The People’s College and the Wayfinder’s are co-sponsoring an investigative expedition to the mountains to the west of Margush. Applicants must be willing to travel for several months, and capable of handling themselves in wilderness. Pay is 60 Acra a head (20 of which can be provided in advance).
The party head out, heading towards the three locations provided to them by the People’s College & Wayfinders Guild. After a difficult journey involving a giant bird, marauding deer, and the criminal gangs of Margush, the party eventually arrive at their first port of call: the valley of the rising moon. Much to their disappointment, the moon simply rises out from behind the mountain peak rather than exiting the cave as the local legends suggest. A violent encounter with some large white gorilla-like creatures did prove that many elements of the local legends were true though.
The second village also demonstrated no unusual consensus, with the local stories of Fairy offerings not actually believed by most villagers (and instead being a means to keep their children away from the cute but vicious local forna). The belief of the children certainly turned out to be sufficient to ensure that the fairies of legend were to be found within the Flux.
The final destination proved to be far more fruitful, with steel becoming massively weaker by comparison to the locally produced obsidian weapons. After a few friendly demonstrations and a duel between Alastair Fitzgrave and the Master Swordsmaker, the party aquire a few local samples as well as the Swordsmaker’s masterpiece: a perfect sword carved from a single shard of obsidian. Outside this one patch of consensus the sword becomes extremely fragile, but within it is perhaps one of the sharpest weapons ever produced.
Once back in Acryn, representatives of the College and Guild are extremely pleased to hear about the evidence the party have gathered. Study of the samples brought back demonstrate that local iron-ore had some extremely unusual properties, which would have meant swords created with it would have been extremely brittle. It is postulated that because steal being weaker than obsidian would have been provable true prior to the upheaval, this is now universally true within their patch of consensus.