THE HERALD

Location: Jotunheim (Date Unknown)

I believe in the Gods. How can you not? But I never thought I’d see one. There was no mistaking Ymir as soon as he stepped from the portal. Although most Jotun look alike, Ymir is ancient and much larger. He brought with him a horde of frost and stone giants. They gained a foothold in Vanern Swamp.

How can this be? We know the stories all too well, the ones told around the feasting halls of how Odin himself slew Ymir with the help of his two younger brothers.  Ymir’s flesh created the land which we now stand upon, his bones the hills, and his blood filled the void drowning all but two of the Jotuns and remained to become the very seas and oceans we sail upon. Apparently Ymir’s essence was too powerful to extinguish and over the centuries he’s once again grown in power.  I can’t help to wonder if our own shamans knew of his return.  What plans does this ancient god have for us, revenge?  Will Ymir take back what was stolen from him?  Will the seas dry up if Ymir reclaims his blood that was spilt?  What of the flesh?  What will happen to Midgard if he succeeds?

I must focus on my mission… a small army of our kinsmen clashed with Ymir and the jotun causing him to flee back into Jotunheim. Many jotun and giants lay hewn on the battlefield but our losses were greater. His plans were disrupted and we took this chance to explore Jotunheim, but there is something eerily familiar about this place. Like I’ve been here in a dream or I’m constantly being watched. We have been here for what feels like a very long time, just trying to keep the enemy at bay. Due to the incomprehensible nature of Jotunheim, there is no day or night. In the end, I’m not sure how long we have actually been here. I think this may be my last report since everything here wants to kill us mortals. Perhaps I shall take my place at the table in Valhalla tonight.

-Arin Snowtouch
 

The following is an excerpt from “Treatise on Spiritual Residue, Spiritual Conduits, Spiritual Anchors, and Spiritual Reasoning” by Junior Scholar Anna Roversham of the Albion Academy’s History of Magic Studies Institute:

Contrary to popular folklore, ghosts do not exist. What most common folk believe is ghosts are in actuality a spiritual residue formed from the souls of those who died in a moment of great emotional turmoil (1); these residues can take many shapes and sizes creating the common forms most people tend to think of as ghosts. All spiritual residues are translucent and they will try to take on the form of the first soul that started the process. Unlike the traditional ghosts of folklore, spirits gather energy from other souls based upon the trigger for the first soul’s residual manifestation; i.e. a powerful sense of vengeance can build if more than one soul contributes to the cause that they died for, which can become a proportionally equivalent physical manifestation of that spiritual residue.

A particularly nasty physical manifestation is King Uther Pendragon. His soul and spirit were focused on unifying the land. Much of his desires were reflected in his followers and thus sprouted one of the largest mass turbulence events in history. The entire Spirit World became a reflection of Pendragon’s fury and drive. It seems his soul truly believed the land still needed unification and he did not understand that the Lyonesse he found was not the same Lyonesse back when he was alive (2).  That this was even possible creates an interesting conflict with Alain de Lille’s Theory of Spiritual Limitation (3) as related to the Avicennian understanding of Multi-Spirit Sameness (4), which shall be discussed more in depth in chapter three.

It was only through the workings of a brave group of adventurers, men and women with loose affiliations to the different guilds tasked with defending Albion, that King Uther was driven back into the Spirit World. However, it is what they found there that is the most interesting development of this entire episode.
 

1. See Merlin’s work: “Ghosts, Zombies and other children’s tales”
2. Uther visited Lyonesse several times during his reign, but did not annex the land.  See Bertrand Muskhaven’s essay “King-touched lands: An indepth history of Albion and the surrounding areas” for more details on this.
3. From Alain de Lille’s “The Theory of Spiritual Limitation”, first published in its entirety in the Journal Spiritae Naturalis.
4. Detailed in Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina’s ground-breaking text “One in the same: How all spiritual residue is linked”, as translated by Sir Hubrecht Delacey.

Update 4:55pm EST / 9:55pm GMT: Pendragon is up!

The Pendragon server will be coming down tomorrow, June 4th, at 2pm EST / 7pm GMT, for an update.

The test server should be back online by 6:30pm EST / 11:30pm GMT.

The character and guild search stats (found HERE) are unable to update currently. The search function still works but no RvR, experience, or tradeskill stats will update until we implement a fix. We have that fix ready but it requires live server downtime to implement it. As such, we are planning to implement this fix when 1.118 goes live in a few short weeks to avoid taking the live servers down more than necessary. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience this causes in the meantime.

Our DAoC Knight Podcast for May 17th, 2015 was streamed live on our official Twitch channel, which is available now on our Youtube channel and our Knights Podcast archive.

This is the written version of the questions and answers from that video. There was still a lot of discussion and ideas on the podcast, so make sure to check it out!

Grab a minute and have a read HERE.

If you want your questions answered by the devs on our Podcasts, please send in your questions through our Grab Bag form!

Enjoy the weekend, and don’t forget about the bonuses now live 🙂