Sekti Abtu the Faire

Dear Father Philip

I hope these tidings find you in good health and cheer. What can I say, Sekti-Abtu has had a cleansing and clearing effect on me. When I wrote last I said I would have good news soon, that is still in the works however but I thought I should bring you up to date on the latest happenings here.

First of all the sad news, Tyvernos, Gnomish Master of Vapours and the Air, has left us on his own mission to his parents, apparently there is a small chance that what he is doing with them will reduce his chances of being able to return to us in a timely manner, though I hope he will, because his irreverent and fun behaviour has been a boon for all of us, especially in the dark times, I hope you could say a prayer for him in his endeavours.

Tyvernos leaving in style by air

They say the gods work in mysterious ways, we had barely wiped the tears from our cheeks saying goodbye and resettled ourselves when a Wild Looking Lady Elf from the far Western Empire appeared, and by coincidence, was even friends with Azariel as she had come from the Vequerrel Woodlands herself, but not even that was the strangest part. Apparently she is a druid of no small prophetic power, and had been having dreams of Crisis’s actions, and as she approached she lifted her hand, and upon her finger was a ring of Crisis, Tyvernos’s mission must be important and dangerous indeed if the gods saw fit to send us help immediately, not that I got to talk much to her initially as Azariel and her immediately started talking like old companions, so the sadness of losing Tyvernos was tempered by having a new friend to travel with. The conversation they had was amusing, apparently Azariel is happily married, not that he ever mentioned it so we teased him a bit, and Caminata, our new friend came to his defense with a statement that we ourselves were redolent with the tang of the trail, or to put it an easier way, we stank, so we had a good cleanup, and lucky we did, as we continued chatting we noticed that the noise outside was getting louder, and lo’ the festival of Ra was getting into full swing, with the Leaders of our church leading the massing throng in prayer, and then of course they pointed at us, the people cheered and we were called to the dais. I have never seen such a huge grin on Xerx’ses, and it didn’t give anyone pause either. While U’Selekma droned on about the story of creation (he did say it well, but after hearing it for the umpteenth time my eyes did start to droop), the Lady Druid decided to inject a little laughter after Lord Ra was mentioned, saying that he was a lot taller than she expected, This set Bishop Tutu off with giggles which spread, So poor Lord U’Selekma was left trying to tell a serious story while a bunch of people behind him were giggling, but his willpower is immense and he managed to finish the story without more than smiling.
After that the party stared, Uunfortunately the Lady Nara was still in seclusion for training, so I couldn’t join her but I did dine at the table with the other important people. The joking atmosphere had still been retained as Asher brought his pet acid lizard, with seemed to upset one of the other guests. We soon had tempers and frills ( a sight to see a big lizard) calmed down and the man who took exception happened to be a fellow Priest – Father Lamriel, apparently he had a run in with one once and it left a scar.
Then the talk moved around to the western empire, of which my knowledge is probably less than I like so I got to enjoy the meal and sit back and talk, the talk covered many places and things, but I did get an appointment to have a Priest/sword chat about who wears the pants in this relationship (apparently it’s the sword), but found out some handy knowledge that if I’m ever in the Western Empire to look up Father Lamriel as he could remember some texts upon the subject that he might have at home, which was more than enough reason for me to start planning on a side trip for when we were up that way.

The talk then turned more towards the philosophy of good and evil, but while we were ruminating on the Idea the name of the demonic creature that tried to steal the foot of Osiris came up, Ratel, and immediately Crisis started talking about ways to neutralise this evil creature, and it seems that our best bet would be to beard the creature vin his lair and destroy him utterly. This might seem a little vicious but he is a vicious creature with no redeeming qualities and he seems to be intent on returning an ancient dark to our world, and he has to be stopped before he succeeds, and there is also a small chance that he may have another piece of the Lawgiver already.

As it was now into the very early hours of the morning, we decided to retire and start our endeavours refreshed and renewed.

The next morning was heavy planning and research time, we split up into teams without breaking the Thou shalt not travel alone Crisis commandment as Overkill went about his business of finding his lost crew and finding new crew for Rogtilda with the help of Azariel and Asher, and Xerx’ses, Caminata and I decided to find some dependable researchers to do some heavy bookwork for us, so we devised a competition and the top few would be paid well to research many difficult things, so I came up with the Idea of letting them find out what they could about Oathbringer , maybe this would bring us closer. Xerx’ses also mentioned that he had magically had his weapon fighting abilities altered to that of a sword master (What mighty magic indeed), and I have been thinking that might be useful for me, but after we had set these challenges I decided that I needed a small amount of downtime myself and poked around the city with whomever would come, and made a lot of notes for mapping the entire city out, as it is a beautiful city, with parks and glens and water fountains, as well as all the travelers who come to see it. Especially during the festival of Ra, people were out smiling and laughing and enjoying themselves, there were street performers here and there and Priests giving impromptu sermons with smiles.

and then later on that evening after the feast the gardens were lit up to the chants of many Priests, it sounded as amazing as it looked.

If you can ever manage it I think you would like this festival, if there was anything I could do to get you to visit during the festival of Ra just say the word and I will do what I can.

After that experience the next few days blurred by until before we knew it the time was up for our researchers to hand in their findings.

And wasn’t I surprised by their findings.

The first researcher was named Zeon Joreaven and had started the research with his brother, together they had found that Oathbringer had been to Hades and back, this didn’t surprise me as much as it might of because she is a powerful weapon, and Oathbringer mentioned that he was correct so we had our first placement, but there was a terrible price for this information, his brother had looked for information in the Church of Dark’s libraries after being approached and warned off, and he was murdered for it. My rage at this mounted again, but all I would do is make things difficult for the church if I started killing Priests of the Dark, but there shall be a reckoning for those whom have allied themselves with evil, and hopefully it will be the Lawgiver balancing the scales.
The next researcher, an Elf named Tamuríl Elendil however was a bit of a stunner, and Oathbringer did not want to talk about it at all, and that was that she had slain a Defiler, she herself had done the deathblow, she wouldn’t give any more details but her silence spoke volumes.

The third researcher was a strange (even after a Minotaur, and Ashada and a Kobold) northern creature called a Jeridu named Xandria, but he was well equipped for reading, he looked a lot like an Elf except he had six arms, and the information that he had found showed that Oathbringer would grow in power over time being wielded by her user, this I knew to be fact myself so we had our researchers three.
Oathbringer is intelligent and Jealous, I will try treating her as a companion to see if the helps in travelling with her, I know I must use her but she is stubborin in her ways, so hopefully if I give some so shall she

Now that our time was up we decided to return to Rogtilda to say goodbye as we would be traveling by land for a bit and we found out how successful the others had been, 2 of Overkills old crew had been found, plus 12 other volunteers to keep Rogtilda in tiptop shape.

Even his Holiness U’Selekma joined us, and that turned out to be a great boon for he spoke for Crisis in the consecrating of the Chapel on the ship, and unlike my attempt he succeeded, and to me the ship now feels more restful, and Rogtilda certainly didn’t seem to mind and any extra protection we can get for him the better. (I was actually thinking about arming Rogtilda more but they showed me the Light of Ra, an amazing weapon that can cook fish from 300 paces whilst they still swim in the sea, it was a marvel indeed).

As we left the boat the throng that tended to gather whenever we stayed too long in one place was there, so we purchased some horses for our wagon and hitched them, ready for our travel to the Lopanic Games.

Written on the 1st of Ra by Indaris Excellar

Sketch of the Vatican blogged by
Glen Ashton
and
Igor Babailov

Floating Lanterns collected by
Wallpaperbod

The Glowy Tree found on
Ebaums World

Im leaving on a jet plane gnome found on
Do 512 Blog

The Aquaducts by
Wikipedia