Extra Information from IC Explorations

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Extra Information from IC Explorations
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Anything on this page is public information, shared with the Research Center who has shared it on Guild databases where they can be read.

Exploration Info bits

All of the explorations have been reported to the guild unless there's a mark of [Unreported] after the title. This means that all of these summaries can be found from the guild database.
Years are by Ellipsan years.


Abandoned Castle - Summer Side
March 215
CW/TW: Human experimentation
Note: This was the former name of the Dragon Sanctuary.

Under the cut

Setting off flashbangs to scare off nearby monsters, a boy entered the castle from the Summer Segment entrance and made his way through to the dungeon cellar. Inside was a large blood-drinking monster called the Vampirebear that had made the dungeon its lair. The stairs down further were broken and a barrier was at the door keeping the Vampirebear inside but allowing people through it, evidently engineered so its creator could feed it captives (animals, monsters, and people).

After returning with backup, the otherworlders got past the Vampirebear and the broken stairs, and found six captive native Ellipsans kept in comas who were intended to be fed to the Vampirebear. The bear was left to be dealt with at a later date, while the civilians were rescued and given over to the Research Centre to research their ailments and treat them.

Abandoned Farm
March 215

Under the cut

An adventuring party arrived at the Abandoned Farm to find Vegetable Monsters, intelligent monsters that grew from the vegetables on this large farm property, dancing and having fun. Fearing the otherworlders came to eat them, the Vegetable Monsters challenged them... to a dance battle. Things were resolved peacefully and the otherworlders were left to explore and given bags of rice. The Vegetable Monsters insisted that they not go down into the root cellar, however; apparently whatever is down there is too much even for strong otherworlders.

Bamboo Labyrinth
March 215

Under the cut

Curious otherworlders fought their way into the Bamboo Labyrinth and discovered it's a maze with branching paths. Taking the left path, they found a treasure box with some assorted prizes ranging from useful to maliciously cursed. It seems only one path can be chosen at a time and the others are blocked off when one is taken.

Unfrozen Lake
March 215

Under the cut

A nighttime fishing trip showed an otherworlder some of the local wildlife. Notably, Fluorescent Hares were discovered, as well as other winter animals like reindeer who similarly absorb the colours of the Northern Lights. Predatory animals and monsters are more often found around the other lakes.

Deserter's Desert
March 215

Under the cut

A would-be camper discovered that the edges of the desert are less dangerous than deeper in, though Cacti Birds still fly about and may swoop down on anything (or anyone) that looks like prey. He found some nice places to build a camp for shelter.

Mushroom Sanctuary and Autumn Flower Yard
March 215

Under the cut

An explorer found all kinds of mushrooms in the Mushroom Sanctuary: glow-in-the-dark ones that make whoever eats them glow for hours, medicinal mushrooms, mushrooms that change people's size, some that make people float (a little when touched, a longer time when eaten), some that increase gravity until the consumer is struggling to get off the ground, one that will either attract luck or curses, House Mushrooms that are big and sturdy enough to hollow out and use as a house, and regular mushrooms (including edible, poisonous, and hallucinogenic). Mushroom People, also known as Mushroom Fae, were all too willing to help, though they do give the feeling that one shouldn't hang around them too long.

Nothing interesting was in the flower yard.

Forest of Spirits
March 215

Under the cut

When a Summer and a Winter approached the forest, the Summer saw nothing odd, but the Winter could see spirits and ghosts wandering around and occasionally going into or coming out of the trees. Getting close enough to enter prompted the ghosts to warn them, audible to anyone (and occasionally meme, following another ghost's "turn around" with "bright eyes"). Other monsters appeared in the forest, from Snowskeletons trying to steal the explorers' stuff to a mysterious other creature scratching at their shelter.

The otherworlders left offerings and tried to reason with the ghosts, who only tried harder to warn them away. (Though they did take the offerings.) The mist in the forest, on the other hand, formed a strangely inviting doorway. The spooked otherworlders tried to leave, only to find that a ghost decided to possess their getaway snowmobile and started driving them somewhere else. Talking the ghost out of it worked and they left with a sign pointing the otherworlders south to a treasure chest containing a protective item: Golden Bones.

Pumpkin Spice Trail and Forest of Courage with bonus Abandoned Well
March 215

Under the cut

The Pumpkin Spice Trail was free of monsters at the time, but the otherworlders exploring it quickly discovered that the swamp itself drains people's energy and weakens their magic the longer they stay. They quickly harvested some strange medicinal fruit: strawberries to treat coughs, blueberries for fevers, blackberries for nausea, raspberries for poison, and pink strawberries with unknown properties.

In the Forest of Courage, they met Frogsuke, a legendary Ninja Frog the size of a small human, who led them to the Abandoned Well. The otherworlders fished Frogsuke's frog students out as they'd fallen into the well. They were rewarded with a Ninja Star to summon Frogsuke whenever they were in trouble (which was later regifted).

Venturing back into the Forest of Courage, the explorers found spirit animals wandering the forest, a pure mountain stream with energy-restoring properties, the Silent Mountains where no one can make a sound, and Witch/Wizard Crows that were avoided.

Abandoned Mansion
March 215

Under the cut

A group of young otherworlders entered the Abandoned Mansion and were promptly locked inside. A nearby fireplace lit up immediately but no other light turned on. Inside were old, faded photographs of the rich former owners, long-burned-out candles, and a grandfather clock that ticked backwards. The otherworlders exposed the reason: a Shadow Moth that moves almost too fast to be seen and makes everything it hits act in reverse. They defeated the Shadow Moth before it could eat them, allowing everything and everyone to move normally instead of do everything backwards. Also discovered in the haunted house was a cursed old locket.

Forest of Courage
April 215

Under the cut

A lone otherworlder entered the forest going southwest from the Autumn airship station, encountering plenty of Spirit Animals -- and plenty of pitfall traps. Something shining in a tree turned out to be a portal that sent her elsewhere in the forest, north of the Great Tree of Death and near the Winter Segment. She returned through the portal, marked it with a cairn, and escaped a Rattlevine by running to the Silent Mountains.

Tree of Wisdom
March 215

Under the cut

Intending to study the Tree of Wisdom, some scientifically minded otherworlders took samples, attempted (and failed) to connect it to a magitech network, and attempted (and also failed) to ask it non-magical questions about alcohol. However, when they asked actually relevant questions, the voices of a young woman and an old man answered.

The answers are: there are no negative consequences to the use of regular season magic (not counting high-risk dragon-blessed spells, as those had not yet been granted) unless the caster actively seeks to make that happen; with enough practice and experience, season magic can be used in tandem with otherworlders' own abilities; the guilds have lists of abilities that can be learned; and the Tree of Wisdom itself cannot strengthen season magic.

After too many questions were answered and they maxed out the daily limit, the tree dropped leaves that forced the inquisitive otherworlders to speak in rhyme for the rest of the day. A mysterious windstorm blocked the path to the One Very Big Tree so they couldn't go study that (OOCly because it was being saved for an event).

Abandoned Graveyard
March 215

Under the cut

Drunken otherworlders stumbled into the Abandoned Graveyard. Thankfully they found it was safe, with the vast majority of monsters repelled by the spirits' energy and even weather being tamer, though part of it had been flooded (only remedied two-and-a-half years later). Being so far from home, they just fell asleep amid the graves.

Wolf's Blood Mountains (foothills and bridge)
April 215

Under the cut

A small exploration party went hunting for wereshrooms (dangerous night-blooming mushrooms with sharp fangs that are poisonous to the touch, useful for a particular medicine) close to the full moon. They found other interesting flora, including melt-me-nots (a forget-me-not variety that blooms in snow and stays cold) and Pretender Flowers (ice monsters that mimic flowers and bite with sharp fangs). The bridge led into the Darkness, and nearby, the wereshrooms they sought appeared; however, so did a pack of werewolves that they had to dodge around to get the mushrooms without being spotted.

Abandoned Mansion
May 215
CW/TW: Character death

Under the cut

The next otherworlders to try exploring the Abandoned Mansion were similarly shut inside. They went up the stairs, following a feeling that something dangerous was up there, which only increased as they made their way to a hallway with six identical doors. Opening one revealed a monster known only as Death, a shadow that filled the room (but could not leave it) and reached out with many arms, aiming to drag in anyone it could in order to kill them and absorb their powers. Death reacted poorly to light and increased its attack, and the otherworlders' attempts to use their abilities from home struggled as the monster absorbed the attacks' matter for power.

The combatants changed tactics when Death tried to block their escape route. They destroyed the floor, sending the whole fight crashing down to the main floor. This freed Death to rampage about the mansion as the ghosts in the house did all they could to keep it contained. The otherworlders did what they could to help the ghosts contain the monster and sent a warning message via the network, but finally succumbed to the monster and its status-effect-inducing arms before it consumed them.

Cherry Blossom Park
May 215

Under the cut

One night, two otherworlders entered the Cherry Blossom Park in search of leaves that could be brewed into tea. They happened to luck out and avoid the more dangerous Weapon Slimes, instead encountering harmless pink birds that were tame and used to people. Even so, something felt off, and there were sounds on the wind like crying voices. The sounds were coming from Weapon Slime territory.

Forest of Spirits
May 215

Under the cut

One of the otherworlders from the last expedition to the Forest of Spirits returned and tried to ask the ghosts why they warned everyone to turn around. Unfortunately they weren't able to answer, having lost their full capability of language long ago. He proceeded through the forest until he reached a comforting illusion of home, place and people alike. It felt like actually going into the illusion home would be a mistake.

Great Ocean Lake (underwater)
May 215

Under the cut

Two otherworlders in search of rare potion ingredients dove into the Great Ocean Lake with Mermaid Necklaces. The local mermaids pointed them in the right direction and gave them a place to stay the night before continuing on their journey, plus a bracelet allowing Summer power holders to use their fire underwater. One of them made a deal to harvest magical algae in exchange for another bracelet.

The otherworlders proceeded to the dark depths of the Great Ocean Lake, where a massive whale lurked... and something else too (Art by Deca). This transparent monster, informally dubbed the deep-sea dragon, growled and used its control over water to ward off intruders. Any attempt to reason with it or sneak by it was rebuffed; the deep-sea dragon didn't want anything or anyone in its territory. They were able to get the algae and whale tooth but could not explore further.

Rain Jungle (ruins)
June 215

Under the cut

Two survivalists prepared to explore the ruins and explored the Rain Jungle after a heavy rain. The edges of the jungle were largely populated by normal animals and plants, and the deeper they ventured into the jungle, the harder it was to traverse. Eventually they found a north-south path leading to the ruins, with a Unicorn Elephant asleep and blocking the path. Sneaking around it succeeded without either waking it up or risking the confused status effect by touching its horn.

The ruins were locked with a puzzle, and solving it let the otherworlders enter, though the door closed behind them. The ruins' gravity effect kicked in, sending them up to a maze on the unlit ceiling. The otherworlders managed to avoid a mysterious reptile in the maze and solved another puzzle to proceed to a very ominous room populated by a floating nautilus monster with tank cannons welded onto its body that shoot ice magic. During the fight, one of them grabbed the gravity orb the monster was guarding, allowing them to flip the gravity in the ruins again and leaving the monster prone upside down on the floor. They escaped the now helpless monster with the gravity orb (which split into six; they stole four of them, leaving the monster with two) and exited the ruins, which sealed up behind them for the rest of the day.

Abandoned Castle -- Autumn Side
July 215
CW/TW: Experimentation, mass abduction/murder (attempts)
Note: This was the former name of the Dragon Sanctuary.

Under the cut

Another group decided to explore the Abandoned Castle from the other side. While the Vampirebear was asleep, they traversed the gap in the stairs to explore the place where the captives had been kept (and steal the used medkits). In that room was a hatch to a damp and dark sub-sub-basement with winding corridors that took over an hour to traverse. They avoided a trap in front of a ladder leading back up, and climbed up it to discover a bunker, another ladder up, and yet another ludicrously long passage -- actually a tunnel that, if walked through for an entire day, led straight into the Deserter's Desert.

The bunker turned out to be underneath a small cabin in the woods full of suspicious medical supplies, rations, and ropes. Also inside was a notebook left by the Scientist, with some entries on the Vampirebear:

It needs to feed every 60 days to stay alive

Monster and animal blood satisfy it less

Human blood is most desired

No preference on age, gender, etc.

(switch to red font)
people meant as food disappeared, work on better security, work on better barrier spells. keep bear well fed to avoid berserk state. do not let the bear free - DO NOT LET THE BEAR FREE.

Naturally, the adventurers decided the best course of action was to immediately go back to the dungeon while the bear was awake and try to kill it. They discovered it was weak to electricity, it gained strength and a clearer head the more blood it drank, and it could compel the people it bit to follow its directions (mainly focused on trying to dispel the barrier so it could escape out into the wild).

While one of their number was turned into a vampire and mind controlled, the curse was lifted when the others successfully killed the Vampirebear. They escaped with a microchip full of data on the bear and the kidnappings and experiments. Notably, the Scientist seemed to feel pity for her victims enough to bury them and bring them their favourite flowers, but not enough to stop kidnapping people, some of whom were already dying, and feeding them to the bear.

Unnamed Mountain
July 215

Under the cut

A cave in the Unnamed Mountain led some explorers down underground and discovered unlit torches and a treasure box with three locks, indicating someone had been down there before. After fighting off some monsters, they learned they could only choose one of the three treasures, and one was real while two were cursed. The one they chose was a ship in a bottle with a note that the bottle could be smashed near water to transform the ship inside into a real ship.

Down another passage was a magical ever-burning torch and two skeletons: the previous chief of police, Johnny Blue, and the upper-class lady he eloped with, Carolin. Harrison always wondered what happened to them but had assumed they were still alive. There were other passages in the cave, but they were blocked off, similar to how the Bamboo Labyrinth prevents people from exploring more than one path at a time.

Johnny Blue's niblings in Coldreach gifted the adventurers his treasure: a compass that points to what the user wants most.

Abandoned Farm
August 215

Under the cut

One of the original explorers of the Abandoned Farm met another otherworlder out there by chance. They found a suit of armour (and tested to see if it was haunted), traded with the Sentient Vegetable Monsters for more rice and a broken cart, and repaired the cart to lug their (non-sentient) crops to the city.

Flooded Woods
October 215

Under the cut

Water monsters (many of them undead) and ghosts gathered curiously as two well-prepared explorers traversed the Flooded Woods with magic and special gear. Some monsters attacked but were easily dispatched. Deeper into the woods was a much stronger monster, a large plant squid that fought with mud, water, and its numerous tentacles. They managed to destroy it thoroughly, but if they hadn't, it would have been able to regenerate from even one intact tentacle.

Past the monster was an abandoned treehouse, a safe spot with some dusty camping gear and seeds that could grow trees immediately when attached to plant material (which one of the scouts discovered by throwing a peach at it to check for safety). The trees take a week to fully mature and a month to produce fruit.

Deeper into the woods, they found both an abandoned boat that could be taken northwest into the fog where the trees thinned out and a path to the west where the trees got so thick the treetops could be easily traversed without fear of falling into the water. The scouts took the latter path, following will-o'-the-wisps (not the Angler kind) for an entire day to a dry forest clearing and a magic circle in the centre.

One of the scouts, the same peach fan from before, tossed a peach into the circle, and it summoned an old man ghost who took it as an offering. The ghost told them that he and many others who died during the Tragedy of Greed but had made peace with their deaths had become spirits whose job it was to try and make the world a little safer for the new power holders: Autumn power holders might shelter people from the rains in that segment, in Winter they provide potable running water from the ice, in Summer they can render the flames harmless, and in Spring, the voices from the Tree of Wisdom are actually these spirits. He also claimed that there were other magic circles like his and the spirits there could help if they could only be found.

Finally, they made their way to the Darkness barrier and threw in yet another peach. And that, children, is where Sentient Peach Monsters come from. Throwing in a rock didn't change the rock at all. Upon seeing what they'd created, the two of them escaped all the way back to the fork in their path.

The abandoned boat was still there, so they took it northwest through the fog. The sailing path led to a hot spring (and nothing happened if a peach was thrown in). The spring had the power to heal wounds and grant energy at the cost of making the people who used it attract more monsters. It even restored missing body parts, albeit as magical prosthetics and not flesh.

Bamboo Labyrinth
November 215

Under the cut

A solo adventurer entered the labyrinth and, just like her predecessors, took the left path. The reward this time was magic beans, which would react like normal beans if eaten or used in potions or cooking but, if planted, would grow a large beanstalk with a treehouse up top. Very useful, except it doesn't come with utilities.

Cherry Blossom Parks
December 215
CW/TW: Mercy killing

Under the cut

Right at the end of the year, two powerful otherworlders entered the parks from the south, west of the Tree of Wisdom. They fought a horde of Weapon Slimes, sustained a few injuries, but outsmarted them... but one survived the first phase of the fight thanks to having more dark energy. It started to absorb both the weapon used against it and the soil and energy from the cherry trees around it, growing larger and larger. They escaped to observe it eating everything they left behind, but it grew even bigger and attacked them. Finding matter-based weapons no longer worked, they trapped the slime with a wall it couldn't eat and killed it with fire.

In the aftermath of the fight, the explorers discovered silver-gold essence near one of the trees that turned out to be a concentration of ghosts of people killed by the Weapon Slimes. They burned the essence to allow the tortured spirits to move on to the afterlife, then moved on to hunt down another Weapon Slime that had escaped.

After taking revenge on the Weapon Slimes for their victims, they set up camp for the night. Faint noises interrupted them in the middle of the night, sounding like cries of pain. They went to investigate in animal form, but peace-loving Cherry Squirrels interrupted them, giving off a sleep-inducing scent that put them to bed until morning. (At least the Cherry Squirrels left food for them afterward.) When they awoke in the morning, the sounds were gone, but ghosts appeared, some warning them to leave and others urging them down a path to continue their investigation. They ended up at the Tree of Wisdom, which gave them further directions.

Walking for hours and hours, they finally found a mysterious cherry tree with a door inside. Passing the tree at this time only led into the Darkness, so they instead entered the door and followed down the staircase it revealed. Thus they discovered the Weird Mirror Tree, a tree with mirrors inside that, when people looked inside, showed versions of them from alternate universes. One of them had an existential crisis and really wanted to punch and break all the mirrors, but thankfully the other hauled him back home instead. The Great Mirror Tree still weighed in their minds enough to plant seeds for a miniplot two years later.

Silent Mountains
January 216

Under the cut

A group of seasoned adventurers headed out on another expedition, this time to the Silent Mountains, where no sound can be made. They found a fork in the path with green, yellow, and red glowing lights at the ends. Down the green path was Glowing Moss (which also made them glow if they touched it) and the Spikeroaches that eat the light, which they passed (and took some moss to study later).

Further down the path was a large, ghostly floating whale (a blue whale, unlike the usual Sky Orcas) inside a chamber where sound was restored. The whale could speak to Winter power holders, didn't know why the Silent Mountains dampen sound, and sought an exorcist to help him move on. It took a few tries, but the Winter was able to exorcise the whale, causing the seal on the wall behind him to explode.

Behind the ex-wall was treasure! Specifically treasure that helped find more treasure: a Golden Sword that makes monsters drop gold upon defeat, treasure-detecting gem bracelets, and a maneki neko statue that really does increase fortune when placed in someone's home.

Further into the caves, where sound was once again lost, they found another fork in the road and headed north up the mountain. Inside they found a lost herd of Lightbulb Walkies, friendly creatures that used to appear in festivals in the city but hadn't been around for a while. The party escorted the Lightbulb Walkies for the rest of the mission.

At the next crossroads, they crossed a deep pit (letting the Lightbulb Walkies cling onto them) and went forward. This finally led them out of the cave and into the clearing between the two mountains. Naturally, the party decided... to go all the way back to the start and try the red path this time. That led to an ominous portal that terrified the Lightbulb Walkies. They tested the portal with a peach impaled on a stick; the portal closed on the stick, breaking it and leaving frost on the end. Creepy.

With the red path a dead end, they tried the yellow path, which led to a warmly lit chamber with a pillar of light and a sign on the wall reading, "Home is where your heart is." The light there made the Lightbulb Walkies incredibly happy, even when the light teleported one of them (and another peach) away. They urged everyone to go into the light.

Paranoid, the party instead sent a note explaining the situation through the portal and discovered that the light teleported people and things to their most important person in Ellipsa, and that the little lightbulb that just wanted to go back to Nightwake ended up in the Research Centre. Still wary, they instead took their new lightbulb friends and went back home the long way.

Silent Mountains
January 216

Under the cut

A few weeks after the last expedition, another group went out to the Silent Mountains, this time heading into the clearing. They saw some of the same monsters the other group saw, namely Warhogs, armoured warthogs that will only attack when provoked and otherwise mind their own business. They also found cloudberries, which allow people to feel lighter and jump higher, and a type of truffle that does the opposite, weighing the eater down.

Later, they found a strangely salty crack in the ground, only wide enough for a small animal to pass through.

Flooded Woods
February 216

Under the cut

The ones who explored this area earlier came with a badly injured friend in search of a healing miracle. They discovered a new monster, Tree Mimics, which attach to trees, pretending to be branches, and fling people who land on them into the swamp.

The party made their way back to the old spirit man, who remembered them and introduced himself as Mr. Yoshima. He missed how the world used to look but truly believed that the otherworlders could help restore it. With Yoshima's permission, they installed a teleport crystal in this safe area.

From there, they returned to the healing lake (from then on named the Lake of Healing, though it would later come to be known as Lake Hange). The lake successfully healed the maimed explorer, albeit with the same caveats as the last time, that any replaced body parts would be magic constructs and not true parts of the body.

Great Ocean Lake
February 216

Under the cut

After completing a quest in the area, two otherworlders decided to stick around and explore. Spotting some sharks west of the mermaid settlement who were acting oddly and guarding something, they went to investigate. They fought the sharks off and found that what they were guarding was a strange underwater building, which the otherworlders entered.

Inside the building, they discovered a giant tentacle and found that it was only a part of a massive monster with magic-cancellation abilities that tried to strangle anyone it encountered. They managed to get away, but the creature's thrashing damaged the structure and blocked their escape route back out. From there, they had to explore and search for another exit, dodging the monster and finding scattered sunken treasure.

They did find another exit and went straight back to the mermaids with their treasure (which the mermaids let them keep, not finding it interesting) and news of the frightening creature living nearby. The mermaids decided to investigate as well and directed the otherworlders to report it to their guild leaders.

Jungle of Judgment
February 216
CW/TW: Snakes, death/gore visions, body horror, parasitism, eye gore

Under the cut

Two explorers went into the jungle north-northwest of the second abandoned port to see the fallout of the destruction the two of them had inadvertently caused the previous year. The jungle had mostly repaired itself in the months since, but still had a few signs of combat and more snakes than usual (normal snakes). Mangolins and Kiwi Cats, harmless fruit/animal monsters that had gone into hiding during the fighting, were also returning to the rainforest.

In one key area, a cocoon made of vines had formed that wasn't there before. Upon investigating, the otherworlders discovered that touching it drained magical energy and a sound much like a heartbeat, but louder, was audible. They tried to pry the cocoon open to discover what was inside, but when a single eye looked back at them, it gave them horrible visions of their loved ones dying graphically.

The creature inside reflected a canon ability back at the user; her companion pushed her out of the way and part of him turned to stone. An attempt to burn it with seasonal magic instead made it shake violently, beginning to hatch, while the vines lashed out to grab their attackers. One of them was pulled into the cocoon completely, and the cocoon and creature merged parasitically with him, able to control his body as it warped and use his abilities.

His companion fought back desperately and freed him from the monster's control by stabbing him in the third, monstrous eye belonging to the cocoon creature. With a final death cry, everything left of the monster withered away and left its former host traumatized and shaking. The only thing remaining was a red crystal on the jungle floor that seemed to have lost all its magic with the monster's death.

In no shape to continue, the two of them teleported back to town and handed the crystal over to the Research Centre.

Southern Forest
March 216
CW/TW: Body horror death (backstory/Tragedy of Greed), kidnapping, manipulation of children, child experimentation
Note: This area has no official name, but surrounds the Abandoned Castle/Dragon Sanctuary.

Under the cut

Heading just south of the west side of the then-Abandoned Castle, a pair of adventurers almost immediately found a pitfall trap. Using Autumn powers and magic items to slow themselves down, they landed safely and found a maze of strange hallways carved from stone.

As they explored, they eventually found a room with a magic circle, similar to the one in the Flooded Woods, and a long spiral staircase. The circle was haunted by a small child who happily accepted offerings of food, especially candy (but didn't like rocks thrown at him). The child turned out to be Prince Elliott, second prince of House Beaumont, the human royal family who had once called the castle home. An Autumn power holder, he had been hiding in the basement once the Tragedy of Greed began making strange things happen, but it came to him too, and he died from his own earth magic.

Elliott explained the real story behind the Tragedy of Greed: the original power holder who tried to take all four seasons into his body was his elder brother, Lucas. But Prince Lucas was not the power-hungry monster the people had since imagined the source of their losses to be. He was simply a child manipulated by praise from a mysterious family friend known as the Pierrot, who had appeared suddenly from another land and taken an interest in seasonal powers. The Pierrot talked Lucas into cooperating with secret magical experiments that went on for three years until young Elliott told their parents out of worry, after which arguments erupted in the royal court and the Pierrot ran away with Lucas in tow. Days later, the Darkness came and nearly every power holder in Ellipsa had their powers turn on them lethally, warping the landscape.

Elliott gave a description of the Pierrot -- a tall man, he thought, with long, brown hair and striking green eyes, who often wore green robes and a large ring, carried a wooden staff with a woven circle top like a dreamcatcher, and always made Elliott feel uneasy. The young prince wished only to help Ellipsa and bring his family and his people justice, but after 16 years, he also wanted help moving on to the afterlife. The otherworlders promised to help however they could.

Wolf's Blood Mountains
June 216

Under the cut

The most dangerous Winter monsters were spreading out of their territories at the time, so a group of otherworlders found it prudent to investigate werewolf territory, still armed with silver weapons just in case. They entered a cave, immediately found three paths, and opted to follow the left path going down... well, sliding down, thanks to the ice, and ending up in a heap. What's more, upon getting up, they set off a trap and had to run from a giant boulder coated in ice. After melting the ice didn't stop the rock, one of the otherworlders used magic to teleport the boulder elsewhere. (Into the Great Ocean Lake. While some poor bystander was trying to train out there.)

Now safe, the party headed to where the rock had come from and found a treasure chest with an old parchment inside. However, despite coming up clean for mimic and curse checks, there was in fact another trap on the chest that started filling up the room with icy water. They managed to escape before the door could seal them in. To add insult to injury, all that was on the ancient parchment was, "Idiot(s)."

The disgruntled and cold party made their way to another path that thankfully didn't seem to have any death traps. At the end was a room walled in red ore with a similar magic circle to the safe spots Mr. Yoshima and Prince Elliott haunted. The ghost there was a middle-aged traveller named Kai, who was the last of a nomadic tribe that lived off the land until the Tragedy of Greed hit.

Kai gave news of a mysterious armoured horseman known as the Knight who had been spotted throughout the Spring and Winter Segments burying black magic rods near the anti-Darkness barriers. Kai could sense a deep, powerful magic from the rods that brought to mind an old elven summoning spell that had been banned. These would later turn out to be key to a plot to block out the sun in May of the next year.

The otherworlders were all worried, asked for advice finding these rods, and wondered if the armour from the Abandoned Farmland belonged to the Knight. Kai suggested making puppets for the resident spirits to find the rods with, and the group offered up some handmade dolls. They hoped to be able to find the Dark Rods in time to prevent the plan.

Flooded Woods
July/August 216

Under the cut

After the dragons were freed and expanded the Darkness-free zone, a group teleported out to the Flooded Woods near the new teleport crystal. They encountered not just the usual undead sea life, but also armed undead skeletons patrolling the ruins of a sunken castle town. The town and surrounding farmlands must have been full of life before the Tragedy of Greed changed the landscape and covered the area in Darkness. Oddly, the castle had multiple broken windows and its door was wide open.

Rain Jungle (ruins)
July/August 216

Under the cut

Two powerful otherworlders went to the Rain Jungle ruins to grab something for the Research Centre and found the same puzzle lock and gravity traps that the others had. Another menacing presence could be felt, which they managed to avoid, heading north through another puzzle door to a storage area full of boxes and barrels. All the food in storage had expired, but miraculously didn't smell bad even if it had completely rotted.

Past the storage room was a staircase, and at the top, the puzzle to unlock the next room had already been solved and the door left open. Inside, with more storage including treasure chests, was a thief in all black covering their face. The thief panicked at being spotted in an abandoned remote area and teleported away, leaving all the loot behind.

One of the chests contained more gravity orbs, though this set allowed the user to resist gravity rather than control the gravity in the ruins. The other was a book that seemed to be on the study of gravity, gravity magic, and gravity orbs, but the text was in Old Ellipsan and hard to decipher.

Fairy Kingdom
August 216

Under the cut

An otherworlder fairy tried to go on an expedition to seek a way into the Fairy Kingdom back when the dark fae still had it locked down. She was unable to break in, but learned that the spell sealing the kingdom was originally cast by the Fairy Queen to keep the kingdom safe, and was only corrupted when the Darkness moved in.

Also of note was a field of skeleton flowers as well as fairies in a drone-like state, who had had their colours and will sapped away and were endlessly collecting the flowers.

Bamboo Labyrinth
August 216

Under the cut

Two frequent explorers headed out to the Bamboo Labyrinth on the recommendation of Helene from the Research Centre. Just like every other expedition here, they chose left. However, this time they discovered a second, hidden path uncovered by a pitfall trap. They were far too suspicious, though, and climbed their way up to the original path and made it to the treasure chests.

This time, there was again one treasure box, but inside was the breastplate from a suit of armour. It looked way too polished to have been in there long, and touching it gave a compelling urge to wear it.

One of them actually did put it on as they headed back to check out the lower path they'd uncovered. He immediately started trying to escape, compelled by the armour to go to a specific place, until his quest partner stripped the breastplate off of him and shoved it in a bag.

At the end of the lower path was an underground lake, a waterfall leading into it, and another magic circle, where a food sacrifice summoned its guardian ghost. This one, a woman named Margaret, was unsurprised to hear that there were others like her who haunted these circles after their own powers consumed them in the Tragedy.

She explained all she knew about the people behind the Tragedy: they were seven people with mysterious origins who had integrated themselves into Ellipsan society, and in her adventuring days, she had discovered that they were actually summoned magically from other worlds. Knowing that they'd kill her if she exposed them or even if she returned to the city, she went into hiding in the Spring Segment, but died out there. She couldn't give descriptions, but had their names: Doctor, Scientist, Wizard, Knight, Pierrot, Icarus, and Herakles.

Margaret agreed to having a teleport crystal installed near her magic circle. She also passed on a tip about Moon Ore found in the underground lake and that it had mysterious powers possibly from another world. The explorers found some Moon Ore to bring back.

With nothing else to do in the Bamboo Labyrinth, they decided to purposely test the armour and find out where it led. After they left the labyrinth, the breastplate sprouted wings and started flying off with its wearer still in it, apparently just trying to go straight up. To space? Who knew. They got it off desperately, escaped via flying transformation, and left the armour to find its next victim.

Temple of Death
August 216
CW/TW: Grievous injury, snakes, spiders, imagery of being eaten/insides of monsters/animals,

Under the cut

A large expedition was gathered up to explore the Temple of Death, splitting up into twos to each enter one of the five doors on the ground floor. Each door disappeared when taken, sealing the explorers inside.

For the door with a spear emblem, the two explorers saw the hallway turn deep red and noticed Roman numerals on the walls: I, III, and V pointing left, II, IV, and VI right, and then skipping straight to X in the middle. Down the middle path was a malfunctioning clock with its own VII through IX section missing, embedded in the wall. When they pulled out the clock, they accidentally hit a button behind it reading “DO NOT TOUCH” and had to dodge a rain of magic spears from the ceiling.

Strangely, because this happened when the clock was on III, when they returned to the hub, the number III was glowing. They went left to investigate it and discovered that the numbers being activated summoned traps, in this case spike rollers at the end of the hall, but also opened doors corresponding to the numbers. After passing the spikes and forcing open the lock, they discovered a giant clock on the floor with all the numbers but no hands. Two numbers had to be pressed at a time to open the next door, but pressing the wrong combination meant more traps.

They decided to go back to the hub and check the other side (although one of them got badly gouged by the trap on the way back). As none of the numbers had been activated, there were no traps this time, but there were some other key differences: the lock on the end wouldn’t break, and the IV-VI labels were just plastered on over the missing VII-IX. The explorers pulled out the numbers and discovered that IX was glowing.

Returning to the main clock, they added the numbers to the clock, which gave them a key and made every number on the walls light up, but also set off more pits and spike rollers in the hallways. They levitated over the pit back to the locked door and used the key. Inside were more broken clocks, some missing VII and VIII. Back in the middle hallway’s clock, they hit VII and VIII to unlock the last room.

Inside was this section’s boss monster: the Time Demon of Wrath, which wore a clock that it could spin and the numbers controlled the adventurers’ range of movement. The boss arena was a platform over top of a deep pit with spikes on the walls. With teamwork, they broke the opals on the time demon’s wings to defeat it.

For the door with a sword emblem, the floor in the hall turned to shallow water once the two adventurers who chose it entered. Continuing in the water would lead to a path with a water-themed wall, but instead, they took the other path out of the water to a platform with a fire-themed wall. The path from there got steadily hotter and led to a room full of unlit torches and a dark path beyond it. Lighting all the torches unlocked a box (a glitter trap) and a key.

In the dark path were two doors: an unlocked, damp door with the sound of water behind it and a locked door that didn’t match the key. Opening the unlocked door let in ankle-deep water and led to a stone hallway lit with glowing crystals. At the end of that hallway was a chest that fit the key. They spotted and neutralized the trap on the chest and took two potions labelled “drink me to cheat death” and “drink me to survive.” As soon as they started to leave, the trap belatedly set off, collapsing the room’s ceiling and then the hallway as they fled back the way they came.

Once they were safely back out of the stone hallway, which collapsed and blocked the door, they headed to the other door and broke it open. Beyond that door was a room full of gold and jewels, but with walls made of fire. The most immediately alluring treasure, a sapphire crown, unlocked the boss arena once one of the explorers put it on her head.

The boss room was huge with a platform and a seemingly bottomless pit, and the Harpy of Greed attacked in a rage with wind magic and metal feathers, wanting her treasure back. They managed to defeat her by destroying the sapphire on her neck.

For the door with a staff emblem, the halls looked like clouds, and the first fork in the road led to colour-coded hallways: pink, blue, and white. The clouds down the white hall started to emit sticky, sugary foam that overwhelmed the sand one of the explorers threw down to clear a path. The team escaped up onto a platform and hit a switch to rise up to the next floor.

Here there were more clouds, but no sticky foam. In the next room, there were three drinks: red, blue, and clear. Splitting the clear drink between them disoriented them for the next five minutes (essentially confused motion controls) and opened a room where skeletons were playing poker (they were supposed to fight, but got bored) and gladly let the two join in the game. They opened the next door upon finishing the game.

The boss chamber was next, but the Minotaur of Sloth was (fittingly) sleeping. So instead of fighting, the adventurers simply stole the rewards and teleported out.
For the door with a shield emblem, the walls looked like they’d been coated in poison, but were actually harmless. Three hallways faced them: one forward with no indicators, one left with a potion bottle stuck in the wall, and one right with the same shield emblem. They chose to proceed through the shield path.

Five shields stood in the hall on pedestals, made of wood, metal, glass, leaves, and ice. The explorers chose the wood and metal shields, which they ended up needing as the next hallway had projectiles (arrows, bullets, and magic) rain down upon them. They dodged and blocked everything they could and moved on to a hall with a burning laser maze, and past that (with both of them sustaining burns, but the one who took the most damage was a cyborg and mainly got marked up and singed) was a door that opened with no resistance.

This led straight to a boss arena with cannons in the walls and a large boss, the Robot Goblin of Envy that held spite towards anyone with a real body. It fought with all the same projectiles as before, plus burning lasers and corrosive poison cannonballs (hence the cannons), and it focused its attacks mainly on the human combatant, wanting a body like hers. She took the shields and ran a distraction while her companion searched for a weak spot under the robot’s hatches, but once he found one, a covered ruby, he saw his quest partner in danger and ran to tank the hit, losing an arm in the process. The robot goblin looked confused and conflicted at hurting its own kind, and the explorers used that opportunity to take the kill shot.

For the door with a question mark emblem, the explorers immediately had to dodge poison-tipped arrows and found themselves choosing between doors with images of snakes and spiders. Choosing the snake door led them into a corridor with an entrance looking like a giant snake's mouth... in fact, the whole corridor past there looked (and felt, and smelled) like they were just walking through the insides of a dead snake.

Thankfully it didn't go through the entire way, transitioning into a lava pit with narrow stone platforms to jump and climb across to the other side, as well as fire snakes attempting to knock the explorers down as they crossed. Past there was a hallway full of golden snake statues. They triggered half the switches on the statues, which melted into liquid gold that could turn anything into gold with it. Water magic thankfully washed that out of the way, so while it turned the whole hall gold, it didn't touch the otherworlders. They plucked the emeralds from one of the remaining statues, and when they encountered a door with a circle of emeralds with two missing, they opened it by inserting those.

This led to this section's boss monster: the Naga of Pride, a giant snake/human hybrid. It fought with fire, lava, and venom, and the boss arena was a lava pit with platforms that alternated between being available versus submerged. The naga's weak points were three emeralds in its skin, and destroying each slowed it down.

Killing each boss made it and the boss arena fade into ash. After completing an area, they would each get a prize, consisting of an idol that granted a blessing each day it was prayed to and occasionally other items.

Time Demon of Wrath – Statue of Longevity, which prevents aging; a chest full of coins; a golden pocketwatch that alerted the user of major life events (but didn’t say what it would be or whether it was good or bad, just when it was)

Harpy of Greed – Statue of Wealth, which grants blessings of treasure and money; any of the treasure from the treasure room

Minotaur of Sloth – Statue of Energy, which supplies energy to everyone in the room with the right blessings (or, with the wrong ones, saps energy instead)

Robot Goblin of Envy – Statue of Immunity, which grants 24 hours of poison and status effect immunity; oil for robot joints

Naga of Pride – Statue of Encouragement, which grants courage and determination
Then a teleport pad at the end would send the explorers back outside, and the doors were still gone, leaving only their carvings.

Northern Cold Sea
August 216

Under the cut

Two adventurers with undersea transformations headed out to the sea from the northeast dock. The sea lived up to its name: extremely cold, barely resisting freezing over due to the salt content, though there was ice slush nearby and solid ice further out. Befriending some telepathic Ice Water Dolphins, they followed them underwater into a cave where an abandoned elven village lay underneath a magic air bubble. The elves who lived there had materials to stave off the cold, magically fresh warm clothes, preservation magic that allowed for the food found inside to still be good even 16 years after the Tragedy of Greed, and the ability to harvest the energy of the moon, which gave the Ice Water Dolphins their ability to communicate telepathically with other species.

On the side of a larger building in the elven village was a set of stone tablets written in the elf language with images of the moon. The explorers took photos of them in hopes someone back in Nightwake could translate. They also found bottles of something that looked like stardust, which they took back outside.

The Ice Water Dolphins were waiting outside the bubble for them and led them half an hour southwest and then deeper down into the sea. After hours of descending down, they finally found a cave that the dolphins seemed confused about but thought humans might want to see.

It was full of cave carvings in the same elven language, with pictographs that showed all kinds of elven customs and historical events. With the help of the phone's clunky auto-translate and the pictures, they could put together a vague outline of the story of the elf civilization, from the meeting of two elves to forming a village, with a refrain of "peace, harmony, respect, and love." These ideals faded away when a certain ruler was crowned, and the images started to depict weapons, destruction, pain, and finally a broken crown. (Oddly for an underwater people, trees and farming also regularly appeared in the story, indicating that the elves perhaps hadn't always lived underwater.) The walls also depicted these glyphs.

Other caves in the area were relatively empty, though some kind of ice octopus lived in one minding its own business. The Ice Water Dolphins promised that if the explorers returned or sent others in their stead, they would show them another place underwater where the coral had healing properties.

Lost City of Memories
August 216
CW/TW: blood, mass murder, self-sacrifice

Under the cut

Two explorers headed to the Lost City from the northwest side, where there was a staircase leading down into the water and a city gate that had seen better days. This entrance led straight into a marketplace that looked like the Darkness had hit before the people had a chance to react; even the wares for sale sat on the stalls, dusty and rotting.

The explorers picked up some potions that still looked good, though their labels had faded over time so it was hard to see what any of them did. The effects were:
1) turns polluted waters into safe waters
2) saves someone from certain death (can't be replicated as most of the ingredients are impossible to get now)
3) makes someone immune to pain
4) makes the users soul into a shield to protect the remaining party (fatal to user)
5) duplicates any item (non-magical kind) immediately
They took some but not all of each of the potions, hoping to have them studied back in the city.

The scent of roses wafted in from the city centre, where a rose garden had overgrown into rose monsters with roses blooming on top of their ugly, blob-like bodies. The monsters attacked right away, throwing their thorn spikes from their tendrils. Fire magic dispatched the monsters, leaving only gemstones that looked and smelled like roses (which the party picked up).

Heading north, they entered the open door of a building that towered over the city. It seemed to be a school, very old and made of marble and other stone, with an information desk in the lobby, though all the papers had long since faded. Plants could be found inside the building, though any rooms where the windows had broken didn't have any plants still alive.
At the end of the first hallway sat a room full of flowers that held mesmerizing orbs, many glowing, that compelled the explorers to touch them. Doing so gave one of them a flash of memories from a random citizen (the potion seller whose stall they'd visited), followed by sending out miasma; if touched, it would spread black curse energy across the body, staining their skin and causing them horrible pain until the curse could be removed. (This kind of curse would later reappear in the veil blocking the sky in the May 2025 event.) Thankfully, the other explorer pulled back the one who had touched the orb.

...who then proceeded to touch another orb, one that wasn't lit up. This one lit up after absorbing one of his own memories (he didn't forget it himself, it just made a copy), a memory of killing a horde of people with pointed ears, fangs, and claws. It too let out cursed mist; all the flowers were tainted. Good job.

It was apparently time to go for broke, as the other explorer decided to touch another lit orb for another memory. This one showed the potion seller from before, through the eyes of someone dear to him. Something exploded, and the potion seller thought quickly and drank his own soul shield potion. This killed him but allowed him to protect the owner of the memory from the blast. The memory ended with the survivor pleading to his dead companion: "You used the-- You idiot. Why. What will I do without you?"

Heart Will Go On Glacier
August 216
CW/TW: bodies/decomposition, hell imagery, amputation, enemies magically knowing things about PCs, parasitism

Under the cut

Two adventurers braved the Heart Will Go On and found artificially made cracks in the ice wall that led to an old and slightly rusted door. Blasting the door open revealed a dark, remote abandoned prison that smelled of death and rot. Once they were in, the door reformed and locked behind them.

Decomposing bodies of captives lay beside their belongings, having fled their cells and died trying in vain to escape the prison. Faded documents, some as messages in bottles, pled for anyone to come save them from what they described as monsters from hell, but the messages never made it out, and nobody came.

In one of the open cells lay a tombstone, but what was written on it gave them pause; magically, the writing on it gave the explorers' own names and birthdates, and listed their deaths as that current day. A portal appeared on top of the tombstone, and a bloody hand reached out to grab them. One of them fended the hand's owner off with Gloves of the Undead, only for another set of clawed hands to replace it and force the portal open further while a paralyzing scream froze the explorers.

Forcing that demon off with the same gloves only prompted a third one to attack with its long tongue, which was stopped by severing it from the body. Projectiles and explosives thrown into the portal finally forced it to close, but the severed tongue tightened around its victim and had to be burned off. The names and dates disappeared from the tombstone.
They weren't out of the woods (or the glacier) yet, as a scream was heard inside and a flight of stairs leading down mysteriously appeared outside the cell. Descending, it felt warmer, less like a glacier... and gradually, more like an inferno. The stairs ended abruptly and looked out onto a burning cave with lava pockets in the rocky floor, bloody spikes and chains, and more demons trying to grab at them. This was the Hell Dimension.

Demons with extremely long arms reached up to grab them, one replacing another each time they fought them off. Others sang a sea shanty, somehow knowing the otherworlders' personalities and relation to each other and bragging that they would kill the otherworlders and their leader, the Captain, would bring more "blood and tears" and help the Hell Dimension to evolve. Their songs came with the urge to sing along, but the party felt that was a very bad idea. Instead, the two sang a different song to try and combat them, though the demons simply laughed that off.

Earth-shaking footsteps started to come up, and they knew they had to flee. One of them threw a Grenade of Luck, which created a goose that proceeded to wreak havoc in hell for months on end. They used a Travel Crystal to escape, but not before the demons injured one of them with a poison blade and cut off her hand. The other found he still had a piece of demon tongue trying to merge onto him like a parasite. Both immediately sought medical attention.

House in a Tree
October 216

Under the cut

A very large adventuring party rolled up to the House in a Tree, hoping to use numbers to avoid any more incidents like the last few explorations. The tree looked normal aside from the door embedded in the trunk. Two people entered at first, and the inside of the tree responded to their surface thoughts: one thinking of a tree he’d played around in childhood and one thinking of a possible path forward, this prompted the tree to manifest a sea of clouds over a vast grassland with one spiral staircase going up. Space would warp to prevent anyone from “cheating” by flying up; the only way up was to climb the stairs. As they climbed, out-of-context memories from every member of the party would be projected in the clouds, but played by generic Ellipsan “actors” instead of the real people in the memories.

The stairs continued up to three different paths: a crumbling left path to a shabby door, a well-kept right path to a mahogany door, and a towering forward path boxed in by the walls of the rooms the other doors led to. The party split into threes. All three areas began with a hallway with three small portraits (of the explorers who chose that path), each with a health bar of three hearts, that could be taken off the wall and put in their inventories.

The left door group found a dusty, cobwebbed, cracked hallway with creepy flickering lights, and past that, nine crates with a note that instructed them to choose only one. Super scent and curse scans yielded no clues as to the contents of the crates. They finally chose one, which included a flashlight, a garland of garlic bulbs, and a silver dagger. The other crates disappeared, and two doors appeared.

They took the left door again and ended up in a room made of bones! ...No, wait, it was just bone-patterned wallpaper. There was a coffin, though. After an argument about investigation versus disturbing the dead, they left the coffin alone but left an offering of a Power Apple from the Shady Shop and a piece of cake. Whoever was in the coffin approved, if humming the opening bars of “Bad Apple!!” and then disappearing when the group left the room was any indication.

Another gross hallway followed, with barrels leaking poison gas, but the garlic necklace seemed to repel the poison. The silver dagger glowed red to warn of a demon, which came around the corner and took the form of the one with the dagger. Any damage to the demon would reflect back on the person whose form it stole, continuing to reflect on the health bar even if he healed, and killing it would kill him. The demon was defeated when they used the flashlight on it, revealing its true form and breaking the damage-reflection spell so they could finish it off without fear. The demon was absorbed into the dagger, and it transformed into a “demon sword” that only the one it had copied could use. The flashlight grew larger and gained the ability to uncover hidden objects.

The next obstacle was a puzzle where they had to untie a complicated series of knots. None of them were very smart and they struggled for a long time, as cheating by cutting the knots wouldn’t work and trying to undo it simply made it worse. They had to give up and let the Altaria one of them brought out of its Poké Ball solve the puzzle. At least they made it to the end, after being bailed out and thoroughly judged by a bird.

In the next room, the party was kept down to two as one of them didn’t have full HP on his health bar (he had to sit in a chair in a waiting room). The other two had to play The Floor is Lava with a room full of furniture that disappeared piece by piece between rounds until one of them won.

After that, the three were reunited and headed past a door to what looked like a room in a cozy cottage. An old woman greeted them, sitting and drinking tea with her cats. They pet the cats, ate the cookies on the side table, and asked her some questions about the tree:

-Why the health bars? (They’re a safety measure to see that only the worthy and pure-intentioned make it inside.)
-What’s the point of this place? (The old women, the Witches Three, live there with their cats and give gifts to those who make it through.)
-Who are the Witches Three? (Retired old witches who want to live in peace outside of the city.)
-Have they left the house since the Darkness came? Do they know what’s been happening in the world? (They’ve magically moved their house around the map to avoid the Darkness, hence the house not having been in this place pre-Tragedy. They aren’t up on the latest news, but have heard of the Pierrot before.)
-Why can’t they give full answers to some questions? (They’re not allowed. They follow a witches’ code of conduct.)
-Do those who have already done the trials have to do them again if they return? (No.)
-Are they fighting the Darkness too? (They’re bound by a contract to only join in the fight “when the time is right.”)

The witch transformed the one remaining item, turning the garlic necklace into a poison-repelling normal necklace. One party member happily gave the witches some more cake. Another grumbled some insults before leaving and was temporarily cursed to bray like a donkey.

Past the right door, the hallway was shiny marble and led to a giant scale with a sign reading, “Those who have more good than evil thoughts, go left. Those who have more evil than good thoughts go right. Get it wrong and you may face judgement.” After some soul-searching, all of them went to the “good” side, and the scale tipped in their favour and opened up a door.

Through there was a hallway of solid clouds that led to a floating archipelago linked by cloud bridges. The islands held five treasure chests, but like the crates, only one could be opened. They checked for mimics and narrowed it down to three (the two mimics flew off, disappointed at being caught). Inside the one they picked was a magic gun with pink bullets, a plush elephant, and a claymore. A locked door appeared on the last island, and they knocked and introduced themselves as adventurers looking for the fabled land beyond the clouds. An indiscernible voice approved and unlocked the door, but warned them not to touch anything.

Past the door was a hallway leading into a treasury full of golden, gem-encrusted statues that compelled the explorers to touch them. Remembering the warning, they sped through to the end of the room, only to see one more temptation: the illusion of what they each wanted most. They managed to resist that (with a great deal of struggling) and made it to the end and past the final door.

The next staircase led to another old woman in a cottage room, who introduced herself as another of the Witches Three. She answered more questions as she allowed the adventurers to rest:

-Is that special-edition golden self-refilling mayonnaise bottle for sale? (That was an illusion. Sorry.)
-Is this the land beyond the clouds? (No. The legends are true that the place exists and the portal is in a tree, but not this tree; try the Spring or Autumn Segment, and someplace that was available on the initial map.)
-How could the tree they’re looking for have been on the initial map if the stories said it was lost to the Darkness? (“Lost to the Darkness” doesn’t always mean “past the barrier.” It could have been partially corrupted or lost some other way.)
-What, like emotions? (The witch continues to be cryptic, only saying, “You have met those corrupted by Darkness before.”
-Some other questions were asked that duplicated the questions from the left team, with the same answers.

The witch transformed all the items they received. The plush became a summonable miniature elephant familiar, able to be ridden, purify water, or clear obstacles. The gun became one that shoots magical energy bullets that vary depending on the setting, able to either stun enemies, temporarily depower enemies, or track somebody. The sword was given the ability to leech magical and life energy from enemies and give it to the user, as well as remove magical barriers (but the energy has to be channeled somewhere else). The group thanked her and offered to help the Witches Three should they ever need it.

The group on the centre path found glass doors leading out to a garden. The plants all looked poisonous or carnivorous and moved on their own, but wouldn’t attack unless one was destroyed; one explorer asked them for samples and took some for science.

In the middle of the garden was a very tempting orange tree that nonetheless felt wrong. One explorer took an orange anyway (...and licked it?), losing a heart from his health bar and triggering a trap that filled the room with smoke that smelled of each person’s favourite scent but would make them pass out from smoke inhalation. They were saved by one of the explorers, who happened to like the smell of blood but did not like smelling it all of a sudden on an expedition, prompting them to leave through the next door. Thankfully the smoke wasn’t able to follow them.

The next hallway split in two, and the group followed a path that led to an aquarium. They looked at the fish (and one of them took samples of the tank plants) until they discovered that one of the tanks was broken and there weren’t any fish inside. One of the explorers walked into the empty tank to investigate, but it immediately repaired itself and started to fill with water and fish. The others broke the glass again, getting soaked but managing to save their companion. Three octopi that had appeared in the tank attached onto them and decided to hang around the party for the rest of the expedition.

The next room was a bedroom and bathroom with towels to dry off, a magically tempting bed, and chests of drawers to investigate. Two explorers resisted the bed, but one fell asleep until the pillows started to try and absorb her. They woke her up (with the help of the octopus, who was similarly concerned) and each took an item from the drawers: a set of keys, a crystal ball, and a sack of beans.

The final hallway had a door with a marble-connecting puzzle, and past that, another door. One of the keys on the keyring fit the door, and opening it led to a staircase with even more cats and another cottage-like room with the third witch. The witch didn’t seem impressed at any attempt to take her cats or at how long the party took to reach her, but still let them sit down, rest, and ask her questions. She also brought their items to their final form: the keys became one key that can be used in any door to teleport to any place that isn’t locked, blocked off, or protected with magic; the beans became a vine, a magical unbreaking rope that can stick to anything; and the crystal ball gained the ability to predict one important thing every month in hopes that its user could change fate.

Crescent Moon Lake
April 217

Under the cut

Two otherworlders with underwater exploration experience headed out to the Crescent Moon Lake one morning and met a fairy who asked about their intentions. They explained that they wanted to see what was there, to try and form diplomatic and trade relationships, and to look for clues to the world before the Darkness. They promised this but refused to give their names, and the fairy, while disappointed, understood this to pass the test and allowed the explorers passage into the lake.

The explorers dived into the lake and felt that something was off, like it should look somehow different. They saw buildings deeper in that were made of aquatic plants and mushrooms, but that couldn't be touched. A spiritual scan of the lake revealed that these would become tangible at night, when the lake would reveal its true appearance. They also found that water fairies had lived in the lake for eons, most of this time living happily, but currently sad and worried about something.

The two surfaced, camped out until nightfall, and returned to the lake to see the truth. The underwater town was now solid and bioluminescent, and a single water fairy guard came to confront the explorers about whether they were there to rob the town like the last visitor. The explorers were confused as there hadn't been any quests in the lake. The guard believed them and explained that an armoured figure, whom the two recognized from description as the Knight, had broken through their defences and stolen all but one of the town's powerful magic statues. The only one remaining was that of a glowing turtle; the water fairies feared the Knight might come back for it, as the five statues' magic was dangerous in the wrong hands and could warp reality itself if used all together.

The explorers healed the fairies who had been injured in the Knight's attack, returned to the city with a promise to help, and negotiated with the Spring Guild and Research Centre to make protective spears based on Barrier Stones to protect the water fairy town. When they came back and handed over the spears, the water fairies gave them a communicator seashell to call them and a compass-like tracker they'd developed in the meantime to try and find the four statues the Knight had stolen.

Survival Fortress
June 217
CW/TW: amputation, mutilation (backstory [state of ghosts] and present [used against monsters]), torture (backstory/imagery), human sacrifice, starvation/malnourishment

Under the cut

A party of five experienced explorers scaled the walls of the Survival Fortress to see what was beyond the gates. Once they got in, they discovered it was a good thing they'd climbed that way; the main gates had been rigged with explosives. The Autumn seismic-sense skill revealed that landmines were also placed around the yard, and judging by the wailing ghosts visible to Winters, many of whom were missing body parts, they may not have been the first to try to explore here. Those ghosts not caught up in their own misery explained that something in the middle building (out of the three main buildings in the complex) was keeping them there and even if they were exorcised, their souls would be pulled right back.

There weren't many options to get into the middle building, but the side buildings had locks that could be picked and interesting-looking orbs (blue on the right, red on the left) visible through the windows. After a discussion on which building to check first, one person volunteered to check out the building on the right with astral projection.

Someone seemed to have accounted for that. The moment the astral projection walked into the building, he was teleported elsewhere, and trying to cancel the projection wouldn't work; his mind was trapped. He found himself in a torture chamber with chains and old, dried blood. He used telepathy to tell his companions what was going on and that the blue orb teleports you. Proceeding from the chamber, he found prison cells next to it, with a weakened, malnourished elf captive who seemed to sense him and ask who was there.

Back in the prison yard, one of the other explorers shot fire at the blue orb through the window. This caused it to return the astral-projecting one to his body and turned the blue orb clear. It also revealed multiple demons and undead ghouls in the room, who noticed the explorers and ran out of the building to attack them.

But if there was one thing this group was prepared for, it was those. With fire magic, ice magic, another world’s complex exorcism spells, Gloves of the Undead, the freeze-movement skill, and good old swords and might-as-well-be-swords, they defeated the horde of demons and ghouls. However, the blue-now-clear orb was apparently destroyed in the shuffle, and without it, the right building completely collapsed as if the orb was holding it together. Seismic sense also revealed that the middle building had somehow gathered even more enemies inside than were lurking in there before.

The group debated where the teleportation led to, which building to go to, how to rescue the prisoner, and how to destroy the red orb in the left building. One of them lashed out and threw a fireball through the window at the red orb as he had with the blue. This did not produce the same result; the red orb sent the fire back bigger, ripping through the window and wall. The group blocked the fireball with magic, and seeing that magic attacks wouldn’t work, they destroyed the red orb by shooting at it.

Predictably, this summoned more demons and ghouls. Less predictably, a long monster tongue, much like from the tongue demon in the Hell Dimension, shot out from the middle building to grab one of them. The rest attacked to try and save their friend, but somehow the monster evaded all of them and escaped back into the building with its prize. Trying to break down the door wouldn’t work with the horde still coming after them, so the remaining adventurers struggled through the fight until they wiped out all the ghouls and demons.

The left building wasn’t destroyed like the right one, but it seemed to be empty of anything interesting save for some old furniture. The retrocognition skill showed that the Survival Fortress had once been a pirate fortress where pirates would terrorize captured civilians. Seismic sense now showed fewer enemies inside the middle building instead of more. The captured explorer kicked the wall to signal he was still alive, and a Winter in the group used the door-creation skill to make a way for everyone, some using animal shifts or other transformations, to barge in to rescue him.

Tongue and captive were nowhere to be found in the entranceway, but the tongue left a gross spit trail down the stairs. Heading down there led to a split path, and oddly, the monster saliva trail went down both ways. The group split up, each duo taking one of the oil lamps on the wall.

The first duo went deeper into the building, where the scent of blood and decay got stronger. The wooden basement floor was in disrepair and broke underneath them, revealing an underground pool of poisonous acid. Further ahead was a pair of doors, but the closer they got to the doors, the less floor there was to cross and the more acid to avoid. They managed to get to the right door and found six more demons lurking inside the jail cells. The demons attacked, but the explorers dispatched them.

Looking at evidence and using retrocognition, they saw that the pirates had captured civilians from all the races of Ellipsa, but mostly humans, and tortured them for fun. At least some of the pirates had somehow transformed into either full or partial demons (likely with the forcible transformation process revealed in the later Hell Dimension event, which also rewrote the victim’s sense of self with that of a sadistic demon).

They also discovered their lost companion... or was it? No, the captured man was a doppelgänger, a special type of demon created by the people the tongue grabs as it drains their energy. As these two had a trust bond to tell the real one, they saw through the illusion, and the doppelgänger revealed its demonic eyes and turned its arms into spikes to attack them. When defeated, it turned into black acrid smoke that weakened anyone who inhaled it.

The wall behind the demon disappeared with its defeat, revealing the torture chamber from before. When they stepped in, the chains sensed living beings and tried to grab them. Weakened by the smoke and the pain of having “killed a loved one” even if it was a fake, they still managed to destroy the chains with fire and ice. They heard back from the second duo, saying they’d found the real version of their friend, and let them know that they found the torture chamber.

Just as was seen in the astral projection, the elven prisoner was there. He asked if the otherworlders were there to save him and promised a reward if they did. He introduced himself as Virion, an elf whose species could live a long time without basic needs and who had thus been left to rot by his captors. He explained that the demons had been capturing people for a very long time, torturing them, and handing them over as sacrifices for stronger demons from the Hell Dimension. He didn’t know why he was still alive when the rest of the elves who were captured with him were gone. The two adventurers freed him and took him with them.

The second duo went down a sturdy stone corridor and avoided a trap in the floor. They too found two doors, chose the one on the left, and found their captive companion... no, another doppelgänger. They identified him as a fake due to having no trust weapon bond, but asked him how he’d escaped; he said he’d set himself on fire, despite the tongue monster being fireproof. A few more failed trust questions, and the explorers attacked. The doppelgänger turned his arms into tentacles to fight back, but was quickly dispatched. Killing it turned on the lights in the room, but aside from more torture devices, there was nothing else in there.

The other door yielded nothing, so they tracked the spit/slime trail to a dead end that looked like a wall had moved in front of a hallway. Autumn’s stone-manipulation skill opened up a path, and they headed past a number of traps toward the real captive.

He was there, unconscious from having so much of his energy sapped to make clones, but so was the tongue’s owner, a gigantic reptilian demon that used its tongue, horns, and claws to fight along with poison and fire. The Autumn user sent a message to the other group that they’d found their lost friend.

Using invisibility and protective items, the two fought. Cutting off the demon’s tail didn’t stop it from pinning its captive; it just caused the demon to grow a new tail while the amputated one acted on its own. The demon did turn out to be weak to electricity, and while it was fast, so were the adventurers, who defeated it as quickly as they could. In an injured fit, the demon caused part of the ceiling to collapse and the boss room to flood with poison, so the group escaped quickly with their hurt friend in tow and sealed the path behind them.

Both duos, now trios, escaped the building and reunited. But the giant demon’s cries summoned hordes of fellow demons, including more doppelgängers of their former captive, rising up from beneath the fortress. The group could see what must have been hundreds of demons gathering, but they didn’t follow once they saw that their prey were escaping. One of them left a peach for the tortured spirits, unable to do much else for them.

The guilds gave a hefty reward for the results of their exploration and directed the group to make an announcement. Virion was taken in to rest and receive medical attention.

Breeze Hills
June 217

Under the cut

Two newer otherworlders arrived at the Breeze Hills in time to see the strange and colourful local birds (where'd these chocobos come from?) teaching their babies to fly and run. Some friendly birds led them through a path that avoided more dangerous species such as Fire Eagles and Ice Falcons, and the explorers followed, wondering what the birds wanted to show them.

The chocobos led them to a cave going down, which didn't seem dangerous at first but pinged a higher sense of danger from a normal-looking crane deeper in the cave. Wary of the crane, they continued until the birds led them to strange vegetables that looked metallic (but were still vegetables) and giant eggs from a different species. Accepting these as gifts from the birds, the explorers exited the cave.

The eggs eventually hatched into rainbow birds, rare companion creatures that grow to a large size. Their feathers could reverse a person's death, but they only gave three feathers to each person. Their songs also healed minor wounds. The vegetables were not just edible, but made everything cooked with them perfectly nutritious no matter what. The explorers also took the chocobos home as pets.

Crystal Mines
September 217
CW/TW: Threat of drowning, attacks to eyes (of monsters), strangulation, possession/body horror

Under the cut

A large adventuring party entered the Crystal Mines and found that the panels for the reality-altering Labyrinth computer game had been removed. Four tunnels lay in front of them, and they split into two groups, one going to the far left tunnel and one to the far right.

The left tunnel started out ordinary aside from the glowing sapphires embedded in the wall, but after a few minutes of walking, sapphire coated the entire tunnel... and for some reason, it behaved like rushing water. The group had to hold onto rock handholds and use whatever gear they had to keep from being swept downward.

They managed to follow the path safely and ended up in a chamber of the cave with a clear pool of water that for some reason couldn’t be manipulated by season magic and had iridescent electric eels swimming in it that would attack anyone who got too close. At the bottom of the pool was what appeared to be the laptop the Scientist had used to play the Labyrinth game. One of the otherworlders used an animal transformation to reach the laptop. Touching it triggered a trap to drop a cage around her and drag her down a secret passage... but given she’d turned into an orca and the cage was designed for a human, it didn’t work and just dropped off to the side. She retrieved the laptop and returned to shore.

Another of the explorers scared the eels off with an electric knife and entered the water with a Mermaid Necklace to check out the passage the cage would have dragged a captive off to. The passage was very deep with an increasingly strong current threatening to sweep her away, and it seemed to go on for ages with no air pockets, so any human who had been captured and couldn’t transform or otherwise breathe underwater would have drowned.

They split the party again, with two exploring the water tunnel with aquatic transformations and finding an underwater prison with more empty cages, the other two searching the tunnel ahead on land and finding a dead end and a golden axe. Picking up the axe dropped one of them into the underwater prison chamber via a trap door. The door tried to snap shut again, but with vampiric strength and speed, the last explorer on land forced it open while the other two (and the giant dog that accompanied the land group) helped get the one who fell for the trap back up onto land before he could drown. At least they got to keep the axe.

The group reunited and backtracked to the point where the full party had first split up.
The group in the right tunnel started out similarly, but their tunnel was filled with emerald, and when it also coated the whole tunnel, it started to behave like quicksand. The explorers had to pull each other out of the sticky, sand-like gems and fly down the tunnel to keep from being sucked down. Past the emerald was a waterfall made of mud that couldn’t be manipulated by season magic, so one of them blasted a way through with an otherworlder power.

This angered a monster behind the waterfall, a tentacle creature made of mud that quickly grabbed at the explorers. They fought back with multiple elemental powers and continued through the hole behind the mudfall, but only found a dead end... except the stones in that wall resembled a gemstone granted from Virion to his rescuers, and when that gem was brought out, they reacted and opened a new hallway made of diamond. This one didn’t do anything dangerous and seemed to have been built for the dwarves who had previously lived and worked in the area, who had left old mining equipment and clothes behind.

In a large room ahead was a single chest, which, upon touching it, turned out to be a mimic and attempted to eat one of them. He dodged the attack and stabbed the mimic in the eye; the mimic let out a scream that induced a confusion effect, but it only affected one of the four. The mimic launched itself at the confused and distracted adventurer, though, who responded by telekinetically throwing it at the “Mime Monster.” That was blocked with an ice wall that the mimic smashed against, and another of the explorers killed it with an ability from his home.

Unfortunately, the confused adventurer was still attacking his teammates, and the curse-lifting skill didn’t work as it was a status effect and not a curse. He snapped out of it when they restrained him. That done, they checked the area. The treasure chest may have been a mimic, but it did have treasure inside: the double-edged axe Virion had described after being questioned upon his rescue. The retrocognition skill showed a memory of Brourfumin, Virion’s missing dwarf friend, place his axe on a pedestal for safekeeping and cast a spell that merged him with the axe itself, hiding in hopes that someday he could be rescued from the calamity going on outside and restored with a counterspell... and then the axe being eaten by the mimic.

With a call and some directions, the entire party reunited in the diamond chamber. Using retrocognition on the golden axe revealed that its owner had used the same spell, not to escape the Tragedy but just because he was possessive of his belongings and didn’t really think things through. Using it on the laptop showed the Scientist playing the Labyrinth game during that event to trap the otherworlders, and finally revealed her appearance: a middle-aged woman with long brown hair and some manner of technological headset over her eyes.

Seismic sense revealed another chamber under the mud area, where a mud creature lurked. The party split again, with two of them returning to town with the axe-dwarves, the laptop, and the mission report in case anything happened, while the other six plus dog magically created a door over the mud chamber to deal with the monster.

The mud tentacle was just one part of a mud tentacle mass that was very, very angry. It grabbed the first person it could and tried to strangle him. Earth manipulation from Autumn didn’t work, just like with the mudfall, but ice could block it and a combination of fire, physical attacks, energy absorption, explosives, and water magic tore it apart. However, the room was full of the same Autumn-proof mud. The monster revived with another tentacle from the ceiling to grab another adventurer... no, that wasn’t revival. The tentacle mass, the mudfall from before, and the entire chamber they were in now was the monster.

By combining their powers again, they killed the monster for good and completely removed it. But the spray of mud as it exploded hit one of them; it would absorb into his body and, over a period of time that lasted after the end of the mission and after their return to town, start to cause him to sprout mud tentacles and slowly transform into a mud monster himself. This was eventually cured after very silly and occasionally inappropriate adventures post-mission.

The flow of mud stopped upstairs with the end of the monster, and it dropped a broken axe. Retrocognition revealed that the axe’s owner had tried to save himself with the same “merge with your axe” spell, but had failed, succumbed to the mud curse, and turned into the mud monster. Was the one that had originally infected him still around, or other unfortunate mud monsters? Probably.

They returned to the tunnel chamber and tried the centre-right tunnel next. Inside was scattered hair that attached to most of them and turned into beards, possessing them by the spirits of fallen dwarves. After a bunch of silly antics with their changed personalities, one of the explorers’ true personalities shone through enough to remember that he really hated facial hair, and he shaved his beard off on the spot. This cured his possession, and he proceeded to rescue everyone else by forcibly shaving them. Everybody swore to never mention this again.

A puzzle door sat ahead of them with the riddle, “Who can shave 25 times a day and still have a beard?” Answering “a barber” opened up an abandoned dwarven barber shop where they claimed a diamond axe -- another dwarf merged with his weapon, who had set the magic beard hair in front of the shop to protect him.

The final tunnel, centre left, was... normal. Filled with glittering gems, but no death traps, monsters, or magical properties aside from what normal gems have in Ellipsa. ...aside from 1 in 50 gems having weird curse effects, anything from light sensitivity to making people glow in the dark to bringing back the beard curse. Surely that would never lead to anything in the future.

The party returned to town to meet up with the two they’d sent ahead. Everyone reported all their findings to the guilds and the Research Centre, with Virion invited to the briefing as it concerned him. They all offered to remain on standby in case something new related to their investigation came up.

Northern Cold Sea
November 217

Under the cut

Otherworlders ran an experiment to see if the Mecha Hangar's mecha, which had been developed to explore the Segments but had been put under further development for almost three years after the first test was sabotaged, could take a Teleport Crystal and install it somewhere far out. The crystal was transported more easily than it could have been on foot, and they took the opportunity to test the machine's exploration abilities.

Abandoned Wizard Tower [Unreported for now]
November 217
This exploration is ongoing. A full description will come once complete.


Liar’s Mansion
November 217
CW/TW: enemies magically knowing things about PCs, transformation horror, human experimentation, PTSD flashbacks, decomposed body parts, character death, dismemberment

Under the cut

A large party entered the side yard of the Liar’s Mansion, where a deep pit lay with cracks in the ground spreading out for it and large glowing red crystals grew out from the ground. The red crystals gave an ominous aura, and one of the group tried to test one, but they decided not to take samples since they didn’t have anything secure enough to contain it. (Thankfully, too, as the crystals would grant any who touched them a red magic-nullifying gem, and while the power was useful, it would sap the user’s energy and eventually start activating on its own.)

They entered the house in three different groups using the door-creation skill twice and coming in through a broken window for the third group, as all the existing doors on the ground floor were locked.

The group coming in from the front entered a dusty empty room with multiple doors out as well as stairs up and down. In the distance, they heard a ticking clock, reminiscent of the haunted clock in the Abandoned Mansion. One member of the group found the source of the noise: a clock in a cupboard. The clock was alive, though, and tried to run away from them... slowly. (You try running when you’re a clock.)

Suddenly the house began to shake... and shift. The foyer they were in somehow transformed into a dance hall with a grand chandelier looming above them. The group freaked out, fearing that the chandelier would fall on them, but it remained stable; one of them took photos to document the new room.

The clock was still there and still slowly trying to escape down the stairs. The group caught it in an exceedingly silly slow-motion chase, and after communicating that they didn’t want to hurt it, they got it to relax. Gesturing as best a clock can, it seemed to urge them to take it downstairs. Since that was where they’d wanted to go anyway, they proceeded down.

In the basement was a completely white room with blinding light that seemed to go on forever. Upon observation, this greige influencer’s dream was actually an illusion created by mirrors and didn’t really go forever, and the clock pointed the group to what looked like a mirror but didn’t reflect anything. The other mirrors inside all looked strange, reflecting the explorers but not as they were; they may have been wearing different clothes or doing different poses. The clock wasn’t interested in those mirrors at all.

They approached the fake mirror and let the clock knock on it. It opened like a door and revealed a sad room of broken, neglected analog clocks. Winter’s repair skill fixed all the clocks, but as their clock companion realized sadly, this couldn’t bring them back to life; they were just ordinary clocks now. Some had nameplates with human names, such as a pair of similar-looking clocks labelled as Jonathan and Amelie Lebell. After one of the explorers gave their clock friend a comforting hug, the group checked it for a name (she had one: Lucy Faraway) and tried to ask her questions. With her limited cognition and movement in this form, she confirmed that she and the other clocks had once been human, and she seemed to be winding down, approaching the fate of her brethren.

With both Winter’s repair magic and mundane technological skill, they did their best to repair Lucy. She held on, her small mechanical heart glowing when her gears were exposed. She pointed weakly across the hall, where, when approached, a door appeared. When they opened the door, they found a dark laboratory with jars holding what seemed to have once been human body parts harvested from the other humans who’d been turned into clocks; Lucy’s name did not appear. The door closed behind them.

Just as the group prepared for a fight, the alarms went off throughout the mansion. A door opened and sent in a group of chimeric monsters: fusions of a Giant Yeti with a Firebird, a Stone Guardian with a Lava Lizard, a Killer Crab with a Shadow Moth, and a Treanpire with an Ice Maiden, determined to kill any intruders.

Using a stun spell to buy time, the party blasted open a hole in a wall, finding another room just like it; every destroyed wall would just lead to another room. The fusions seemed to be mostly targeting Lucy and the person holding her, true to the “destroy the evidence” alarm. One of the explorers sent an SOS in the group chat, and they continued to hold their own against the monsters and search for an exit.

The stairs were gone thanks to the changes to the building, and blasting a hole into the ceiling took longer than the floor, but they managed to get one through to get back up. The Treanpire/Ice Maiden (Tree Maiden?) spread icy tendrils to trip up the group; one of the explorers stood up to protect the others, and the ice branches sliced off one of his arms. He responded with a berserker rage, shooting at all the enemies. The one who’d been protecting Lucy held her own, but eventually lost her life as well to the fusions, with one of the explorers coming downstairs as backup only arriving just in time to see his companion die.

The group coming in from the back ended up in the kitchen, where everything looked old, covered in dust and cobwebs from disuse... except, for some reason, the shiny new knives. They immediately decided to check the fridge, which contained a half-eaten sandwich, a container full of mould that might have once been food, and a fresh, pristine bottle of pop.

Suddenly the house began to shake... and shift. The kitchen they were in somehow transformed into a dining hall with a table set and food laid out (though the open refrigerator remained unchanged). The explorers stole all the food, including the gross stuff in the fridge, stuffing it all into a Hammerspace Purse. The food all immediately regenerated once taken. The cupboards were likewise stocked with oddly new and polished cutlery. One of the explorers ate the food, which was laced with a potion that made her incapable of telling the truth for the next 5-10 minutes (and which also gave her mild food poisoning; weird spacetime magic or not, it had been sitting out for 17 years).

From the dining room led a locked door going outside, two obvious doors (one going east leading upstairs, one west leading downstairs), and a hidden door behind the refrigerator that, when using enhanced senses from an animal shift, smelled faintly of perfume. Moving the fridge out of the way, they opened the door and were awash in the scent of flowers... carnivorous flowers, that is, which started to spread past the two who freed them and expand through the mansion.

The explorers tried to fight them to keep them from getting at their friends on the other floors. Being attacked by their saviours prompted the plants to fight back with corrosive acid and prehensile vines that grew back when cut. Fire and ice magic worked to cut back the plants, which revealed a core “mother” plant at the centre. Though the upstairs group was too preoccupied with the Scientist’s latest mind attack to communicate that this plant was another victim, the two fighting the plant froze her in place to restrain her. Her acid corroded the ice, though, and they were forced to kill her. The strong floral scent faded from the room.

With that done, they could see that the room was full of terraria with regular plants inside, as well as bottles of perfume. They searched the terraria for clues, but then alarms went off through the entire mansion. Perfume bottles were knocked off the shelves and broke, letting out toxic fumes that caused the explorers to hallucinate their enemies, feel random pains, and sluggishly slow down. They managed to escape the room and make their way upstairs, since the illusions hiding the true nature of the mansion had broken.

The two using the broken window found that the second floor looked much like the first did. The stairs going down didn’t look like they led anywhere, even though logically they should have led down to the first floor where the first group came in. There were four doors leading in different directions, including one that looked like it went outside, but that door didn’t exist on the outside of the building. They decided to open each of the four doors going clockwise to see what happened.

They didn’t even get that far. Opening the first door on their left caused the entire rest of the house to shake and all the rooms to transform into different rooms. Messages from the party group chat told them of the foyer and kitchen turning into a ballroom and dining room. For them, though, there wasn’t any change and there was just a wall behind the door they’d opened. Using the retrocognition skill on the wall and door didn’t yield any answers, but opened the person using it up to a mental attack that felt like an electric shock. He fainted then and there, and his companion warned the others through the group chat. Once he recovered, he felt disoriented, and touching him would give off small electric shocks for the remainder of the mission.

They opened the next door, which actually led out to a real door they’d observed, one out onto the second-floor balcony. Stepping out onto it, though, triggered two effects: the door caught fire (but the fire was actually harmless) and flowers started blooming on the railings (which gave off pollen that threw off people’s balance). One of them was safe, wearing a protective mech suit, but the other, who was still recovering from the mind shock, had to be pulled away to keep from breathing too much of it in.

Trying the next door led to a normal-looking study filled with books and documents. Just like the kitchen and dining room, most of the things in here looked properly like they’d been abandoned for years, but on the desk in the centre were seven fresh folders, exactly the number of explorers in the full party.

Each folder had an unnerving amount of information about each otherworlder in the mansion, from real names (though one was oddly magically redacted) to vital statistics to mental weaknesses and one lie each had told in the past. The injured otherworlder, still disoriented from the shock and viewing the world askew from what pollen he’d breathed in, urged his companion to keep his file but destroy the rest. She tried to burn them, but the files all regenerated and her own was magically edited to call her a pyromaniac. Thoroughly freaked out, they just stuffed them all in a bag.

That done, they checked out any other files they could find in the study. The old files started out empty, but soon began to generate descriptions of group one finding the clock graveyard and group two fighting the plants. A search for the names belonging to the human clocks turned up a file on a “time experiment,” where 15-year-old Lucy Faraway was the sole survivor of an experiment that turned captives from Sunsprout City into clocks; while she still transformed, she was going out of order slower than the others, and so hadn’t yet wound down and died. They also found a file on a “plant experiment” where its own last survivor, Charlotte Brunsfield, had “shown excellent development in growing plant life” but was locked in the room behind the refrigerator when the researchers couldn’t keep control of her.

With the description of horrific experiments intertwined with the head researcher leaving personal notes about who her captives were before what she put them through, it was no surprise when using retrocognition on one of the files showed the Scientist standing with another person in a long cloak. This time she’d been prepared, lacing the files with another mental attack. The already injured person who’d tried the skill felt like she was looking right at him before the memory cut off and his head felt like it was burning, filling with all the pain and negative memories in his life, which transferred onto the pages of his personal file. His companion quickly got him out onto the balcony, where the flower trap had deactivated and he could rest outside in the fresh air.

That left only one person exploring upstairs. She noticed that Lucy’s file was starting to fade in and out, but was more stable as the downstairs group fixed her up. With only one door left, she opened that last door. The mansion shook again, but this time, instead of everything else changing, the upstairs changed. The study, door to the wall, and balcony disappeared entirely, and the entire upstairs was now a laboratory with person-sized pods, some destroyed from the inside and some intact. Each pod was labelled with either the name of a victim of the time and plant experiments or the name of one of the explorers. The injured otherworlder who’d been resting on the balcony had been moved into the pod with his name on it.

The other explorer froze in horror, remembering her own past and trauma similar to what the test subjects had gone through. Recovering slowly and seeing his companion triggered, the injured one forced himself to draw what he’d seen of the Scientist and the cloaked person. He found scraps of paper that he stashed in his Hammerspace Purse with the files. Right then, the main-floor group killed the mother plant that had been Charlotte Brunsfield, and the text in her file faded away.

Beside his pod was a suspiciously tempting big red button. The two explorers in the room fought about whether pressing it was a good idea, but the one in the pod overpowered his companion, threw a shield up around the two of them to guard them from any fallout, and pressed the button.

Right away, alarms blared throughout the mansion. Nothing else happened at first, as the alarm was meant to prompt personnel to evacuate, but then a shockwave from the pod actually pierced through the shield. It detonated all the pods and ripped through the entire mansion, destroying the roof and the whole second floor. The one who hit the button threw himself on his companion as a human shield, and while he was killed in the blast, she was knocked out but survived.

This, it seemed, was the “destroy the evidence, cops and/or the guilds found our deadly human experiments!” button.

The group who’d been exploring the main floor found their way upstairs to find one of their friends unconscious, the other missing as enough time had elapsed since his death that his body had vanished. When an SOS came through in the group chat from the basement, they split up, one going down to save the basement group and the other to heal her battered, unconscious girlfriend and call the guilds for help.

The guilds contracted dragons to get their leadership to the mansion in record time. Jade evacuated the two on what was left of the top floor and healed their wounds. Olwen headed to the main floor and used his freeze-movement and ice powers to stop the fusions, Dawn came with him to evacuate the other survivors, with Sawyer sealing the fusion monsters behind a wall made from the stone and wood of the house. The power holders united to throw up a barrier around the Liar’s Mansion to keep the monsters from escaping out into the world, and the dragons took the group back to the city.

With the damage sustained in the fight, while her protector had done her best, Lucy Faraway had broken and her time ran out. She was now, like the others, just another broken clock.

---

Event #8 information gathering
Library event


Diary Snippets

More Personal accounts

"I safely arrived to this world. It's all new and weird. I'm not the only one either, which is both interesting and rather infuriating. None of them are people I know, but two of them seem to be in close contact with one another. None of us have gained these seasonal powers, but held onto our own ones, or so they say. I have no way of knowing if they're telling the truth.

I could probably run some very interesting tests on this world. Perhaps I should consider it my pet project while I'm stuck here. I already have so many interesting ideas. What would happen if someone tried to receive blessings from multiple seasons? Could one get them all? All very, very fascinating.

- The Scientist"

"Darkness is pure. It's made of the souls of power holders, refusing to depart this world. We should not fear the Darkness as it's out loved ones' embrace. Feel the Darkness, let them talk to you. Hear their whispers and wishes. That may be key to understanding. Set the darkness free and let our loved ones do what's right for the world. beComE oNE oF Us. The worshippers or darknesssss. Destroyyyy the barrier. Joiiinnn ussssss. [Text becomes even harder and harder to read at this point.]"

---

Darkness

Of the Darkness and dark energy

• The Darkness from before was made up of the souls of power holders who died under bad conditions and were left with regrets. Their grudges and desire to still live on left them in the world and started corrupting the areas around them. This particular piece of information as never published due to the fear of upsetting people too much.

• Someone was exposed to a lot of Dark Energy, due to Darkness-corrupted monsters ganging up on him. By some sort of miracle, he survived the attack and seemed to be fine, but then he himself was partially corrupted by the energy. Half of his body turned into a pure dark creature with fangs and claws sharper than knives. He was still control of his body, but in agony, and begged to be put down before he would kill someone. After that people have been exposed to the dark energy, but it takes a lot to be turned into something similar.

• The origin of dark energy dates back to before 'Darkness' of any kind was formed. The first 'versions' of it were a product of negative human emotions and it was enough to corrupt plants and small creatures. It was only after the souls of the dead power holders joined in that it started corrupting larger, more powerful creatures. It even started affecting magic, making it weaker. The only thing that stands against it is the Seasonal Abilities. We're quite sure it's because of the power holder souls.

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Dragons

Dragons, after all

• Dragons have existed in Ellipsa a hundred years ago. They vanished before the Darkness came, for reasons unknown. They were last seen in the skies of the Winter Segment. Those who still remember dragons (from stories their grandparents might have told them) don't speak about them because it's painful to have lost their grace and their magic.

• All of the Seasons have their own signature dragon that controls a certain element, linked to the season. It has been rumored that Seasonal abilities are a blessing from the dragons, but no one has been able to confirm that. The book also has images of different dragons of different shapes and sizes, such as one that looks like a dragonfly more than a dragon or a giant skyscraper dragon.

• First weapons and armors were made from dragon scales and nails, donated by the dragonkind. They wanted people to be able to protect themselves even without them around, so they made sure to always give "all extra" to them. Some of the very old folk may still have peculiar looking armor beneath their clothes that are most certainly made from scales.

• There is a cult that actually believes dragons are gods that have descended from above to guide them. They believe in it so much that always get down on their knees before them, as a sign of respect. Most dragons find this a little awkward, but some play along, as if not to hurt their feelings. The cult believes that the end of the world is close at hand due to dragons no longer blessing and protecting them and continue to pray for their return somewhere.

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Geography/History

Places and Knowledge lost

• There used to exist more safe places to live like Nightwake all around the Segments. However, due to the efforts being concentrated on Nightwake, most people chose to abandon their villages and move to where others were settled, leaving them unguarded.

• Temple of Life has a counterpart; the Temple of Death. They're very similar, as no one knows what exists inside the Temple of Death - no one has dared to open the door because of the temple's name.

• Crystal Mines existed in the Autumn Segment. Before the Darkness came, multiple different races of dwarfs worked there and protected the place. To become a miner in these mines always meant someone had to go through the dwarf trials to be proven worthy.

• The crater in the middle of the Bamboo Labyrinth leads to an underground lake, full of golden and silver fish that bring fortune to those who capture them.

• There exists a village somewhere in Autumn Segment woods where a species of intelligent frogs live and learn the art of ninjutsu. They have lived and survived there for generations and occasionally appear to help people in need, as they constantly watch people from the shadows.

• The Forest of Spirits used to be a gateway to the Forest of the Lost Souls, but ever since the Darkness it was sealed by the spirits wandering the forest. The Forest of the Lost Souls is a place where anyone can meet their lost loved one and spend a healing moment with them whenever they feel like they need it. The Forest of Spirits can only mimic a fraction of that by bringing forth illusions of someone's home.

• There used to be an actual amusement park in the Autumn Segment, but it was abandoned due to spirits and ghosts possessing the rides; apparently building such thing upset the natural spirits of the world. The ruins were lost to the Darkness.

• In the Forest of Courage, south of the Great Tree of Death, one can find a tree that has several marks of the ninja carved into it. Reciting the right words (carved onto the tree, written in a code language) will open a portal to a village hidden. Despite being in the Autumn Segment, the village is bright and has natural greenery all over... but it's also meant for small people. Frogs, to be exact. The biggest frogs are size of a small child. They can use ninjutsu to make visitors their size, however.

• There used to be a city called the Sunsprout City that shut its doors to all outsiders. The city was between the Lower Great ocean Lake and a big Savannah. Not much is known about the community, except that they seemed to live far longer than normal people and occasionally one might have arrived in other villages to scout for new members to move into the city.

• Fairy Kingdom is located in the Spring Section, further north from the Cherry Blossom Parks. It's even bigger than Nightwake. In fact, it's the biggest settlement in the area currently explored of the world. The second biggest settlement is the Survival Fortress, home to the Northern Pirates. After that it's finally Nightwake.

• There exists a kingdom with humans, under the Flowing Woods of the Autumn Segment. The king and queen work closely with the forest elves and in return the knights protect the woods from monsters. It's a harmonious place, where anyone can visit, as long as they promise to respect nature. It's also a great place to get delicious apples and pumpkins.

• Somewhere on Ellipsa lies a legendary valley. It's hidden under magic, in a regular valley. It's said that only those of the purest hearts and intentions can find the hidden valley and enter, as it's a place full of purest form of magic: love. Those who have visited the valley are few, but all of them say that a power unlike any other coursed through them and they understood, at that moment, what love meant for them - making magic easier to control and come to them as natural as breathing. There are records of a place opposite to the place existing, and finding it would cause [this section has been torn of].

• Valley of the Wind was a prosperous village in the Spring Segment. The best grains came from there, as the place was perfect for mills to work with ease. The bread made from the flour made in the village was most divine thing. It was also the place where people invented different kinds of flying-related inventions and produced. The Winged Mounts usually frequented the valley as well, playing with the children and acting as couriers for the produce.

• The river around the city used to be a hot spot for fishing and finding a fresh source of water. It started showing signs of change when dark energy was discovered and eventually it was the first "victim" of the energy, turning the river completely into something that saps energy. Scientists have yet to find a way to reverse the effects.

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Magic

Magic is Everywhere

• All magic is more powerful when used together with someone. Even two power holders using their powers together is stronger than individual attacks done at the same target. The more trust between the people using seasonal abilities or magic, the stronger the power is.

• Whenever you're in a bad situation, it might be the greatest idea to kiss someone. Kisses have mysterious powers, all positive in their nature. Some say they can even cure someone who was turned to stone by monsters. It's confirmed that kissing someone under a sleeping curse will always wake them up - unless it's the True Love's curse, which means they need to be kissed by the love of their life.

• There exists a magic of dance that let's someone pass through impossible environments, such as lava, water or even empty gaps between platforms. As long as the person has an area in mind they want to cross to, they can apply the magic to cross the distance. The magic protects the user from harm - or from falling.

• All magic has different colors, even if they're not usually seen by the naked eye. These colors are usually determined by the feelings of the user at the time. With right enchantments, it's possible to see the color and know what the person using the magic might be feeling. This applies even to monsters, which might lead to better understanding their reasons for attacking us.

• There used to exist a way to enhance items without needing to use worded spells or good feelings. These methods dealt with making mixed powders of different flowers and herbs and sprinkling them onto the items under moonlit nights. There were festivals designed for this very purpose. However, once people learned new ways, these old ways were forgotten. Wizard's who were disappointed in abandoning these ways sealed the recipes away into the Wizard's Tower on Autumn Segment.

• While every native in Ellipsa is able to use magic, not many have the right genes to become masters of it. These masters, witches and wizards, have proven to be different; much like the power holders are. None of the seasonal power holders have ever been witches or wizards. It's a strong theory that those with genes to become witches and wizards have elven ancestors, while power holders may have had [this part has been ripped off by someone].

• (CW/TW: blood things) There exists a magic that was forbidden to use by anyone. This was called blood magic: the ability to control blood of yourself and others. A certain ritual needed to be done to gain access to this magic, but this ritual was sometimes fatal to whoever participated in it. Mostly because those who unlocked blood magic sometimes went berserk and drained everyone out of their blood. It's said there are still ghosts that suck blood out of people, who are the ghosts of those gone through the ritual as all of them were hunted down and killed.

• Those who bath in the crescent moon lake, under the crescent moonlight, are said to be blessed with youth. The lake has a magical effect that will help one's body relax and become a less stiff. If only it weren't so far from the city.

• There is magic behind touches, as long as they have some kind of an intention behind them. Just placing a hand on someone's shoulder and thinking you need to comfort them has magic that will actually make someone feel better. However, the same can be said about touch with ill intentions. Someone who loathes another may very well cause even permanent damage to someone just by touching and feeling these feelings. While the effects are more 'mental' than 'physical', the ill-meant touches may feel like they affect the whole package.

• Magic has always been considered a part of the world. Even before humans were able to control it, several other races could. Eventually they learned, through studying and practice. Children started to be born with natural talent for magic. Anyone who was open for the idea could learn magic and it was the one thing that bound all living things together in one way or another. Hence any imbalance in magic could easily break those bonds apart. Which it eventually did, as people started being afraid and mistrusting of the greater powers they could not learn to control.

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Misc. Information

I promise to sort these out one day

• The magic in the world is so strong that it can repair places back to their former glory surprisingly fast. If a forest burns a new one will grow in a month's time, as an example. However, some damages need help from others to heal, especially if it was done by people instead of happening naturally.

• Technology wasn't native to Ellipsa. It was discovered when magic helped the world to gather information from other worlds. After that the ones interested in technology started advancing rapidly. The technological advancements were focused on Nightwake in general, but the plan had always been to distribute them to other villages once they were tested to be safe for Segments' sometimes unpredictable weather.

• There are eight wonders in Ellipsa. Each Segment has two unexplainable phenomena. Summer has golden waterfalls in the Jungle of Judgement and a flaming grassland. Autumn has the Silent Mountain and the giant shipwreck. Winter has a bridge that shows visions of loved ones and the iceberg in the middle of snow. Spring has the One Very Big Tree and the crescent moon lake. (Some of these locations have been lost the Darkness)

• I think, therefore I am. Never say this out loud near a group of ghosts or they will start thinking they're you and take your form, perhaps even your body. Spoken from true experience. If you see multiple ghosts going by the name of Sir Price, exorcise them for me, please.

• Somewhere inside the mountains in the Winter Segment lies a flower field full of magical flowers made of glass. They absorb the moonlight and can act as weapons to purify curses and things corrupted by the darkness. It's not something that can completely fight the darkness away, but they help when creatures are overpowering.

• Moonstone crystals can be grinded into a powder that acts as a natural seasoning to any food. It will automatically choose a flavor that fits the ingredients. However, using too much Moonstone powder will result in becoming reliant on moonlight to say energetic and healthy.

• There used to be a group of people who believed all of the Seasons had a God. They believed that making offerings for them would help to keep them at peace and that the natural catastrophes were a sign of their ire. No one was, however, able to confirm their existence or find any even more ancient text about such gods existing.

• Magic is constantly gathering new information from other worlds. That's why sometimes new cultures or traditions may pop up or new trends (albeit sometimes really backdated) become viral. It's also how new leaps in science and technology happen.

• Most of the fauna and flora used to be dangerous for natives to eat. However, with magic and potions, people were able to adapt and become more resilient to them. However, as they learned how to cultivate their own foods, they stopped trying to build resistance for new things.

• Blessed Seaweed harvested from the Great Ocean Lake is one of the healthiest foods in the world. Eaten just one raw seaweed a day will give you all the important nutrients you need in a day and you can eat whatever else you want the rest of the day. The problem is that the seaweed in question is 2 metres / 6.5 feet tall and it needs to be eaten fully - and raw.

• Ellipsan calendar used to be different. There were only eight months, two for each season. Each month had 60 days and a week had 10 days. These months were named after seasonal constellations: Northern Sword & Amethyst Seal for Winter, Diamond Tiger & Large Sapling for Spring, Caracal Minor & Southern Gate for Summer, Maroon Raccoon & Big Maze for Autumn. For simplicity, they were usually shortened to one word (such as Sword, Seal, etc.) The days were simply just called One to sixty and weeks were called from first to sixth. So one full date would have been: Day one of the first week of Caracal Minor. As knowledge of other worlds started to flow in, they took a different calendar and adapted to it instead, as all the old calendars were lost in the tragedy.

• First signs of technology were discovered in the Deserter's Desert. It seemed to be some kind of a giant treasure box, locked with different technology-made locks. Before anyone could go check it out, it was buried under all the sand and no one has seen it since. Some even claim it was just an illusion.

• It's said that every creature on Ellipsa has at least one 'unicorn' in existence. These rare beings are always magical and posses powers of healing nature. Corrupted 'unicorns', however, do the exact opposite. Finding one is very hard, but it's said that they especially like basking in the full moon's light. Those who see these unique creatures will also get a blessing of great fortune (anything that requires luck has a 90% chance of succeeding).

• Making a weapon out of three specific metals will result in a very powerful weapon. Two of the three metals are easy to find, as they're common in weapons made in Nightwake: High Carbon Steel and Magic-infused Silver (it helps with making weapons easier to use with seasonal magic). The third metal, however, is a mythical Blood Metal, only found in the deepest levels of the highly dangerous Wolf's Blood Mountain. Using these three metals will result in a weapon that can shoot crimson light slashes out of it, capable of cutting through things like a sword would but from a distance. Using Blood Metal on its own will make weapons very sharp and red-colored.

• Around the same time every month (at the end of it) a weird sound can be heard from the Silent Mountains. Which should be impossible, considering all sounds should be gone from there, but there have been multiple reports of this happening every single month. The sound is close to human cry, but not quite. It's difficult to discern what it truly is.

• Before people started using horses as primary mounts, they used bears. Each season favored a certain bear: winter has polar bears, spring had giant panda (bears), summer had brown bears and autumn had grizzly bears. Summer was the first move to horses as bears due to them being a little too hot to ride with all the fur and eventually, people found horses to be a little faster and more obedient. Some bears still like people, however, and sometimes even seek their company.

• Scholars at the City of Lost Memories practice alchemy. It's potion making as we know it has taken its inspiration from alchemy, but has left out significant parts of it such as [messed up text unable to read at all, goes on for a long time]. Practicing such things outside the city is very dangerous and forbidden.

• There used to be an actual wedding tradition on Ellipsa that has been forgotten a long time ago. It involved having a power holder from all of the seasons present and performing a special magic of elemental blessing. All four main elements were cast above the couple and they collided, breaking apart into dust and raining on them. This blessing will ensure a long-lasting relationship, blessed by the elements.

• There are plants that only live on magical energy. They can grow anywhere, on any surface and in any climate. When exposed to large amounts of magic they grow into plants taller than buildings and they won't stop growing unless cut down. These plants are most commonly found underground spaces, as innocent looking ferns that seem to lime the dark climate. They grow into plants that somehow symbolize the first magical energy they absorb.

• There used to be a mayor in all of the districts in Nightwake. All of them would gather in the central district to discuss the future developments of the city as a whole and make important decisions together. However, after a series of conflicts between ideals, they decided to appoint on neutral mayor, who would always have the final say: the one in Nightwake. [Inspecting about this will lead to learning that after the Tragedy, all other mayors quit their positions (too stressful or too many lost family members) and only the one in Nightwake Center remained. However, he takes advice from power holders etc.]

• Killing someone who has been transformed into a monster is not considered a crime, even if they would seem to be in control of themselves. The city takes no risks in the people transformed eventually losing themselves and attacking the normal people. We also consider it mercy, as who would actually want to spend rest of their lives as a monster. [If asked from locals, no one remembers this law being a thing in Nightwake and it certainly isn't currently.]

• There has never been a need for a military in Ellipsa, but we have been very close to having them. The Sunsprout City in Summer Segment was built of warriors who believed having an army would do great things for defenses. Most of the other settlements did not share their vision, saying that just having power holders to defend them from monsters was more than enough. Yet, rumor has it that the human Kingdom in the Flowed Woods started preparing their knights in a military like manner "just in case".

• Once upon a time there was a kind princess living in the elven kingdom. She was admired by everyone. However, someone wanted her for the power she held, so she was hidden in a tower far away. Then the Darkness came and the princess is still hidden away.

• Those touched by the Ice Phoenix are known to rise to do great things. Their lives are bound to the phoenix and whenever a chosen one dies, the phoenix appears once again to find its next chosen one. Instead of rising from ashes like a regular phoenix, the Ice Phoenix rises from the ice cold water, transforming in the air surrounded by icicles. This always happened at the Frozen Lake that used to open up everytime it was time for the phoenix to wake up again.

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Other (new and old) races

Fairies, elves and others, oh my

• There exists a world above the clouds that's full of different races who talk our language. They're animal tribes, who act like humans but look like animals. The Winged Mounts come from said place, but only those who receive a blessing from an ancient tree (currently lost to Darkness) can reach the clouds.

• Vampires used to exist in the Autumn Segment. They were almost hunted into extinction by evil researchers since they wanted the secret to immortality ... and good looks. Every vampire has an unexplainable charm.

• It's possible for a Fairy and a Human to have a child. This child is called a half-fairy, who possesses fairy-like magic. It's usually impossible to recognize someone as one, unless they use magic in front of someone.

• Fae are just fairies who craved more power than they were gifted, abandoning their fairy names. It is said those who learn a fae's true name can turn them back into fairies, should the fae desire it.

• Elves existed on Ellipsa several hundred years ago. They lived in the forests and in the mountains. No one has seen an elf after the Darkness came, but most of them could mask their ears and unnatural eyes to pass as a human.

• Elves have a medicine that's a cure-all. I had the honor or staying with them and they nursed me back to health with just one potion. I had several conditions back then, such as a fever, a few critical injuries and even poison in my system. But just one medicine was able to heal them all. All I can say that it tasted really creamy somehow, but I have no idea what was in it.

• Mermaids and sirens used to rule the Great Ocean Lake together. However, after one the mermaids killed the leading siren's son, a war broke out and things have never been the same since. History seems to claim that the war was caused by siren's greed, but most of the old mermaids should know the truth and have been silent. The newest generations have no idea of the bloody history.

• Dark creatures lie in a dimension different from ours. We call this dimension Inferno. Those well versed in magic are able to summon the creatures from within the dimension, but it can also be accessed through dimensional portals. Dark creatures, in this case, are mostly different kinds of demons and unexplainable dark monsters. And also void cats. When they first came to Ellipsa they were terrifying creatures that ate all light they found, but most of them adapted to their environment and became more cat-like creatures. They still have the potential to become monsters, but usually don't bother to (but still eat light).

• Some monsters are shapeshifters and can turn into any kind of creature they see. A lot of them pretend to be like the creatures, mostly to spy habits and best ways to eventually attack the community from the outside. As people, they can even mimic speech. It's very hard to tell that they're not what they pretend to be.

• After the dragons disappeared and their scales and nails couldn't be used for weapons anymore, people started looking for alternatives. At first it was similar scales from hunted game and bones, but eventually people found out it was easy to use anything as long as you could enhance it with magic. That's why there are still weapons such as sturdy sunflowers. They actually cut things, believe it or not.

• Losing the kingdom in the Autumn Segment was a loss of variety of weapons and knowledge on how to use them. Even if they never attacked anyone, they were nervous enough to prepare an army for possible attacks from other settlements. That's why it became mandatory for every knight of the kingdom to also study warfare.

• This is mostly a rumor, but Riki might be a Warlock from another world other than Ellipsa. There's no real records of his past and the items he can sometimes come up with aren't exactly normal.

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Seasonal Powers

Spill the tea on seasonal powers

• Just like the Winter Power Holders are able to use the power of the moon, the Summer users used to be able to use the power of the sun. This was, however, deemed too dangerous for the users, so it was later banned from being taught to anyone and then the skill was forgotten.

• In ancient times, winter power holders were usually classified as Exorcists, due to their powers to see and communicate with ghosts and spirits - and even exorcise them. In turn, summer power holders were their knights, protecting the winters from other sorts of harm whenever they were out exorcising haunted places. Winter power holders are still called upon to help with matters of the dead, but the tradition has slowly died down. Otherwise exorcising spirits takes several hours or rituals and the right conditions to do, such as the festival held in October and November in Nightwake.

• Much like summer and winter power holders worked together, spring and autumn power holders did as well. Spring ones used to be dedicated healers, who also purified toxins and curses out of the nature, and grew new plant life, while autumn ones helped by restoring the earth and protecting the spring power holders on their journeys. These traditions have long since been forgotten, even if each power holder works indepently to aid the world to their best ability.

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Cursed Knowledge (cw/tw: it gets dark here)

This gets cursed

• The Great Tree of Death is actually made of multiple people who opened a very magical box. This box held a curse that bind them all together and eventually made them into the tree. No one remembers their names or their stories, but it's believed they're still alive and spread the pain they're constantly feeling on others with their visions gifted by the curse.

• Before graveyards were made, people were buried under beautiful trees in the Spring Segment. There trees were the ones in the Cherry Blossom Park. Out of the soil the cherry blossoms got magical properties that even now heal ailments. However, the soil also attracts monsters, who wish to keep the soil enriched - even by dragging people who are still alive to bury them six feet under.

• A Kraken has been sealed in the Great Ocean Lake, that's able to eat something as big as an elephant with one bite. As long as its tentacles remain bound by the enchanted stones, it can't escape, but as time goes by, the angrier it gets and it will fight against the binds even harder.

• Under the abandoned farms lies a creature of horror. It's a being that could easily devour a whale whole. It was sealed away and is even now guarded by the sentient vegetables that live on the farm, making sure no one accidentally sets it free. [A picture is attached of a very gory looking slime that seems to be made out of blood. It has four sets of eyes and a the note under the picture says it's much bigger than the space allows it to be.]

• It's scientifically possible to combine a human with anything else found from Ellipsa. My research, now wrongfully shut down, shows that anyone could become a better version of themselves just by a few experiments. We could survive without seasonal powers! Become enhanced humans! But the leaders of the world shun my scientific progress and refuse to let me continue my tests. If they won't support me, I will do it without their help. They will be sorry when they realize what they missed out on.

• (cw/tw: dismemberment, gore) The pirates used to have a 'sport' called 'Hostage Hustle', which included using civilian hostages as game tools. This meant things as gross as cutting of their feet and using them as balls or attaching them onto some robe and dragging them around in contests of strengths, in the middle of snow and ice. Many bodies were found near their settlement in the Winter Segment that were in horrible shape. They did not care for the lives of their hostages and used them as they pleased, even if someone came to pay them a ransom for them.

code bases by tricklet