The Duke's fort was routed, we were shepherding settlers down the river at the time, but we were there too late to save anyone. We managed to find the Duke's daughter - she escaped down an underground tunnel, and we've been guarding her. We met up too with last remnants of the Dukes house, but I'm sorry to say that the Duke himself didn't make it. The fort itself is no more - it didn't survive the fighting. Or the fire.

We agreed to accompany the Duke's daughter and the last few members of their household down to Corflu where she was to be found passage on a ship back to the Lunar Empire. So we'd be looking for some new employment next.

When we arrived at the city, we were paid as promised. The Sun County folk in our group are starting to get a little itchy in the feet - it's almost time for our annual service, and we don't want to disappoint our feudal masters. Not again, at any rate. We don't have too long now, but we'd like to make a bit of money before we're due back.

As we relaxed after our difficult journey, we were offered a chance to take in a bath house. We thought that an excellent idea. So to save us any hassle while our belongings were not with us, we changed some of our existing wealth at the Ingillies trading house into something more portable, then return for our 'massage'. And a Splendid Evening was had by all.

After our physical exertions we retired to the bar. There were bawdy group of sailors here, and they were drinking heavily - Finch even joined in their dice game for a bit. Eventually we turn in - this was quite a draining day.

The next day Andra spendt some time at the Zola Fell temple, where she heard some interesting news. She heard that the river folk had stopped making journeys up the river at night. There were odd tales of something called the 'phantom' that was scaring them and hurting people. He is, according to the stories, a dark robed boatman who appears wrapped in a cloak of mist. Some folk have been found mutilated and tortured by the river at the places he's been seen.

When she told us all about this, Hank piped up that he'd seen this boatman during one of our recent missions - it was all misty when he appeared during the night in the middle of one of Hank's watches. He'd actually forgotten all about the incident until now.

The boat, he tells us, was moving quite quickly but under some odd kind of power that meant it didn't seem to be propelled by anything.

While Andra was away at her temple, we received a message from the Duke's entourage asking if we were interested in a lucrative but dangerous mission. So Finch and Stelios set off to meet up with them.

The Duke's men, it turns out, are interested in some of the giant condor eggs from the Condor Craggs. There are giants living to the north of Pavis who will, it seems, pay handsomely for them. The Duke's man would be willing to fund a journey to recover some of these eggs for a share of the profits. Most importantly for him, this would possibly fulfill a duty of the Dukes to the giants.

We'd need to have some good climbers, and some good climbing equipment, and we'd have to be prepared to fight these giant condors while climbing the cliff faces.

We have a short discussion, and we decided to have a go at this condor mission. I'll be going along with Stelios, Hank and Azyet. The Duke's man has a box to keep eggs in - but we don't want to remove all the eggs, we only want to take a few, no more than 6. He has also hired us a guide, and he'll be accompanying us on part of this mission - he expects to maintain a base camp while we go off egg-finding. A suggestion was made that perhaps we could manufacture some dummy eggs to replace the real ones with in the condor nests. That'd keep the condors off our tail until we'd made our escape.

Our next port of call is to get some equipment - we need to buy some proper climbing gear.