Tsaimath

Chapter 232

Either the smile on my face or the Athame in my hand must have clued the centaur in to the fact that things were about to get interesting. He tried to break the bindings I had conjured around him, not that he had a chance to do so, the frozen chains I had bound him in were tight and solid.

I carefully planted the staff in front of him, using a bit of Ice-Magic to anchor it in the soil beneath, making sure that Lenore could easily watch what I was doing and would be able to ...

DLM- Bk 4, Chapter 40

The food served at the Guild-dinner was surprisingly scrumptious, a feast in the most literal sense of the word and at first, I had a ‘feasting while the world burns around us’ impression, wondering just how we were supposed to enjoy the expertly prepared food knowing that around us, people had lost everything. After that moment, I realised just why it was served the way it was, what I was looking at was the food that would have perished in a day or two without refrigeration,...

Chapter 231

 AN: Happy New Year, Everyone

Part of me wondered if the Centaurs were somewhat related to ants. Watching them gave that impression, they looked rather agitated as they moved around camp and I thought I could smell their unease, even through the scrying magic I used to watch them.

But it was somewhat understandable that they were spooked, at first, they had lost about thirty percent of their troops without managing to bring down even one of their canine attackers, followed by...

Chapter 230

I was waiting with a feeling of breathless anticipation. During the night, Lenore and I had, more or less jokingly, made predictions and bets on the reaction the centaurs that escorted the supply-oxen would have, once they noticed a mist-bank rolling in and how they would react once they were covered by it. The ideas started with the sensible, run as fast as they could, continued with the boring, do nothing, and finally, started to become ridiculous when Lenore suggested that the...

Chapter 229

My original hope, to attack the centaur supply-team during their nights-rest was sadly out of the question. They hadn’t moved on after arriving at the western centaur-camp during the middle of the day, instead, they had stayed there, obviously planning to spend the night. For us, that was both good and bad news. Good news, because it meant that all wolves would be able to join in our attack, bad news because it meant we were lacking the cover of the night. Luckily, I’d be abl...

Holiday Special

Come on, Children, gather around the hearth and sit down. Sit down and listen.

Now, that the nights are long and dark, let me tell you of times long past. History has many lessons for us and if we don’t learn from it, it might just repeat itself. Tonight, I will tell you the story of the Severing, a tale of the horror’s brought about by lust for power and fanatical devotion to a cause. Some say, every being is willing to become a monster for the right cause and whether ...

Chapter 228

The sleet kept going for four days and by the second day, all of us were bored out of our skulls. On the first day, I had enlarged the Igloo to create multiple chambers, one for Sigmir and me, one for Rai and Adra one for the wolves with us and finally, a chamber to be used as out-house, allowing our waste to fall outside and be washed away by the rain.

But even with those chambers, there was only so much we could do inside and the conditions outside were far too unpleasant...

Chapter 227

Success had never been so miserable.

Lenore and I had managed to keep our ritual going for a little over sixteen hours, pumping an insane amount of Astral Power into the storm. After that, I had slept for a good eight hours, securely held in Sigmir’s arms until waking again, to realise that the storm was still going strong, dumping buckets of water, snow and hail onto the landscape. Obviously, that included us and by the time I woke up, we all had been thoroughly drenched...

Chapter 226

After making sure that everything was ready for a prolonged session of spell-casting and telling my party and the wolves around us to take cover, I took up my position in the middle of the ritual circle Lenore and I had set up. For a moment, I considered sitting on the ground, as I normally did when using magic circles that didn’t involve me dancing as part of the ritual. It was a curious thing, using dance to guide magic, it worked but, if asked, I hadn’t got the sligh...

Chapter 225

I had to blink a few times, after seeing the attributes of my new weapon. Or rather, casting tool, it wasn’t quite as useful as an actual weapon, just like my Athame. There had been small losses to the original Whacking Stick, it had lost a small amount of damage, it had lost the damage-amplification when used as a weapon from the back of a mount but that was it. I was quite sure those losses were the result of the reduced physical stability the weapon had, thanks to the settin...

Chapter 224

During the evening, Lenore returned once more, quickly entering her Hallow after landing on my shoulder. 

“There’s a storm coming.” she told me, sharing a feeling of apprehension. “I wouldn’t want to be caught by it in the air.”

“Good to know. Does it roll in from the south or from the north?” I asked, curious if there was a way to use the storm to our advantage. 

“I think it’s one of the last storms blowing in from the north,...

Chapter 223

Misdirection. That was what it all came down to. Everyone agreed that trying to face the centaurs head-on would produce only one result, our death. Originally, I had believed that we might be able to actually push them back but once I had fully realised just how many of the silly ponies were in the camp and that there were more camps further west, with us merely attacking the one furthest in the north-east, I had changed my opinion. To stall them, we needed to avoid their focus, ...

Chapter 222

After dissecting the Centaur and discussing with Rai what the best spots to attack were, Lenore and I used magic to scatter the remains, plowing them into the snow and making the snow look as pristine as it had looked before the battle.

“Snowdust, we are finished here. Do you know if Windpaw has finished his task?” I asked, looking around to take stock of the wolves in the area. I had noticed that some of them had been watching what I had been doing, but I had been too ...

Interlude: Road to Puppytory

Official Road to Purgatory-Beta Forum

• -Morgana, confirmed Beta-Account-

Did you have a bad day? Spent a long time walking down a lonely road? Are you looking for something to soothe your weary soul?

Join me and let yourself be healed. 

puppies.avi

A dark-cloaked figure is seen walking through a hallway, the walls glowing in a soft, silvery-cold light. Her hood is drawn down, hiding most of her face ...

DLM - Bk 4, Chapter 39

The rest of the day went by in a blur of mental activity, incorporating the vague information from Mordred, directing the people outside, trying to get everyone to work together, it felt as if whenever I managed to deal with a problem, three more cropped up.

Finally, with the setting of the sun, activities outside ceased as darkness blanketed the area. The calls for information dwindled, the requests stopped, I was finally able to hear myself think.

“That was…” ...

Chapter 221

“Yes, Master?” Rai asked once he was next to me, having picked up on the seriousness in my voice.

“Once, I told you that information was the key to defeating your enemy. This lesson is one on information gathering, in this case, we want to understand how centaurs work. Sadly, I cannot even begin to guess how their bodies work, the combination of humanoid and horse makes that impossible. So, we will have to learn how their bodies work, by studying them directly.” I began to expla...

Chapter 220

“You are bleeding…” Sigmir reminded me, once the fighting had calmed to the point that she had breath to care about anything other than keeping Centaurs from running either of us through. After taking a deep breath and settling my mind a little, I felt the wound I had suffered at the beginning of combat and decided that Sigmir had the right of it, I should deal with it, before it weakened me even further. The wolves had fully encircled the centaurs and were happily bleeding...

Chapter 219

The snarls in front of me got louder and now, there were other noises mixed in. Screams of pain, cries for help, commands to form up as a commander tried to get his people into a semblance of order, the dull sounds of weapons hitting wood, all of it combined to form a horrific racket. It only made my smile wider, there was no way that anyone would hear Rai or me approach with that much going on.

We ghosted past the trees until we saw the first centaurs, their backs turned t...

Irminsul - Epilogue: General Discussion

Irminsul-Forum, General Discussion

• Wayton
• [First Life-Server Impressions of a previous Beta-Tester]

Greetings to everyone reading this

I wanted to make this thread to share my first impressions, seen through the lense of a previous beta-tester and I’m curious how everyone else, tester and non-tester alike, has experienced the headstart-launch.

First of all, kudos to Northwind-Entertainment the head start wen...

Irminsul - Chapter 32

After another couple of fun-filled minutes of walking up and down the seemingly endless stairs on the cliff-face of Grey Quarry, I reached the landing from where I had looked out over the valley below with Roknar, just a few hours before. Now that I had explored it a little, I was able to see the places where I had been, the various fields, the well where I had drawn water and, in the distance, the brook that led to the slope where the wolves dwelled. I had to admit, it was an in...

Irminsul - Chapter 31

I made my way to the door that housed the kitchen, domain of Grethra, the cook. Or maybe calling her a chef would be more appropriate, I had yet to meet her, so I wasn't sure. The door a a symbol on it, after a second, I realised that it was supposed to be a large, witch-style cauldron, just in this case, it was more likely to represent a soup-pot. 

When I opened the door, I almost had to take a step back when a cloud of hot and moist air blew into my face, which was r...

Irminsul - Chapter 30

Finding my way on the stairs leading up the cliff into Grey Quarry was more difficult than I had expected. While I had a rough idea where to find the craftsmen and with them the trainers for other professions, it was only a rough one and the stairs had surprisingly few connections between them.

After a couple of minutes trying to find my way, I asked a nearby guard who helpfully explained how to get where I wanted to go. Sadly, it involved going back down the cliff and taki...

Chapter 218

“What hubris…” I idly thought, watching the centaurs from above. They hadn’t learned from our attacks in the last couple of days, not at all. The first attack, under the cover of conjured mist, that they hadn’t respected the change in environmental conditions and fumbled into a trap, it might have been forgiven once. But the wolf-pack and I had repeated the same pattern three times over the last few days, a dense cloud of mist rolling in and under the cover of that mist...

Irminsul - Chapter 29

With the big, bad wolf slain on the ground, Venja, Menja and I were done with the quest. But it would have been rather impolite to simply abandon the other two, letting them fend for themselves. Before that, I needed to regenerate what I had spent in the fight, so I pulled a crystal from my inventory, noting that I had depleted half of my stash, and looked into the log to see what I had gained in the fight against the big boss wolf. The wolf itself had merely given eighty-four EX...

Irminsul - Chapter 28

After steamrolling the first two wolves with our newly expanded party, the two newcomers gave a more or less grunted greeting of Hello and we turned to make our way back up the slope, towards the area where the big, boss wolf was supposed to be. On our way, I learned a little more about the classes my teammates were playing, surprisingly, given his, in my opinion, incredibly stupid name, the paladin was the one who readily explained his character to me.

It made me glad that...

Irminsul - Chapter 27

We had retreated into a rock-formation to recuperate, when Menja suddenly spoke up.

“Gotta go for a few minutes.” he said and I could hear the urgency in his voice.

“Do you need me, love?” Venja instantly asked in response, cementing the idea that they knew each other in the real world.

“No, I don’t think so, you can stay in the dream. Maybe I’ll join you in a few minutes.” he continued and then, he was gone. Well, his character was still there, ...

Chapter 217

After my magical scouting, we quickly returned to the cave the wolves had claimed as their den for our operation, while I considered what I had learned. The main thing of which I was now quite certain was that trying to openly attack the camp during the night would be difficult, with massive losses almost guaranteed. The patrols would spot an attacking force, unless it was functionally invisible, and the centaurs slept next to their weapons, allowing them to quickly muster and fi...

Irminsul - Chapter 26

We killed a few more wolves as a group, with me keeping their attention, Venja stunning them before we all unleashed our combined attacks in that moment. The experience-points were a little meagre, at least for time spent killing the enemy, but on the other hand, the ability-gain was insane. Each of my class-abilities, at least those that I used in the fights, gained at least one rank, making killing the wolves quite useful.

Sadly, after we had killed our sixth wolf, we had t...

Irminsul - Chapter 25

For a moment, after killing the wolf and greeting my new teammates, nothing happened. I felt a drop of liquid on my face, running down towards my lips, and my tongue darted out, licking it up. There was little flavour, just a tiny bit of a metallic taste, but the effect it had on one of my teammates was rather pronounced.

“Well hug me…” Venja muttered, loud enough to be heard, even if the middle word clearly had been a different one when coming out of the players mout...

Irminsul - Chapter 24

 AN: The "decline" and "failure" parts of quests have been removed and I might do so in past chapters. 

For the next couple of hours, the complete ingame-night and well into the next day, I did quests around the fields of Grey Quarry, hunting various more or less cute furry critters, the martens were my favourites and completing a couple of fetch-and-carry tasks that a reasonably intelligent potato could have managed. But it was well worth it, netting me some seven-thousand ex...