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[al-ma-48]

Week 22 - Kraken

Undine was beaming with happiness as we returned to her home. Sadly, we found her beloved Tinted Barriers in a turmoil! Merfolk from the neighboring reefs to the north had arrived just before us, bearing horrifying news. According to their reports, an elder kraken was approaching. Several travelers had reported seeing it, and all communication with villages in the north had ceased! Despite all mundane and magical efforts, only silence answered their desperate call for news. One could only assume the worst - that the kraken had destroyed all life in its wake! Recalling my previous encounters with behemoth creatures, I volunteered to join the reconnaissance mission. As we quietly swam northward, we encountered less and less ocean life. The open ocean can be a lonely place, but close to the reefs, one usually finds an abundance of life. The emptiness was not a good omen of what we were about to come upon! I felt a growing sense of doom as we descended deeper into the ocean, looking for the nearest merfolk village to the north. We entered the vacant village just after sunset. For more than an hour, we desperately searched for any remaining witnesses or signs of the invader. In the end, it was me who found the kraken. Or, to be more specific, the kraken found me…

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[al-ma-48]

Week 24 - Underwater Kingdom

I let out a panicked scream as I felt the pirate occultist's hand on my shoulder. Luckily, his intentions were not as sinister as his appearance. After establishing that neither of us meant any harm, we learned that Willoughby ‘Twitching’ Tentacle had a pure heart of gold. He loathed his family’s inherited pirate business and craved a change. But having just finished his occultist apprenticeship after occupational retraining, he found it very hard to get a job offer. After weeks of searching the ‘Adventurer wanted’ boards along the coast, a mysterious client made contact. The rewards were minimal, but Willoughby desperately needed experience for his CV. So he took the job and met with his clients, which turned out to be a race of very intelligent squids. They wanted him to defend their underwater kingdom that was under threat. Nobody was more surprised than Willoughby himself when he actually opened a portal and the kraken came through. Unfortunately, only then he understood what his occult teachers meant when they said that summoning a creature is the easiest part. The gargantuan kraken had no intention of listening to the tiny, inexperienced occultist. Zoanthidia and I followed him to this mystical underwater squid kingdom in order to learn more.

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