We are back now and ready to go. Hopefully I still have all my players but if I have lost anyone, please let me know.

Feel free to catch up and post. I would like to post movement and the night actions by the weekend.

Wheeeeee!!!

Posting ASAP.

Will post tonight count on it!! Welcome back Al and Van MISSED YA'S

For the record. Rangers have animal empathy - but they do not have the ability to talk to or charm wild animals.

Char could approach the Bear and if it awoke, then Char could attempt to "calm" it (save vs Rods at -2, yes a save vs, rods ... I didn't write the rules). But he can not go and aske the Bear for permission to bunk with him in the ajoining room, oh ... and by the way, don't eat our horses.

As to why Wynter would miss a bear? Well you wouldn't know why but the dead aren't always clear on what is real and what is not. A dead spirit might not notice a bear, or a pit trap, or the poison needle, etc etc etc.

Yep, I understand animal empathy but I didn't figure Wynter (or even Jal) might have a good grasp on how that worked.

By the by... I sort of ended my last post with Jal "separating himself" from the party... Just to be clear, he's not trying to lead anywhere and he's not really going any particular direction...just keeping some distance for the time being.

Hey! Did you see the size o' that chicken!? Dog! Did you see the SIZE o' that chicken!!!???

Dapple's not gonna raise the issue again after being slapped down by Arien, but no one else is curious about the "spotty" intel from our ghostly friend? *shrugs*

May not have a chance to write up a post before tomorrow...so if anyone wants to assume in their post that I'd do a reconnaissance of the place under the cover of night, that would be a fair assumption

Both Char and Adrian have asked some questions that will probably bring about a couple of revelations and I had planned on having Jal, perhaps, try and speak to Dapple once camp was made (if that's okay with you, of course)...

Working on wrapping up a fairly lengthy post, atm, so you may have something to "work with" very soon.

The man who now refers to himself as Spellbinder spent the earliest years of his life as a homeless urchin on the streets of Freegate and, like many others in his situation; he was forced to eek out a meager existence by resorting to the typical street-rat skill set of panhandling, picking pockets, and petty thievery. If he had ever had a family of any kind, he had no memory of them – not so much as a fleeting image of his mother’s face hovering over his crib – and, in fact, the boy didn’t even have a name of his own until, at the age of 8 or 9, he managed to pilfer enough extra coin from a loosely strung purse to pay for a reading from a Gypsy fortune teller who had set up a tent in the city’s bustling market. For a neat sum of 6 coppers, the gypsy woman was able to divine that the boy’s name was Jal (a moniker that, he would learn later, was little more than the gypsy word for ‘wanderer’), and, thus informed, young Jal returned to the streets a little happier than he had been moments before and with a little brighter outlook on his life. A name was a start, after all…

Now, firmly affixed with a name that he could call his own, young Jal was still set apart from his peers by a much better than average intelligence. While those urchins that he huddled with at night for warmth and safety were content to take their daily haul to the nearest fence and sell it for the first flash of coin, Jal was a bit more deliberate about the black-market trades that he would make. Should an open pack or cut purse render up something more than coin or baubles, Jal would keep the item in question close to him and, as he could read and write almost as well as any noble’s child, would spend quite a bit of time sneaking into libraries and researching his treasures, learning as much as he could about them before deciding which black-market hawk would be best to trade with for the particular item and, in pursuing those transactions, was not afraid to use the information gleaned from his study and research of the loot to haggle with the fence and boost his profit substantially by doing so. Things went well for Jal for quite a while until one of the aforementioned acquisitions happened to be a scroll case from the pack of a member of the cult of Iuz. Initially, Jal was successful in the theft and escaped with what he later determined to be at least part of the wizard’s spellbook. In fact, he might have eluded the wizard all together and made a nice, tidy profit from the sale of the scrolls but, as had become Jal’s way, he spent a great deal of time researching the scrolls – making trips to the library and referencing his own collection of pilfered tomes and parchments – trying to determine exactly what it was that he had. Really, if he had considered it at the time, he would have realized that he was spending an almost ridiculous amount of time on the scrolls… he couldn’t help it once he realized that he could actually decipher some of the spells and even, after a bit of practice, cast some very minor cantrips.

As fate would have it, Jal spent so much time pouring over the scrolls that their original owner eventually caught the young pickpocket in his own ramshackle hideout with the scrolls spread out before him, trying to make another spell work for him. For some reason still unknown to Jal, the wizard chose not to kill him outright (which was no small allowance for a follower of Iuz). Instead, the wizard “suggested” that Jal accompany him back to his tower where the urchin would receive a “proper education” in the arts arcane. Unfortunately, that education was not at all what Jal had been expecting. Rather than take him as an apprentice, the wizard used Jal as a slave and worse. Over the next few years, Jal was subject to the sorcerer’s whims and abuses, and the closest he ever got to practicing magic with the Devotee of Iuz was when the wizard required his blood as the component to some spell or if the wizard happened to run out of materials on which to scribe newly crafted or learned spells, the young urchin’s skin made for a handy tablet, didn’t it? Despite all of this, Jal still managed to gain somewhat of an education in the use of magic. Many times it was by sneaking out of his room and secretly observing the wizard but, just as often, he found lessons in the moldy and musty closet in the cellar of the tower that, until his arrival had served as a repository for the wizard’s “useless” tomes on magic – and, of course, he accompanied the wizard (as little more than the slave he was) on several of his travels. It was on one of these trips that Jal decided it would not be long before he would have to leave the wizard’s service one way or another.

The details behind this all are still fairly unclear, as it is something that the spellbinder is reluctant to talk about and, typically, the mere mention of the subject sends Jal off into what might appear to some to be gibbering insanity – if confronted with his past and/or mention of his master, Jal tends to withdraw into himself, muttering under his breath apparently talking to himself… In all actuality, when Jal gets like this, he’s talking to the “memory” of a miller’s daughter named Wynter. This girl – perhaps the closest thing to a true friend and true love that Jal had ever known – lived in a town not far from the wizard’s tower where Jal was trained and befriended the young slave/mage on one of his first trips into the town (Jal was tasked with gathering provisions while the Master went about more pressing business). Jal and Wynter became close friends over the years – a secret that the boy kept from his master, of course – and as they both aged, Jal came to believe that he loved the girl. Unfortunately, as seemed to be the case with many secrets he had tried to keep hidden from the Iuzian, the sorcerer discovered Jal’s infatuation with the girl… had even seen him enjoying himself in her company… and by way of punishment for the unauthorized dalliance, killed Wynter and her family. Jal literally went mad when he discovered the smoldering remains of the mill on his next trip to town and, upon returning to the wizard’s tower that evening, shuttered himself away in his room for the next two weeks, and, at the urging of Wynter’s voice – which now constantly whispered in his mind – spent every possible second of his time copying spells from the moldy tomes in his room and carving them into his flesh (spellbinding as Wynter called it) in preparation for his own escape. Nearly a month later, Jal’s opportunity presented itself. The wizard had retired to his rooms after casting a particularly draining spell and, while the Iuzian recuperated, young Jal gathered his meager belongings, slipped from his room and stole into the Master’s laboratory. With Wynter’s voice to guide him, Jal cast every spell scribed into his flesh at the center of the wizard’s lab… the results were cataclysmic… Jal remembers very little after that until he found himself wandering along a road that he didn’t recognize several days later… Wynter’s voice whispering in his head for him to “go home”… So it is that Jal Spellbinder spent the next several years traveling from one town to the next, existing as he could by hiring himself out when necessary – but only to those who did not expect him to use his skills for evil as he had seen his master do – and trying to find his way “home,” wherever that may be.

Bits added by the DM: It was some years later that Jal found his way back to Freegate, only then realizing that he had been taken deep into the Empire territory with his “mentor”. Vague recollections came to him in the streets and alleys and he found himself staying here in hopes to find something called “home”. His studies as a mage began again under the gentle and watchful eyes of the Mage’s Guild. There he has even taken lessons from the great archmage herself – Gwanele. So it has remained for a year now. Then just before the fall ended last year, you were encouraged by your ghostly companion to join a group of adventurers in dealing with an ogre problem to the North West. It was good to work in a group, but most of all you had the chance to unleash power like you never had before. After the winter, the call came again for another group, and you barely had to wait for Wynter’s urging to sign up again.

I hope to post this week-end...just got back from Vegas.

Now, perhaps, Jal may be a little less of a mystery, eh?

Finally got the little oddball caught up with current events, too. Looking forward to a little sneaking about and getting into trouble...

haven't heard from Admiral or Olan since my last post. IF yo utwo have nothing to add, I will move the game forward.

I have a little to post, but it can be done as a backpost. Either way, I'll try to get it up by tonight.

Yep, I have little to add to either conversation or recon efforts.

I take that back I guess. After another look through my spellbook, I do have some stuff to add to recon in the form of distractions, if they want.