Well, that was certainly a legendary couple of days; we emerged from the Caer, and found and explored old Camrish. Last summary ended with the door opening... It was snowing outside, which bothered a lot of people. Thwack and E'leia got into an argument over usefulnes in combat, which ended when E'leia lit Thwack on fire, resulting in him suddenly disappearing in a pink bubble. She said she had no idea why that happened. This resulted in more arguments, some discussion of pink bubbling in dreams, and eventually E'leia is knocked unconcious when Donk drops her. There was a person waiting outside, who eventually came up and introduced himself as Steven Mandrake the Wizard. He had come looking for the Caer, because he had had a series of dreams, which appeared to be the shared ones that we had. We talked with him for a while, then set out to get firewood so that we could build a fire in the entrance to the tunnel to keep it warm. Upon learning the joys of something he called 'frostbite' which results from extreme cold and walking around in wet clothes when it is snowing, we all agreed it would be clever to wait out the storm in the cave entrance. Steven gave some brief lessons in how to survive in the cold. Monali worked on making better shoes for everyone. We did karma rituals and set a watch schedule for the night, coordinating with the orcs. In the morning we did karma rituals again, and set out with half a dozen intrepid orcs. We walked down to the road visible from the tunnel entrance, and headed south. It entered the forest, and then forked when it hit a river; one path led east, conveniently labelled "To Camrish", and another led west and almost immediately forked to WNW and WSW. We took the east fork. After a bit more time, it came to the town of Camrish. It was huge. Thick, high walls (~25 feet high, thickness varied), with towers that appeared to contain fire cannon. Main gates had fallen down (or been knocked down). We entered, and scouted a bit. Several prominent buildings were intact, as were a number of nondescript ones, which appear to be more than enough to house the Caer population. Locatation appears to be moderately defensable with some repairs; many buildings appeared to be build with defense in mind, and the outer walls and gates, while not entirely intact, could probably be made defensable easily. Went to the river, and saw some evidence that someone else had been here recently, and had cut a hole in the ice, presumably to get water. Did not follow tracks. River looks to be a good water source, if a bit annoying to cut through the ice. Went to the town hall. There was a room with a miniature map of the city which detailed things like sewer pipes and water pipes, with what looked like magical controls for valves and such. Also a couple of systems that were unrecognizable; someone hypothesized that one of them was a manna distibution network of some kind. They seemed to come together at two important buildings. Other interesting room was the 'registry of deeds', which contained a number of books, a few of which were in marginally readable condition. K'shrik opened one and it appeared to be a journal of some sort. We noted this as a potential source of a lot of pre-scourge information, but decided not to disturb them further, as the book was falling apart as pages were turned. I believe someone opened a second one to check for dates, but the dating system was unclear to us. Other rooms in the building appeared to be bureaucracy, irrelevant to us. Moved on to what appeared to be a ruined temple. It resembled the ones from the dreams most of us had; it had a single large room, domed roof, caved in, and twelve statues with bowls in front of them. (description to follow in separate summary). One in particular was odd; an orc in broken manacles, with a second set of unbroken metal manacles that seemed out of place; no other statue had any non-stone bits. Much discussion followed, with several people placing things in the bowls in front of the statues - Steven put bits of metal in each one, I put an arrow in front of a windling with armor and a banner, Monali put a knife in front of a dwarf with smithy equipment. The nethermancer checked and sensed some spirits, distant but perhaps paying attention. Eventually we decided to attempt to break the metal manacles; Monali tried and failed to cut with metalworking tools (limit to the available damage from portable tools). Zero shot them with a spell that melted links in the chain in half. The parts that fell to the floor started moving; Monali, Zero, and I shot at them. E'leia sensed danger. The nethermancer sensed that the spirits were getting much closer fast. Everyone but Donk, Zero, Monali, and I left the building. The people inside the building witnessed a strange event. The statues gradually took on some small lifelike qualities; the stone seemed more fleshy in places, the eyes seemed to be looking around, and so on. Eventually the Jester stepped off his platform and began dancing around the room. Shortly thereafter, the orc and the man with a contract stepped off their platform and walked toward each other. They did a series of things that seemed symbolic of the man enslaving the orc, who then broke free and attacked him, and then he beat back the orc and reenslaved him with the contract, and so on. After a while the rest of the statues stepped off their platforms and began to mostly pair off and do things which appeared symbolic of various human interactions. Many of the implements traded places; the manacles were eventually sold and traded around until they reached the smith, who reforged them, and sold or traded around again until they eventually landed on the empty side of the scales. After a while they all stepped backwards toward their pedestals, and named themselves as they stepped back up. Several of the individuals had traded implements, so that for example there was now a human smith rather than a dwarven one. The jester now had a broken scepter and a full face mask rather than the small eye mask, and named himself 'the mask' as he put it on. The things inside the bowls had disappeared at some point. Afterward, Zero put in a slate with some spells on it into the bowl in front of the Mask, and it disappeared. Monali put another dagger into the bowl in front of the smith, but nothing happened to it. We observed that the building's roof had been fixed, and that the dust and such inside was also gone. I'm not entirely sure what the people outside the building saw. Someone else should fill that in. People came back in and we discussed. We decided to move on. We went to a large stone building with two lion statues in front and writing in a strange script on it. Inside it was almost cave-like, with large veins of living crystal (still alive). Large pipes came in from the roof, with little hatches at the bottom. There were small glass and bronze capsules under the bottom of some of them, which were empty. The model in the city hall indicated that those pipes might have been connected to a system of pipes running through the city at rooftop height. We cut the investigation short, since it was difficult to cross the building, though there were several doors, including one which appeared to lead to a basement. Headed to the other nexus place from the city hall map. It was a large building of thick glass. Its floor had arcane symbols on it, as well as veins of living crystal. Various people hypothesized that this place could be used to cast immensely powerful spells drawing on the symbols on the floor and power coming from the living crystal veins. We decided not to mess with it. We quickly cased some of the rest of the city, noting a few more buildings in decent condition as well a lot that were completely ruined. We went toward the main gate where we had entered to gather firewood. Outside the gate was a huge thing that was eventually identified as a large number of creaatures called 'horses'. I shot one, and we skinned it so Monali could try turning its hide into better clothes or boots, and Steven cut the meat so we could cook it. We gathered wood, and took one of the nearby buildings in good condition for a camp. We are currently resting for the night, and people will be meditating. Plans for tonight: eight hours meditating leaves you with as much rest as four hours of sleep. Add in four hours on watch, plus four hours asleep, and you have a good nights rest. I believe all of us could use the time meditating... Watch schedule will be four watches details dependent on who is present; for the first half of the night A and B watchs are meditating, while C and D trade off sleep and watch; for the second half A and B trade off sleep and watch while C and D meditate. Since we have six orcs with us, they do 1/3 of the night watches. Monali will be working on the horse skin for a decent part of the night. Plans for tomorrow: I think the correct way to get the entire group of orcs here without any of the weaker ones freezing to death is to first prepare this place a bit. Tomorrow we spend the morning gathering firewood here. Then we walk back to the intersection in the road, and pause there to gather more firewood and clear an area there for a warming station. Then we head back the rest of the way, and spend tomorrow night back in the tunnel. Day after tomorrow, we set out with approximately a hundred orcs, walk to the intersection where we stop to warm up and gather more firewood. Then we walk on to the city where we have the firewood laid in from tomorrow and warm up. They spend the rest of the day gathering a large amount of firewood and working on more couple of buildings to make them more habitable (clean out a hundred years of dust, repair doors so that buildings can be defended, etc). After another day or two of this, we can go back and get the rest of the group, with the stop at the intersection prepared with enough firewood that people can stop and warm up there, and when people reach the city there will be prepared buildings with a store of firewood laid in. At that point, we'll see. I'd like to send a hunting party after the herd of horses; food and better clothing are going to be the next big problems, and that will allow us to scout a bit more of the area at the same time. I believe Monali would like to set up whatever stuff is necessary to do tanning, as well as a forge. Barring further problems, I'd like to then hang out in the area for a couple weeks. Scouting up the road in each direction seems clever, and even going just half a day in each direction will take four days. Hunting for food is also necessary, and we should investigate the various buildings more. Stopping back in to investigate the buildings will also be clever at some point, as well as possibly opening the rest of the scrolls. We will also want to scout more bits of the town; climb some of the towers and see if the fire cannon are working, see if the sewers are still clear and usable and not inhabited by nasty stuff, and so on. Then we may want to go back into the Caer... Or range further in our scouting... Lessons and suggestions: 1) We need more party cohesion. If you think there is something wrong with the above plans (realizing that the further out parts are a bit speculative and subject to change), feel free to suggest them. But try not to argue too much once we are putting a plan into place; that only leads to wasting time. We should establish rally points in case the party gets split up; for now the building we're camping in is the obvious one. 2) If you disagree with something the group is doing, that is fine. Make a suggestion to me. Do not wander off doing your own thing. If you get into an argument with another member of the party, I will arbitrate. You will then accept my arbitration and shut the hell up. You will not settle disputes by setting people on fire, dropping them, or anything else that might cause damage. 3) Something you all need to know and internalize is that orcs are a bit touchy about freedom. Manacled statues have meaning to us. Any suggestion that a manacled orc statue is somehow appropriate will cause you to suffer a lot of pain. If you act as if you are assuming that you can be in charge of the orcs with us because you are an adept, it might well be taken as a sign that you think you are in charge because you aren't an orc, and that will lead to them rejecting our help really quickly. They are fiercely independent, and resentful that they have no voice in the caer government (which is why they are out here, risking their lives to be free). I suspect the only reason they are willing to put up with us is that they see me acting like I am in charge. If you do anything that is disrespectful to the orcs with us, or anything that shatters the image that I am in charge, life could get really difficult really fast. 4) When we see something in a strange language, could the people with fast learning ability please discuss? We have a finite number of slots for learning them, so having more than one of you learn is kind of silly. 5) We need to share knowledge of the dreams, and history, and so on. Please try to do this to the whole group, preferably during downtime rather than when we are standing in front of a statue trying to decide what to do. IT will make all our lives easier.