Dark Passages
I'm no bard, but sometimes metaphors are just true. For example: sometimes to get to wide open skies you have to find your way through dark tunnels. I've been yearning to visit the wide open plains of Karana and pay homage to the Rainkeeper, but I'm not yet enough of a druid to attune to the circle there, so I'm going to have to make my way there on my own two hairy feet. And that meant, for a start, making my way through Runnyeye.
Runneye Citadel is a nasty underground maze full of goblins and the occasional giant floating eyeball. Don't ask me about those. All I know about them is they can mess with your head if you get too close. I don't dare wander too deeply into Runnyeye myself, especially not alone, but if you know just the right path on the upper levels you can get through it and out the other side without too much trouble.
On the other side though, you run into the Gorge of King Xorbb. A real "out of the frying pan into the fire" situation. Metaphorical this time. Who is King Xorbb? I'm assuming one of those giant eyeball guys, but I don't honestly know for sure. Like I say, I'm no bard. All I know is that there are all manner of eyeballs floating around that gorge mind-controlling minotaurs and mud men and making them fight goblins. And everything in the gorge, on both sides of that little war, wants to eat halflings.
It was lucky I ran into a barbarian shaman, who had for some reason traveled all the way from Halas to pick fights in the Gorge. Yeesh, she was tall. I don't speak much Common and no Barbarian at all, but we managed to team up and take care of enough goblins and minotaurs to get me safe passage through. Coincidentally she had the same name as a bard who'd wandered through Misty Thicket when I was fighting on the west side of the wall - or else "Ayashasa" means something in Common I'm not aware of like "mind your own business."
Come to think of it, that seems more likely. Maybe wandering adventurers don't like nosy halflings asking their names.
Anyway, I'm now safe at the edge of the eastern plains of Karana, making camp and enjoying the wide open sky. It's like nothing I've ever seen, and it fills me with a strange sense of purpose. I want to learn every inch of these plains before I move on with my travels. There is a lesson here somewhere for me from Karana, I just know it.
