Do horseshoes improve your luck?

Some days ago a big group of bored Arilonians sat in town and couldn´t decide where to hunt. We had just started moving towards the savanna dragon cave, when we had to turn, as not everyone favoured the area and the group would have been too small. So we finally decided to visit Dinken and then Ravyn.
This proved to be a good idea. On the way through the wasteland hyena parts were flying to the right and left on our path, nothing could stand to Dreskos and Graviers Oakbashers and my Hatchet. A short visit at Hannes later, we entered the lower plains of Ravyn. We started of quite well, although the first cobra brought a surprise: it opened its mouth and bit one of us! All previously encountered specimen had passively watched intruders into their territory. In the end they didn´t prove to be much of a threat, especially as they didn´t evade blows as easily when trying to bite someone.
We then started a tour all through Ravyn, first leading north. At the wagon with the merchant offering golden horseshoes we had a critical situation, but thanks to the chainers survived. We fought lots of horses and bisons and managed not only to skin several valuable furs, but also found two intact horseshoes. Finally we arrived at the eastern river, but the only bridge is barred by someone demanding 22 more golden horseshoes to let us pass.
In the south more and more giant bisons crossed our path, but they were not much of a challenge to our group. Only stallions or a bigger number of mares presented real trouble to us, but we always prevailed until we decided to slowly head back home.
We had just come back to the western cliff with the wastelands towering above us, when our group was overrun by half a dozen stallions. I fell pretty fast standing in the first rank, but most of the others made it back east. I only heard distant noises, but after quite some time Tarra, the last standing healer, fell too. So we had to depart, but it had been a fine hunt.
As a conclusion i can only state that one horseshoe may improve your luck, but several dozen still attached to stallions feet certainly do not.

Investigations and a missed chance

The past two days i´ve travelled to lots of hunting grounds again, sometimes just for the fun of testing my strength, sometimes to hunt alone, sometimes with a group. The first destination was the Tundra, where we hoped that one of the previous storms had blown a hole to the impassable northern rock and wood formation. Right at the cliff from the Bisonplains we had to face the first snow tigers and quickly slew them. I had just started complaining about how sparsely populated the cold region is, when we ran into two packs of several Tundra wolves. The group did a great job bringing these down.
I even managed to recover several of their furs, one worth 21 coins. But as it is, when you become too bold and boast about having a hand for furs: i ruined the next few furs, harvesting several taunting comments from the rest of the group. Still, the wolves and some bears proved to be worthy opponents and it was fun to fight them. Once an ice maha threatened to overwhelm us, but thanks to the mages and their boosts i was able to fell it at last.
After we couldn´t find a change in the landscape anywhere in the north or west of the Tundra we decided to quickly visit the Glaciomyrms queen chamber and look for diamonds. We had bad luck, though, only one royal myrm was present, surrounded by dozens of lesser myrms, so that we went home after a quick sidestep to the snow vermine chamber.
The rest of the day passed rather uneventful, but the next day Leda invited to a small trip to Boanyoo, where she wanted to investigate several spots. Our small group of 4 people headed there and did pretty well until we got to the graveyard. In the little chaos of retreat after Rions and my skin were rotting due to having touched foul zombies, Tarra got bitten by poisonous lizards, which was the beginning of our luck fading. We next went north to the huts sheltered in the small forest and even more lizards were laying in ambush for our healer and mage. Eventually we came near the northern village and its safe fence, but several bandits and a moment of unawareness suddenly led to me being the only survivor of our group. It took some time until my wounds closed, but then i made a run back to the middle entrance where i met with the rescue team. Via Derain and the northern entrance we managed to advance until we reached the fallens and could rescue them. Leda looked a bit disappointed on the way back, so i assume she didn´t find anything useful in the village or at the other spots.
A while later i was hunting some horses in Niamph when suddenly i found i couldn´t lift my left arm any more. My shieldhand dangled at my side and while i was still wondering what was causing the stiffness, i felt a hoof colliding with my back only a moment before another one hit my chest. The air rushed out of my lungs and all went black. I woke a bit later lying helpless on the ground and had to wait for help. The rescue team had a hard time getting through all the spiders to me, as they had no pathfinder among them. On the way back i could show them the shortcut through the spiders, only to see them land in the middle of a huge amount of mammuth spiders. I´m really sorry for all the trouble i have caused and thankful to the rescuegroup who eventually managed to bring me back to town.
A more pleasant surprise for me was the realisation that i finally learned to be swift enough to avoid a Nightwendeckas strikes. Too bad that in my joy i forgot to care for their precious skins.
After a small sleep i awoke again, only to find that Splashs newest event "Knock the Splash" had already started. Unfortunately i had forgotten about it and so wasn´t one of the candidates who got the chance to compete with him. I only arrived for the final celebration of Penthka, who could not only beat Falk in the first stage but also Splash in the real event, congratulations! I hope the next event of this series will be soon to give me the chance to participate as well.

The best cure for meditation stiffness

After quite some time of meditation i woke up yesterday, eager for adventures, but stiff from the long time i had not moved. Of course the most effective treatment for this is a hunt, although the beginning feels not easy. And so i ran to the Orga Camp to catch up with a group who wanted to pay the Orga Chief a visit. I saw them soon and we ventured into the depths of the cave. In the beginning the fight seemed to go well, but badly wounded the Orga summoned the last of his strength and killed all the fighters. I had ducked too late and so could not be raised again by the healers. The rest of the fight i had to watch lying around, but the others were generous enough to bring me my part of the Orgas treasure after its death. A prayer and some quickly collected, sacrificed mushrooms from Rion then propitiated the gods who send us some healing potions that helped raising Achima and me.
A sudden urge made me run back to town, but in the passage i encountered two large death vermines. While i could lose one, the other followed me south to the ford and once again i was too inflexible yet to avoid it. I felt a sharp pain and fell into a coma, from which i only awakened in Reizendes tree some time later.
After this Leda invited me to enjoy a test of her newest achievement: the ability to open a portal to Ardvell! We went hunting some red spiders, but due to the small group didn´t make that much progress and were in constant danger of being hurt too much to be healed, which eventually was Penthkas fate and the end to our hunt.
Seeing Penthka reminded me again that the last time i had seen her she had still looked for a drop of Chabyllusblood and therefore i visit Sunken again. I hadn´t been down there for quite long and as it seemed no one else either, as way more creatures than normal greeted me. I also encountered lots of Chabys and Kraskajos and enjoyed this change to the more frequently visited hunting grounds. As a result, Penthka can now organise her big shopping tour.
Next i ventured south and tried to collect some horsefurs, but soon dark clouds approached the sky. I had just started running back to town to seek shelter, when i felt the first drops coming down. I was so shocked by them i stopped dead in my track and nearly let myself be trapped by a horde of Niamph spiders, but i could escape and finally arrived in town, a little wet, but i am sure worse was to come. I had indeed just found a comfortable position to meditate, thunder crashed and rain came pouring down.
When i sensed the weather calming down i emerged from the tower again. The rain had caused lots of strange plants to grow in town, among them Treangi bloodbushes, wake-me-ups and strange starflowers. Suddenly i heard the heavy steps of something big and in the next instant i faced a bloodoak towering over me, trying to grab and crush me! With Penthkas help i managed to make firewood of it, but somehow this storm seemed to have made lots of creatures seeking out Arilon and so we had to fight through dozens of Myrms, bats, frogs and others until we could nearly not move any more 1w, because the blood had made a mudpool of the earth and the Myrms chitinskins made sharp-edged traps threatening to slice through bare feet.
The evening then brought back a feel of the time before the great storm. A big group went to hunt Ardvell spiders, with Aridor going first, falling and so causing more and more mammuth spiders to venture into the portal cave. I managed to trap the first two with kudzu, but just when i ran out of these useful plants, some more came into the cave. First we tried luring and picking one off to kill, but with me luring the others were short a fighter and this failed. Finally i could convince the spiders to follow me outside and push Aridor inside, so that the spiders lost interest in the corner with the cave and we could heal up and get coordinated.
After that we hunted for quite some time in the area between the portal cave and the big Inn to the south, with several people being ported back and forth to leave of join us. I had a great time, learning a lot and getting more than enough practise in the luring of spiders. I´m sure now that Leda can safely open the portal we will visit the area more frequently.
As an end to the hunt we had to take the boats, as Falk had fallen in Kajmanos. Leda's magic shield saved me from drowning when we were surprised by two Sekats and so it was not as bad as it could have been. In the swamp we quickly found Falks corpse, slaying the Anaconda, that had been his fate on our way. I arrived back in town exhausted, but happy and with the thought not to meditate as long as last time.

The Thieves Fortress

After some days of mostly meditating and some tries of different challenges i decided it was time again to hunt properly. Yesterday Tarra had invited everyone to join a hunt through the Ardvell forest to change spidereggs for brooms in the thieves village there and so i joined in. We had just started when we met several Ashursos. Luckily we had to face at most two at a time and so we managed to bring down these bears after tough struggles.
On the way to the village we had to carve our way through seemingly endless hordes of Lupos and Boars with sharp tusks. Sadly in the tries to bring them down we often striked towards their head and in the end just one of them went down with intact tusks that Malachym could recover. When we arrived at the village my battlemood rose to new heights, as several barking watchdogs came running for us, accompanied by some Chocolateursos and thieves. Slowly we got the upper hand and managed to enter the village.
After a short look around and finding a hut on the western end to be safe in case of emergency we gathered to storm the fortress. My nose smelled even more dogs when i came closer to the door and indeed the thieves seem to keep the main force of them inside this structure. We had to retreat several times to heal gasping wounds. Still, our group was big and disciplined enough to defeat one foe after the other until the ground floor was in our hand. We climbed a ladder in one of the towers and tried to storm the next floor, but several Ladrons came running, capes flying behind, knives in hand and so we had to retreat to scatter them and gain control again. To avoid dying so close to our target we decided to lure Ladrons from the roof, which went quite smooth until we decided to climb up as the region around the ladder looked empty. Well, of course the Ladrons were just standing in the corners and so we had to retreat and were nearly killed by the following thieves. Luckily some healers managed to avoid their knives and could heal me, so i could distract them long enough for the others to be raised and the room being secured again. Frenzymac looked a bit pale, as he had glimpsed his greatest fear on the roof: a black-clad Ladron! To my surprise when facing him alone we had quite few problems bringing him down, encouraged by Frenzys cheers.
After this fight we took over the roof as well and visited Fasiná, a handsome Kyttyn, who handed out selfmade brooms in return for some red spidereggs. Back on the roof we fought another black Ladron, this one wearing even a black cape and no red as the first one had. But the belief in our strength had grown too much for him to stand a chance against our combined weapons and so we quickly gathered again in the middle of the village. As several people wanted to leave soon it was decided to head back via a path. On the other side we soon found out that it had been a good idea to take the long way to the village and not take the path: we were immediately surrounded by several dozen wolves, some thieves and several grey Ursos! Luckily about half the group made it to the northern border, where the trees grow more narrow and made a stand there until the opening was secure enough to go back and help the others. After this last challenge i headed back to the meditower, satisfied after a nice hunt and with a broom for the enhanced cuirass in my bag.

The End - April Fool

As the pages run out and the ink goes dry this will be my last entry into my diary. Here i´ve written down many great adventures i´ve had as well as funny encounters and hard-earned achievements. I want to thank all of my frequent readers, you are the main reason i kept this up for so long!
But from now on my travels will only live on in my memory, so if you want to know about them, come out of the meditower and experience them at my side.

Of course this was just a joke, although the low number of reactions (and as the librarian told me, readers in general) may lead to this becoming real sometime.