tower bright and early in the morning. The ravens flew us south, following the edge of the floating island, and we saw many towers around the edges. There were even ruined fortifications connecting some of the towers. We saw a tower made of sandstone, two more with a strange dome and a peaked roof.

About a quarter of the way down, we came to a river, flowing off the edge of the island and disappearing into mist. This suggests some powerful magic is active here, above and beyond merely levitating the island; the water would surely have run out long ago were it not magically replenished somehow at a rate equal to the outflow of the river.

Session map

We crossed the pit, finding a T intersection with two more doors. Between us, we listened to them all. We heard voices behind one; someone was chanting. Stria opened the one next to it, just a crack, and closed it quickly. She whispered that there were more Vol cultists there, discussing how to get past some monster obstacle. Behind the third door, yet more dragon cultists. There were no obvious valuables or reasons to reveal our presence, so we left.

Oscar

I pulled myself to the top of the plateau just as Seleana was promising the ravens we had brought food. Just in time, too; one of them had given the druid a nasty peck on the shoulder that nearly tore her arm off. I laid the seed out according to the directions, while Selaena made silly caw caw noises. I can’t criticize too much, I’ll be doing the same thing later. They ate, and 7 of the ravens seemed amenable to becoming our companions. Which was good, as two new adventurers had joined the knight Stavros at the bottom of the cliff. Selaena and I struck a holy bargain of healing, and Denara smiled upon it enough to bless u-Heury for bravely keeping between the druid and the ravens.

Session map

After bringing Ygnas back, and getting her settled in at the tavern to recover, we reported to the wizards at the tower of the leaning goose. They were so excited by the report that they proposed an immediate return to Highfell, this time on the backs of giant ravens. The wizards claimed to possess a kind of magical birdseed that would allow us to befriend them, for a period of months at least. We could then ride the animals to Highfell. We could return the same way, but I insisted on a potion of feather fall for each member of the group. Just in case. Ygnas insisted she needed rest, but recommended her friend Selaena the druid to accompany us. The wizards suggested we look for a specific tower within Highfell, an octagon with a rectangular annex, once occupied by their patron.

Go itself has a built-in set of tools for building go programs and running them. The dependencies and configuration are mostly handled automatically. This makes initial development fast and easy, but eventually, more complex requirements surface and require soome type of automation. I’ve seens lots of different approaches:

• My work uses a custom-built tool written in go to manage packaging, deployment, signing, etc.
  This works well but is a lot of effort to write and maintain for a small project, especially multiple small ptojects doing the same thing.

Session map

By the time I caught up with the old man and his cart, darkness had fallen. We exchanged pleasantries and agreed to be allies for the night in case of trouble. We both went to bed, hoping to hear my friends catching up, but I drifted off.

I woke to Rowen poking me with a stick. The rest of the group had found horses somewhere and caught up. I didn’t want to ask where they got the horses, for fear I wouldn’t like the answer, but I least I wouldn’t have to make the journey to Thatchem alone. Unfortunately they brought a huge panther with them. The panther promptly pounced on Morin’s horse and dragged it away while I healed her wounds.

Faran Magebane

The next morning, we explored further, finding a large room with a central pedestal. The pedestal was surrounded by stone pillars, and had a stone structure in the center, covered with sockets as if gems had once been held there. One large gem remained, remarkably similar to the one the earth elemental had dropped. The rest claimed this was a something-something we were supposed to cleanse to stop the dessert wizard. I was confused. We eat desserts, we don’t cleanse them. But before I could protest, someone laid their hand upon the altar and more earthy elementals appeared. We handled the trio with relative ease despite there being three of them, mostly because killing the first one to appear made the other two disappear.