Philo's Journal

Week 1

Of all the weeks that I've been in Gildale this week by far has been the most eventful. First the issue of the flaming rabbits had the constable, Gordon Welsh, sending myself, Atlas and a few other guards(Talin, Cora, Maxwell Kim, Nyso, JoAnna, Shepard) into the woods for information. Not a task I wanted to do, but I brought a book along. Atlas and I enjoyed ourselves despite being in the middle of the woods. We managed to find a rabbit that appeared to light itself on fire when it was asked where the flaming rabbits were. I found this quite odd, my initial thought was a druid had enchanted the rabbits, or the rabbits were somehow intelligent. I now believe some sort of of illusion magic is the cause, and but more on the later. We lost the trail of the rabbit but later found it's charred remains, which we are assuming was the rabbit we lost track of. We returned the rabbit and the information to the Constable. He didn't seem very interested in the rabbit, but he did have a nice paying side job for us to do, which ended up being one of the most interesting events to happen to me while I've been in Gildale.

The job was to meet up with a merchant on the eastern road and escort him back to Gildale. We left the town and waited 2 miles outside of town for the merchant to arrive. The merchant was actually a spellologist named Averice Mk'Ginis! He has been working on a method for retaining spells in a matrix. The spells can then be manipulated. He had a spell contained in a matrix and it appeared to be some sort of acid fireball. I spoke with him at length on the trip back and, once back, we continued to discuss books and spell matrices at length. Before leaving he bestowed a book to me called Masterson's Arcanum. I spent the next 10 hours without sleep and continuing to study the book. I found the book was actually about illusions both magical and material. At the end of the book was a spell that I was able to memorize and cast without having to read it from the scroll. This is amazing for me as I have never been able to retain the magics of a text before. I suspect that the [[Averice Mk'Ginis]|Averice]] knew this would happen. He seems to like me and I hope that he will soon take me as his apprentice.

Once I finished the book, Averice gave me another book to read, The Machanicus Arseneria. Atlas seemed particularly interested in this as well so he used a spell to duplicate the book and we are both going through the book together. Thus far we have learned how to build some gnomish time keepers. It's all very interesting and I can't wait to finish the book and continue on with the next one that [[Averice Mk'Ginis]|Averice]] has for me.

In some unrelated news there were some adventurers in town for some time, and apparently one of them spotted Cora stealing form other people in the tavern and went to take her to justice. To make matters worse Talin went to defend her and he was killed by the adventurer. He was apparently resurrected by on one of the other adventurers and Cora was put in prison. I'll have to make sure I keep my distance from Cora from now on. Seems like she can not be trusted.

After the incident with Cora and Talin, the Constable wanted me to do some research regarding the black temple. Apparently some witches from that temple were looking for the adventurers that passed through, and the Constable believed they intended to harm the adventurers and wants me to find out what I could about them. None of the texts in any of the libraries contained any information about it so I talked to [[Averice Mk'Ginis]|Averice]] who suggested we talk to a hermit in the woods west of Janson Lumber. Atlas is going out with a small contingent of guards to find out what the hermit knows. I'm staying behind to read the The Machanicus Arseneria.