Through Mist and Shadow

 

The following journal entry details our expedition into the recently discovered Myrkand Realm.

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  Objective: Explore the Myrkand Realm
  


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  Party: Lady Mirabella Caleah, Traains Weck, Mordecai Conviction Avaricci, Alexander, and Kaecil Kayessan
  

During one of my previous adventures we stumbled upon some kind of stone circle much like the ones found before around Idriell, however this one, when activated transported us to some kind of demiplane. We had dubbed it the Myrkand Realm, naming it after one of the first elvish specters that talked to us and helped us get out of there, back to the material realm.
 
This of course gathered some interest and many of us wanted to go back to explore this realm. Which we decided to do. We gathered a few willing and available adventurers and head for the stone circle again, armed with the knowledge of how to come and go with a magical activation stone. Out of everybody in the part Alexander and myself were the only ones that visited the realm of Myrkand before. Both of us informed the party that we couldn't eat anything in that realm for it would prevent us from coming back to our own realm. So the party tried to stock up on rations and headed out.
 
The voyage to the stone circle was relatively uneventful. Only when we came upon Uthal's bridge we were attacked by a few swarms of ravens. The group made short work of these birds, and quickly continued the journey. This was the only thing of note that happened during our trip, it took us about two days to get to the stone circle (set up camp twice).
 
Now the real work was upon us, we gathered in the stone circle and activated the circle with the stone, Alexander had a bit of fun at the expense of the group by making everybody compliment each other before he activated the circle. Once in the new realm we got a lay of the land to see if there were any landmarks we could follow. I flew up on my broom to check. I spotted a plume of smoke south of us. We all agreed that we would head in that direction. First, however, we decided to go to the tower in the north again to submerse ourselves in the strange basin of water restoring our physical forms. You see, this realm makes us appear somewhere between half specter and half skeleton (ooc: something like x-ray). The water restores it somehow. In hindsight we should ask if there is a way to reproduce the liquid.
 
Afterwards we head south fairly quickly we came upon a small hut, which was recently attack, explaining the smoke we saw earlier. Inside we met another elven specter, named Lucy, standing over a dead human man. Turned out they were living together and were attacked by some kind of large beast. During our attempts to hepl she mentioned there were more humans in this plane and were in need of help. She pointed us further south. If we had been in the material plane you could say we were heading toward the Loneholm Ruin. Lucy, the elven specter, called it Faufnor. Instead we found a group of settlers in an intact and under construction Loneholm. The settlers mentioned they were transported to this place accidentally by one of their own.
 
After much discussion as to what to do we decided to wait a while before heading back and trying to get these people out of this realm. For some reason they wanted to what for a harvest of the massive hallowed tree standing at the center of this settlement. The fruit is poisonous but also restore health to whoever that eats it. We managed to bring two of those fruits back to Vareholm proper. In any case we didn't have enough rations for the entire group to transport them back to the stone circle as it was a large group and it was a day or so travel away. Thus we decided to take one person, a young woman with us to see if we could restore her to her normal body and our plane.
 
On the way back to the tower we were attacked by some vengeful specters, two of which were familiar to me as we fought them on our first trip there. Some kind of elven wraith warriors. The other foe we fought was a large troll but also appeared as a specter. I'm not sure if it differs much from the regular troll kind we find in our realm, in any case I didn't have much time to work out its strengths or weaknesses as Conviction and Traains made short work of the beast. I used a hold person spell to hold the wraith's in place and weakened for Alexander to wipe them out. Mirabella was too slow to act and was frustrated she didn't get to fight something. In any case we made sure the young woman was escorted safely to the tower.
 
We try to emerge her in the water at the tower but nothing happened, at the time we feared we had failed. But we had one more thing to try. On our previous trip the elves said we needed our normal forms to be able to activate the circle, but that is just being able to activate it, not if it is needed to be transported back. So we gather in the circle, once we have restored ourselves to our normal forms, and activated the circle. And what do you know, it worked! The young woman got back to our realm, she still looked like a specter however. But Alexander and a few of the party had filled their water-skins with this strange liquid that restores our bodies and now tried again to restore her body to her, this time it worked, she returned to her normal self. To our surprise Lucy followed us and got transported back to our realm too. Thinking we had the solution at hand we tried to restore her as well, but to our horror and disbelief when we tried it she rapidly aged and turned to dust. Apparently she was stuck in that realm for so long she had long passed away and didn't have a connection to this realm anymore.
 
Now knowing the solution to the problem we spend a couple days hunting and foraging to gather enough rations for the return trip for ourselves and the group of settlers still stuck in that realm. We go back in and this time bring back the whole group of settler except for 3 other who wanted to stay. One of which promised to harvest the tree and he invited us to come back every month to receive more of those magical fruits.
 
Now that we got everybody back safely to our realm we escort them back to Vareholm so that they can have a peaceful place to live out their lives.