Riva: Railroaded

[Part of the Darklands of Arkania Story.]

Whoa!

After slaying a large wolf pack in the woods, the team found themselves back at the Riva marketplace to sell all the loot they had gathered from the mines, and to cure Allison's numb skull illness. While doing so, an agent of "the Guild" - saying their leader wanted a meeting in an abandoned warehouse at midnight. She also promised they wouldn't be killed.

"Well, surely with that guarantee we will be fine," announced Braxwolf Storm, so the party went to the meeting and promptly got hit by sleeping gas. Only when they awoke as bound captives did "the Trademaster", the leader of the guild, show up... and then he basically forces them to join, because there's no option given for doing anything else. Railroaded much?

Upon accepting they are each given a super secret wristband that lets guild members recognize each other. These are even color coded so you know what role/rank each member holds. Seriously? The guards in Riva must be stupid.

Armbands? You expect us to see that through our helmets!?

They do learn something useful though: that there are old sewers far beneath the city which are accessible from each temple (yep, all the priests have wristbands)! Unlike the regular sewers, the old sewers skewer with space/time and serve as a method of fast travel. Thank god they aren't annoying as the Old Sewers in Wizardry Online though.

Old Sewers: New Trials

Part of the journals from Wizardry Online! You can view the rest here!

While Selenka has been working hard on her cartography project, the big guy and I got a mission from Zermu Terlu to take out something called Abadon within the Old Sewers. More importantly, the beauty in black was reportedly sighted down there giving Caanon all the more reason to charge in to find her and her posse. Turns out the "Old Sewers" ARE the Caligrase Sewers, just with more paths opened up thanks to another survey team. Gone are the zombies and bandits; instead now we have a Blue Feather cult training grounds, the Balboa family - a demihuman group of refugees, and deeper in cursed coins and terrible insects.

Unfortunately now the path further in is blocked by some giant imp, the possessed and deformed body of a baby sacrificed by the Blue Feather cultists no doubt. Caanon is not quite sure how we'll get past that thing as of yet.

Back at Illfalo Port, a wizard from the Ministry of Magic has found an unstable portal to some testing grounds of their own. I went in with three porkul-pickers: Quark Wolind, Macu Meng and Raven Daydream to face the challenge rooms of ever increasing difficulty. Unfortunately we only got half way (I think) through the whole thing but it was still a good boost to both soul and gold funds. Lastly it seems Winter2 Silence has been busy causing chaos in town. It seems even other criminals are wary of her since she hunts everyone outside the Temple of Oblivion - it sounds like she's almost unstoppable. Makes me wonder how many other high powered individuals exist that I just haven't heard about.

As an aside, found something quite interesting in the town library too.

I'm as surprised as these two!

-Thanam