Gather round, friends and strangers alike. It is time once again for your friendly neighborhood scribe to put quill to parchment and share a tale of bravery, heroism and death-defying adventures!
This recounting begins on the jungle island of Buccaneer’s Den. The lovely and talented bard-mage Ki’Anna Stydoran, Joram Lionheart (and his henchies) and I were doing our level best to clear that accursed place while digging up treasure chests when I received a message from Tristan Gryphon. He had found a special "sacred" treasure map and wondered if we wanted to help him find and recover the riches. We of course were interested, but there was this little matter of an Ancient Dragon who had designs on having me as a snack. After more energy bolts from Ki’Anna, a lot of pounding from Joram (and his henchies) and a few well-placed fire arrows from me, the behemoth finally fell. We collected our just rewards and headed back to Britain to meet up with the rest of the stalwart group.
Aislin, Bronwyn, Jocilyn, Scott Myr and Tristan awaited us at Britain Bank. Ki’Anna was the designated cartographer and Scott Myr was the designated chest-popper. (Scott said that since he had died earlier, it did not much matter if he died again. I am still not sure if that was bravery or something else.)
Ki’Anna decoded the map, and it led to one of the Shrines (I can not remember which Shrine this was, sorry.) After digging it up, the first thing we all noticed was that the chest was wooden, not metal. When Scott popped the chest, we killed the ensuing mobs without much trouble (I think they were Dragons, not sure). Inside the chest, however, was another special map! This began a series of trips that included all 8 of the Shrines and ended at Compassion (more about that one later.) After this first chest was completed, Zeth appeared (Master Scout, he has a way of just appearing) and he accompanied us on several more of the chests.
Throughout the course of over two hours, we killed every member of the Dragon family a couple of times over (except lesser wyrms and wyverns), Titans, Ogre Lords, Ogres, Black Wisps, Ice Fiends, Ice Eles, mages, bone dewds, necros, shadowpacks, hellhounds, a Reaper, gazers – - basically a lot of different mobs.
Our casualty list included just one adventurer and Tristan’s dragon at least once (might have been twice). We also encountered a talking dead ancient dragon. After Tristan insulted it, another Ancient Dragon showed up, apparently to defend the dead dragon’s honor. It did not succeed.
The final map led to Compassion. We gated in and had to deal with the normal desert spawn of flaming skeletons, flaming gargoyles, sand eles etc. This time when the chest was dug up, it was metal. Since this was the last Shrine, we expected to be over-run with all manners of hell spawn. We buffed, positioned ourselves and said little prayers as Scott popped the chest and...
Nothing. It was a dud! After a bit of looking around, a note magically appeared next to the empty chest. The Treasure Chest God or Goddess (aka Seer) told us that he/she had oopsied and would figure out how to fix it. With that, we headed back to Britain Bank to split the loot, not really knowing what to expect.
While Tristan sifted through a mountain of magics, gold, hides etc, Leroy walked in and handed him “the last sacred map.â€