Sir Villas Wake
Sir Villas Wake is a Human Mage who was researching the Weird Statues in Eltibule. He was working alongside Sinda, daughter of Yasinda. The duo encountered problems during their exploration...
Dalvos is a "young colleague" of Wake's.
World Influence
Eltibule
Sir Villas Wake investigated the weird statues in Eltibule.
Error: Item not foundIt's entitled "Private Journal, Sir Villis Wake." You carefully look for exploding glyph traps or deadly poison darts, but it seems safe enough. However, after reading just a few paragraphs, your eyes glaze over with boredom. Maybe you could skin it and manage to stay awake...
... and I'm certain now that the statues are tied to the phase of the moon! This proves that they can't be of Dwarven origin, because the Dwarves never use lunar magic -- it's too unpredictable underground. But the dwarves certainly made use of the statues. For what, I cannot say.
... I believe that one statue is the Primary statue during each phase of the moon, and can be found by placing a moonstone on the statue. The primary statue will accept the moonstone. Other statues will return the moonstone unharmed, rather than consuming it as everything else is.
...each seems keyed to different trigger items. The primary statue accepts gems. If you head clockwise around the general area to find the next statue, that one accepts mushrooms. The one beyond that accepts fish. And the one beyond that accepts bones. Those are all that I have discovered so far, but I believe each statue can accept several different kinds of things.
... providing a correct key item retrieves a document. Most of these are pieces of dwarven script describing a hidden cache of treasure. A cartographer could probably turn these vague clues into exact coordinates. I'll have my assistant in Statehelm come here immediately; she is better at all this map malarkey.
... we have now sampled several hidden containers, and the results were impressive.
It appears that an entire society of dwarves used the system hundreds of years ago, and left their treasures behind, trusting perhaps that the complexity of the system would keep their items safe.
... I found one item that was relatively modern, suggesting that dwarves were using the system as recently as a few years ago. In fact, they may still be using the system even now...
... an imperfect understanding of the system, but it seems to have an inherent limitation: each type of item can only be sacrificed once per phase of the moon. This restriction is most vexing. There are eight moon phases each month, so the order of the statues changes every few days.
... discovered that the statue which accepts mushrooms can also accept cat eyeballs and (perhaps) other bits of animal corpse. We were able to get two maps from that statue: one from a mushroom and one from the eyeball. Then, the next day the moon was in a new phase. We went clockwise one statue, and sacrificed another mushroom and cat eyeball there. Success! Starting to feel like we understand the mechanism now...
... I've contacted my young colleague Dalvos in Statehelm; he will want to see these statues. There seems to be a vast power structure underneath them! Perhaps together we can harness this energy that the ancients so carelessly left behind.
Sometimes Sinda makes errors when mapping the coordinates, which is entirely understandable. But the vexing thing is that the ground here is so full of buried items that we often dig up something even at the incorrect coordinates! Typically, these items are not very impressive... and some are not containers at all. In fact, today we unearthed a dormant slime, which we barely managed to escape from. Terrifying.
... after several more successes, we hit tragedy. We must have calculated the coordinates incorrectly, because we dug up a mottled floating skull. It screamed "COME TOUCH YOUR FATE, SINDA" and she died instantly. In my terror, I fled straight into a pack of wolves. Am now bleeding badly...
I have made it back to our campsite, but I"m stuck. I can't ride a horse in this condition... I've lost the use of my legs. Going to let the horses go free, and hope they somehow survive. I used my last sending stone to contact Dalvos... he said he was coming soon. If I can survive a few days, this nightmare will be over.
- - Another book titled Personal Diary, Sir Villas Wake can be found in a box of millet in the front tower of Eltibule Keep. You must accept the Gratflower Millet quest for Gretchen Salas first. The text contains "boring personal details about some sage's life."
