To the Opal empire

After closing up shop and selling the weapons entrusted to me by the gentleman named Macca Ni I headed towards the Black door Inn. Dar and Din had a good night's rest in the stables there and I sampled a few of the local dishes as good seafood is difficult to acquire in my homeland. The inn was lively and certainly well recommended, though I had to help Macca Ni not lose too much to a swindler in a game with dice. And then I had to keep the swindler from getting swindled...
We also learned from some musicians with an Orcish heritage that traversing the Opal empire might be more troublesome than I previously thought. The group had been turned around at the border for not being human enough as I understand it. The gentlemen I travel with should be fine to pass through but I might encounter some trouble. If obstructed I might need to find an alternate route. As repayment for the information, I wrote the group a recommendation for inns and taverns in the Eyaw empire. It should be effective in the larger cities, especially because I wrote it on the back of my braised pork-noodle soup recipe.
 
Half a days travel from the border we had to stop for the night at an inn. A defensive tower seemed to be in progress of being built next to it. According to the local guards and a few of the travellers, the Opal empire is suffering from a severe case of humanoïd supremacy and they're patrolling the rust hills, which are rich in iron, as well. The guards are suspecting the empire is preparing to make a move in an attempt to secure the area. It sounds to me like they are preparing for war. Best to travel through as quickly as possible if we can get in at all.

(......................)
 
I'm not sure how but the gentlemen and I crossed the border of the Opal empire. It was Maca-nee who did all the hard work of talking to and convincing the guards. We didn't dilly-dally for too long and quickly made our way further down the road. Eventually choosing to spend the night at a small village and... things... happened.

First of all, these people weren't as unpleasant as the guards. Other than a bit of curiosity they held no malice. They asked me how I was still in the empire, a question I honestly don't know the answer to, and informed us that those in power had actually rounded up the 'non- normals' not too long ago and those had not been seen after. Hopefully, they were simply deported and nothing else.

The second thing pertains to a geyser that provides the entire area with water and fish which I'm pretty sure are salt-water in origin. It might be some kind of portal that opens on the regular and provides precious resources to the people.
At any rate, it had something to do with an old, glowing tome Gimdalf has in his possession. From what I gather from the gentlemen's tale is that the tome is related to an ancient race that lived on this plane aeons ago and usually alerts them to the ruïns scattered across the land. The problem is that the language the tome uses is long dead and forgotten so it is virtually impossible to know what exactly the text means.
Either way, on with the story. The tome seemed to be showing some kind of message that indicated something wasn't working right near the geyser. Having no indication of what the text actually meant, mister Gimdalf tried to touch all the text in the tome to find a clue. Tragically turning of the geyser in the process! This means great disaster for the village.
Although the gentlemen and I would love to undo this action, none of us currently have enough understanding to 'fix' this mess or have the resources to dive down and brute force it, nor do we have the time and freedom of mind to stay in one place longer than absolutely needed. The best we could do is leave and find a way to quickly read the old language and come back in the future to restore the villages water source.
 
On the road to the next town, we met three travellers who hardly seemed to be trustworthy at the start. There was a lot of back and forth and a failing attempt at mystery on their side but in the end, it all came down to this:
The travellers were gnomes wearing cloaks of human guises to avoid surveillance. It seems there is animosity from the country's nobles towards any race that isn't dwarf, elf or human. They'd acquired a blueprint for something that absolutely couldn't fall into the hands of the Opal empire and needed to be delivered to the Free cities. I'd simply destroy a blueprint that's that dangerous but apparently having your hard work disappear into nothingness isn't the desired event for craftsmen other than chefs... As far as I can tell, taking the blueprint with us won't ad much more danger to our route. And as payment, they gave me one of the cloaks they had, which should make passing the checkpoints much easier. They also promised we'd be repaid upon delivering the blueprint.
After acquiring some more information we want our separate ways. Although I did request they take a look at the geyser situation. They may be able to get it working again or think of a temporary solution.