…or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Kill Some Bugs.

So, there we were fresh from the defeat of the Boregal in the dogforsaken burg of Embered Peaks.  We (Lincoln, Geon, and I – Lemuel had apparently wandered off somewhere) found Semiko sleeping outside of the Forum of the Dead and she rejoined us. Besides being so nutty she seems like kind of a slacker but they’re may be a few shins I can work out of her if I play my cards right. With order restored and nothing left to do here we headed on down the road for some much needed rest and relaxation in the Cylion Basin.

At Cylion, those crazy colored pools seemed to be working again and we gained some much needed rejuvenation. The local wildlife seems to have calmed a bit as well. Later, we checked back into the hotel there and in the bar downstairs heard some interesting rumors.

Apparently, the Amber Pope is calling for crusades against the Gaians north of the Cloudcrystal Skyfields. In Uxphon, an uncle of one of the locals at Cylion Basin by the name of Baron Tychronus is heading off in one of those crusades. We decided, why not? It’s a long journey of around 550 miles to either Uxphon or the Amber Monolith. Something may distract us along the way but every journey starts with a first stem and in this case it was making our way over the Black Riage into the Steadfast via Tremble Pass. We hope to make Legrash in three or four days. Things were going swimming until I, with my incredibly keen senses, detected a shimmering spiderweb crossing the narrow ravine ahead. A steel spider was perched at the corner of the web. Spiders… can’t live with them. So, naturally, I attacked.

Well, that probably wasn’t a good idea. The spider fought back and had two buddies creeping over the rise on either side of us. Things were going pretty well on our side, though Geon doesn’t seem to really have the hang of using his powers yet. His onslaughts seemed to keep bypassing the foes. After some deft footwork I started tripping over myself as well which cost me a gob of painful painful spider venom in the face. Yuck! After a painful and drawn out combat we finally put the last of the buggers down. Their web posed a problem as it was fine enough to slice through metal and synth. A flick of my fingers and my hedge magic managed take it partially down, well, low enough to climb over.

After that, we continued to Legrash. With luck we’ll reach the settlement before running into more bugs or something worse. Hopefully, there will be some marks along the way to make a few shins.