Barry and Larry

[songqu88@gmail.com]

"It's not the Blight that kills you..."

Meh. I'm done with that plotline. More importantly: Adventurers > Nobles in the context of this Inv.

The nobility would never admit that though, true to form. Yay. Very rarely does one get to see the story from the nobles' perspective in one of those fantasy "save the world" heroic stories. Mainly because it would be so dumb and frustrating for readers, lol.

[Gustav Kuriga]

I'd like to point out that Chenier never said he was looking for a way to win. He was just looking for a way not to have his realm die like Hetland did.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

"Win" = survival in the case I was talking about.

"True Win" = something none of us will ever know now. Unless the Mr. Tom decides to reveal just what the heck we were supposed to do, and what the theoretical "good ending" would have been. Can't hurt (unless some parts are still relevant to 5th Inv) since it's just a story about an alternate universe, like in those superhero what-if comics.

[Chenier]

What I said was essentially: You lost by trying to find a way to "win". That in itself was probably a wrong way to go about this. If you paid attention, the Blight could be dispersed, and in fact it was during 4th Inv around Riombara's south. The mere fact that you wanted to avoid the Blight was shallow and shortsighted. In addition, thinking foremost about your own survival, though natural, probably played into the Invaders' hands. Oh, and I have a sneaking suspicion that, though the 3 "evil" factions were fighting each other, essentially the source was the same. Wait, how does this matter? Oh yeah, you guys messed up Daishi. Kudos for that.

IC, yeah, yeah, I know. Apparently ICly, your characters are idiots. Don't worry, most of our characters were...and still are.

The blight can be dispersed, eh? Mind telling me why everything that was blighted still is, then? The blight is, in all appearences, permanent. We were even told it wasn't going away. How is trying to prevent a permanent change short-sighted?

"Probably played into the invaders' hands". That's just a load of crap. Tell me HOW an alternative course of action would have been better, please. All you do is say "you sided with the daimons, daimons are bad, therefore your decision was bad". Instead of telling me how wrong I was, how about you say what *you* think was "right"?

The only thing that could have, indirectly, helped them was the threat of action against Hetland. But we didn't. And why did we threaten action? Because Hetland were full of dumbasses and because the Light was arrogant as hell with the sketchiest ethics ever. Don't blame our characters for not feeling safe around the combination of these two.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Uh...yeah...it could have been. Maybe not currently, but during the 4th Inv, definitely yes. I can confirm this because I was checking the D map daily, and at one point brought it up with Anaris on IRC. He also claimed not to know how that happened. That's probably because any additions and removals were manually done by the Mr. Tom. The only question is under what circumstances Mr. Tom would be inclined to change it. You would have noticed too that at first Blight appeared slowly. Toward the latter end of the 4th, Mr. Tom was more aggressive with Blight.

Anyway, I am about 98% certain that at least Rines, or whatever that region's called, unblighted shortly after the Riombaran Light Temple showed up.

Now, I will admit that I don't know what was right. How could I know? I'm just like you: A normal player completely uninvolved with the veiled and aloof machinations of the GM team. However, I have seen enough accidentally to believe that one of the whole points of the daimons was to get humans on their side. Whether this really had any real mechanical consequences, I wouldn't know because I don't understand much about their mechanics.

But...you want to know what was wrong? Helping to destroy the Light temple. You know how I know that? Because...well, one of the instructions to the NPC factions was to get humans to destroy the Light temples because they couldn't themselves, and that would help the invaders flood in more reinforcements or something.

[Geronus]

The only Riombaran/Meridian city to be blighted during the invasion was Irombro, which, once blighted, most definitely stayed that way. Rines, being part of MR, never even fell into Invader hands. No Riombaran region was ever unblighted, either before or after the Temple of Light arrived. We managed to take regions back from the monsters before they were blighted on many occasions, but the change, once it happened in a region, was permanent without fail.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Gosh, are we really going to argue this? Unfortunately evidence of this is gone, and probably only one person can say for certain one way or another. I know what I saw though.

[Tan dSerrai]

I had 'only' an adventurer in Riombara after the first third of the invasion - but as far as I recall no region was ever 'unblighted'. I am not 100% sure but relatively so.

Artemisia, would you be willing to tell us /which/ region(s) was unblighted? In addition is there /any/ chance on learning more about the 4th invasion, the laws that governed it?

[songqu88@gmail.com]

I don't remember specifically the regions' names, just that they were somewhere south of Grehk. And the reason is because as you see now, there is only one region line (of two regions) separating Grehk from the southern blight. Sometime around the end of the 4th, there was a second line that suddenly opened. I talked to Anaris on IRC about it, so something definitely happened or I wouldn't talk to him about an actually serious topic in BM.

So uh, since it's clear that the daimons are bad news this time around, I wonder if it's ok to reveal some of the "instructions" back in the 4th. Basically nothing you probably don't already know, which is the whole "get humans to destroy the Light" thing. There was also the whole reinforcements thing and the interference. And finally the Archons thing. That was all really that I overheard.

[Geronus]

I don't remember specifically the regions' names, just that they were somewhere south of Grehk. And the reason is because as you see now, there is only one region line (of two regions) separating Grehk from the southern blight. Sometime around the end of the 4th, there was a second line that suddenly opened. I talked to Anaris on IRC about it, so something definitely happened or I wouldn't talk to him about an actually serious topic in BM.

It would have been an extremely noteworthy event, not just in Riombara but continent-wide, to see a blighted region return to normal. I'm fairly certain that it would have caused a major stir had it happened; there's little chance that we would have not noticed something like this happening in our backyard. The only event like this that I can recall is when someone (one of your characters actually, if memory serves) somehow managed to become lord of a blighted city. This was quickly declared to be a bug, however.

The line you are referring to is Glongin and Ardmore, I believe. South of them are Rueffilo and Rii, and south of Rii is Irombro.

Rueffilo and Irombro (and everything south of them) were blighted during the monsters' second pass through our territory, relatively early in the invasion. Rii was then TOed by a rogue undead unit before it could be blighted, and we RTOed it back. Rii (along with Ardmore and Glongin) were taken by the monsters during their third pass against us, at which time Rii became blighted almost immediately. Ardmore and Glongin were never blighted, I always assumed because Tom didn't want to completely cut off Grehk from the rest of the world. We traded them back and forth with the monsters for a little while, but they never caught the disease.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Since this falls under "Open Book" category of adventurers...

Torture Report   (17 minutes ago)
High Lords and Ladies of the Court,

This is the report of a commoner by the name of Himun of Thilye, who was captured in the northern parts of the forest in Lastfell and brought before your most loyal servant, the steward of the town of Neuropa, who had him tortured until death. Said Himun was feverish when he was caught, and would not have lasted long with or without the torture. He was in the possession of several items that a commoner can not possibly have acquired legally, including weapons and armour. It was believed that he most likely murdered one of the nobles that vanished over the course of the past weeks, and taken his gear. In order to discover the whereabouts of the body, a scribe was present for most of the torture and wrote down the mad story of this criminal, certainly a product of his fever.
Your servant does not believe a single of his words, but as the king has requested any and all information regarding the Daimon threat, he feels compelled to bring these to your attention despite the unlikeliness of any part of it being truthful, as we know for certain that no human being can survive in the Blight for any length of time.

My name is Himun, from the village Thilye in Crim. When the blight covered our lands, my family and friends fled south. But I could not find work nor land to farm, just like many others. So I started hunting the wild beasts that came from the Blight as the Marchioness had put a bounty on them. When they became less and less, I travelled ever closer to the Blight. It is a cursed land, but I had to live.
One day, me and my two companions found an old temple. Very close to where you can't breathe anymore. There was an old priest inside. He had survived through all of it. We brought him south, to safety and he gave each of us a blessing, an amulet. Yes, that one. With this, he said, we could enter the Blight. We never did, as long as there were any beasts outside. But then it just stopped. No more beasts. When we were almost starving, we went in.
The others didn't make it far. It was dark, at midday. All the air was dense and dark, like fog but black. And the ground was, changed. Plants were dead, mostly. No animals anywhere. We had brought enough food, but did not expect us to be food ourselves. We met the first of them entirely by surprised, in the burned-out ruin of some village. We were scavenging for supplies, it was eating the corpses. Or what was left of them, most looked like others had taken a bite before.
It was the most horrible beast I have ever seen, and I have seen my share. It walked mostly on all four, but it could use the front claws like hands, much like rats do. It was almost the size of a man, but much heavier. Scales and fangs, the whole thing. Not an animal of the forest, that we knew right away. But it knew us right away as well. Maybe it was hungry for fresh meat, anyways it jumped us as soon as we'd seen it. Slaughtered one of the others on the spot and ripped his arm off. The other hit it with his axe, but barely scratched it. That was when I ran. Found a trapdoor in the next house. Still hear his screams in my dreams. It must've eaten him alive or something. I don't know how long it lasted, felt like hours.
But it didn't come searching for me. Maybe it was all full. I stayed in that cellar for the night, didn't even dare to make a fire. Only realised the next morning that there was a dead kid in there with me.
Next day I got out. Out of the cellar, out of the village, out of the whole cursed area. Except that I couldn't get my bearings in that evil fog. Must have been noon when I heard something in the distance. Climbed up a small hill I did, and then I saw them, in the village below. Creatures straight out of hell, the one I had seen the night before must have been one of the smallest ones. Fifty or more of them, most twice as big as a man, some large as a house. It looked like they were gathering there, waiting. Didn't look much like animals at all, almost like an army. Organised, if you know what I mean.
Didn't want to wait for whatever it was they were waiting for, but I couldn't move. And then it came. I will never forget that creature in what's left of my life. It wouldn't fit through the town gate, I tell you. But the worst was that it seemed to not be an animal at all. It had a weapon and some kind of armour. A huge sword, saw-toothed, black steel or something. Could probably cleave a horse in two.
Then it spoke, and the others listened. Really looked much like an army then, and many of them also brought out weapons then. I couldn't make out a word, was a strange language. But I had never been so afraid, thought I'd die of fear right then. I got up and ran for my life, never looked back once, until I was well outside the Blight. And then some. It wasn't even what he said. It was his armour. That armour…

The criminal babbled incomprehensible nonsense for a while after this. The torturer tried his best to get him back to his senses, but he died shortly after.As this happened days before the Daimon army marched out of the Blight, your servant feels it falls under the Kings request, even though the entire story is highly unlikely.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

I don't even know where this fits in, but since it's "Open Book", then let's open season with the sesame seeds and let our little prince-to-be and his genie friend in.

Mortality   (6 minutes ago)
The referendum on mortality has failed, because I had it set to require a very high amount of support, and it didn't get enough support to pass.

So the 5th invasion will play out without mortality. For the moment. If the human realms get beaten badly, I may decide otherwise, but in that case there will be a warning at least a week in advance.

If you want to make me happy, try to make sure people not on BT can follow the invasion as well. The 5th invasion Wiki page is still not all too good, just a collection of some data points. If just five people write a few sentences each, we could have a narrative there that tells others the story - and maybe makes it easier to understand and follow even for those with characters on BT. It would make me very happy.
Yes, that means you. Head over and write something. A couple sentences is all that's needed.

-- Tom

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Orders from Dunbor Lorganson   (1 day, 9 hours ago)
Message sent to: Artemis, Barry, Dayne, Ingel, Pippa, Vladimir
Everywhere you go you hear rumours of the Thalmarkin Adventurers being summoned to the Draconic Union guildhouse in Orde.

The King is ordering his subjects to join this guild, they say. He wants those with and adventurous spirit to work together with the rest of the North. United for one goal: the survival of mankind and the destruction of the daimonic forces.

From the looks of the heralds and their heavily armed guards, one might get the feeling the orders of the King are there to be followed without hesitation.

Dunbor Lorganson
Duke of Unger

You are welcome into the Draconic Union guildhouse and informed that you can join, gaining the rank of Aspirant, as soon as you are able to pay the 25 gold application fee.

Roleplay from Barry   (10 hours, 17 minutes ago)
(Personal message to Dunbor Lorganson)
Barry stares at the25 gold application fee. Then he looks at his empty pockets. He proceeds to go away.

[Geronus]

Wow. How does he expect any adventurers to join for a 25g fee?  :o

[Lorgan]

Wow. How does he expect any adventurers to join for a 25g fee?  :o

I didn't exactly know there even was a joining fee.. :P
It's being taken care of... I hope.

The Draconic Union is the communication guild of the Northern Alliance. This is my attempt to organize adventurers internationally, should give us a better chance of finding the necessary items.