Testing... The feedback seems correct. Alan Bannel is speaking now.

We were all at the tavern when it happened. Forgemaster Erik showed himself to be a bald, 40-year-old, heavily built man. The steam backpack he wears is very interesting, spitting out smoke which complements his multi-tool battlehammer. He cut to the straight, asking us to follow, which we did. He briefed us on the past week's advancement. During one of the Break of Dawn's weekly trips, they lost the villagers, and a new forgemaster found them disappear into the Break of Dawn's engine. Other than that, they know not of what happened. Forgemaster Erik reminds us to prioritise the protection of the ship's engine and core. Three villagers were found missing, one at the engine, core and boiler room each. Forgemaster Erik passed us a map of the ship quite easily; it seems he trusts the Bastion or the Two Silvers quite a bit. The boiler room is at the bottom. The party quickly discussed what to do.

The party arrives at the Break of Dawn, where a spiral staircase is let down, allowing us access to the first floor. They, as in the forgecrafters, seem oddly nonchalant about the fact that the villagers are melded into the ship. The party was informed there was a witness, so Magnus went to question him. He was busy, but fortunately, he made time to answer. Apparently, the villager just melted after touching the copper engine, turning it into gold. While the party made their way to the boiler room, Alan surprisingly found no one knowledgeable about the boiler room.

When they reach, they realise the room is suffocatingly hot. Additionally, it seems the golden boiler is spreading. Rohan leylines the boiler room, reducing the Plane of Order's influence. Magnus followed up with an inspiring speech, which somehow worked in commanding the melted villager to recede from the boiler room. Alan tried to peel the rest of the gold off, which worked, but a golden parasite tried to make its escape. Brok managed to catch the gold parasite with his bare hands somehow, extra successfully too, with Magnus' aid. Rohan tries to chain it, but it doesn't really work, and Brok seized the opportunity to yeet it off. Magnus produced an interesting container to hold the parasite, and it worked.

The party then moved to the Core, which is locked behind a wheel-mechanism door. The room behind it is just gold, in a way worse situation. The core is a giant Aetherforge (About 3 Bald Eagles and a Half?). The Core is protected in a metal cage with four pillars supporting it and glass walls that go all the way to the top. The floor and the ceiling connecting to the Aetherforge are gold, and it seems to be controlling the Core. Rohan tries to leyline this place as well, succeeding, which causes gold to bubble. Brok pops one of the bubble then some liquid gold replicates the form of Brok, which charges at the party. Rohan quickly reacts and charges back at it with Arcane Absorption. The creature dodged out of Rohan's path, purposefully leaving an arm which corrupts Rohan who touched it. Brok charges it as well, making contact. Using the commotion, Alan quickly identifies the energy pipes connected to the Core and starts removing the gold-transformed part he knows is safe from any fragile parts. The Core reacts weirdly, causing great harm to the party and causes another golden egg to hatch into a young gorilla. Rohan tries to fend the creature off with his magic to a very bad aftermath, being Bloodied and corrupted further as the creature jumps onto Rohan and covers him from head to toe. Brok rushes his doppelganger instead, barely succeeding with Magnus' inspiration.

Alan quickly grabs the rope dangling from the ceiling to reposition himself to where he needs to be and away from the Gold Gorilla's ranged attack. With the vital parts already marked, he quickly carves out all the transmutated parts and learns how the energies are transferred within the ship. Down the floor below, Magnus draws his bow and shoots the Gold Gorilla, which eliminates it. After all the active hostilities are removed, Rohan works on the Golden Egg. He was able to remove it, though a bit of time was spent. Before the party leaves the Core, Alan quickly uses his understanding of the Core to empower his healing barrier and patches Magnus up.

The party finally arrives at the Golden Engine, which is raining gold inside. The Engine is a giant turbine with gold seeping down in front of it before sent flying outside into the forest. It seems the Bloom is purposely trying to spread the corruption. P.s. Rohan wanted to eat the engine. Nevermind, he does try to eat the engine. And Magnus thinks it's a spellcaster thing. Wow. (He ate it using Chains as his platery, Magnus helped him dine, apparently. GM Mystic is taking all the Suspense.) It's done, and the party heads to Forgemaster Erik for a final report.

As the party tries to leave the ship, on the deck, the Golden Corruptors kamikaze the party. The party tries to fight back. Magnus tries to coordinate the people to achieve a certain success. Alan fired his Prismatic Rifle, but had a hard time aiming. Brok uses the ships' cannons. Magnus broke the cannons. Alan fixed the cannons. Brok used the cannons. All the cannons.

Everyone was chilling at the Two Silvers until an old woman walked in to the counter, wearing thick clothes despite it being summer. The woman is named "Brenna", and she asks the party for a favour after hearing someone has not been around for two days. Husband of her friend, stuck in his workshop, requests that the party check it out. Apparently, the lady is named Loxa Kremmel. The family name is quite well-known and has widely contributed to the community. The husband, Mr Nicholas, has the habit of gifting children toys.

His workshops are guarded by ELFs. Three-storey building, a utility building with empty spaces around it, which clearly had buildings before. Very few windows, they are round and can only be barely squeezed through by a child. Upon a more specific look, there are actually four floors. The utility building seems to be a large furnace, built out of clay bricks. Pretty sturdy. Heavily wooden-studded door with a small peek window beside it.

When the door is knocked, the party hear metal footsteps before a small figurine peeks out of the window. It's very thin and looks like a bolted-together little tin man. A lot of beeps and mechanical voices. The figurine disappears for some time and slaps a piece of paper on the window. "Beep beep beep." Jett expands the peek window with magic, and immediately after the wall is a set of stairs leading up to the side.

A dozen or so ELFS are having a party, which freezes the moment the Aetherforged walks in. The sound of alarm and panic rings throughout as the ELFs rush at Jett, then past Jett, up the stairs with everything left behind. On its hands are claws bolted onto the ELF, clearly made or added after. The ELFs magically animated a child-sized action figure. Alan can discern that a lot of modifications are slapped on later, hazardously. The ELF the party caught starts to lose battery, but Alan was able to get it to lead him upstairs to the proposed leader.

On the second floor, the other ELFs immediately deemed the persuaded ELF a traitor and aimed at the party with a giant pencil ballista. Jett tries to create a rift under the Ballistaes to swallow it. It works, but before the effects take place, the party realises there are also bigger ELFs with fancy crown-like hats indicating their status. ELFs from the glasswork area throw a glacier bomb at the party, and everyone dodges the brunt of it as they try to run to the second floor out of the affected range. They don't reach the stairs yet, but the party is now at the centre of the room. Banners hang from the ceiling, "Independent Elf Republic" written with ketchup. A simple grate gate with a giant metallic lock seals the other half of the floor away from the party. Alan creates a barrier against the person working on the gate while Jett stasis the Glasswork ELFs that were throwing ice bombs. Clement quickly works through the lock.

Delaney immediately weaves through the open door only to be forced to roll an Agility Defence Roll. To the left of Delaney is a conveyor belt with a giant gift machine. The Giant Gift suddenly bounces at Delaney and swallows her. Jett rushes forward to try to pry the Gift Packer open. There was a metal window to the Gift Packer; the window ripped itself half apart and swung around. There are many arms inside, wildly swinging like an eldritch horror mimic. Belaney transforms into a horrifying lizard and lands on Jett's shoulder. Alan quickly runs towards the other party members. He almost made it, but an ELF stopped right in his path. He backed away just in time, however, to avoid the worst. Clement quickly followed up with a freezing spell, buying Alan enough time to reconvene.

Delaney the Lizard scouts out the third floor; it's an old man's garage filled with stuff. A labyrinth storehouse. It's just a large "The Pile". On the second floor, Jett expands, hitting the ceiling before smashing the giant gift packer against the wall, shattering it. However, as the Gift Packer is torn away, Jett is damaged too. Then Alan quickly clears out the ELFs on him with his prismatic beam attack, major arcana shotgun, and blasts them away so he can join the others on the other side of the gates. The garage also smells of cabbage. As Delaney crawls above the ceiling, she finds the exit and the Head Elf lying in ambush with a spear. She crawls just above the Head Elf and turns into an alligator before dropping right on the ELF. The Head Elf got squished, really hard. Delaney then shifts back and summons the rest to the exit to the fourth floor. The Glasswork ELFs made an explosion, the intention unclear, and further affected the workshop's stability.

After climbing up the ladder, the party finds themselves in an Artificer's Laboratory. There are a lot of inventions here, some with a purpose, others not. There's a life-sized boy puppet and a cannon named Super Gravity Something aimed at the ceiling with a hole in it. Its objective is to send something far away quickly and safely by blasting it. The Artificer is nowhere to be seen, but there are notes indicating experimentation. The landing spots seem to be just outside of Baston's non-recovered zones, like the Slums. Alan test-fires the cannon, and it works well. After Feather Flower Jett and Delaney transforms into a bird, the cannon fires with Jett inside a box and holding open a pocket dimension holding Alan and Clement.

On the landing spot, there's another crate that crashed into the wall, and the lid is stuck shut. As the party emerges, they find themselves surrounded by a dozen or so thugs. Jett and Alan play the good cop and bad cop to try and intimidate the thugs away. After they left, the party freed the Artificer, and he was a genuinely nice guy, but not Santa.

When the party returned to the workshop, it had collapsed. The ELFs pretend to be nice, but Alan partially revealed their evil nature by influencing the ELFs to forget Nicholas was present. Nicholas then promises to look into it.

The party is given a hand-drawn cart with an Aetherite (Bigger) on it. When the party reaches their destination, the Bloom is already very thick and is swirling around the ground. The villagers follow their previous jobs, though they are not mentally present. Some villagers appear to have protrusions growing out of their backs, covered in a metallic sheen. When the villagers get into the Aetherite's range, however, they instinctively follow it and break out of the charm as long as they are within the Aetherite's aura. As Alan tries to urge the villagers to seek the Aetherite's protection, he quickly realises the Bloom here is affected by the Plane of Order. Alan attempts to move their job destination into the crystal's affected area. Still, the villagers' hands grow rapidly to drag him deeper into the village while returning the baskets to their original spots. Rohan tried to help him escape the villagers' grip, but he was flung out of the Aetherite's protection range, too. Reggie stepped in, intending to shock the transformed villagers, but it struck Alan instead. Emit tries to cut the pole-like arm, but it bounced off harmlessly. Alan removes himself from the assailant's senses using an Arcana, causing their focus to shift to Reggie, who promptly deactivated them with a smash. Emit seeing that, quickly replicated to successful effect. Everyone quickly returned to the Aetherite's side while the Forgemaster made a quick examination of the transformed villagers. Then, rough sounds emerge from within the village's depths. There are approximately 5 giant war machines that resemble an amalgamation of cats, dogs, horses, and other farm animals. At their torsos are cages, with one cage holding a villager that is connected to the machine itself. The party quickly set up an ambush, and Rohan initiated the first strike as the giant war machine aimed to retrieve one of the deactivated villagers. With his magical abilities, he immediately crushes all four war machines with empty cages in that singular strike. The remaining one went over to the deactivated villagers and turned them into four new giant war machines, each of which detains a villager. Alan tries to make a run, but Rohan, controlled by the original order beasts, stops him in his tracks. Emit then tries to strike one of the order beasts, but it's barely effective. Reggie tries to follow up, barely succeeding as well. Rohan, after reclaiming himself, goes for another ram, causing some effect. Alan, after analysing the situation, sees himself out due to his existing injuries and lack of functioning arcana. Unbeknownst to Alan, Emit was able to cut a tube, finding it to be much more effective despite being difficult. The war machines retaliate, wounding Emit and Reggie as Rohan pushes forward and causes a Wild Surge. Dead birds dropping from the sky. Reggie slams the ground with his electrical gauntlet, damaging all of the War Machines, dropping one and damaging two. Emit continues his effort in trying to cut a war machine's tubing from the one imprisoned by it. He succeeded, and the party quickly left the place as they heard mechanical birds approach. The corruption from the Bloom was sticky, causing both Reggie and Rohan to be corrupted. However, the mission was a success overall.

Arcana Test... It's working. Alan Bannel speaking.

I was busy approaching Delaney to obtain the Demonic Seed passed into her hands. It's a valuable item that will definitely solidify my business reputation or net me a lot of money in the underground market. However, the plan was disrupted by a sudden incident in town. It seems a Smuggler was able to secure a Relic from Sorrow's Harbor, very interesting. It'll be a good signature item for my Business if I'm able to obtain some of its core parts. Not to mention the Forgemaster potentially bidding a high price for it, and I get to form a friendly cooperative or business relationship with them.

The Two Silvers sent out its own people, joined by a Luminary who goes by "Your Brilliance". He went for a drink after offering the job request, which is supposed to be good for us. [Addendum] Too bad, we botched the quest quite hard, and to my personal anguish, I contributed a lot to the mess. [Rewinds backwards] We spread out at first trying to track down the Smuggler. Using my Energyweaver, I followed the Relic's lingering magical field. Others contributed in their methods, such as turning into a tracking hound, summoning an air spirit and using their relations.

We reconvened at the "Slums" of Bastion, immediately running into Emit's friend. Emit used his favour and got him to drop the possible score, and we learnt the Forgemasters are paying high prices for the relic too. Makes a lot of sense thinking about it. Shortly after, we ran into a few Lightkeepers who were likely bribed. They purposely kept a stabilizer off, I suspect it's to help the Smuggler of the Relic to get by, but it's unconfirmed till today. Note to future self. And another person used her relations to settle the problem, this time it's Delaney's highschool classmate. Strider almost created a ruckus but we were able to stop him in time and move on.

Then, after talking to a tree, we were led straight to the Relic. It's a very interesting one, connected to the Plane of Dreams and perhaps also related to the Plane of Water. Its shape being a Sextant, and the Smuggler was under its thrall or heavily affected by the relic's magic. I'll skip through the combat, it was embarassing. (Definitely didn't summon a nightmarish Demonic Bear after being licked by a Kelpie which also rammed into me twice when I tried to modify the Relic to temporarily shut it down). Nonetheless, the end result was messy. Although the situation came into control and we were able to complete the Luminary's request, the relic was permanently destroyed. I was able to source a few parts to research myself, will add more to that once I've made progress.

Terminating recording. Alan Bannel out.

Testing 1, 2, 3... The recording device is active—Alan's speaking.

As you can see, I, Alan Bannel, have arrived at the target location where the Nightkeep is observed spawning during the night. The records have been verified as true. Additionally, one can spot groups of Wilders, ones influenced by the Demonic Plane around, as informed. It seems the transport animals they use have been affected by the Bloom as well, gaining demonic features and changing to carnivores, maybe omnivores. More data is required for a complete analysis. They transported their goods through carts, Emit and Clarissa went ahead to scout. I was not able to listen to the Wilders' conversations due to my strategic location of being on this cliff, so I'll obtain their information later. [Edited Addition: Seeds, Mana Forge, a Bear]

While the two are busy doing that, I've noticed some of the Wilders investigating the base where the Nightkeep would spawn. One would suspect the landing platform has to be maintained through that act. If push comes to shove, destruction of that landing zone could give the Wilders a lot of trouble when they wish to spawn in next time. [Edited Addition: The Nightkeep's Appearance is NOT time-fixed, but controlled through a Pylon in the basement.]

After the Nightkeep spawned, bearing some unfortunate incidents I wish not to mention. [Redacted Footage & Records of Wild Surges]. I've confirmed a good portion of the Wilders live in the Nightkeep semi-permanently, or at least long-term. They managed to corrupt the seeds, granting them the ability to grow demonic trees in the material plane. Furthermore, it seems they are capable of producing a variant type of refined Aetherite capable of creating intense Bloom and granting demonic transmutation to living beings (For Now, Lacking Information) caught in it after coming into contact with the standard Refined Aetherite.

Ok. We're busted. Terminating recording...

After-battle Report: The Wilders caught our identity, especially Clarissa's, after she caused a bunch of demonic plants to grow from within their keep. Ask her for more information regarding the Keep's interior. The mutated Demonic Bear's last status cannot be confirmed, as we are forced to retreat after suffering considerable losses. Fortunately, Clarissa was able to force the Nightkeep to despawn from the Material Plane for now, but it's likely they'll return soon and be more prepared against the other remaining factions in the material plane.