We continued searching the building with the sarcophagi. I guess it's something like a mausoleam. We didn't find much of interest. There were some urns, which did contain ashes, but they were not like the sundered man urns that the others in the party had seen previously. They weren't magical.
We followed the tracks of the undead to a palace that is in fairly good repair. Lani scouted around it, and found that the interior was in a considerably better condition than other buildings we had been to.
Considering we have already wasted several months, we have decided to rest and rememorise, rather than go straight in. It seems pretty lcear at this stage that there is something inside. There aren't even any vines growing on the building. Clearly some magic is keeping them away.
I can't help but wonder what caused the inhabitants of this city to leave. We haven't seen any signs of attack, or natural disaster. It is a fairly sizeable city. I can't imagine why anyone would just pack up and leave.
Today has been a bad day.
At first everything went well. We entered and searched the building. There were some of those white undead, which Al'Alin quickly destroyed. I think it's almost a reflex action for her to destroy undead.
I should point out that Xeris didn't enter, as she "got a bad feeling", and neither did Remus. This would explain why the building appeared untouched by both flora and fauna.
At any rate, the lower levels of the palace contained nothing of interest, except the undead. The undead did not react to our presence, so even they were a non-event.
On the top level, we found an intact door. When anyone touched the door handle, and image of a woman appeared and spoke a message. According to Thora the message indicated that she was sorry that she wasn't here, but she would be back later. Given that the building looked like no-ne had been there for about a decade, it doesn't seem likely that she'd be back any time soon.
The unnamed woman has long black hair, and was clad in fine, coloured robes. If she had of left her name, I might have been able to do a sending to her. Oh well, her loss. We decided that we may as well break in. Thora managed to reason to herself that this was an ok thing to do, since the undead are "an affront to nature", so clearly the woman is "an enemy".
And then things got ugly. Once the door was open, most of us looked in and saw a rune, which immediately caused us to view each other in a very bad light. We argued a lot. Thora almost succeeded in killing Phoranin. Apparently Gurzurk pulled her legs into the stone floor, took off her boots, and started tickling her feet. Most amusing. Almost having her killed was not amusing. There was lots of fighting.
I even went to the window and shouted out insults to Xeris. Of course, I apologised later, but she didn't seem to accept the apology. That's her problem though. If she can't accept that I was not being myself, then there's not much I can do about it. Maybe it's something to do with being long lived.
We did get past that door eventually (Lani scratched the symbol off with a dagger). Over the next day as well, and many dispel magics later, we managed to search all of the top floor. There was nothing of interest to find. Clearly the mage who had previously occupied the building had decided to leave. Seems no-one wants to live in this city. Oh, there are indications that the previous occupant of the palace may have been from the Ylaruam, the same place Al'Alin is from.
It seems pretty clear by now that this city is unlikely to be where the Emerondians live. We'll just have to keep looking.
We've decided that over the next few days, we'll clean the place of undead. After that, we'll see...
We are pretty sure we've cleared this city of any remaining undead. In the end, there weren't that many.
Thora decided to do a divination, to which she was told that it is hard to find that which does not wish to be found. Not exactly very helpful of Freya.
Finally, we decided to throw caution to the wind, and had Leo determine the appearance of these elusive Emerondians. They are humanoid, about 4 feet tall, and green. Now we just have to find them. Since it seems pretty obvious that they should be able to disguise themselves pretty well in this Pantheon forsaken jungle, I don't think we're going to have much luck.
Zim, Phoranin, Gurzurk, Safranna, and Roland, decided to head back to Serraine, whilst the rest of tried to find the Emerondians. Lani has flown off scouting. Thora and her wolf have also wandered off.
I get to act as the messenger boy.
I had an idea several days ago. As it turns out, Thora can scry on the Emerondians. She decided to head back to the deserted city, where she can continue to scry on them, and try to determine where they may be.
She arrived back today to do so. It turns out that they live in trees which are hollow inside. The tree looks like it has a big bulge at its base. They can easily "extract" things from the tree, such as furniture. Clearly, as expected, they are able to manipulate nature quite easily.
Finding trees with bulges at their base shouldn't be that hard. I have informed Lani to keep an eye out for it. She has also decided to head back to the city.
If we cannot find their location, we can still teleport there. The best plan seems to be to send Xeris there, after which she can move away a distance. We can then scy on Xeris, and teleport to her location. Since this Nemon guy can do Teleport Without Error's, there should not be a problem.
Lani returned today. She has had no luck in finding any Emerondians. Neither have the rest of us.
Zim and the rest have been informed of our plan. We'll probably teleport there tomorrow night. Thora will confirm that they sleep at night.
Zim does not seem to think much of what we wish to do, but I feel that it has minimal risk. Besides, after over six months of trying to find these Emerondians, I really don't care if we scare them a little.
Everything went smoothly. Xeris (with Nemon) teleported to the Emerondians, and then Nemon teleported us to Xeris once she had moved a distance away.
We decided to not have a fire, since that is unlikely to impress the Emerondians.
Zim and the others brought back some interesting news about Talib's wife Kazerabet, which Tsaz managed to determine. Apparently, one of the books on Necromancy was written by Talib, his wife, and some assistants. Apparently the library in Serraine might have a complete copy, but the librarian doesn't want anyone to get a hold of it. There are some texts that are apparently better left unread by the general public.
Apparently, they might have come from the Ylaruam. Furthermore, Kazarabet specialised in specially preserved undead.
Given all this, it seems likely that the persons place we just ransacked was Kazerabet's. Hopefully Talib won't find this out. Unfortunately, due to a sending I did to him recently, he already knows that we were in a deserted city (which we now think is Ysaweb), where there was a necromancers place which we decided to ransack. I thought that he was sounding a little terse in his replies.
Well, it was an honest mistake. Maybe she's dead anyway. I'm not about to try a sending to her to find out though.
We waited most of today, in the hope that the Emerondians would approach us, which they didn't. We went to find them, but found no trees with bulges. However, Xeris "spoke" to one of the trees, and found out that the Emerondian was still inside. I find it strange that trees are "intelligent". I'll have to remember to not tell Xeris that I've chopped a number of trees down in the past, both big and small.
We waited the day, but no-one came out.
Thora decided to go inside the tree to speak to the Emerondian there. She went in, it came out. It did not look impressed.
Thora chatted with it for a while. It seems the Emerondians don't think too highly of "meat creatures". They certainly aren't very talkative. It said that it knows nothing of what we want, has nothing to do with what we want, and would prefer to have nothing to do with us. It didn't leave any doubt as to what it thought of us. Apparently, whenever they and the "meat kind" interact, distaster results. I wonder if this may be a reference to the past, when they supposedly had dealings with the piece of the sundered man. Presumably that was not a happy time.
It as agreed to see if any others of its kind may be willing to talk to us. So now we wait.
It seems we are in business.
One of the Emerondians strolled up to us today. It looks the same, but presumably it is a different one to before.
It didn't waste any time. It seemed to knew we wanted the piece of the sundered man. It said that we could keep it if we could get the ashes.
He gave us directions. It is 50 miles "that way". It seems that it was stored in a tree, but over time, the ashes have corrupted the tree. Now the tree will find us, when we enter the region.
I have to admit, I am highly impressed that a portion of the ashes of one man could corrupt a tree. It will be interesting to see how the tree has been corrupted. I imagine that it shouldn't be that hard to destroy. The currupted tree should also constitute fairly unique spell components. I will have to collect some of it.
Which leads me to wonder what the sundered man is like. Well, I really don't want to find out. If he ever gets reconstructed, and realises that we have played a fairly major part in trying to prevent his reconstruction, I suspect we'd be near the top of his list of targets. And given how powerful he is, I don't think we'd stand a chance.
Oh, in exchange for this information, the Emerondian wants us to keep the other humans away. I can't see how we could convince the Thyatians to stay away. From what I know of Thyatians, they're more likely to want to conquor the Emerondians than speak with them. The Emerondians don't even want to speak with the Thyatians to establish a treaty. Foolish. They are clearly a recalcitrant race. They appear to prefer hiding and hoping that things go well outside. That is not how the world works though. Well, I'm not going to lose any hairs over this.
I wonder where we are. We could have been teleported 10 miles, or a thousand. We really don't know. I suppose it doesn't matter too much.