The New Remnant

The flight is glorious and takes about half the day to get where you are going. You fly northwest, heading up along the edge of the swamp and runoff streams to the large river that runs along the north of the swamp. If you were to head east on the river, it would take you to the infinite tower that many of you have visited before. Instead, you turn west along the river, crossing the river and then flying along the northern shore.

After a couple hours, you see a castle emerge from the horizon on the south side of the river. Magian will tell you that the castle used to be the main residence of the Lord whose holdings included Paphos back in the day, and it was one of the few locations associated with Paphos that survived mostly intact. However, despite this, the occupants were wiped out completely. A large tribe of orcs had claimed the castle many years ago and had long ruled it undisputed, but rumors said that a group of giants had recently taken it over. What that means for the orcs (or anyone else) is unknown. Fortunately, Magian says that their objective is firmly on the north side of the river, so there would be little chance of interacting with the occupants of the castle.

You finally come to a landing uncomfortably close to the castle, but on the north side of the river. (The river is pretty wide, so a boat of some sort is likely needed to cross it, and there doesn't seem to be any docks around where you are. Magian helps anyone needing help off, and gathers you all together. "We landed a short distance from where you'll need to start because I wanted to keep the griffons away from the anomaly. It's right over here." He leads you to a spot that you couldn't easily see from the air because, but is completely obvious from the ground. It looks similar to a walled remnant some of you have visited before, but it looks to be in much rougher shape and there are no well-worn paths or roads into the gate you can see. "It looks unoccupied, but there are occupants, though I don't know what they are."

Magian pauses and says, "The issue is that this didn't exist a month ago. This was a fairly open clearing. Now this new remnant exists. We have not seen anything just 'appearing' like this for a long time. The other problem is that this has a fairly strong magical emanation that doesn't seem to exist on the other remnants. Basically, this is very unusual, and anything this unusual is likely not a good thing. Your task is to explore it and see if you can find out why it has appeared. Since we don't know how long that may or may not take you, we don't have a planned time to come back to pick you up. I have seen that you," he nods to Oliver, "were being trained to give you an easier route back. In addition, I will be regularly sending a griffon to do scouting along the north river back. If you are seen, they will call out and come back for more to carry you the rest of the way back. But, for the most part, you will be on your own out here."

Magian sticks around for a few minutes to answer any questions. When done (or if there are no questions), he heads back to the griffons and heads out, back to the Carriage House.

Any questions for Magian? How do you want to approach this remnant. From your vantage point, you can see one gate on the facing wall. You likely assume there is likely one gate per side like the others, but you don't know that. It is obviously surrounded by a Barrier like the other remnants.

"My, my, who would have thought learning to bend space in an arcane node of old could be so tiring. And sleeping while riding griffon didn't sound like a fine idea either." Oliver yawns and stretches, tired.

He then shakes his body off to freshen up a bit and looks around at the renmant gate.

"Do you reckon we should knock, or find a way to peek inside first? Knocking would be the most polite, of course, but might conflict with out interest in surviving."

Having thoroughly enjoyed most of the ride on the griffons, after initial panic because the griffons looked like they could devour him in a single bite, Aizashi thanks the griffon carrying him and steps up to Oliver with a giant grin on his face. This has been amazing. We should do this again some time. It might be a good idea to have a look first?

Stee dismounts the Griffin with a silly grin on his face. He has never experienced anything so exhilarating in life. As soon as he hits the though he is all business. He will start scouring the ground for tracks or sign of any kind and to also get a feel for the place.

Arc pet the griffon's neck, thanking him the ride, then stretched his wings and jumped out of the griffon. It looks like a good decision to ride instead of flying by himself after all. Such a long flight would have been too tiring for him.

Then Arc checked if anyone needed help to dismount, and looked around to the new place.

Traveling Cords has mix feelings about the griffon trip. There was shock and surprise as he never even considered such a notion. Still, he carried on with this as something new. He is receiving lots of something new. These lands and ways are very foreign to him and take a bit to adjust.

He dismounted with aid and not sure if he wants to do that again. He quietly moves on as ready as he can me.

The ride on the griffon was a little better this time. Maybe Blornvid is getting used to it. Still, he's glad to be back on solid ground.

But passing through one of these "Barriers" was a different unpleasant experience in its own right.

Blornvid sighed and walked several feet away from the others to see what he could glean by studying at the remnant and the barrier.

You look over the area. It is fairly open terrain with only an occasional tree or clump of wild shrubs. You cannot see the river from where this new remnant is, but it is still close by.

The remnant is basically rectangular or square. It has a wall about it like the other remnants, and outside the walls you can clearly see the sheen of a barrier. The walls look to be around ten feet tall, and the only thing you see protruding above the view of the walls is a roof spire that looks to be pretty impressive and seems to be roughly in the center of the remnant. Nothing else is protruding above the walls. You can't see what it looks like clearly, though, as the barrier makes the view unclear. The walls themselves appear to be complete, at least on this side, but are also not in good repair, with several cracks and other evidences of damage seen. None of it appears to be from an attack or violence from the outside. All of it is either from aging or maybe something done on the inside. Blornvid is able to see enough of the door on this side to realize that it appears to be slightly open, but there is no one visible.

You scout around the area and Stee finds what looks like a trail that leads from the south (and the river) up to the remnant. It is not something that has been used repeatedly; rather it is a path that was cut not too long ago, but hasn't been used much, or at all, since. As Stee checks out the path something glints a reflection of sunlight. He quickly closes to investigate and finds a few items, including a helm. He shows them to the group and Blornvid says, "These be orcish!" It would appear that a group of orcs has made it here before you, but you don't know how many or how few ...

Stee looking at the others."Do we want to keep this stuff? Does anyone want it?" He turns and looks to the barrier. "Oliver are we going to be able to pass through this barrier? I have never encountered this before."

"I'll be right back"
Arc jumps up and flies a couple of meters or so outside the barrier, circling around the top of the walls. He won't touch the barrier even with his wings.
He sees inside and only flies higher if he finds nobody inside (he won't risk being seen). If he still finds nobody, he wil get to enough altitude, and do a whole circle around it, to have enough of a visual image to draft the whole place's map from the sky.
When he is back, he will share all findings with his friends. He would even draw in the dirt a draft of map with a talon.

While Arc is flying about Elyse asks the group: Have some of you explored other remnants? If so, what did you encounter. What can we expect inside?

Aizashi thinks back to his adventure with the other remnant before explaining 'The last remnant I have visited was like maybe a small crumbling city. But it was much smellier. It was home to bugbears, goblins, lizardmen and hobgoblins. I think I remember a few orcs as well. They were living in gangs and all of them tried to control the most of it.

"I think we will be able to pass this barrier if we just push through, but if we find another barrier deeper in the remnant, we might need to use some of our tools at hand."

"The magic in here is this strong." Oliver lifts a finger and produces a ball of light attuned to the surrounding magic, to make it shine with proportional brightness to the barrier's strength.

"... aand the closest alcoholic beverage is in that direction." He focuses on his circlet and points with the same finger in the direction whispered to him.

"Not going to find any Orcs out here." He seems to be ready to enter.

Arc circles the Remnant as finds it difficult to look through the barrier. You are able to get a general idea of how things are situated and laid out, it's all a bit out of focus because of the visual distortion that the barrier is creating. What you see is that the Remnant looks like a big square (similar to the others you have visited), but it seems to have a simpler structure to it. The center is occupied by a large structure that seems to be about three or four stories tall. It isn't a square, but isn't a circle, either. It occupies the entire center. Inside the walls are lots of structures that are attached to the walls and open up away from the walls. In between is a big ring-like open area that goes all around the center structure. There doesn't appear to be the normal roads and alleys and passageways you have seen before. Instead, the open area ring is a combination courtyard/walkway/road. The only spurs off of the ring are to the four gates in the walls. (There does appear to be one gate per wall, as with the others.)

Arc does see figures moving around in the Remnant. You can't get a good description of them, because of the blurring effect of the barrier, but they are obviously humaniod (can easily be orcs), and the majority of them seem to be concentrated in the buildings attached to the wall to the left of the door you are currently facing. (So, if you went into the door of the Remnant and turned left, most would be there. If you turned right, you might or might not run into anyone.) Some do appear to be in the central building, too. You can't get a good count, but there are several (at least a couple dozen, you figure). As you fly around, they do not seem to pay any mind to you. (Most likely because of the distortion, they have no way of knowing what you are, so they don't consider it anything unless you make too big of a show of your presence.) As you fly around, they really are concentrated at that corner, so if you entered from a different gate, they might not even know you are there immediately.The magic of the area is pretty minimal, but the barrier is indeed quite magical. It is, however, no more magical than any other barrier, so the orb glows with a medium intensity. It also obviously prevents you from detecting anything past the barrier. Your alcohol sense says that there is alcohol somewhere in the Remnant.