39. October 8, 2017

A druid arrives after an hour and twenty minutes to parlay; he lands as a bird, turns into a man. Talks to the archer in a language we don't know.

The druid says the glacier used to be a kingdom; and the emperor used Honal sorcerers to encase the kingdom in ice, because they were Ærden's allies and Ærden was a threat to the emperor back then. (This happened hundreds of years ago, as did the takeover of their holy mountain by Kirenweld, and they are still bitter about these ancient events.) Ærden people are descended from the Thelduin, the first humans and learned their druidic magic directly from the Thelduin. That's why the emperor back then was afraid of the Ærdens, and wanted to keep them in check. They are angry, and are working to melt the glacier, and they want the other nations to be at odds with each other, and they don't care about the current emperor.

Ghard notices that the druid is an illusion. He whispers this observation to Rhedoran, who spreads it clandestinely to his people. Ghard slowly ambles toward Odette, and tries to trip her, hoping to trigger her ice power. He is successful—sort of—in that she startles and ice flies from her in all directions and freezes six.

The druid says that it's troubling we know of the daughters of the duke, as that was a secret. Those girls are who are melting the glacier; they have abilities beyond that of the the regular Ærden. But the younger has taken ill, and they wanted the Healing Woman to aid her. He says that if we release the two archers that we'd taken prisoner, then they will escort us north to meet the druid in person. We march for 5 hours and arrive at a village. They ask us to leave our weapons outside; Rhedoran and his crew elect to stay outside with our stash. We talk...they agree to take us north to the Healing Woman, who they say voluntarily came to try to help the Duke's youngest daughter recover.

We offer to help. We tell the druid we think the duke's daughters could help resolve the larger conflict, and possible uprising of the monstrous aquatic races.

The druid says that the way her learned it, magic is a Force outside people. But the Thelduin could tap directly into it and manipulate it directly. He says there was a byproduct, a second tier of magic that is cast off. That tier is what the Thelduin taught the Aerden to use. From their use is more cast-offs, and that's what the other races see and manipulate as magic. So Ray and Fluid theory, as it's called, deals with how the castoff magic is used by the other people. But when the Thelduin were frozen in a glacier, the Aerden lost their biggest magic (all pre unification). Jessa points out that the nexus of

magic, which had been located at the empire's city, shifted to the Heart sea; the druid says he doesn't know about that, he is talking about a lesser attack to freeze up the Thelduin's magic.

They put us on plains ponies (our horses stay behind at the small village), and we gallop to the Aerden capital, which is a modern-looking city on a peninsula in a lake. 6 days of travel. We arrive, we ascertain the Healing Woman is healing the younger sister and needs

more time. We decide to engage in some training while waiting. (Level up! It takes 5 days.)

The Healing Woman tries to heal Odette. She fails and is frustrated...keeps trying for hours. Starts chanting, finally something happens: an apparition is expelled from Odette's back—it is a ghostly-looking Thelduin elven woman, 7 feet tall. The haze clears from Odette's eyes, and she screams “help me, please help me!” and then the apparition snaps back into Odette and her eyes frost over again. The Healing Woman looks exhausted. The druid looks amazed, and informs us that he thinks he knows what has happened. He says that certain Thelduin nobility could project their consciousness into others, and he thinks that is what has happened to Odette. He now believes that yes, some Thelduin must still be alive in the glacier. Our path is clear, we need to go north.