20 Eleint 2993
What Happened with the Orphans
You don’t know about me, unless you have read entries in this book from smarter writers, but that doesn’t matter. Yesterday we arrived at Temple of Jael and looked things over. We also dug about until we broke up some of what seemed like important parts of the dirt those druids were gonna do. Then we decided it would be best to try to go talk to them, maybe get a leg up on their plans or sneak thief those kids–real kids and not the goat kids—away. Byara greeted us and then Aenery went and hid behind her skirts, which makes sense since it turns out he was her brat all along. We hung around those woods because Byara told us that we could join them for the ceremony that was to take place at noon and we were going to throw some sand in their gears if we could. I seen this red ball come bouncing out the front door of her hut and was Sure they didn’t want us to see that, so I snuck in invisible in the middle of the night but there was no kid and just a note about what time sunrise was. The party signals me down and we haul you know what back to the temple because those druids were just stalling for time. What happened there, I can’t tell all of. I didn’t see the real fight. The only good thing I can say I did for sure is I told Fenpenny the truth to his face when he asked me if I could do what needed to be done. Then I was running. Signed F.F.
Vogelvina
Vogelvina returns to Gosterwick on the 13th of The Fading, ready to train to level up to second level. The next morning she wakes, completes her hour-long stretching, meditation, and fighting routine, smokes a cigarette, and heads out into the wilds of the New Forest with a tent and gear. For the next seven days, Vogelvina wanders the forest, training her body and mind to the next level in meditation, combat, and learning. Over these days she becomes intimately acquainted with the cycle of life and death in the natural world, studying both the prolonged process of birth and the at times undeniable cruelty of the long death.
Early in this week she stumbles upon a small ramshackle shack in a small clearing. Approaching cautiously, she sees no one about. As she is about to knock on the door of the shack, a voice, thin and reedy, calls out from inside and bids her enter. Vogelvina opens the door and crosses the threshold. An old woman, aged beyond anything Vogelvina has seen before greets her from a chair at a rickety small table. Intrigued, Vogelvina approaches and sits at the other chair. Hours pass as the two talk about life, death, birth, and rebirth. The old woman tells her about the ways of poisons and healing and how one must start with knowledge of the latter before embarking on a quest for mastery of the former. Sliding a worn and dog-eared copy of Pheetersin’s Guide to Medicinal Plants of Northern and Central Irthuin, the old woman bids Vogelvina start her training. Vogelvina offers to pay for the book, and the old women accepts 50 gp in exchange.
Vogelvina spends the remainder of her training collecting plants, preparing poultices, balms, unguents, ointments, and reductions as she starts to learn proficiency with an herbalism kit. Her studies that week culminate when she happens upon a wounded rabbit, bitten by a snake, making its way down the path of the long death. Taking pity on the bunny, and eager to apply her limited knowledge, Vogelvina prepares a paste of the bulb of the goldbark bud mixed with a dash of minced darkberry and feeds it to the quickly fading woodland creature. Returning to Gosterwick with the rabbit, Vogelvina continues to nurse the creature back to health and wakes on the 20th of The Fading a 2nd-level monk with the love and companionship of Tularemia, level 1 bunny.
