We left off chatting with our new found friend. Turns out his name is Zirt and he is from a civilization called the Gordonians. We chatted with him for some time and learned a lot about the northern area. Turns out the haze somehow mutates things and people into abominations. The longer you stay in it, the greater the risk. I honestly hate being correct about this because I want to journal to his village, but... I don't want to take the risk in the haze. From where we were, it turns out that travel to his village was about 5 days, so it is good to remember when we are more capable of travelers. We decided to take Zert with us back to the south. He is very interested in the desert flowers and would love to see our "source" of them. Bringing him back also lends some credibility to us in everything we have found. I've kept Siona updated so far, but I think I'm going to save Zert until we get back to Fiddletown.
We traveled south and mapped V28 and U28 on our way south. On the way back through the mountains we found a giant hole that Volsaid and her group must have done. They either must have found what they were looking for, because by the time we got there, they were already back in the foothills camping. We discussed potentially giving them a visit to chat and you know... chat, but decided against it.
We made safe travel south around Volsaid and her bullshit.
Six days of travel to get back to the crawdad cove. We spent the evening at the cove. Felt nice to be back in even remote civilization.
After that we went straight back to Fiddletown. (5 days of travel).
We quickly checked in with Fermicus and got him to fetch the baron. We went to the Baron's home and introduced him to Zert. We were once again pretty open with the Baron and shared everything we found and saw. He let us know that Baron Gilead is trying to get WA on his side as well as the deal he has already made with the miner's guild. That appears to have left Fermicus uneasy. Which isn't a big surprise, but we need to somehow get some more support on our side. I'm going to carefully push Siona a bit more and see if we can get some people from the lore college out here. Maybe even get her to travel with us as well. I would be lying if I said I didn't miss her. Plus, it would be nice to travel with more people. We've been around each other a lot recently and I need some space.
From there we went and found Dudds to get that contract going. Yay more travel...
Nevertheless, the next step is going out to the falls and chatting with some Merfolk.