Sins of the Fathers

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December 2008

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Teaser - Link

On a strangely warm late fall afternoon, Ardry opened the door to his uncle’s cottage and recoiled from the smell and the gust of roiling green vapor that greeted him. It was a sharp, overwhelming reek, redolent of rotten eggs and burned hair. Trying not to gag, he called out to the cabin’s inhabitant.

“Uncle Aliester! What’s going on in here?”

Aliester the Loquacious, pre-eminent Isparian sage of Dereth, came out of his workshop and into the cottage’s front room, trailing a cloud of fumes behind him. The old sage was dressed outlandishly: an oversized heavy leather apron and hood covered his entire body, with thick leather gloves and a mask made of wet cloth wound tightly about his nose and mouth.

“Armmph mph bmph!” he called out excitedly. After a few seconds of Ardry’s uncomprehending stare, Aliester realized his mistake and unwound the thick mask from around his face.

“Sorry, Ardry my boy. I’ve been experimenting with some new formulae, ever since the alchemists’ guild published their findings on new techniques for throwing phials…” His eyes went wide and he crinkled his nose in disgust. “My heavens, is that how it smells in here? I just put this mask on when I started working with the rock sulfur, I hadn’t thought the extra variables I introduced would be quite so pungent. You have my most sincere and fulsome apologies…”

Aliester rushed around the cottage opening windows and lighting candles as Ardry trudged to the table in the middle of the room and set down his pack. The young explorer rummaged among his things and withdrew a pile of heavily marked-up papers and maps and laid them on the table. A moment later he added to the pile a bewildering contraption made of Drudge-gut twine, pyreal rods, finely crafted gears, silver mirrors, and long shards of deep blue crystal.

Aliester returned from his fumigation and exclaimed with delight when he saw the items Ardry had laid out. “Ah, wonderful, my experimental theodolite! Did it function as efficaciously as I had predicted?”

Ardry grimaced. “If by ‘work’, you mean, did it give me numbers that I wrote down at every point on the map you asked me to visit, then yes, it worked. If you are asking whether or not this contraption you rigged together actually gives geomantically accurate readings of nodes and ley lines… Well, you’re going to have to ask someone better trained than me, like that nice girl Hoshino Kei or Prince Borelean or Harlune himself.”

Aliester’s normally cheerful face turned ugly for a moment when Harlune’s name was mentioned. “That pompous and anti-intellectual curmudgeon! He sent me the most unnecessarily rude response when I inquired about the possibility of using Empyrean blood as a medium for certain mana-culturing experiments I had in mind…”

Ardry sighed. “I remember, Uncle. Maybe you’ve forgotten that I was the one who had to disarm the device he’d attached to the note. Or, rather, tried to disarm, only to have it literally blow up in my face.”

“Hmph. Yes, well, suffice it to say, we shall not be employing him as a technical or philosophical consultant on further refinements to the experimental theodolite. We have other resources, among my academic peers as well as your colleagues in the exploratory and military occupations, who would be much more suitable, not to mention more cooperative…”

“I’m quite sure, Uncle. But look…” Ardry picked up the sheaf of notes off the table and waved them under his uncle’s nose. “Did you need these or not? Because I could just as easily have spent the last week at the new monster fight arena, watching someone else suffer for a change. You know, taking that vacation you promised I could go on after—“

“Of course, my boy, and you are certainly free to appropriate the next two or three weeks of the festive season for your leisure time, as I promised you. You have more than earned it, of course.” Aliester eagerly took the papers from Ardry’s hand and spread the maps out on the table. “Please, help yourself to some mulled wine while I examine the notes…” He gestured vaguely at a kettle by the fire.

While Ardry fixed himself a cup of mulled wine that tasted only faintly of the sulfur-and-burned-hair fumes that had previously filled the room, Aliester compared Ardry’s pages of recorded readings to the spots on the map where they’d been taken. After a few minutes of muttering to himself as he analyzed the data, he shuffled excitedly into his workshop and returned with another pile of papers filled with figures and diagrams. These looked to Ardry’s untrained eye like star charts. He watched his uncle compare and cross-check a few dozen numbers as he sipped his mulled wine.

Finally, Aliester looked up from his work. “It is as we feared,” the elderly sage announced gravely. “The uncharacteristic warmth of the weather is tied into the geomantic anomalies of recent months, which are in turn influenced by the astrological convergence that the council of sages and I have observed… Indeed, if the accuracy of the experimental theodolite can be verified, then the readings you have taken for me would go a long way towards validating the Theory of Geomantic Subterranean Influence and Interior Metaphysical Sympathies that we’ve worked so long and hard to propound…”

“Huh? Layman’s terms, Uncle,” Ardry said. “This has something to do with that Falatacot demon that’s been trying to bust out of its prison, right?”

“Ah, sorry, lad. What I mean to say is that the stars are aligning to make it easier for those terrible Patriarchs to break their master’s ancient bonds… And that because he is so close to freedom, his nearness to the surface and influence on the ley lines is actually affecting our weather.”

“And that means…”

“Well, that means that our traditional winter may never come and the demon’s due to breach the surface any day,” Aliester announced, seeming to surprise himself with his own directness.

“That’s terrible,” Ardry groaned, as he set down his mug of mulled wine. “What can we do about it?”

Aliester gave him a regretful smile. “Well, Ardry, to answer that question, I’d need you to travel to a few more spots and take some more readings…”

Rollout - [<Rollout Link to Turbine> Link]

Release Notes - Link

Hello there and welcome to the December Release Notes. It is the winter once again in Dereth. And of course the town of Frosthaven is once again full of activity. It is however strange that the snow is not coating the ground like it has in previous years...

Lets see what is new in Dereth this month!

Live events are coming this month. Stay tuned to the official Asheron’s Call Forums for more details!
Monster fights are now up and live! Make sure you go check them out and pick your favorite today!
Level eight spell components now can be stacked up to 1000.
Dark Isle Mukkir, Ruschk, Remoran and Sleech have had a rebalance. Mukkir Ruschk and Remorans should be friendlier to melee and archer characters now.
A Mana Forge Key has been added to the hero token vendor.
Presents have been placed around Dereth, with an extra special reward for finding them all.
Using our previously introduced rare monster spawn tech, new rare monsters are spawning around Moarsman City and Freebooter Keep.
Society armor has had its base Armor Level increased.
The drop rate on Horrid Remoran has been readjusted to be more in line with the way we had intended it to be.
Xana Bin-Xara in Wai Jhou has had a typo fixed.
The Siraluun Feather Bag's description has been changed to reflect the updates that were made to the quest.
The Sawato Bandit Mask has been changed to start with 300 mana.
A new tier of Grenades have been added to the game.
Several more spell fixes have been made to fix issues with some spells overriding other more powerful ones.

So there are just some of the things we have in store for Asheron's Call in December. Please remember that along with everything listed here, there are several new quests and exciting things going into the game for the December event.