Rangers of the Abyss
ady Dawn, queen of Britannia, and Queen Zhah of Ter Mur have decided to build outposts in the Stygian Abyss, so they can get early warning of any new dangers that might spring from its depths. As the Abyss was the only way to travel between the two worlds, it was not to be sealed off. However, something was preventing the building of structures in the Abyss, and it was suspected that the Chaos coming from the Slasher of Veils was the reason.
Queen Dawn was looking for volonteers to explore the Abyss, and the required tool to detect the evil there was the Lamp of Spirituality. Sharkeye Pike felt that he was up for the challenge and applied for the position. The first task was to gather four ingredients that were needed to craft the Lamp of Spirituality: A lantern, a silver sapling seed, a rare serpent egg and a dark wisp orb.
Sharkeye decided to start with the part that sounded the most difficult: Finding the dark wisp orb. He knew that Dark Wisps lived in the second level of the Wisp Dungeon in Ilshenar. He also knew that this place was haunted by lots of undead mages and creatures. So he grabbed his undead slayer spellbook and entered the moongate to Ilshenar Honesty.
The task proved to be more difficult than he had expected. He quickly found some Dark Wisp Guardians, which he had not seen here before, and assumed that they would guard the orb. Slaying the guardians seemed to be the direct approach. The other wisps and mages in the area caused a lot of problems, but finally the two guardians were killed. Sharkeye now was able to open the chest and received the dark wisp orb.
The rare serpent egg was an item that also served the purpose of a key to Medusa's Lair. So Sharkeye Pike traveled through the Underworld into the Abyss Dungeon to find the area called Serpent's Lair. He had his snake slayer spellbook ready when he entered the home of the serpents. He saw lots of serpent nests on the ground and reached into them to search for eggs. Often, his hand would be stuck inside the nest and a number of snakes would come out, attacking him. It took many attempts before he finally found an egg, and especially the Coral Snakes poisoned him and bit him fiercely. A snake charmer's flute would probably have made things easier...
The pirate picked up the silver sapling seed from the white tree in the Stygian Abyss, and then returned to Britain to buy a lantern from the provisioner's shop. When he returned to Dexter in Lord British's Castle, he turned in the four ingredients and received the lantern of spirituality. He went downstairs to the Royal Guard's Office and talked to Sir Geoffrey. This lantern was supposed to detect the influence of the Slasher of Veils. When being in the Stygian Abyss, its light would turn from white to purple, due to vice corruption.
Pike went back into the Abyss. He was supposed to use the lamp of spirituality to discover virtue nodes in the Stygian Abyss and then use them to push back the influence of the Slasher of Veils enough to build an outpost. This lantern would glow green when he found one of these virtue nodes. Thanks to the help he received from his friend Kel Wyn, he quickly was able to find those places, bury this virtue crystal at the spot, and return to Sir Geoffrey.
Each time he returned after having found a virtue node, he received a satchel with a reward. Obviously many people had searched the Abyss, as the ground was already littered with satchels. After his last trip to the dungeon, he was lucky and received a Frostguard Talisman as a reward. While the virtue nodes for humans were on the Underworld side of the Abyss, those for gargoyles were located on the Tomb of Kings side of the Abyss.
When all virtue nodes had been detected, Geoffrey sent the people of Britannia on a quest to apply some virtue ink to the lantern while standing on the future house plot in the Abyss. There was a different plot for Gargoyles, but this did not matter much to the pirate.
Since those who solved the quest would participate in a raffle to win one of two housing plots in the Stygian Abyss, he wondered who those lucky persons would be. Personally, he preferred the Jolly Roger Inn as his home. The pirate could not imagine living in a dungeon. He rather lived by the shore of the Britannian Sea.
04/2010
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