February 2019

A few days travel into the primeval Yavimayan Forest, the group is ambushed by a small raiding party of Skybruner Orcs. The Orc raiding party is lead an Orc sorcerer and Orc champion, supported by two Ogre battering rams and consists of 25 Orc grunts.

A fierce battle takes place with Essen escaping high into the trees before raining down lightning strikes (which on one occassion catches an unimpressed Grundark in its area affect), Dawn throwing up a Wall of Fire that greatly weakened the startled ambushers before nearly fallen victim to the Orc champion, Grundark bravely battling an Ogre battering ram while being bounced around on his arse on several occassions, Gimblenock leaping over the top of his much taller comrades suprising Ogres and Orc champions alike and Dwayne taking on Orcs and Ogres and bravely interposing himself between Dawn and the Orc champion.

After being peppered by lightning bolts, javelins and loud Orc warriors the group manage to take down the Ogres, Orc champions and many Orc grunts before the magician and remaining Orcs scamper away through the overgrown undergrowth made larger by Essesn's magic. Following up the victory, the party follow the sorcerer to a hilltop overlooking a lush valley. Multiple campfires send up smoke and rather than take on several hundred Orcs, the group gets a wriggle on with its main target (the city Cyolonore) in mind.

Weeks later, after using skill and magic to avoid the ever increasing number of Orcs the group come across the sight of more than a thousand crows, ravens, vultures, caracaras and skuas circling above a battlefield littered with the corpses of more than ten thousand Orcs. The biggest number of slain are the Greycale Orcs. Grundark realises they are at the edge of Greyscale territory and have been attacked by the combined forces of three other Orc tribes. There is a single Ojasi banner among the fallen of the Orc tribes of Jagged Meatpackers, Bridgebreakers and Granite Rifts Raiders. From her vantage point of a raven flying above the scene, Essen sees that no birds are landing and that the occassional Orc corpse is being devoured in great gouts of blood and violence by things unseen. Sensibly the group moves further on, even though it is near dark and sets up camp a little further on.

That night at least three highly obscured green dragons are observed flying down to the battlefield, including one that flies directly over the groups campsite. There landing causes a huge ruckus among the birds which had landed on the battlefield during the night. Dawn also briefly observes on the horizon (not in the direction they are travelling) a thin yellow smog-like haze, beneath which she barely hears several audible booms, before it vanishes from sight.

One night out from Cyolonore the group is witness to a truly cosmic experience:

• eerie sound of cosmic trumpets vibrates deeply everywhere
• stretching the entire length of night sky a monstrous, transparent alien tentacle with suckers, planet sized hooks moves through the void between the spaces
• planets and stars are impacted and jolted
• a thin scar releasing damp white light is left behind that remains in place in geostatic position
• it was a small portion of the Elder God Architeuthis almost emerging into the universe
• stars have been knocked from their constelations

Essen casts a divination spell to understand what is going on and is given told "the major discontinuance of the golden serpent discontinuance will give rise to the eternal fall of the Star Dragon"

Dawn seeks divine assistance. Falling through the dimensions a bright star crashes in front of the group and it is a possible future Dawn, an Exemplar Dawn with eyes of liquid silver, a platinum halo that flows out behind her, skin of armoured gold and is the true queen and mother of all. Dawn asks to understand how the dsicontinuance can be stopped and Exemplar Dawn downloads the information directly into Dawn's mind. Dawn realises because of the complexity and density of the information it will take a long time to understand. She also understands that there are other people or entities that would gladly capture Dawn and extract this knowledge from her mind.

Two nights later they reach the outskirts of the former Elven city of Cyolonore. Even though it has been 500 years since the Liodon departed, it has not been reclaimed by the forest, but has grown wilder in mimicry of the original Elven gardens that once prospered here, including wild orchards, wild flowers twisting around and over archways, groves of untended decorative trees reaching high into the sky and fields of long grass and wildflowers. The small central city city and the buildings in the surrounding 5 miles of the central city are rundown but still habitable. Ojasi Orcs have now occupied the central city and each Orc tribe has been allocated a camp area for their 100 warriors.

The group get with a mile of the city. Grundark and Dawn elect to remain concealed while Essen tranforms into a raven, Gimblenock turns invisible and Dwayne is polymorphed into a Hand of Luthic (female Orc preistess) and has tongues cast upon him.

Dwayne:

• gets into a literal pissing contest with an actual Hand of Luthic where he is trimuphant
• observes the flatpack construction of ballista, trebuchet, mangonel, siege towers, battering rams
• observes Orc War Wagons both complete and being constructed
• observes that 10 Orc tribes have sent their 100 warriors and learns 2 more will be arriving within the week

Essen:

• sees that the ancient moat is filling in with putriscient black water rather than the original clean spring water the city was famed for
• observes 4 elves using oversized calligraphy brushes designing a magical sigil on the forecourt of the main palace building
• they were ancient elves long extinct, but Essen couldn't recall their name
• wasn't sure if they were real, actual ghosts, illusions or land memories

Gimblenock:

• almost got busted by guard worgs and their Ojasi handler who threw dust of appearance over Gimblenock's head
• found a building that contained a permanent teleportation circle
• had a good look at the buildings in the front half of the city and knows which ones are currently occupied and which are vacant

Grundark and Dawn:

• hears voices from the past and sees figures moving in the past as slivers of light
• the voices are those of long dead elves who are talking about a chamber of Emtariath (the 6 armed Witch Queen of the Atrophic) being discovered beneath the palace
• They and worried even though Emtariath vanished at the same time as the collapse of the Sarpadian Empire
• where the group is holed up is the former temple of Lithandr