ROLLENSPIEL

I have just gotten a report that there are Goo-infected beasts in the Upper Bog. More news as it happens.

-- Bittty,

An intrepid team of homins of all lands traveled to Upper Bog to investigate the report. Present were myself, Mannicmatt and Sarlic, Psykro and Suborca and a pair of dedicated healers.

My first sight was of the flock of Igaras hovering at the center of Fearing Fen Farm. Even from a distance the loathsome purple color of their wings was obvious -- complete contamination by the Goo. They appeared to be far more powerful than would be expected in that region and Suborca identified them as being Mortal Igara, very similar to some of Pei-Ruz's "pets" in his foul camp deep in the Goo.

We discovered the first attribute of this flock of Mortal Igara by accident. Poor Mannicmatt wandered a little close to the edge of the Outpost and half of the flock immediately beset him. When I attempted to heal him they immediately beat me into the dust. By the grace of jena I was able to regain my life and I returned to the scene to find the rest of the party assembled and healed up.

By dint of careful experimentation, and sequestration of our dedicated healers at a safe distance, we discovered the following:

The Igaras group in sub-flocks of five Igaras each. There are two sub-flocks at Fearing Fen Farm. If an Igara of one subflock sees you or you engage its attention, all members of that subflock will swarm to attack you. If you strike back within sight of the other sub-flock (ooc: ~50m range more or less) then both flocks will attack. If you run far enough from the other sub-flock before attacking, then only the first sub-flock will beat you into the dust.

The sub-flock will spontaneously split members away from a heavily armored homin and attack other members of their team once they have engaged the first homin.

The Igara have been substantially strengthened by the Goo both in the amount of damage they can take and in their resistance to spells. I estimate that it will take most of a standard team of masters to take out a sub-flock. Suborca suggested that the usual team for invading the camp of Pei-Ruz could handle them easily if they attack one sub-flock at a time.

It is possible, but difficult, to outrun them. They followed me during one experiment almost all the way to the Ecowarriors camp before breaking off and returning to the OP.

We were unable to kill any of them to see what portions of them might be usefully harvested from their bodies for investigation or crafting. There will need to be a stronger team to do that.

There is no sign of a Goo Mound in the OP, the Powers be blessed.

Is this the sign of another Marauder manipulation of the Goo? Or is it spontaneous?

I invite all homins of good will to research, test and report!

-- Bittty

By the way, if any homin is willing to translate and post this in the dialects of Avendale ((FR)) and Windermeer ((DE)), I would appreciate it.

In a late development, Naema from Guardians of the Shadows was able to pull a sub-flock and keep it's attention with her masterful sword-work. I was able to kill one of them, but the rest of the flock drove her and myself to the dust, and the corpse rotted before we could be resurrected to loot it. We are trying again even as I write.

4 x q250 magnificent goo contaminated meat. We killed and looted one. It was costly but we now have more knowledge.

We killed another. Now we're getting corrupted igara skin also.

Great work and reporting Bittty. :)

Thanks for your efforts in continuing to investigate this new menace.

Others came, having read this account.

We formed a team: Arfur, Naema, Mannicmatt, Sonej ,Crafy and myself. Naema taunted sub-flocks of Igara out, then engaged them with Arfur to help, their long swords dancing in the evening air. Once engaged the elementalists could overcome the resistance by successive casts until the Igara fell to the dust. Often they would flee and we would had to chase the Igara back to the Outpost re-engage them. One by one and two by two they fell until the Outpost was cleared.

We found corrupted Igara skin, of excellent quality in addition to the meat.

For now, the Outpost has been cleared. But if more Goo-infected Igara appear we will know that this is not a natural occurrance, but that something more sinister is afoot.

== Bittty, Senior researcher, NTCS.

(With profound thanks to all who have assisted.)
(The Guild La Firme can expect a pest removal bill in the morning. Just kidding.)

A small time later: Another Mortal Igara is in the Outpost. Could we have missed one? It seems unlikely. Sonej and I have killed it and wait to see what happens. We wait well outside the Outpost of course.

Thank you very, very much, dear Mac'Od Bitty, for informing us all about this!

During the Assembly of the Great Circles in Zora on Frutor 26th in the fourth cycle in AtysYear 2572 (OOC: April 24th 2013, 22:00 CEST) Seternulon and his team announced that they had discovered Goo-infested "deadly" Igaras in the Upper Bog near the Fearing Farm Outpost there and had hunted them.

The Awakened Fey-Lin Liang was so kind to tell us that before the second Great Swarming some homins had warned about Goo being found in the bark under this outpost.

Still some of us who were gathered at the Assembly wondered if this Goo-infestion might have something to do with the Goo discovered in the Kitin-Nest and the Kitin-tunnels that are still under the bark all over Atys since the second Great Swarming. Could it be that the Goo has spread from the Nest through these tunnels?

The Royal Academy in Yrkanis would be grateful if some of the material from the infested Igaras could be preserved and passed on to the Academy for further inspection and research.

Thank you.

As of right now (18:45 BST - 17:45 UTC) the Igaras are back in full force. I count 10 individual Igaras in 2 flights of 5.

Thank you for that unfortunate news, Arfur.

Nair-Salazar: I would be most happy to pass on any samples for study, but while the skins are durable the meat seems to rot very quickly; I have had to empty my pack of all of it before it contaminated the rest of the contents with a mixture of simple rot and the Goo. I incinerated it in the hottest fire I could construct. ((ooc: The Contaminated Goo Meat cannot be traded.)) It is unfortunate, but the Academy will have to actually get off...err...send representatives of their own to collect samples of the meat.

Enlightened Zhoi. I am afraid that your scribe may have mis-transcribed the time of the meeting since we are now almost to the end of 2572, but I know that if was held many days before I first posted what I thought was new information.

I must say that I have never heard of any Goo infestation near this Outpost in the heart of the Verdant Forest, and I was harvesting in the immediate area for most of late 2571 and early 2572. I will be the first to admit that I do not search out Goo, but if Goo were spreading via the tunnels would it not express itself most easily where we know those tunnels penetrated the Bark, in the Mounds near the cities in the four nations?

The only other time I ever saw Goo in the Forest was many, many years ago, well before the Second Swarming when a sequence of Goo Mounds erupted, tended by corrupted Gibbai. The cause of that was not natural, but due to Marauders.

Still we must keep our eyes open and our minds alert.

Mac'Od Bittty

I have to apologize for my slip of the pen, dear Mac'Od Bitty. Thank you very much for pointing out my mistake. I have corrected this.

Oh, and you don't have to be so courteous as to give me a title that I do not deserve. You see: I am neither an Enlightened homin nor an Awakened, just a lowly Honorary Initiate by choice; representing the nonconformistic Zorai who are aiming to live their own definition of wisdom next to their devotion for their people, the Kami and the principles of the Zorai, like those belonging in neutral guilds, being solitary wanderers, believing in other deities and powers additional to the Kami or being Atys-citizens like myself.

It is unfortunate that noone else before you has let the public know about the goo-infested mortal igaras; it might have been that the first team or even a few teams thought that they have solved the problem once and for all by hunting those abominations down. Now we know that this is not the case.

However luckily no other reports of goo-infested animals have come to light since. I am regularily patrolling through the regions that my city Hoi-Cho is responsible for - the void and the haven of purity; and other scouts that I know are roaming all over Atys keeping their eyes open. Le

t's hope this incident will stay an exceptional case, not the beginning of an Atyswide goo-catastrophe.

(OOC: it took a little, but then I've figured it out: I've been using this calendar http://www.elx-files.de/ryzom/Kalender/Atys-Kalender.PHP for a long time. Last time I checked after the server-merge it showed the exact same date as ingame. Which is weird in itself since we consider our homins to have been in Exile for 8 years after the second Great Swarming ;)

However that calender has changed, perhaps when European summertime started, and I have failed to notice it, sorry for that! As for now you have to fill in exactly one RL-day earlier to get the ingame-date. I sincerely hope that we all have the same ingame-date... For instance 2013-04-26 2:00 should be Fallenor 28th in the fourth cycle of AtysYear 2572 as the map says on my screen ingame right now.)

Nice scouting bittty :) I'll be keeping an open eye out for valcore (when i get back) if more goo mobs start returning!

3 things are weird about these Igara:

1 they are not native to the forest regions
2 they are gathered in a confined space - a working Outpost
3 they are much higher level than the mobs normally found in this region

If there are any more examples in the other regions, I would suggest we first search the other working Outposts that are in 150-200 level regions.