Today is story time. This is the journey of Findal (”Find-all”) Goodridge, my Dwarf Wizard, and her voyage through the world of Thaumdor, the new Voyage realm made by WanderingStar.
Character Creation
Before making this character, I read up on the world lore of Thaumdor, about how the Dwarves lived in magnificent cliffside homes in the rainy Highlands, multiple races sheltered together in the city of Sanctuary, surrounded by the Elven Everwood, and the exotic Spice Isles resting in the south, waiting to be explored.
I think when it comes to staying interested in a long game, starting with a vision is important. At least for me personally, knowing the world lore was helpful. I was in the mood for a cozy game, and had the perfect idea.
The vision for my character was a Dwarven miner who mined rare gems in the cool months, and then in the summer, I travel to the exotic Spice Isles to sell my goods. I chose earth magic and water magic starting trait, Craftsman trait, and the Wizard class which had Alteration Magic and Ritual Magic. I picked the ‘Overboard!’ start, which had me traveling with another dwarf.
Actions 1 - 500
My game started with me being thrown from a riverboat that was attacked by pirates. The dwarf Bledek Stonegut saved me by pulling me from the water. As soon as we shook hands, a pirate ran up and tried to stab him in the back, so I returned the favor by summoning a wave to sweep the pirates out to sea. We thanked each other, agreed that the water was no place for a dwarf, and decided to travel back to the Highlands together.
Just before reaching the highlands, we had our first encounter with shadow cultists (the main plot of Thaumdor is that the Shadow Covenant is trying to destroy society)
Out of all the skills I had, Earth Magic and Water Magic were my only ‘offensive’ abilities. I was in the mountains, so I opted to use Earth Magic. We fought some cultists in a ravine as they were performing a ritual to release some shadow monster. Bledek and I defeated the cultists, but just barely. My earth magic was only around level 15 at this point so I was just barely succeeding most of my rolls, which felt appropriate for my first real fight.
We had taken so long, that their ritual had almost completed, and a shadow monster was trying to come out. I quickly used ritual magic for the first time to seal the dark portal, which also barely succeeded. Most of my clothes, and my staff was destroyed. It was hard, but I won. I felt like so far I had done an excellent job of selecting my skills, and I was well prepared for each eventuality. This was the result of all my experience thus far, both as a player, and someone who has built worlds in Voyage already.
This is another reason I think knowing some lore is important. In a world mainly on the ocean, water magic would be OP. In the Dwarven Highlands, earth magic is worth its weight in gold. So I felt strong, but this is because I was playing to my strengths. If I had started with Fire Magic, or traveled to a different region first, I would have had a very different experience.
We slept at a nearby inn, then returned to the ritual site in the morning to loot the area. In the morning, a few more cultists had appeared, which surprised me. I tried to fight them, but I ended up getting knocked out. When I came to, Bledek had defeated them all by himself, and he helped me up. That’s twice now Bledek has saved me. He mentioned that the binding stones the cultists used in their ritual was very valuable, but we agreed that the priority was to get to safety since we were outnumbered.
We crossed the border into the Highlands, and I looked at the map. Lots of locations, but I wasn’t sure which ones were friendly. It was evening so we rested in the southernmost location, a creepy vulture valley. I used my Earth Magic, and Bledek used his Stoneshaping, and we made a nice alcove for ourselves to sleep. He told me a bit about his history, how his entire clan had been wiped out by an evil giant, and now he was looking for a fresh start.
In the morning we went to King’s Watch, the outpost in the center of the map. I asked them for directions and they mentioned a couple of cool dwarven places to live… we settled on a direction, and eventually found our way to Ironfall.
Once we arrived and introduced ourselves to the Thane, Bledek kept whining about how he wanted me to go back and fetch the dark ritual stones. Since my intention with this game was to play more of a crafting game, I told him I didn’t want to go. I told him to ask the Thane for men to take with him, and go south to fetch the stones himself. So finally he left, and I was alone in a new city, ready to mine and craft, like I had always planned.
Coming to Ironfall felt like coming home. Everyone loved crafting, and we were safe in the mountain. I met a few NPCs from the local guild, and expressed my intention to become an official crafter and build my own shop. I got a few quests about getting guild approval and demonstrating my skills. I managed to convince some people to let me build my own little alcove using my earth magic. So I started my own shop, ‘The StoneRidge Workshop’. I used Earth magic for the space, Crafting skills and Alteration Magic skills helped me to build the furniture.
After a good sleep, I woke up, ready to craft.
I looked over the loot in my inventory. I had looted about 5-6 cursed shadow items from the cultists. I used Ritual Magic to cleanse the shadows from the items successfully. My Wizard class perks really helped here.
Once I had the cleansed items, I took them to the local market. I showed off my items, and people were impressed both at the item quality, and at the fact that I could cleanse corrupted stuff. They mentioned a lot of their inventory was corrupted. I spent the entire day trading with people and doing demonstrations of my ritual magic, which made me a few friends.
Then I went home to sleep. In the morning, a weapons master came by. I had asked someone for a recommendation of who was best to fix my damaged weapon, and they mentioned this guy, Master Dornin. We worked together all morning, and he built me an excellent new staff.
Next I went to the local seamstress to help repair my robes. In her workshop, we repaired my robes together, and enchanted them so they boosted my earth magic. Then I cleansed a corrupted chainmail, and asked her to sew it into my robes, which gave me this beauty:
I spent the whole day with her, building a new armor set, which boosted my earth magic and ritual magic.
By the end of the day, I was starting to become quite powerful.
It took about 300 actions to actually start crafting like I initially wanted, but now the payoff was quite satisfying. I had built my entire character around crafting and building homes in the mountainside, and now that was what I was good at.
I spent the next few days cleansing the inside of the fortress city, doing quests for people, removing shadow corruption. I found Vex, a shadow ninja in the armory, cleansed her of her shadow corruption, and sent her to prison. I did half a dozen quests, and made 5 good friends, and 10 more acquaintances. I got familiar with the areas, and felt a nice sense of community. We spent a day planning to build a proper Dwarven tavern, but at the last minute we discovered that there was a very valuable mineral vein in the planned construction site, and the construction was postponed. #Sigh
After 3 days, Bledek had not returned from his mission. I talked to the guards and we created a search party, heading south to find him.
He had been captured and tortured by a Shadow Covenant wizard, Vashara Nightweaver. She was talking about how she wanted to corrupt the binding stones beneath Ironfall to release imprisoned giants. My only 2 good skills at this point in the game were Ritual Magic and Earth Magic. So I used the first turn to lock the lead cultist in a prison of earth while my allies freed Bledek, and the second turn I used to drain away all of her shadow powers. I’m not much of a fighter, I’m better at cleansing and building. So I did what I do best.
After Vashara’s head cleared, she helped us free the other dwarves. We fought a few more rounds of guys while on the trail of Grimvar, an evil Shadow Covenant giant who masqueraded as a dwarf and was responsible for killing Bledek’s clan.
One funny part was that the bad guy actually sent a stone golem after me.. which I immediately saw as an incredible opportunity. Before my party could destroy it, I put my magical skills to work and bound the golem to my will.
I renamed him ‘Breaker’, healed him, and led the rest of the party to fight Grimvar before he could unleash an army of giants. We crushed him, reversed his dark ritual before it could release the giants beneath the mountain, and went home.
Once we were home, I was surprised to hear Bledek was mad at me for sparing the life of the reformed shadow cultist.
This was a really cool moment. This was a character I had a long history with, and he was mad at me for something that genuinely made sense and it was something that I respected and didn’t want to try just wiping away with a persuasion roll.
As much as I loved Bledek, I knew that he still needed time to heal. Ironfall was finally safe, and it was the home he had been searching for all along. So after thinking about it, I decided it would be best to leave for a while.
Actions 500 - 1000
It was time for a fresh start, where no one knew who we were. I had an inventory full of valuable Dwarven items, some interesting new NPCs to interact with, and I was finally ready to visit the exotic Spice Isles I had been dreaming of since starting this game. In exchange for her freedom, I hired the assassin Vex as a guide for Vashara and I.
We took a boat south, and made good time through the marshes. As we made camp the first night, we were immediately beset by enemies. There were bandits leading a pack of wolves, and some large corrupted shadow wolf joined in as well.
I created an earthen wall around us, and coordinated my 3 new allies to help me defeat the creatures with relative ease thanks to my careful tactics. A couple bandits managed to sneak away, but I resisted the urge to follow them in the woods. Both of my allies had been wounded. I used Earth Magic to make us a house, and they went inside to rest and heal, while I made dinner.
That night, I talked to both of them and asked them what they were feeling now that I had removed their shadow magic. I asked them if they had other skills. Vex had her Rogue skills, and Vashara was good with Alteration Magic. I offered to teach them my powerful shadow cleansing ritual technique so that they could help others like I helped them.
I gave each of them a gem that had been corrupted, and walked them through the process of cleansing it. Though we had been enemies, I showed them that I was willing to trust them and could offer them an interesting life if they stuck with me for a while. They agreed, and we went to sleep.
In the morning, we continued down river, leaving behind the nice house I made. We sailed all the way south to the sea. There on the shore, Vashara and I both converted our tiny row boat into a full sized merchant ship with a cabin.
Then we sailed to a nearby island. We went to the tavern, had dinner, drinks, and danced. At the end of the night, they played a slow song, and I had a slow dance with Vex the ninja while my other companion watched from the wall. Everyone in the tavern saw us holding each other.
This started to set off some alarm bells for me, as there was a chance that the wizard in my party may feel alienated and it could break up our group. We all went to sleep in our own beds and didn’t talk about it the next day.
Stuff like this is probably the most unique element of Voyage. My companions have their own eyes and opinions, and they may or may not go along with how I lead them, something that really doesn’t happen in any other game.
The next morning Vashara was obsessed with wanting to see what the sailors were up to, saying she heard them talk about some unusual events in the night that could be related to the shadow cult. I tried to talk her out of it, but she was too insistent. Since I felt guilty for excluding her last night, I agreed to investigate. Apparently someone did something strange off the coast in the night. We sailed out there, gave ourselves water breathing with our Alteration Magic, and dove in. I was in danger here, since all of my gear boosted my earth magic up close to level 50, but my Water Magic was only level 11.
We found another corrupted ritual site on the sea floor, surrounded by 2 sea monsters. We kept getting attacked by the sea monsters and I couldn’t fight back, so I just grabbed on to Breaker and let him quickly drag me to the sea floor, where the corruption was coming from. I cleansed the ritual site, and the monsters fled.
Then my companion went ballistic.
Vashara started talking about how the ritual site was actually a giant’s prison, and she wanted to release the giant. Vex had to hold her back from breaking the seal, and Vashara was even preparing to attack us. Things were spiraling quickly. Even though I had assumed her obsession with freeing trapped giants would be gone after I cleansed her shadow corruption, I was surprised to learn that this was just part of her actual personality. Finally I was able to talk her down by telling her that we didn’t have enough information about what was down there, and we could risk millions of lives. She finally relaxed, and worked with me to re-seal the prison. This was peak RP, lots of fun.
After that, we left the small island and went to the large island city of Tevantia. Not wanting to be hounded by the authorities, I paid my docking fees like a good sailor. I left Breaker to guard our ship, while the 3 of us went out to explore the town. We first stopped at the market and sold some of the items I made. The merchant told us a bit about who ran the island, and which factions were weak at the moment.
As we stopped for ice cream, a catkin approached us. He had heard about Vashara’s skills and wanted to offer her a job doing enchantments for him. We told him we were on the way to the arena, and he could accompany us.
At the arena Vashara started talking with the cat about magical business, while Vex and I stopped by the betting house. She used her fighting experience, and I used my arcane sight, and together we decided on which fighters we thought were the strongest. I put down 500 coins and she added in 400 of her own. Then we went back up to our friend’s private viewing box while daydreaming about how rich we were going to be.
We sat in the back row and watched the fights and played footsie, while Vashara negotiated a business deal. Kaelan was getting frustrated as one of his fighters lost, but Vex and I walked away with over 2000 gold.
The catkin asked our friend out to dinner, and Vex and I happily pushed her out the door so that we could go on a proper date. The stars were truly shining upon us. We went back to our boat and got dressed up.
Vashara went to dinner, and Vex and I went to a fancy Serpentkin restaurant in the same district. We ate some fish and shrimp, and saw lots of interesting characters. On our way back, my golem sent word that something was going on at the docks.
We went and saw some cultists unloading stuff on the far side of the dock. We used Vex’s ninja Shadow Magic to hide in the dark. I put my hand to the side of the boat and carved a hole into it, quickly sinking it, then I pulled the cultists into the sea and drowned them while the harbor guards arrested the survivors. Vex got wounded in the fight, so afterwards I took her back to the boat to lay down, and waited for Vashara to return.
Then Vashara and I dove into the two boats and looted them of their treasure and documents. We found out House Saltwind was funding their operation (they have a majority of the council seats in the city, and are quite powerful). Based on the letters, Lyanna Saltwind was likely the second of the 3 Shadowbound I had to defeat.
In the morning, Vashara came up with a cover story about me wanting to cleanse some corrupted items for Kaelan so that I could get him alone and ask him to help me corner Lyanna.
This turned out to be a whole can of worms. I went into his heavily guarded estate, and discovered he had a dozen corrupted binding stones, each with a calamity level spirit bound inside. He wanted me to cleanse them so his house could use them as tools to lord over the island. He told me they were worth a combined $3,000,000.
I activated my Arcane Sight, and saw a chilling sight I hadn’t noticed before. Kaelan was also infected, being manipulated by shadow energy. As I began to cleanse the stones, the shadow energy reacted to being outed, trying to choke him. I took his desperate hand, and cleansed him of the corruption. Once he was back to his senses, he agreed to let me take the stones. I promised him he could make up the lost profits once I broke House Saltwind’s monopoly for him.
We cleansed the stones and sealed them inside of Breaker. Until we could make our way back to the Highlands and seal them in a Dwarven vault, this was the safest option.
So far things were going well. I was three million dollars richer, and we had a meeting planned for tomorrow with Lyanna Saltwind, who could be the key to ending corruption here on the island.
Then came the curveball.
Vashara was livid that I kept these beings contained, and wouldn’t let her free them or talk to them, because she believed that they had knowledge that would be useful to humanity. She went on and on with this religious fervor about how the giants and bog monsters and ice wraiths all needed to be freed at once so we could live in harmony. I tried to talk her out of it and explain things, but she just wouldn’t stop. Finally I put my foot down.
I told her straight up: Things don’t always go the way they go in your head. If you don’t believe it, I’ll prove it to you.
I challenged her to a fight on the deck of our ship.
She came at me, and even though I was at a disadvantage with (virtually) no earth to command, I got in a lucky strike. I picked up a distant pebble, Bolin-style, and launched it at her.
I got a critical hit, bloodying her head with a rock from above, and then made it rain.
I beat the brakes off of my apprentice in just two turns, and then let Vex clean her up. Then the real work began.
I felt terrible for what I had done, and tried to make her understand why I did it.
I apologized, and we talked for a long time, about how there is mistrust in the world, and how true bonds often take many years to form, and have to be approached from a place of equality and openness. As long as we held this power over the trapped beings, they would never trust us.
I knew why she was saying the things she was saying. I knew she was an optimist, a good person who wanted everyone to work in harmony.
I wanted to believe in her vision. I wanted to be wrong. I wanted her to be strong enough to prove it to me, but today that hadn’t happened.
I turned the subject toward fond memories of working with skilled masters when crafting items in Ironfall, about how great it had been to make a new wand with Master Dornin, and how Helga Threadspinner had made my fantastic armored robe. I did my best to show her that I believed in the world she wanted to build.
Eventually we came to an agreement. From now on in our journeys, I would let her take the reins when dealing with supernatural beings and deal with them as she saw fit. The only condition was that she would trust me when I told her my instincts said a being was dangerous.
After that I let her get some sleep, grateful that our group had survived another day.
To Be Continued!
Benjamin