First, we're still back in Woodland (hurrah! Home sweet home!), although we won't be here long since we'll be heading off North to Joven soon. More on that in a bit.
I had a chat with Armand, the high priest of my mosque, and let him know about what we had been doing for the past few months, as well as give him the plans for the portal that the Messengers in Port Town had entrusted me to pass on. Poor Armand is now one leg short, due to a gnoll raid that had occurred while we were gone. But good- no, great!- news; he has selected me to be his replacement when he leaves Woodland. Of course, this won't happen until I'm ready (I certainly don't feel ready yet!) but it's still great news; I've always wanted to be a head Messenger of a mosque!
Enough about me, I suppose. Yesterday Linora finally got the henchman she's been hunting for; his name is Shocko and he's... well, crazy. (And after hearing him talk [and talk] insanely, I'm certainly glad that SwampFox is both sane and quiet.) Although it leaves me to wonder what other candidates for henchman replied to Linora's request, if she ended up with that one. But I digress. Ayman also had some good news; it turns out that the card spell that he was hit with a while back has a range of effect, so he didn't lose his possessions that were back in Woodland. (Let's just hope we'll never have to see him naked again!)
And in far less great news, we learned that there are dragons and a renegade wizard on the loose. There is a new dragon nearby (not one of the known 7 dragons, so possibly the child of one) which is possibly black and is encroaching on the territory of the green one we had the pleasure of barely avoiding the other day. SwampFox told me that RedArrow had told him that he had seen a dark dragon, so I'm wondering if that one and the new black dragon are one in the same.
SwampFox was also immensely helpful in telling us about Baser (the Shadow-Man); it turns out that said man who had held SF captive is a corrupt wizard from Goth, according to Zolirian (the guild's master-at-arms). This wizard robbed the coffers of Goth, then sailed away on a stolen ship. Well, we know where he ended up, thanks to SF; he's now to the South-East on a high hill. This wizard is the reason why there are no longer many orcs around; he had held some of SF's clan captive to mine for rocks, and the rest of them have sailed away because "the land is bad because of the Shadow-Man". I'm thinking these rocks were to build Baser a stronghold, but that's just my own speculation.
However, we're not going to go straight to the South; Ghost reminded us of one of the tests in Dwight's trial, which involved fighting a shadow-man. So instead we are first going to go North to Joven to talk to the priests there, I'm assuming to see if we can find more information (although I think Ghost misses Dwight).
I'm sure I missed some things that happened to the other party members, but I'll leave it to them to fill in the blanks.
~Cyneric Conroy, Order of the Fleet Fox
March 21, 7th day of Brightmoon
