Vaehran - see Castle Vaehraun.
Van der Rohe, Twilight (Geoff) - member of the Pegasus Corps on Vorn. Hir first mission was the Temple of Friendship mission. S/he also went to the Fire Dwarven Necromantic Research facility where hir adventures seem to have ended at the hands of a caustic undead monster.
Vanup, Shudar (NPC) - Vornish tribal gnomish chief. The wisest of
the Shudars, if one of the poorest, he sent his own son, Han-gar, with the
Sword Group to learn. See Shudarates.
Varini, Giacomo Irata (Ben) Surface gnomish male. Writer wanderer and Thoreauvian.
V'Edma (Lisa) - sorceress who was working with Lantelle Svorak in a
magical maze having just escaped Luke's camp and an Eck/undead attack on 29
Nov. 10037. On Dec. 10th, she was captured and on the 14th, she arrived at
Ayer's Rock. On the 26th she was tortured...
Venosa roots - red-brown plants from northern Vyrica and the
Republic that grow quickly and is very nourishing. Only perfectly ripe
roots can be used as a spell component.
Ventrooms - large 2ft diameter white mushrooms with red spots and
demanding soil requirements. Component for ?
Verteux - area of Ilico near the base of the Sprines, inhabited
largely by hobbits. "Major" cities: River City, Trade City. Areas of
interest: Verteux Cave Complex, ? River.
Veridian, Iana (Ben) Human female. College student, physomancer. Presumed dead on India.
Verteux Cave Complex - also known as the Gnomish Fortress for
fund-raising purposes - found by the Verteux Loonies while pursuing Orson's
Gold. Along the little western tributary of the river [name?] was a series
of three shallow depressions (graves) and beyond them a circular, rocky
depression. To the right was a large pile of rocks, to the left was a
grave of some kind, and down the middle between them was a well-worn foot
trail leading down into the ravine. There was also a fairly obvious,
ill-maintained trap door. The area clearly saw a fair bit of gnomish
traffic. Going down through the trap door is a small cave system with
about two levels, a couple of decrepit stairways (one of which collapsed
causing great irritation and a couple of bruised botties). The most
interesting thing was that one of the rooms seemed to be an indoor pool,
compleat with some brightly coloured fish. Upon scooping out enough of the
water with barrels and dumping it outside, there was revealed a passage
which led to another similar room. Excavating the graves aboveground
revealed the remains of dead gnomes (in gnomish graves-- amazing!), and a
pipe buried underground which seemed to lead from the river in the
direction of the cave system. Examining the river bank in the area where
the pipe ought to come out showed that it was in fact there, but it was all
silted over and could not have been in use anytime recently. So they
didn't bother sabotaging it. [Perhaps it had been used to flood the
caves?]
Concerning a return trip to the complex, Gabrielle Monsoir recalled, "We
found lots of damage to the caves in general--wooden floors crashed
through, various places were it looked like there had been a cave-in, and
so on. It was like bumbling parties of adventurers had visitated this
thing before. Indeed, Yanni seemed deeply troubled by deja vu phenomena.
Equally eerie, he excavated a partially buried skeleton to reveal a single
boot with a key hidden in it - the sort that would open a treasure chest as
opposed to a door. Deeper inside the cave we found a room with more
skeletons, and also a small three-by-three foot cage (empty). Yanni opened
the lock, although I couldn't see whether he used that key he had found or
whether he picked it. In any case, it was empty; its only relevance seemed
to be its value as a clue. Not that any of us would know what to do with a
clue if it marched right up, introduced itself, honked our noses, and sang
anthems while bouncing merrily upon its ugly spotty butt."
Verteux Loonies - adventuring group led by The Pat originally out of
River City. Party has leads there for treasure and possibly a portal
(what?!?) in the Verteux.
Known or suspected members: Delver Astro Aloha of Trantor, Erskin,
Geriatric Galakowitz, Horatio, Jack, Michigan Militia, Gabrielle Monsoir,
Zhen Otdel, Yello Pages, The Pat, Pavel , Pilfer Stunkfellow-Stroup, Dry
Wall, Yanni,
Based loosely on the journal of Gabrielle Monsoir and the singularly
unreliable, if entertaining, recollections of The Pat: "The first of
October 10039 was to have been a day like any other. I had elected to
spend it at my favourite new tavern, The Gibbering Idiot where I was
prepared for another day of nothing-in-particular with my pal, Yanni.
Today's round of strangers was a real prize winner. First there was some
guy named Delver carrying a map of the world with a huge Gnockagon
inscribed all over it, who kept insisting that he was a Traitor. There was
also a rather willowy girl who claimed to be a fortune teller named Zhen,
and a bloke named Horatio Erskin (?) who was accompanied by a Dorc named
Pavel, an entomologist who seemed to be rather anxious not to be found out.
But far and away the wierdest was a fellow in a big stupid-looking
reflective mask, who claimed that some people called him "The Pat". This
fellow was unquestionably a few toes short of a kick in the pants. He
traveled in with a little fellow who seemed to act as his seeing-eye dog,
as well as hearing-ear and thinking-brain. He called himself "Yellow",
although he hardly looked jaundiced. But then, parents often name their
children the wrong thing.
Such a bizarre lot can only add up to one thing: an adventuring group.
Therefore, it was with an air of destiny that a young Hobbling named Drogo
came in and entreated The Looney ("Are you a Knight?") to help him search
out his missing uncle. We set out with young Drogo the next morning to
meet his father, Drogo, and his eight hundred brothers, sisters, uncles,
aunts, and whatnot. They explained to us that the boy's uncle, Orson, had
been the looney of the family (Oh, fickle moon!). Orson apparently had
left the family fold and consorted with Orcs, Gnocks, Elves, Humans, and
anything else that amused him. He talked about having great treasure, but
would not reveal to anyone the nature of what he had found. Then, one day,
a bird came bringing a message signed by Orson. However, by the time we
got there, the writing had all disappeared from the paper. Luckily, Drogo
sort of remembered what had been on it, and he and The Looney collaborated
to reproduce the drawings, if not the text. (See Orson's Gold.)
So, we had practically nothing to go on, but that didn't bother us. We
set out East along the river, toward the southern Sprines, ready for
action. We travelled for two or three days without incident, but the third
night was our first test. The excitement began during the first watch,
which Yanni and Gabrielle had taken, when we were attacked by two or three
gnocks, who used the blinding goop trick. Once we managed to get fighting,
we drove off all but one.
The next day, a sunny October 5th, we searched the belongings of our
assailants, we found food, mundane camping stuff, feathers which seemed
like they might belong to the same sort of bird which had been used by
Orson as a messenger, and three purple mushrooms, which some party members
suspected of being magickal since it was The Pat's expert opinion that they
were not edible. [Editor's note: Where did the blinding goop come from?]
We also found, as we regrouped that morning, that our camp had been joined
(mysteriously) by a fellow named Michigan Militia. (Or perhaps he showed
up with Jack when we went back to Trade City to cure Yanni's blindness.)
Along the river [what river?] we found a field of gourds, which had us
all in a tizzy because of the prominent role played by gourds on the
message. The new pothead insisted on picking a few of them, which seems to
have been one of those rare actions one takes in a lifetime which have no
material effect on the course of the universe whatsoever. Later on, we
found a fork in the river with a wondrously bleached skeletal hand (well,
it was a big tree) sticking out of the cliff at the river split; the main
channel continued off to the south, and a fork came off to the west. We
(for some reason) decided to scout up the little fork, away from the actual
mountains.
Along this little tributary thing, we hit the jackpot - a series of
three shallow depressions (at which Delver commented, 'Graves! Let's dig
them up!'), and beyond them a circular, rocky depression. To our right was
a large pile of rocks, to our left was a grave of some kind, and down the
middle between them was a well-worn foot trail leading down into the
ravine. There was also a fairly obvious, ill-maintained trap door. The
area clearly saw a fair bit of gnock traffic, although we didn't meet any
of the little rockhopping trilks while we were there. We wasted a large
amount of time trying to excavate the graves without shovels (even
Michigan's gourds made fairly poor digging tools), and finally decided to
hop down through the trap door and search for treasure down there. First
off, Yello and Chef Looney ("I must follow the Sidekick, for am I not the
leader?") scouted down, and eventually the rest of us followed, except for
the NPC cowards in the party, who stayed above, the better to run away -
and excavate the graves. No treasure was found. See the Verteux Cave
Complex.
We then lost interest in the site and decided to explore further
[elsewhere]. We scrambled up the other fork of the river (?) to a sort of
a dead-end waterfall, (there was no way we could proceed without climbing
equipment), so we went back and followed our original fork of the river.
Near the original site there was a cliff overlooking a large ravine. We
explored a small section of the ravine cursorily, but found nothing other
than many many gnomish tracks and occasional bits of litter. It occurred
to us that hanging around down there was not going to be especially
productive, so we went back up the river westward until after 28 stadia [a
stadium = approx. 607ft] or so, found ourselves at a small pond, about a
twelth of a stadia wide and about 10 foot deep. The river, 20 foot wide or
so at this point, fell majestically down a cliff into this lake. And,
miracle or miracles, we saw small turtles. We were also attacked by a
water creature with 15 foot tentacles which came up on Yanni from behind.
We barely managed to beat the thing off. In addition, an Invisible Big
Foot walked through our campsite that night.
However, we needed a lead, and the little turtles (related to another
image in Orson's message) seemed like one. There was also the matter of
the water in the lake; it was clearly coming in from the river via a
waterfall, but the level of water did not rise; therefore, there had to be
some escape for all the water. We figured it was possible that the place
to go from here was down the drain hole-- and yet there was the monster.
We sent a brave scout swimming into the pool (safely tethered by rope and
with the rest of us watching carefully, ready to jump in and haul him out)
to check it out. Sure enough, there was a kind of a drain out the bottom
of the pool, and sure enough, the monster made a grab for our scout.
Unfortunately we could find no good way to deal with the monster, and no
assurance that the drain was a route we could take. Our search of the
basin turned up no hints at all, and we found no natural direction in which
to proceed. In particular, we could not discern any clue as to the next
item on the drawing (the woman). There seemed to be nothing to do but turn
back and go home, so we did. We assured the family of little Drogo that we
could find no trace of their relative, Orson, or his alleged treasure. The
family seemed more interested in getting our signature on some legal
documents which would smooth over the inheritance process than anything
else.
Another day found our party suddenly blessed with two new hangers-on:
Pilfer Stunkfellow-Stroup and Geriatric Galakowitz, two halflings. There
was also a mysterious being known as Jack who was hired as a cartographer.
Somehow, we ended up back in that stupid little area we had just gotten
done snurfling about in. Apparently The Looney found some "Military Types"
who were interested in the Gnomish Fortress. Gnomish Fortress? Well, what
I would have called an abandoned bunch of caves (the Verteux Cave Complex)
is apparantly to be honoured with Strategic Military Importance. So the
army pays us to map a perfectly safe and fairly boring lot of caves, and on
the way we find treasure beyond the dreams of avarice, which of course we
keep to ourselves 'cos the army won't know anything about it, and Orson's
family no longer expects anything.
Since we seemed to lose the trail right at the lake, and we knew the
lake had some kind of a drain out the bottom, we came upon the plan of damn
damn damming the creek to hell. We put the dam back at the junction under
the Skeletal Hand, and it worked well. So well that on the night of
November 30, we were attacked by two dozen river zombies. Ignoring this
event as unimportant, we tromped merrily back to the now-draining lake. It
must have been our hope that draining off the water would also solve the
monster problem. It seemed to, so we sent Pilfer down the drain to
explore. The results were, of course, wonderful; he found that it led
DOWN, until it got too narrow for further exploration. (The arrow made out
of skulls pointing up the waterfall obviously wasn't important either.)
Eventually, we choose to rive deep into the heart of the mountains to
the north of the gourds to look for the next clue (the lady with the
prominent attributes); Michigan went ahead and never returned. We were
saddened by his loss; after all, he undoubtedly had had some silver in his
pockets. Oh, well - such is the way of things.
Unfortunately, at this point all we had for an orienteer was Jack, and
there is reason to suspect that Jack wasn't doing very well. We wandered
in the mountains until our limited food supply made it necessary for us to
buy more food. After tromping a stadia here, a few stadia there, we came
back and dismantled our dam, hid from the dragon that flew overhead that
night, and went back to Trade City where The Pat, Yello Belly, and Yanni
went back for supplies. The Pat secured some more money from his contact,
and we returned to action. We still didn't find any treasure.
On December 10, we'd arrived back at Trade City, my side still sore from
Yanni shooting me with a blond arrow in the dark of night. Despite loosing
Michigan on the 8th, we were in good spirits. Naetheless, it is at this
point that Jack left us, mumbling something about a woman named Jill. In
his place we were joined by a chap calling himself Charles Magos-Slayer and
Dry Wall the New Outdoorsy type. Oh, and a Sea Elf named Antonio, no
relation to my cousin Vinnie. My motley band, including Yanni of the Two
Notes Now, Yello Pages, Delver Astro Aloha of Trantor, Pilfer
Stunkfellow-Stroup and Zhen Otdel, arrived fresh and safe at the gnomish
mining fort on the 20th. I went and bought torches and things on the 21st
, came back, and we camped at the river junction on the 23rd. We journeyed
upstream past the old dam remnant, the curious religious Dead Deer Pits,
another pond and cliff which we scaled by mystical means, and the cairn on
the Western Peak of the Two Peaks, after which we saw a dozen giant
two-headed trolls mining geodes. After Pilfur stole one of their rocks and
Yanni offered them gifts, we climbed back down the rope they so
convienently left at the cliff. Naetheless, we left all this obviously
unimportant stuff and headed back to dig up rocks in the gnomish fort.
(Did I mention the small chunk of thick magical rope we found?)
We spent some time digging out the skeleton in the gnomish fort,
eventually discovering a wondrous room filled with goodies. There were
skeletal dead fish, 2 crossbows, 2 bows, 100+ arrows, a box, 4 chests, two
helmets, three crates, spices, china, and two glass aquaria. There was
money and rotten clothes inside some boxes.
We journeyed back to River City and waited for Drogo to return from a
trip. After telling him we hadn't found anything but vicious trolls, we
departed for Trade City around the 29th. We took a month-long caravan to
Dun Cess, and arrived around February 3rd, 10040.
After spending 8 weeks training in Dun Cess, we set off to make yet
another information gathering strike for the military. Our point of
interest in this mission is the convergence/divergence of the three rivers
in the mountains of Pavimentum. The Mystic Gnomes have sent several
expeditions to this location, and the military wanted to know why. The
interesting thing is that we bought a putative Beigebeard map with a
pentagon drawn on it, and one of its points directly corresponds to where
we are going. The military provided us transportation through the
blockade. Upon arriving on Pavimentum, we made our way up the river to the
mountains. Our great and wonderful leader made many informational and
decidedly marketable trips into each town and village on our way. We
entered the foothills. Suddenly, we were surrounded........
Verteux mountains and River City - Group: Verteux Loonies. Problem: party has no clue what to do next. Need decent equipment. Need sane leadership (i.e. NOT The Pat). This puzzle is a lead on treasure and in all likelihood a portal
Vespin, General (NPC) - commander of Malmo defense, died (?) there.
Corrections? Additions? lkies@jumpgate.net
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