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Followed broken flat stones to a surface like we used with the vehicle. Found nasty smelling misty place that turned out to have 'hulks' - or creatures made of many bodies. They attacked us, along with some bats who wanted to steal me away. Slept badly after my watch - was really hard to stay awake during my shift and creepy things were moving in the mist.

Also spoke to people who were behind barricades against the hulks whose roof we will fix when we return.

Went to the place with an X and met a crazy man with lots and lots of small robot things. They are hard to talk to and gave me a headache. They were intended to fight off the hulks, but all they do is make more of themselves (supposedly they were supposed to only build one more than fell when one falls in battle). I'm not clear but I do not think they have ever fought the hulks yet.

I don't entirely understand why, but you seem to have to tell them what to do when you build them, and cannot change it later.

The river has magic in the water.

We come across an altar in a sunken concrete pit. Some houses around it. All ruins. We continue along old roads. There are mounds; the trees break, and ahead there is a clearing with many small puddles/pools. It smells of dead bodies and alkalinity. We go around to the north. There's a miasma and some sort of ritual object.

We pass a pair of rusted rails - lots of iron. Then a sand scar – dunes, less than a meter high. This leads us to a big low building with defensive barricades and a stench of death. We bypass it and get to a road. Then there's a compound, ringed with barricades. Rusted vehicles. We think about introducing ourselves, as a hedge against having to run away. We decide against it.

Eldawen goes scouting and is attacked by bats. We smack some bats. They try to pick up the fox, and also try to distract us while corpse-monsters sneak up on us. They do not get to sneak. I form mein glaiven. Eirun puts up a magic wall. We prepare. We fight. We camp on high ground.

I take a moderate injury. (- to clubs/diamonds except resistance). Eldawen heals me, and I will get a -2 to diamonds instead. In the morning, -1.

When I get up for watch, I patrol and see signs of intrusion. After dawn, I suggest that we go talk to the barricaded people – we might need to use them for shelter on the way back. Everyone agrees. We visit The Apothecary.

They're friendly. They know what Gurdsn are. We promise to come back and help with a roof.

We are moving close to a leyline nexus. Guns swivel to face us. A skinny humanoid comes out. It's a robot. They are relieved to hear we are sent by the seers. Inside the hangar is a mad scientist's workshop, focussing on machinery. The mad scientist is 9 feet tall and sinuous: Kimball. He has a self-reproducing robot problem. The robots were to stop the zombie things.

I attempt percussive maintenance. It does not work. I teach another one to harvest trees.

There was a broken surface, like many flat black stones (that isn’t actually stone). We headed east-ish, following the flat stones. We passed ruined houses. One seemed to have an alter: blue polished stone with a ladder for access. We were surrounded by forest as we walked along the flat stones. Later there were what appear to be grass-covered burial mounds. There was a very unpleasant smell. We detoured north to circumnavigate the mounds. There was a pit that runs north-south; there’s a foul mist down there. The forest North-east of the pit is thinner, and sickly.

Eldawen did a little aerial reconnaissance. We headed east toward a scar in the land. Came across a rail line. The steel was good quality; nothing had eaten the ties. We decided to follow the scar anyway. Scar seemed to be piled up mounds of sand. Eventually it flattened out and road began.

We passed a building that had barricades. Kept going, trying to find someplace defensible for the night. Came to another building with barricades. We had a kerfuffle with bats and Shambling Hulks. We found a ruin to use to shelter for the night; there were things out there overnight. I fell asleep on watch, and that never happens.

We visited Compound in morning. Turns out to be ok people after all. We will return so I can fix their roof later.

We got to the area marked on our map. Met another tinkerer. He has robots that are supposed to destroy the hulks. They are building more of themselves, and then he made other robots which are disassembling the new ones as soon as they are built.

His aura says he’s a mage, but he doesn’t seem to think he is one. Everything is couched in terms of engineering.

I am surveying a black-suit mining site. Two non-oomans run out, right past me. We take cover and flee with Gus. Introductions, and a quick lumberjack demo later; we come to a small semi- ooman town. “Dreamland”. Aerunn is a dwarf, Eldawen has a fox, dragon and ooman form.

We meet lots of people, including Clem the cybercentaur. Then we meet three Seers. They hand me an anti-surveillance amulet. They give Aerunn a quest to find a shiny humanoid thing or being in the north.

The seers have been gathering new arrivals via rifts into Dreamland for a while now.

We do social things and tell stories and dance for a bit.

In the morning, the whole village is packing up.

Gus gives us a lift up north. I swim across the river to borrow boats without asking permission.

Ran into Batu and Eirunn after hunting for breakfast. But then the ground started being weird, a creepy-looking munching thing came out of nowhere and we all fell somewhere strange. Grumpy people were surprised and called someone with spikes to deal with us. But he attacked us - at least the other people only pointed guns at us at without actually firing!

Batu attacked because spiky guy attacked us, but that made the rifle people shoot Eirunn so Batu attacked the rifle person. Eirunn also threw her hatchet at someone and it was weirdly effective. I tried to get people to be sensible, but unfortunately spiky guy didn’t care. Everyone else was willing to consider that maybe we weren’t immediately terrible people just because we came out of nowhere. I really didn’t think it would be good to end up in cuffs with people who were immediately horrible at us. When it was clear we the spiky guy was not going to be reasonable and he flung Eirunn across the room, I grabbed her hatchet and we skedaddled.

Then they were trying to shoot at us with big guns and there was someone (Gus!) waving us on. So we joined him and jumped into his giant metal vehicle. Met someone named something long, but Sky works. Got to a town of people who had more clue than us. I danced, which was fun. Met someone named Panther. He was friendly - I like meeting people!

Eirunn needs to go find something humanoid that gleams? Not sure what that means, but we will find out. We also have a charm to protect us against spiky guy finding us (he can smell me?!).

Then we needed to cross a bunch of water. We found boats! Paddling is a little like using my wings alternatingly.

Met Eldawen on the mountain while I was hunting for a copper vein. The ground started trembling and Batu’s feet sank in. There was a grinding noise, and something like wind howling. A thing with a whirling metal teeth came out of the ground and we fall into the hole it made, through a blue-ish glow.

The air is cooler, wetter, more alive? here. I just crushed some rock by falling on it! There are pale, steady lights. Some of them are lines. This is not my mountain!

There are large people here. Two with rifles, some in black armor. They tell us to get against the wall.A new person comes in - has spikes on their head - and does… something. Batu panic-charges, I got shot, and fall off. Spiky-headed person hits me in the head.

I got back on Batu and we run. Come out in a pit mine. Batu’s shoes let him go straight up the slope, and Eldawen flies up. We high tail it away. There’s a flashing light signaling ahead of us, and a flying thing with guns coming up behind us.

We got picked up by Gus (he of the light signals). We piled into the back of his vehicle, and took off. Gus told one of us to get to the dorsal gun. I manage to damage the pursuer enough that they stop. We paused for a breather, and dug the slug out of my shoulder. Gus tells us that the spiky-head can track us magically, but that that tracking can be blocked with other magic.

We arrive at a town-ish place; the Free City of Dreamland. This settlement is a hodgepodge; mixed population, many Humans. A lot of variations of humanoid; including centaurs. Clem is centaur who looks like parts are machine.

We met three old beings, probably human. These are the seers that sent Gus to get us. They give us amulets to block the spiky-head being from tracing us. One of the seers has a vision when they put the amulet on me. They asked us to go on a quest: go North and find a humanoid that gleams. Not sure if it’s a being or an object.

Clem introduced me to his version of welding, and to a power grinder. Turns out he's human, but built himself the centaur legs when he needed to replace his human ones.

The next morning the seers gave us a map of the northern area for the quest. The Settlement packed up to move, and we packed up for the quest. Gus is going with us; driving his ATV partway there saves us about three days of walking. It’s about an hour drive. Batu get pretty motion sick in the back of the ATV.

We got to the river, and the bridge is gone. Eldawen and Gray Sky went over the river to borrow some boats from the other bank of the river.

Well, the new folks are going to work out just fine. One of them caught a prophecy, wouldn't you know. So we're off up north to find some sort of Shining Human (glitter boy!? I hope not!). I think the two that aren't gerdsn are pretty clearly from somewhere else where magic is as natural as here, not at all like Old Earth. And they got the Coalition after them already, which just PROVES they're on the right side.

The short one took to welding like a maniac, have to get her more tech to play with.