By Nysa

"Killing Hill Giants was fun," Cen told me as we walked together to the bank in the Plane of Knowledge.

We'd just come from selling for hours at the Bazaar and were ready for some adventuring. The other day, while we'd waited for Hasten to show up in the Rathe Mountains for Cen's Jboot quest, we'd felled a giant or two. Their loot was considerable.

"Okay," I told him. "After our banking business, let's kill some giants."

Cen wanted to try Ice Giants in The Great Divide first, and that sounded fun. We hadn't done much exploring on the continent of Velious, but had been talking about it. We killed two Ice Giant Scouts before having to run for our lives with a pack of dire wolves on our heels. We decided we'd best move on to Hill Giants, as we'd found a very safe spot to sit and camp while medding between kills in the Rathe Mountains.

So off we went, running through the darkened swamp of the Feerott, with all its odd sounds, and finding our way to our desired spot in Rathe. There weren't many people around, and though there was a high level wizard nuking 2 and 3 giants at a time, we were able to pull a considerable few. A Cyclops here and there broke the monotony.

We made right over 100 plat each, which was nice. As the evening came to an end, I made camp in the Plane of Knowledge, and Cen went on to set up another booth at the Bazaar. All in all, a nice but uneventful evening. At least no one died.

By Nysa

As the sun slowly began to peak over the tips of the Butcherblock Mountains, Cenalorn and I were making our last run around the vast zone collecting goblin heads and blood. We'd been doing this for about an hour, as the items sell for almost 5 plat apiece, but as daybreak came upon us, more and more people came into the zone. The hunting was less plentiful and the camps became camped.

"Now what?" I asked Cen. Neither of us liked fighting for camps, or trying to make our way through an over-populated zone.

He thought for a moment, his blue eyes almost shut in consternation. Then he suddenly opened them and announced, "Sand giants!"

"What about them?" I queried, wondering where this was going.

"I read up on them in the library," he told me. "We might could get some experience as well as some good money off of them. You can track them. They're in the desert of South Ro."

This sounded promising, so we took off. The quickest route to South Ro, from Butcherblock anyway, was to speak to the Magus as the Wayfarer's camp. Within minutes we found ourselves standing in the almost deserted camp, surrounded by orc camps not but a few feet away.

I buffed us up and we took off in the direction of the sands of the Desert of South Ro. I was unable to track any sand giants, but Cenalorn read that they might appear if we killed all the undead we could find. It wasn't but a few minutes of killing mummies and zombies when we crested a hill to see the Ancient Cyclops running right towards us. I had just tracked the area, and he hadn't shown up; obviously he had just appeared as we came over the hill.

Though he was only a dark blue con to us, he was still tough. As the massive creature fell to the sand in death, he cried, "Oh, my precious ring!"

"What is it?" I asked, scared for a moment. The look that went across Cen's face at the moment was startling. I thought he was having a heart attack.

"It can't be!" he cried, rushing towards the huge mound of dead cyclops on the sand in front of us. He began to loot the giant pockets and I heard him scream, "Oh my god! It is! I can't believe it!"

"What? What? What?" I cried out, running up to him. I was at a loss as to what the excitement was about.

"Jboots!" he said, running up and hugging me. Cenalorn had been wanting a pair of Journeyman's Boots (or Jboots) for some time now, but we hadn't had the time to sit down and do the difficult quest. "This is the hardest part of the quest!" he told me, tripping over his own words in his excitement and shoving the Ring of the Ancients in my face. "And we just happened upon it!"

Indeed, then, I knew we were blessed. I later learned that some people camped the Ancient Cyclops for over a week before getting him and his ring. We knew we now had to finish the quest.

Our next job was to run over to the West Commonlands and find the Shadowed Men camp. Luckily, we were the only ones in all of the W. Commonlands and after only five or six respawns, we had the next part of the quest in our hands - a Shadowed Rapier.

It was then a quick run to the bank in the PoK to grab 3250 in gold coins, and we were off to the Rathe Mountains in search of Hasten Bootstrutter.

Before going we read up all we could on the quick-footed little Gnome who gave the gift of Jboots. We sat and waited in the spot we were told he would run by.

There happened to be another adventurer, a Wood Elf Ranger who was only one level below us, who was right behind us the entire time on the quest. He sat with us to wait for Hasten and we promised to let one another know when he appeared on track.

It was almost a two hour wait. The part of the quest that was written to be the simplest was, in fact, the hardest for us. All of a sudden, I saw him on track! I yelped out to Cen, "He's up! He's up!" just as the other Ranger yelled out to me that he was on track. Suddenly a flash of something ran past us - Hasten runs like a horse with a Lvl 65 Bard speed song cast on him. Here are the three of us running after this gnome screaming, "Hail!, Hail!, Hail!". It was quite a sight.

The other Ranger was closest - we told him to keep chasing him, and Cen and I ran back to the spot we knew he'd pass again. Standing on either side, we hoped to stop him as he ran back through. We'd just taken our positions when the other Ranger yelled that he'd caught him. We hurried to him, and he was still standing there. Cen hailed him, gave him what he wanted and was rewarded with his own pair of Jboots. (Which he, throughout the rest of the day and night, kept showing off to me proudly).

And that is how we completed the Jboot quest.

By Imarra

Sunab and I were sitting in the bank, bored off our rump. He had a few quests he'd been working on that he wanted to finish, but I just wanted to kill things.

As we were sitting there, debating on what to do, a Vah Shir our age who as a Shaman like Sunab asked us to hunt with her in Shadeweaver Thicket. Eager to have even a small group, Sunab and I went with her without a glance back.

We found the nuisances and needle clawed hoppers near the gates to Shar Vahl entirely too easy, and decided to further up the dirt road that leads to the Paldual Caverns. We were suddenly attacked by a Loda Kai Bandit, a fierce competitor much higher in level than us, but we found we were able to defeat him fairly easily.

We spent the next two hours fighing lesser shades and saurek hoppers until our friend advanced a level. She had to go soon after, and Sunab and I moved to a safer spot on the way back to Shar Vahl. He sat comfortably under a large tree, and I continued pulling creatures until we both gained our level.

Though we both wanted to go on to the goldmine of experience that awaited us in Paladual Caverns, now able to go there in our sixth season, we were too tired. We made camp in near the small stone bank outside the city. Paladual awaits us another night.

By Nysa

I only hope that I can remember all that transpired today as I jot it down in my leather-bound journal.

I awakened early and called upon Cenalorn. It had been too long since we'd gone out adventuring together and he was more than eager to help me think of something to do. We had, at first, planned to go on a great quest and accquire a pair of Journeyman's Boots for Cen, but realizing it would take more time than we had, we settled on just working on gaining experience.

Meeting up in the Plane of Knowledge, we took the Firoina Vie portal and found our way through the maze of caverns to The Dreadlands. We tried to take on a Mountain Giant, but he proved too much for us, even though he was weaker than us both. After both almost losing our life, we began to look for other adventurers to group with. There were none to be found here, so I pulled out my book of maps. Neither of us had ever been to Mons Letalis on the moon of Luclin before, and I had read it was about our level of experience. We took off once again.

Mons Letalis proved to be more of the same - a Stonegrabber we took on would've cost us both our lives if we hadn't been close to the zone. Discouraged, Cenalorn suggested we return to the plentiful hunting of zelniaks in the Dawnshroud Peaks. As we'd had luck there before, we made the trek.

It wasn't long before we made a small group with a dashing young Human Rogue. We fought in our spot for hours, both of us finally gaining a level of experience. Our group was at times large, and others very small - as members came and went. Late into the night, I saw a small Gnome Cleric running towards us in bright red and gold armor. She wanted to join our group, but she had a pack of 6 or 7 wolves at her heels! We all made it to safety, but she perished. She rejoined us, bringing along a friend, a Gnome Wizard. We had now, when our Rogue friend returned after a brief leave, a full and powerful group. We all decided to hunt together in The Overthere.

Cenalorn and I had thought we could no longer gain experience on this barren seacoast plain, but we were wrong. We were all doing quite nicely in a quiet spot, when I heard a loud snarl behind me. I spun around in time only to see gray stone and yell out a "WTF?!" and was dead. Apparently, a dying and fleeing Dark Elf had trained two named Gargoyles and a dragoon on us. Our Cleric resurrected me and we decided to try our luck hunting down at the mudpit - as the pulls would be quicker.

We were not there more than 10 minutes when Cenalorn, who was our appointed puller, yelled "'Goon!" It was a warning none of us had time to heed - for as soon as the first dragoon blow hit Cen, two more of the blasted fiends were upon us. Everyone in the party perished quickly, except for the Wizard, who ported out, and the Rogue, who was not seen as an enemy to the dark guards.

Once again, our kind Cleric resurrected us all - after the Wizard and Rogue had drug our corpses to a safe location. We re-convened just inside the great, stone hall that leads to Skyfire. It was with great merriment that we all got drunk on fine mead, and proceeded to duck walk around while levitating. I'm sure anyone who passed us had a good laugh and would've taken us all for members of the Rutabaga guild, of which my young friend, Irin, is a member.

We decided to call it a night there, and made our camp on the cold stone floor. It was one of the most eventful adventuring days I've had to date.