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Tales from the Shifting Dunes


Nozgoth
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Tales from the Shifting Dunes

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-=- A painting of the Shifting Dunes -=-


 

In my time on Arcas, I have gone on many expeditions, fought many beasts, seen many anomalies, been to many places - yet one place never fails to surprise me, no matter how many times I visit it. The shifting dunes I believe they called it, yes - the shifting dunes.

 

An entrancing pile of sand, if you aren’t careful you might get eaten up by the constantly moving terrain… or worse; voidal piranhas - but we will get into those later. Anomalies are scattered throughout the dunes, and it is split into jagged sections by rivers and streams running through it - you won’t want to fall in… trust me. The rivers seem to come from a large pool of water in the center, who knows how far it goes down. Though by far, the most interesting part is what lies above the center pool. A floating monolith…. Yes, thats right - a floating monolith. It seems as if the earth was ripped from the ground and propelled into the air - an island leisurely floats in the air with odd, black structures sitting atop it. They seem to be that of something man would make, though something tells me it isn’t that simple. It is quite obviously of voidal nature… the whole place in fact is void-ridden. Anyway, let's move onto the first time I went there - shall we?

 

It all started on one sunny day, the Illumiran guild of Haelun’or called for everyone to gather in the square. I soon found out we were going on an expedition, I got quite excited in all honesty seeing as I hadn’t left the lab in what seemed like weeks. We walked for ages, my feet began to hurt - until we embarked on small little boats and paddled the rest of the way. Eventually, we hit land on the dunes. It smelled of rot, of the void itself - the sands were constantly moving and an awful ache erupted from my head. We decided to explore a bit - naturally, we gravitated straight toward the obvious floating monolith. We stared at it for a while, some people did some awfully reckless things such as throwing rocks at the monolith and some mages even tried connecting to it. The ones that tried to connect, got knocked out of connection and were thrown backward against the sand - thankfully, they were fine. The monolith was ironically uneventful, though we continued to tread onward - hopping over gaping chasms and walking dangerously close to quicksand. We came across a glowing plant, I immediately wanted to grab it since I'm an Alchemist. Though like everything, it wouldn’t be that easy. The flower, what I now know to be as Wavering Bloom, was on a jagged pyre surrounded by bottomless pits on all sides. What did I say to that? “Screw it!” and I jumped, hoping for the best - surprisingly, something actually went well. I landed on the rock pyre, successfully dug up the plant, put it in a vial and jumped back - unscathed. Remarkable! I know! Anyway, as much as I’m sure you all would like to hear about how perfect I am, I’ll continue on with the story. So I now had the plant, I didn’t get the chance to have a good look at it because an awful, corrupted-looking voidal vulture swooped down and started attacking us. Long story short, it stood no match for us as we outnumbered it and it retreated. From what I recall, I think some mad-lad threw a sandal at it while it was retreating and landed the shot! That's about it for the first trip, aside from an interesting looking tree we found - which we didn’t manage to get anything from the first trip, though I will elaborate more on that in the next section. Oh! I almost forgot to mention what I like to call - Shifting Sands. I dipped a vial into the quicksand, and to my surprise the vial filled up and when I capped it - the sand inside it began to swirl around like a mini-tornado. It was quite interesting.

 

Ah yes… the second trip. This time I embarked as Arch-Magister of the Alchemist’s guild with a group of alchemists. We had a druid with us, and she seemed to be under immense stress the second we got there - eventually having to turn back and leave a few minutes later. Rather unfortunate indeed. Though fear not, for we made some new discoveries this time around. A mysterious fungi which we now know as Taint Gauze seemed to materialize out of nowhere behind a colleague of mine, I bent down and moved to harvest it. Though it would not be that simple… the fungi latched onto my hand - expanding and growing up my arm. It stopped about halfway up my forearm and I did not care to take it off as I wanted to see it’s full effects. Which I will be discussing in my next book. Anyway, we continued the journey - my students wished to gather more of the wavering bloom I had shown them the day previously, so I let them do so. On the way to the wavering bloom, someone fell into the chasm though landed in the river at the bottom, thankfully. The same colleague that the fungi had appeared behind, happened to have some rope on him. We dropped the rope down, though this was not without difficulty - figures could be seen in the water swimming toward the poor fellow who fell. They were the voidal piranhas, they bit him, latched onto him and overall caused severe damage to his legs - if we didn’t pull him up in time, who knows what could’ve happened to him. Continuing on, we traversed to the same tree as the first trip. This time, we were able to harvest an odd, golden sap. Something akin to nightsap, though it has different properties - which I will again, elaborate on in my next book. That's about everything for the second trip, so we shall move on to the third and final trip.

 

My third venture to the shifting sands… This was once again with the Illumiran guild of Haelun’or. We didn’t get anything productive done because a mere few minutes after we got there - a giant golem attacked us! The nerve! We were just leisurely walking about, when it popped out of the sand, its massive hulking frame stomping towards us. It was at least 5 times the size of me in all dimensions, it was made of sand and pretty much waved off every hit. I managed to plunge my sword into its chest, exposing it’s core, then shortly after, a brave man stuck his hand in and ripped the core out - killing the beast. Adeline, the leader of the Illumiran guild kept the core for further study - I didn’t get much of a look at it unfortunately. Many got injured during the fight so that turned out to be a quick conclusion to the final journey. Do I think that will be my last time treading those despicable dunes? No… no I do not. For some reason I just can’t stop going back there, no matter what I do. Something dark is at work in those lands - and I don’t like it!

 

[!] An elegant signature would be apparent at the bottom.

 

A book by Saevel Venleth,

Arch-Magister of the Alchemist’s Guild

Edited by Nozoa
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