Ratite Hudsonia of Zenorum

A member of House Aviary. Played by John Greenwood.

#### Sent:

Hudson, wants to chat, or find the general outline, of the local healing consortium - whether that's a formalized Healer's Guild or a state medical establishment or just some loosely knit group of herbfolk.  Looking for details and maybe even a meeting with the local recruiter.

#### Response:

**Lady Holly Lightward** is one of the older heads of houses in **Bastion**. Her teachings have been largely followed by most of the healers in Bastion now.
As long as you heal those in true need first without cost, and any who are injured while serving the benefit of the community without cost, any additional healing should be paid for. The usual cost of healing is around 5 copper per spell level used. You need to be able to put food on the table, so giving away all your healing for free makes no sense. Each individual may work out their own way of getting paid, but doing work for free is slavery, not work.
If the injuries are due to work for Bastion as a whole, these injuries are to be healed free of charge to the individual. Usually said healing will be paid for by the kingdom in some way. Injuries that are received during personal endeavors are generally expected to be left to heal at their own pace aside from any preliminary care required to insure the injury won’t have any long-term negative effects.

### June IBGA

#### Sent:

Hudson will take Baron Heartwood's invitation and seek out the Arcanist of Time for an interview and get-to-know session.  After his unsuccessful attempt to connect with Lady Lightward (she wouldn't even meet with him, ¡of all the nerve!), he'll try to make friends, or at least acquaintances with this dude.  In general, he wants to know more about Formal Magic (he's never been able to do it before) and the ins and outs of magic.  He'll happily work in the Arcanist study, grounds, or whatever to help out - so long as it doesn't infringe on his work for House Aviary.

In specific, he's looking for details (or places/things/ideas which might lead to details, [a la mods]) about 'old' Zenith and how we can connect with them in their pocket realm - what better historian than a person who moves through Time.  Zenith is a long-term goal and will likely take digging and time.  In the short term, he's looking for information about the guardian-type folk who protect the Tower on Baron Heartwood's land.  This last bit is near to Hudson's heart.  As a former soldier and sailor, he knows a bit about duty, honour, sacrifice.  He's mostly cast off that life when he became a full-time mercenary, but he would like to see if the Arcanist of Time has any knowledge about the guard's families - he hopes to either reunite them across the generations or at bring some details back to the guards about their scions.  He was really touched, and a bit saddened, that they have forgotten the reasons they serve and the people they loved.

#### Response:

**Arcanist [of Time] Zedd** is thrilled to have your company, at least he usually is. Some days he doesn't recall your arrangement and one day he initially dosn’t seem to even remember who you are, but most days the two of you share pleasant conversation while scraping the writing from ancient vellum scrolls recording crop yields and resource allocation from over a thousand years ago. You talk about the basics of magic, and of ritual casting, and Zedd tries to explain the fundamentals of **Time Magic** though it dosen’t make much sense to you, in fact you are fairly sure that it breaks several fundamental rules of magic. When you bring that up to **Zedd** he replies “Sort of, it used to. Or maybe it still does? Either way its not really an problem for long.” which you find entirely unhelpful. Still, despite his flightiness and loose grasp of verb tenses, **Zedd** is a treasure trove of knowledge. (edited)

He tells you about the tower that you visited in the **Wild Woods**. It once belonged to the **first High Arcanist** of Bastion. It was the location where she would experiment and, as one of two casters to survive casting the ritual that created **The Nimbus**, monitor it and insure that it was holding strong. It was also the site of the fight in which she slew the **Elder Dragon Crythryxia** after it was discovered the dragon had betrayed her alliance with Bastion. Nobody knows what happened to the tower, conspicuously so. The only thing that is known today is that over 7000 years ago the tower was destroyed and the then High Arcanist refuse to tell anyone what had happened, and indeed spent quite some time in her later life insuring that no records of it remained. Even **Zedd** is unable to see what happened as an apparently purposefully constructed mystical interference prevents him from looking through time back to those moments. You are able to discover that at least some of the guards in that tower were of the original members of the Gloom Guards as **House Gloom** has records of several Gloom Guard perishing within the tower around the time it was destroyed. They were all honored with a true hero’s funeral and send off which gives you some comfort.

As for **Zenith**, very little is known about your long lost ancestral homeland, save that they apparently worked with Bastion on the creation of the Ritual that sequestered the human kingdom. You are able to come across the occasional mention, but it would take more time to try and piece together all the mentions and short accounts into something useful. As for reaching them, **Zedd** encourages you to speak with the High Arcanist, as his entire being is currently enveloped by trying to bridge the barriers between worlds so if anybody would have the answers you seek, it would be him

### July IBGA

#### Sent:

In honour of the upcoming Celebration and all the good work completed in the last few months, Hudson is taking Reynold, Zedd, and all the Arcanist folk out for a night on the town.  They've worked hard and mostly anonymously these last few months and deserve to blow-off some steam.  He'll pick a place in Bastion that is mid to upper scale and rent out a backroom.  Hudson will bring a barrel or two from the House Aviary's vineyards: something light and fruity, perhaps a sweet blackberry cider with a hint of anise; the kind of easy sipping cider that creeps up and, before you know it, everyone is dancing on the table singing, "Ruby Red Tail."  Hudson will build a friendly rapport with the Arcanists, get any information he can on what they expect will happen when the Reunification Ritual is finalized (the kinds details and misgivings Arcanists don't normally share with their King), and learn about the internal intrigue and personal family stories within the Arcanist's group: who's sleeping with whom; gambling problems; kid's birthdays; wedding announcements; what research is being done "on the side, off the books"; etc..  Hudson plans to wind his way through the Arcanist hierarchy and wants to know the lay of the land from the apprentices on up.

#### Response:

Given the busy schedules you know the **Arcanists** lead you are slightly surprised when they do in fact take you up on your offer. You select an elegant tavern in the capitol city with a spacious back room and everything is set just as you would like. The younger apprentices are the first to arrive, which is of no surprise, they are most of them young, **roughly in the 20-25 range in human years and of all races save the Biata**. As you begin talking with them you learn that they are all training under either one of the three Archanists, or an elder apprentice as the High Arcanist does not have time to train students anymore. His Apprentices (the three Archanists) are more akin to lab assistants than true apprentices. You also learn that there is no end to the drama amongst the younger Archanists. Rivalries for the favor of their superiors run hot and fast and you hate who is nearly as talked about a subject as who's sleeping with who.

That kind of talk continues right up until the High Archanist, the first of the proper Archanists to do so, arrives at the celebration, at that point everyone’s conversation turns suddenly to their latest projects or breakthroughs whenever the High Arcanist is in earshot. Not paying attention to the general clamor he greets you, thank you for your invitation, and you soon fall into a conversation about the most recent interaction of the transportation ritual he is working on. He seems quite pleased with this version, pointing out that none of the test mice died, disintegrated into a puddle of goo, or burst into a being of living flame. He seems quite optimistic about the prospects of success come the fall.

As the evening draws on, most of the apprentices are deep in their cups. Even the High Arcanist seems to be feeling the effects of his drink as he sits quietly and stares into its dark depths. You ask him about the wisdom of putting all of their efforts into this one ritual, would it not be wiser to work on several solutions at once instead? The High Arcanist is quiet for long enough that you start to wonder before he answers you, his voice quiet. **“Nine hundred forty six thousand eight hundred and twenty three.** That is the number of people that live within Bastion. Should the worst come to pass and The Nimbus fail, we have theorized that my apprentices and **I could possibly save two hundred and eight individuals.** Possibly. We are putting all our resources into this one effort because it is the only one we’ve come up with that has any chance of success. And we have to give it the best chance of success we can, because it has to succeed. There are Nine hundred fourty six thousand six hundred and fifteen reasons why is has to succeed.”