From the journal of Caesar Bonaparte, Human Illusionist of the third circle.
Word went out that the King of Throal was looking for low circle Adepts to go to Thivanadir to "make it more accessible". I immediately wondered if the King thought his kingdom had too many low circle Adepts and he was looking to thin the herd a bit. His reasoning that a safe port in the middle of the Deaths Sea was desirable is rather suspect in that in order to get to this safe port, one has to travel over the Deaths Sea! His thinking that an extreme southern trade route would promote trade is possibly true, but it seems to me that the primary beneficiary of that will be Travars traders and fire miners.
However, since I am a loyal Travarian, I have no objection to the kingdom of Throal helping to develop such a trading base in Travars backyard, I agreed to help and urged some other low circle Adepts who were investigating the proclamation to come as well. We spent some time studying maps and reading travelers journals, and despite my urging that waiting (even for months) for an airship going to Travar would be quicker, we set off on foot for the coil river, where we took a riverboat to Travar. From there we managed to talk our way onto a fire mining ship. Within two months of the king's proclamation we arrived in the vicinity of Thivanadir.
Our sharp eyed lookout spotted the flag that the last group of visitors had constructed, and we approached slowly and carefully. I tried to cast "see the unseen" but found that any attempt to cast spells from my matrix caused visible stress to the matrix. However it turns out "see the unseen" was not necessary, as my "True Sight" allowed me to pierce the illusion surrounding the island and I was able to see it, helping guide the ship into a good landing.
We talked to the residents of the island, and found that they had mellowed considerably from where the tales that had been going around the last few months indicated. The gates between the different sections of the prison were open and the population was intermingling. The whole prison vibe was now mostly gone, and with it the astral clouding had lightened down from corrupted to tainted.
Our mission was to make the ex-prison "more accessible". We had several ideas (some of which we had read about in the journals of the previous visitors). Among them were, (a) Deal with spell matrix dampener, (b) Deal with the invisibility. (c) Somehow reduce the extreme turbulence that ships flying over the Deaths Sea face, and (d) Anything else that would promote trade, which would include the building of docking towers and other major construction projects.
I did Astral Sight tests in various places of the community, and quickly identified two sources of powerful magic. One was coming from above, and the other from below. I deduced that the islands invisibility was probably the result of the magic coming from below, and that the spell matrix dampening was probably coming from above us. We learned that there was a section that used to be the administrative section of the prison further up the mountain, but that was now locked. We decided to start with that.
There was a doorway that was locked. One of the windlings in the party stuck their hand into the lock and had it mangled a bit when a trap went off. Near the doorway we found metal's and molds that appeared to be what was needed to cast a key. Someone found a recipe that listed the correct ratio of metals. We deduced the correct mold for the key we needed and we mixed the metals and cast a key in the red mold. After we dunked the key in latex several times it engaged the tumblers and unlocked the door.
We climbed the stairs, noting from old disturbances in the centuries old dust that somebody had apparently used them a few years before. On the next level we found old administrators offices. There we fought 5 seasoned scouts. One was killed, two were rendered inconcouse, and ran away, and one surrendered. The survivors spoke Therian (as do I), and said that the 5 of them were the last survivors from this section, and that they had been eating rats and bugs. He lead us to a well lit room, where several machines fed power to a huge crystal. We examined the machine and saw it was powered by true air. Little of the True Air remained after all these centuries. We removed the fuel source and the machine turned off. After that I could use my spell matrixes with no damage.
We drew up diagrams of the Spell Matrix Disrupter. Since the others were determined to turn these plans over to the Great Library of Throal, I made some copies for the libraries of Travar. We took the surviving Scouts down to the main prison and introduced them around. Statistics:Posted by ChrisDDickey — Fri Aug 20, 2021 6:28 pm
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