Brockett, Duchy of
Tyrangel, 606 ER
Before recording my
experiences in Brockett, I will first detail the events of December
17th 605, and
how I spent the winter, as understanding what happened there is necessary for
understanding what follows.
December 17th
I traveled through the
forest near the Grond Hills, looking to meet up with Travador, Idrahil, and the
others. Riddle was with me, and we had
also managed to find Kylou, Patches, and his wife Jade. Patches had some information on the plague we
had been researching. He suspects it may
require celestial formal as well as alchemy.
The breakthroughs look promising
As we followed the
path, Riddle noticed that the area was familiar and wanted to do some more
exploring. He knew of a Necropolis in
the area, and was hoping to glean some information on the most recent
developments there. The path ahead was
blocked by some sort of gate or barrier that we did not understand. Kylou entered it and his ashes fell out the
other side. Our only life spell was used
in an attempt to revive him, without success.
We progressed onwards,
and met a Wild Elf who was very reluctant to speak. Large
black lizards had taken his brother, and he was giving up on rescue, instead
leaving to report the loss, and warn the others. He pointed out where his brother was taken,
and we investigated. On the way there,
we saw a blue hazy image of Kylou lying on a bench, but we could not see or
interact with him. Finding nothing else
to do, we continued onwards. As we hid
in the bushes, we watched two large Draconians leading a bound and blindfolded
elf away. They were attacked by
lightning cats, but the cats lost. These
Draconians looked entirely too powerful for our small group to fight… but Riddle
and Patches jumped forward to attack the Draconians. I also did not wish to see the Wild Elf
suffer the fate the Draconians had in mind, and decided to try and help. Soon after fighting began, Kylou reappeared
wandering out of the forest, with seemingly no memory of who he was or what had
passed. The fighting went back and
forth, and was fierce. I do not remember
all of it, for I quickly became a target of the Draconians, who had been
ordered to bring back elves for transformation.
The battle did not go well, the Draconians were as powerful as I would
expect Dragon Kin to be, and I fell in battle. I self-resurrected at a Tree of
Life inside a Necropolis—the very same necropolis we were going to
investigate. Although I expected that
resurrection to be painful, it was not.
The tree was a very calming, peaceful, and restorative presence, and I
can only assume that is why my spirit was attracted to it. All I know of what followed was told to me
by the others.
Despite overwhelming
odds, Riddle and the others continued to fight the Draconians. Eventually, seeing my body dissipate, and
knowing we had no life spells, convinced
them to let the Draconians leave with the elf.
After that, they continued onwards towards the Necropolis and approached
the gate. They spoke with the Undead,
and watched as the Plague-ridden Reavers began attack. The undead killed the Reavers and downed
Riddle, Patches, Kylou, and Jade. They
were all brought inside the Necropolis to participate in a ritual to resurrect
Angus Tyrangel. This ritual took place
next to a black mass of energy large enough that I could see it from the Tree,
which was the death place of Macabre.
Riddle did the only thing he could, and caused a backlash to prevent
Angus from being brought back. Everyone
in the circle, which included quite a few undead, died. They found my spirit at the Tree of Life and
decided to resurrect there as well.
Kylou was acting strangely and we believed him to be transformed, but much
later he was identified and found to be ...intact. I think he is crazy.
This particular Tree
of Life acted like a circle, and the undead could not enter it. Not only could they not enter, but they were
completely unaware of the Tree, and of us.
There were also a few piles of ash around the Tree, indicating that the
undead could not exist underneath it. We
would watch entire squadrons part like water around the Tree, and not even
notice that they had done so. However,
as soon as we set foot outside of the ring of its protective branches, the
undead became aware of our presence and would move to attack. Once we stepped back, they forgot about us
again. We had no weapons, no equipment,
no food, and no way out. I spent a great
deal of time there toying with the undead, hoping I could get one of them close
enough to drag underneath the tree and take it’s weapons. I was unsuccessful.
This Tree was also Fey
in nature. We noticed some small sprites
flying around now and then, and a Dryad lived in the tree, coming out
occasionally to tend to it. She acted
unaware of our presence, as if she could not see us. We spent all winter, a month or so, trapped
together under this tree.
Towards the beginning
of January (or I think it was, I lost track of the days), a Leprechaun
appeared. Also around this time, a small
black spider had showed up in the branches, and I caught it watching us with
it’s glowing green eyes. The leprechaun
was tired of us being on “his porch”, and explained to us that the Tree acted
as a bridge between Tyrra and Faerie. I
didn’t really pay attention to him much, his accent was strange. I paid more attention to the spider, who had
gotten nearer and was watching us. The
Leprechaun, called Shamus, offered to help us leave. We had to take a bite of some fruit, and
click our heels together chanting “there is no place like Bane” three
times. I picked up the spider and we all
did this. Ridiculous as it was, it
worked.
January 606 ER
Friday
We rifted into
Brockett in January, surrounding Prince Bane.
Apparently, the fruit we had eaten was “fruit of Prince Bane’s womb” and
used his ties to Tyrra to bring us back.
There had been plans to rescue us, but no one could figure out how to
get inside the Necropolis. It is for the
best really, such an effort would have cost many lives. We were inside the Barracks of Baron
Shiro-gin Takai. The barracks had been
recently overrun by a group of bandits/ assassins calling themselves the Black
Daggers....