Merc, shall I post first or do you want the honors?

I'll let you have all the honors, Rhae :)

M3

Hmm... I think I will probably add to Aemoten's part after cthulu has posted, and also post Etakar then.

- Does the basement floor of the borderhouse also have wooden floors like the upstairs and stairs are? I have been imagining it this way, but now I am not entirely certain. From the posts it seems the downstairs walls are wooden, too, not stone as with upstairs...
- Also, what is the ceiling/roof made of?

What kind of structures does Zerul generally have? Any notable style those are built in?(For some reason, I keep picturing somewhat fanciful stone buildings, at least for the richer parts.)

@Shien and DJ You can assume that Thaler will follow along with Aemoten to the roof though she'll be the same despondent unresponsive person she is at the moment unless something major happens. She'll pretty much do as she's told now without exception but she won't verbally reply to the orders when given them.

...Jack?

I'm here, I'm here, I've just been a little preoccupied... and as of late a bit under the weather as well, but I am constantly stalking around here and keeping myself updated on what happens. For some reason I've been surprisingly successful at finding excuses not to post anything, even though they were things that obviously required my response, such as a question aimed directly at me. But since my presence has become uncertain, I will prove it by being here now.

The floor, walls and ceiling of the first room of the barracks lower floor are all made from wood, whereas the second room (the pantry) has three walls of stone similar to the ones found upstairs, with the fourth wall (the one shared with the first room) being wood.
As to the architecture of Zerul - by which I assume you specifically mean Zerul City - well... Eh, I just tried tried to do some quick research on architecture to find something to reference, but it's too much of a bother for me right now to get past the volumes of results specifically pertaining to religious buildings and castles to find something about more common structures. But generally the Zerulic citizens favor cleanliness in their buildings more than those of the other duchies, making white, beige and cream the predominant color of exterior walls there, usually with gable roofs with shingles typically made of wood, although wealthier structures - particularly those situated in the northeastern central part of the city, where the Magic Academy of Zerul lies and sorcery generally runs rampant - are known to use slate shingles instead. Walls are typically made of stone, and while load bearing walls are usually relatively solid, Zerulics like windows; the bigger and more numerous, the better. They also like arches, and many windows and doorways (with those that can afford it) have arched tops, and if they do not have protruding frames all the way around they can at least be expected to have an exterior windowsill, the most popular color of which is currently red. Walls are almost exclusively made of brick, and the shape of buildings is usually relatively squat, with buildings often being elongated and more rarely squarish, but always rectangular, and usually no more than two floors tall, meaning that each building takes up more horizontal space than the buildings found in the other cities; basements are relatively common, but usually small. The Zerulics are not fond of columns but, once again, like arches and fountains, and as such these can be found in most wealthy estates, which also like to boast of neatly trimmed and utterly domesticated gardens that are obviously artificially arranged (I hate those...). Towers are rare and reserved for important official buildings, the only ones to have more than one being the Castle Zerul and the Academy, and are always circular in shape and with conical roofs at their tops.
This is all mainly pertaining to the middle- and upper-class of the citizens, though... Obviously these kinds of homes are expensive, though slightly cheaper in Zerul than most other places. Less extravagant homes usually still have stone walls, though often in the natural color of the stone, with far fewer windows but still with wooden shingles; wooden walls and thatched roofs are rare and are almost exclusively found at the outskirts of the city. They are also smaller and much more ordinary in most respects... generally something like what we are used to seeing in movies and such as the homes of peasants.
Was that a satisfactory description? Did I miss something?

@sartorous: I should have responded to your posting your CS earlier; I let myself postpone that bit for far too long and with too little justification. I'll add a link in the OP... But does my memory fail me, or has Salas' weapons changed? My memory is not good enough to pick out other possible inconsistencies, but something in the back of my mind tells me that he had a different selection of armaments before...
Also, any thoughts as to how he survived the Battle of Anaxim Forest, or where he is going to go now?

With ceiling/roof I mainly meant that of the upper floor (in regards to how much the men on the roof are standing on and such). Other than that you've answered all the RP-related questions I have posed in the last two OoC notes (excluding the one that simply says "...Jack?"). The description for buildings of Zerul City was perhaps even slightly more detailed (never a bad thing as long you don't spend entire chapters of writing describing things of marginal relevance within an an actual storyline) than I would have expected under the given circumstances. I also tend to prefer written descriptions over "something a bit similar to this" examples.

(White rooms... I never liked overly white rooms. I certainly hope actual future interior looks nothing like the repressing clinical sensory derivation chambers so many sci-fi films have depicted it. Living room like this? Please no. Picture the couch, chair, windowframes and carpet being likewise white for full effect.)

- I'll probably post on Tuesday... Stuff to do this weekend - not so much a lack of time as possible solutions for unrelated stuff taking up disproportional amounts of space in my mind and outcontesting IC happenings.

Ah, I didn't even think of that... the roof of the barracks is stone-tiled and flat (I think I already described it as flat, possibly repeatedly, but I don't trust my memory). Concerning Zerulic architecture, note that it was the exterior walls that were mainly white/beige/cream colored; the interior walls tend to be much more individual, just as the furnishing is.
Your link seems to give a 404 error when I try it, but I think I know what you understand. I don't like when rooms are lifeless like that, either... nor do I like exaggerated order, for that matter. If a room is meant for people to live in, I like to be able to see that such is actually the case. Cleanliness and order is nice to an extent, but where there is life I want to be able to see that life. I feel the same way about gardens, really... Almost everyone else that I know want to control their gardens, cut down their trees and bushes, keep their lawns neat and tidy, exterminate weeds when they appear, but I personally prefer the appearance of wild nature over artificial construct. It would take something pretty extreme for me to fell a tree or remove a bush, and as long as the grass isn't tall enough to hide potentially dangerous things beneath it, I like it that way compared to when it's short.
That's another reason that I never want to have to live in a proper town, let alone a city; that, and my self-diagnosed mild enochlophobia (fear of crowds) (I can be in a crowd if I have to, but I'll usually get increasingly anxious the longer I stay there and ultimately start hyperventilating and feeling a greater and greater urge to flee). Oh, and the light pollution. I like the stars, and I like being able to see them; I think they are immensely fascinating.

Yes, his weapons changed. He has two daggers now and a rapier instead of a saber. Is that a problem? And, I was thinking that he could have been poisoned and passed out and possibly come near death and be nursed back to health by some druid hermit in the forest, if that would work?

I don't know if the fact that his weapons changed is a "problem", it's just a little lacking of continuity. When you make your characters I give you a lot of freedom to make them as you want them and give them whatever items you want them to have, but once the character is made... well, new items don't just materialize out of thin air. His new weapons would have to have come from somewhere, and quite frankly Salas himself would need a reason to switch his previous set of equipment for this one. (Not that thinking of somewhere he could have acquired new weapons from would be particularly hard, considering the battlefield littered with nearly two thousand crusader corpses that occupies what was once Gariel Downs.)
Poisoned, passed out and nursed back to health... how long do you imagine this would have taken? It sounds like a rather long process to me, and with the characters Salas shared the scene with (Jillian and Gerald) only around half a dozen hours or so has passed. Besides, it would leave some rather gaping plot-holes and inconsistencies to use that explanation, such as how he survived the confrontation with the Wyrmslayer (he could just have let him go, mind you, since the Wyrmslayer did not really want to fight him in the first place), how Salas was poisoned (wyvern venom kills quite quickly, as does the rangers' poisoned swords, and druids are capable of neutralizing these poisons in a matter of seconds) and how and why a druid survived and felt obliged to help Salas (the Anaxim Forest has been burnt to the ground, and all of its inhabitants have been killed; the likelihood of a lone druid surviving (and of this druid having stayed away from the battle, its occupation considered) is slight at best).
If you can't think of a way that Salas could have escaped the destruction of the forest I may be able to help; it would even provide a plausible way for him to be reunited with Jillian and Gerald, if that is what you want.

Alright. Changed the weapons back. As for how Salas escaped. If the poison idea doesn't fit in, he could have just left Wyrmslayer alone and then either engaged another enemy and followed them into the forest and ended up escaping or just escaped after leaving Wyrmslayer alone. What's your idea though, Jack? I feel like yours will be better, especially since it's your story.

Simply disengaging the Wyrmslayer and escaping is always an option, of course, and an easily credible one at that; the only real issue with that solution would be that Salas would end up leaving the Anaxim Forest on foot, whereas Jillian and Gerald left on dragon wings... in other words, the characters closest to Salas would end up a day's worth of travel away at best. It could be done (presuming, of course, that it would not be out of character for Salas to do so; forcing a character to do something it would actually never do is never a good solution), but it may not exactly optimize the roleplaying experience for you.
The main requisites of my idea is that Salas survives the battle, either by fleeing Gariel Downs or by being injured to the point where the crusaders would ignore him for the most part, but stays within the forest itself. Escaping the fire would technically be possible, especially if he stayed in Gariel Downs where there are no trees nearby, and the towering Gariel Rock sheltering the area from the wind. The crusaders would move on soon after Jillian and Gerald's escape, by the time of which the battle irrefutably ended, and Gariel Downs would be safe; littered with corpses of crusaders, defenders and beasts, certainly, but relatively safe. Regardless the point would be for Salas to have remained in the forest, since Renold (the green dragon with Jillian and Gerald) mentioned to Gerald in an earlier post that the highest of the Guardians of Anaxim, Crone, stayed in the forest to finish some business before fleeing herself. It would be quite likely for Crone to go to search the forest for survivors and consequently discover Salas. Crone is also coincidentally an extremely powerful sorceress and healer, so she would be fully capable of mending Salas' wounds, after which she would be liable to teleport both of them to where her second in command - Renold - had gone, which just so happens to be where Jillian and Gerald are. That way he could rejoin those two immediately, rather than having to chase after them for who-knows-how-long until he caught up.

I like the Crone option. I think I could cover that in one post. Where were Jillian and Gerald taken?

They're in Pelgaid now, some ways north-west of Pelgaid City by a small lake surrounded by a natural barrier of rocks.
...But I would prefer that you did not write about anything specific in regards to Crone's actions if you are going to write a catching-up post like that. Crone is a semi-important and very powerful NPC, so I would rather define her actions and persona myself. Don't detail her saying anything or showing any particular emotion since chances are that she would actually have said or felt differently than you'd presume. Stick to a very basic description; finding, healing, teleporting, done. The alternative would be me playing the role as Crone, which would probably take quite a bit longer than a single post skipping forward to Salas rejoining Jillian and Gerald.

Which would you prefer?

Sorry for the double post. My internet messed up.

All right, hey. So, first of all, sorry for taking so long; I had a decent amount of exam stress, and even though this post in reality did not take much effort, I simply didn't have the mind for it amongst everything. That said, I will be able to post in a more timely manner in the coming weeks (probably months) since the worst of it is mostly behind, and I should be able to dedicate more time to you people again. Hopefully I didn't worry and/or upset you too much Jack, I know I can be somewhat difficult to RP with as it turns out.

It's all right, Ashgan; you warned me that it would be like this for a while, and since the only one you've really been playing with is me, nothing in particular has been delayed besides Jillian's own storyline. I don't terribly mind inactivity as long as it's expected so that I can compensate for it, if need be, or just know that I don't have to worry. Frankly I'm just thrilled to be able to continue that part of the story at last! Personally I think I like Jillian and Gerald's story better than the companions' story at the moment, actually, because the two of them are so horrendously ill-equipped for the situation they're in and, despite doing their absolute best - Gerald mainly by analyzing how they could be as useful as possible, Jillian with sheer raw magical power - , they still lost. The companions have had it rough, sure, and have accumulated more than their fair share of physical and mental scars, but they've always managed to beat the odds. Don't get me wrong, I like that as well... it's just that there's a certain beautiful realism to the fact that sometimes your best attempt is still not good enough, and that even if you're the good guy, even if you do all the right things, one little detail can make the difference between triumph and defeat, in this case the fact that no one managed to reach Kevalorn.
Another thing that excites me about this is that it's so very different from what happened in a similar scenario in my novel! The battles were similar yet opposite, with vastly different outcomes that will affect the Planes on a huge scale. One of the main characters of the novel died in this battle, actually, along with several story-driving NPCs... not to mention that the Anaxim Forest has been destroyed and Hazzergash is still at large. It's entirely new terriroty for me. I love it!

And you picked a near-perfect time to end your hiatus too, with sartorous making his return and all.
Speaking of which: @sartorous: Yes, which I would prefer... that is the question, is it not? Slowing the story even further by playing out a sequence between Salas and Crone, possibly even desynchronizing his and Jillian's timelines even more than they potentially already are, or allowing a quick processing and conclusion to that part at the cost of a semi-important character only committing generic actions during it...
Neither option really appeals to me, actually, so I suggest a third one: Salas was injured severely enough during the battle (he could possibly even have been hit by one of Kevalorn's attacks but narrowly survived) that he lost consciousness and has been comatose in Gariel Downs since then. Crone will then find him like that, as the forest still burns around them, and therefore opt to evacuate him first - teleporting to the Jillian/Gerald scene - and then healing him, enabling him to regain his health and consciousness. That would negate the need of an IC sequence taking place in the burning/burnt Anaxim Forest altogether, as it would just be a matter of me writing a post of Crone arriving and healing him (it may take a couple of posts at most, but it should be quick), and then you reassuming control of him as he regains consciousness.
How does that sound?

RPG sure has been lagging a lot for me since yesterday... It barely loads for me, and on about every fifth attempt or so only. (Everything else is as quick and reliable as it gets.)
- It seems that my picture link, for whatever reason, ends up with the HTML linebreak tag (<br>) concatenated to the end of the address (after the file extension) when you actually click it. So if a link to a picture - or just any link - leads to not found, you can always just see whether there is anything like that at the end of the address and try whether a version with it removed leads to anywhere.

And hmm... I think you'd like my garden - it is largely half-natural. The back end of it is essentially kept as a woodland-meadow ... which is to say, I mow it down once each year in the late autumn when plants aren't exactly green anymore (And end up with a boxful of little oak trees. I can't kill little oak trees... Luckily, I still have places for them to end up in.), and occasionally either remove something - lest I end up with a solid empire of bishop's weed - or import something I happened to find interesting, but otherwise do very little with it. ...Ironically, it seems that some traditional "garden plants" usually found in flowerbeds are more than happy with such conditions. And if I don't mow the part of my garden that is lawn for a short while - I generally don't bother to do it all too often - then it ends up looking like some sort of flower-field, since it is at least as much various clovers, black medick, prunella and such as it is grass... The most taken care of thing in my garden is probably the pond ... it still looks half-natural with rather varied and disorderly selection of plants, but truth to be told, if it were left on its own for a mere month or so, then several meters from its edge on all sides would become impenetrable two-meter-tall wall of whichever handful of species that won the war. That ... is certainly some fertile ground around the pond. I like to at least be able to access the said pond, and there to be be at least some variation around it (a matter of keeping the most aggressive plants within some sort of confines).
- I don't mind the very immaculately ordered and groomed artificial gardens per se... They are certainly preferable to no garden at all. I just find them somewhat boring, whereas I am always discovering new things in my own garden, never mind the much richer wildlife (though some of it can be attributed to me living me in the middle of nowhere even more than the chosen state of my garden).
...Never mind pidgeons or crakes. Little owls are most likely to not let you sleep with a window open during later half of summer. - I mostly have long-eared owls over here. (TEE-YOU! ... ... TEE-YOU! ... ... TEE-YOU!)

Dark Jark said The companions have had it rough, sure, and have accumulated more than their fair share of physical and mental scars, but they've always managed to beat the odds.

I am not sure whether I would personally call everything they've been through beating the odds more than Jillian and Gerald have done so? In the end, notably more companions or to-be companions have died than there currently are in the group, and even more have left (one of them in an extremely poor mental state) or gone MIA... In the sense of their adversaries either being felled or backing down (in one case being anything but defeated or severely weakened and going forth to cause almost as great, and potentially in time even greater than - destruction as the Crusaders did upon Anaxim) they probably could be considered to have been victorious, but that would be a very Pyrrhic, bitter kind of victorious. (As you yourself said, the only way the last great fight could have gone any worse would have been if they all got killed.)

There is, by the way, a very good reason for anyone to hurry away from the Anaxim Forest's immediate vicinity without spending time to heal anyone or do something else significant: smoke. Smoke everywhere. And at least some of the huge (how huge?) burning trees are falling onto the field (How big was/is Gariel Down's anyway? You can fit hundred thousand people into a fairly small field...). And since natural grass is dried straws by this season and it may have not rained in the past twelve hours (?), Gariel Downs itself is probably as flammable as it can get with all the corpses strewn over it... In any case, you probably wouldn't want to stick around, even if Salas isn't necessarily unconscious. Being largely immobilized more than does the trick. (As I have mentioned it before, I personally tend to be somewhat bothered by the "was unconscious/comatose for x amount of time while not in (modern) hospital" plot device, since more often than not it isn't actually feasible).

Right then - post is up! Enjoy! (And your turn, Merc! I eagerly await to see what Ixion's reactions will be. :3)

EDIT:
Also, sorry about the week absence. I had some family things, as well as a few internships I needed to set up and well... Life never likes to give anyone a break. :P