___
Wind whips through nearly every city in Istaria as the world plummets into an icy spiral of death. Plants wither away and spring may never be a possibility. Snow thick enough to swallow up an ancient drifts against Kion’s walls and the dragons of Dralk huddle around the lava pools for warmth. Even the Helian are welcome in Dralk during these dark times, the Schism cooling with the freezing weather and the ancient loyalty between Dragonkind sparking up.
However, hope is not lost; multiple councils of the most powerful mages have been pulled together, desperately trying to find the source. The eldest mages of Ice magic have been brought to Tazoon for testing and trials.
Two months into this horrid cold, a discovery is made; the orbit of the Realm of Ice is closer than ever, as discovered by the gnomish astronomers in New Rachival. With the help of a daring dragon, a gnomish piece of equipment was flown above the swirling clouds to make a detailed map of the stars hidden by the cloak of clouds around the world.
Intently studied, this chart proved the orbit of the Realm of Ice and laid the groundwork for discovering possible causes and solutions. At this round table of discussion, the dragon who flew above the clouds finally spoke for the first time after his mission, his wings tattered and blue in places where they were frostbitten from the extreme cold.
“I’m afraid to say, naka’duskael,” he hissed, his voice raw from breathing in ice crystals for hours. “That you shouldn’t look for an inanimate or natural cause to this. Realms do not connect on their own; the great Dragon Drulkar had to step into the Prime through the Gate of Embers, which provided a magical connection otherwise not normal.”
Devolving into a coughing fit, the dragon slouched over, tired and weary. “I was not alone in that sky; something else was there, weaving the icy magic that created those clouds. We have never stepped foot in the Realm of Ice, but I fear what may step out of it.”
___
On February 18th, 2017 at 03:00pm EST, a finale event for the Hours of Frost will be hosted on the Blight server. This is 9:00pm CEST and 12:00pm PST. Please be aware of these following points:
- Since this event is on Blight, copy your characters prior to its start. We will run a force-copy 24 hours before the event starts. Please queue your characters to copy before the 17th at 03:00pm EST.
- As per last year, any rewards given out from this event will also be given on the live servers. Please contact your server’s event GM if you are missed out. Rewards will likely appear in your vault and may stack with existing items, so please keep careful inventory so no one gets doubled up.
- Following feedback from last year’s Halloween event, the Event channel has been converted to a joinable GM-write-only channel. This means that everyone can join it, but only GMs can write in it. Join the event channel. Any dialogue between characters and instructions will be written here. If you do not join, you will be utterly lost.
- We plan to involve characters of all tiers into this event, but the end boss will be nearly impossible for anything under level ninety to kill. Do not be afraid to join if you are not max level!
- The event will start in New Rachival. Please gather at the landing pad there and keep a careful eye out for the event GMPCs for location changes.
There is expected to be a larger than normal number of players in one area. Please consider reducing your view distance and/or adjusting your graphics settings to ensure a smooth play experience.
After the halloween event, many optimizations were made both to the Blight server and the client to help ensure better client- and server-side performance. If your computer can handle running debug logs with so much happening, please do so and send them in afterwards via a ticket. It may prove helpful to our technical developers to have such a legitimate stress-test.
We hope to see you there!