Some of you have wondered and messaged me where I've gone. No I haven't vanished or wandered through another time dialation field.

The fact of the matter is for The Order has had me doing work. Odd jobs, fetch and get-it kind of stuff and been letting me use an empty cot and keep me fed. Yes the food hasn't been that good, and yes I've had to abide by their rules, some of which includes "no posting every little damn thing you do for anyone that can get a net connection to see". However the weather is starting to clear out, and that means other people are going to be needing my services again, and I'm already in talks with some people regarding some equipment they'd like to salvage out of the ashlands provided they can get it cleared with the SLC... they also want someone who's experienced enough with magic and the ashlands to be able to determine if the equipment is safe to salvage, or if it'll be like a thunder egg again.

Speaking of, I had the opportunity to make a short trip into the ashlands recently along with a couple other stalkers to teach some of the order folks how to survive out there (yes I do have permission to post about this since it's not really important to keeping their forces secure and keeping order between the SLC and CR). During the trip a couple of the order soldiers found some thunder eggs, and to demonstrate the destructive power of them we threw one into a gravitational anomaly (gravity well+self contained geode of magic= floating crackling thunder, at least that was the idea at the time), which made an impressive light show, released the magic and then temporarily dispersed the gravitational anomaly. What we also got out of it were the pieces of a thunder egg fused with ash that turned to glass during the magic release.... there's something odd about them but no one's really figured out if there's anything truly special about them, or if they're just good for trinkets that can be sold on a street corner... Other than that, taught the scrubs how to use pocket junk (rocks, coins, spent shell casings, bolts, etc) to identify magical anomalies and their areas of effect. No one died and we didn't get snatched up by inter-dimensional bullshit... At this point that's my threshold for a good day I guess.

Not dead, just busy with surviving.

There's no room at the barrows this time around what with the druids being busy with studying their magics and Bideford, Fiske also is helping them.. not sure what kind of help he'll be able to provide honestly.. but we'll see. I've been kinda couch surfing, which also limits my options because my accent pegs me as a "coastie"...which is kinda odd because I always thought the people on the coast sounded weird, but that's neither here nor now.

Regardless I think I worked out a deal with the order guys on work shelter and food. They've been having issues with some of the locals getting through their security and into their caches and want an actual skulker to catch them and "teach them the error of their ways" and apparently Leishey's organization has enough credibility with them to get me the job.

Not sure I really want to keep working with them, I've heard there's some shadiness going on that I don't want to be involved in. Trafficking stuff from the ashlands like thunder eggs and other magically augmented materials... even weaponry... I mean don't get me wrong, I'd work all day to tag caches of stuff for the order in a heartbeat because they're doing it to keep the peace, the rumors around what the "archivists" (what leishey's group is calling itself) are up to... it sounds like they're setting up a private army.

I'm going to have to shell out a couple boxes of ammo though. I sheared a locking lug on my rifle and, while it still shoots I'd rather have one of the order's armorers take a look at it and make sure the M4's in top shape. They may be here to keep the peace and offer some of their services to the public, but it isn't free that's for sure.

that's about it for now. Might have more to talk about next month.

We didn't take a time portal again.

And that's not for lack of trying, rather than mess around with dealing with winter we did attempt to use our previous campsite as a way of skipping the snow and rain, which, well, didn't work.

It ultimately took us a couple extra days to get back into confederacy territory after getting the truck stuck in a slurry of ash and snow more than once, thankfully with liberal use of duct tape, a couple 2x4s and luck, we managed to get it unstuck both times..... and then we got met by a patrol unit and got led into processing... because of how much stuff the ecologists were bringing in, how long we'd been gone for, and the fact only two of us were really known to them it took the majority of December to process us... and even then I only got stuff like my tablet and satcom yesterday.

The druids have no idea what to make of Bideford, I honestly don't care at this point, but I've told Leishey (well his liaison out here), that I'm not doing any more large team stuff. 2-3 people max, easier to prevent stupid shit from going down that way.

Still attempting to make heads or tails of the last few days, for starters there's been too much interference to connect the uplink for almost a week.. which is alright anyway since we were on our way out of the ashlands last week already.

Bideford's dead... but he's not dead. It's a weird state of being to say the least, basically I need to rewind to the 18th and work my way through the events that've led to today.

The short of it is, Bideford pissed off the tree-man thing I've seen out here... he and I were patrolling the campsite edges for any last bits of equipment that the ash might've swallowed up since we were moving camp to a new area to see if there were any different species to catalogue. The Ent (just going to refer to it as that for here on because it's more or less what it was) just wandered up over the rise, stomping along, more or less ignoring us, I gave it my usual wave.... and well Bideford... He lost his cool, snapped up his rifle and shot it, right in the side. I'll admit, I'm impressed at how quick he got the shot off, side note, .30 cal hollowpoint does literally nothing to one of these creatures, at least nothing visibly.

Well you ever have one of those moments where you screw up, and you have a bit of time to reflect on the fact you've screwed up.... that's basically what happened. The ent , just kinda stops and turns to face us, as if to say "I'll give you one chance to apologize"... well bideford is lining up for another shot, I try and get him to drop the rifle because at this point I've realized two things, "the ent is intelligent" and "It's welling up magic and waiting"... well bideford takes another shot, hits it in the arm, and it, howls out something, low and monotone before loosing whatever spell it was making on us,

 Eivan has made it over to us by that point, so has Fiske, and the plants on the hillside begin to convulse and rapidly grow, growing from woody stems to softer and vinelike tendrils that brush the three of us aside and converge on Bideford... kinda like a venus fly trap on a fly almost.. he struggled, we tried to pull him free, but the plants kept shoving us off and the wines started constricting around him...I'll spare ya'll the details....

 At the point Bideford finally stops screaming, and struggling, I realize the ent has stomped over and is admiring it's work. It's easily twenty or twentyfive feet tall, and just looms down at us before reaching down with it's gnarled hands, and just brushes me, Eivan and fisk aside, picks up the plant coocoon around Bideford and just stomps off into the ashlands.


So... Eivan breaks out the alchohol we were saving for a successful return from the expedition and we just spend the rest of the day drinking around our campfire. No one really talks for about a week.

Well on friday, as we're pulling stake and getting ready to head out finally, Bideford stumbles into our camp... only.. well he's not bideford... I mean he has all his memories, well aside from his death and whatever the ent then did to him, there's also the fact that he has a set of wooden deer antlers growing out of his head now and has gone... more or less "full hippie"...love peace and flower power... it's a strange change to say the least and we're still debating on what to do with him... Eivan says he's been marked by nature magic and the druids back in SLC will want to study him...

Me?... I just want to get back to civilization, get paid and be done with these ecologists. They're getting on my nerves wanting to stop and look at everything... they literally have a half ton of samples that we're hauling back, and a quarter of that is scat from the bison, deer and coyotes that are out here... I'll admit I'm curious as to how they've survived out here too... but there's no reason to bring back that much crap.

The ecologists need their own satcom.

So.. add that onto the list of things needed for further expeditions out here, along with one or two of the Order's GPS units with the twin signal for better accuracy. Would make for mapping out anomalies a bit easier.

That or a signal booster for both. for some reason out here there's just horrendous latency, making ecological uploads take so long, and phone calls have that awkward 2 to 3 second delay between what you say and the response...

Few more new species. They'e more or less decided what I was calling manzanita is a species of manzanita, they're debating over the scientific name though.

Not much else to mention though.

delayed updates are a thing too.

I had intended to make an update sooner, but the ecologists were hogging the  uplink sending data back since Friday.

I won't bore you with the details but they've identified about twelve new species of lichen, 6 new species of plants, tried to catch as Bideford described it, "a coyote that was running around that had deer antlers strapped on its head"...kinda think someone came out here and strapped a set of christmas antlers on it as a prank, but that'd be farfetched to say the least and I didn't see it personally.

No sign of the entfolk yet, or a dragon but on occasion I've felt like we were being watched from a distance. Eivan noticed it too and we've been taking watches at night as a precaution.

Well....time dilation... that's a thing I guess.

To say today is a weird day is an understatement.

Last night we set up camp, staked tents, dug trenches and prepped for a long stay... today we completely undid it all, pulled stake and moved about a quarter of a mile and re-established our main camp... why you might ask?

Well yesterday for us was May 1st.... and today is October 30th. Somehow in the span of about eight hours we managed to lose, would lose even be the right term?  Skipped I suppose is better.. regardless, 6 months. Half a year!

We chose that site oddly enough because it had less ashfall than some of the other areas.. Eivan said it seemed to have weird magic, but we just thought it was what was keeping out all the ash.

Last night we went to bed all well and good, and this morning we woke up all fine, well aside from there being much more ash at the edges of the clearing, and then I go to rig up the sattelite uplink and my PDA syncs up and flips forward 6 months, I don't realize this till I patch through, adjust the antennae the right direction and manage to call out to Leishey to let him know we'd established our camp, and... well freaking the hell out would be an understatement, he thought I was a ghost. I had to get Eivan on the line to talk him down, and get the full story... seems we missed some stuff back in civilization, but the weather isn't changing (it almost never does change in the ashlands anyway), so we may as well complete the job. Bideford insisted we make a radio call to SLC, got the Order guys on the first try too, and asked them to relay a message to his wife to let her know that no he's not dead... next radio day is going to be next weekend, hope things work out for him I guess.

Hopefully no timey wimey bullshit is going to happen again tonight. I'll be very pissed off if I miss christmas new years and my birthday.