The night sky split with a deafening concussion. Two beams of light, one smoking red, the other icy blue, speared down from the moons overhead to strike the land. And then, as if the beams were conduits that drained the energy of the moons away, the auras around both moons began to fade and dim…

With that, a year-long period of turmoil and portent was finally brought to a close by a group of clever and persistent adventurers from the cities of Ysallyra and Elysium, and the land breathed a sigh of relief, freed from the ominous magical workings that had hung over it for so long.

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In the year 283, two sorceresses sharing the same surname appeared in cities at opposite ends of the land. It quickly became clear that these two women, twins by the name of Shora and Sehalla Conforius, were on the continent for one purpose – the defeat and death of the other. To this end they bent the very laws of nature to their wills, casting spells of tremendous power that brought the two moons of Akanbar under their control. The result was the most horrendous weather since the Dragon Wars, a time of unending torrential rains, raging tides and devastating floods, while in the skies above the moons blazed with auras of fire and ice.

Eventually, seeing that their struggle was deadlocked – for the sisters were equal in power just as they were identical in appearance – the younger twin, Sehalla, fled the continent for the ancestral lands of House Conforius, which lie on the distant Carmena Isles. Shora pursued her, and the sisters passed out of sight and knowledge of man. But their work did not, and the unnatural weather raged on unchecked.

Finally, spurred onwards by prophecies that the mystics of their cities had unearthed, parties of adventurers from each realm set sail for the Carmena Isles. There, they believed, they would be able to find the sorceresses who had wreaked havoc with nature and compel them to undo their spells.

Sure enough, they found the Conforius sisters – changed to pillars of salt by each other’s magics, frozen forever in the wasteland their battles had made of their ancestral holdings. Unable to pry the secret of the weather from them, the adventurers had to set forth to find their own solution.

With help from the people of Carmena, the party managed to unearth the secret of nullification magic. They created an orb of nullification, which when invoked absorbed the greater part of the weather spells – draining away much of the unnatural aura around Akanbar’s moons, and allowing the natural balance to slowly restore itself.

Thus the crisis was averted, and the land set safe once more. But on the far Carmena Isles two pillars of salt still stand, memorial to the violence that blood siblings may do upon each other in the name of power.

In recent developments, travellers from the city of Elysium were stranded in a Travanok establishment by the prevalent heavy rains. They found themselves sharing a table with a one-legged sea captain, who in turn shared his tale with them over a mug of ale. So enthralling were his accounts of adventure on the high seas, that the travellers found themselves drawn to follow in his footsteps. Learning the ways of the sea from him, they set about acquiring a ship of their own, and shortly were afloat.

In the course of exploring the coastline, they came across an inlet leading up to Baresh, an old outpost of Golgonath which was lost during the Dragon Wars. Now a town of piracy and slavery, Baresh is independent, but still open to alliance with its old masters.

Word of even more distant lands followed suit on the rediscovery of Baresh: hidden rivers, secret coves and even isles clear across the Great Western Ocean. These tales inspired many other adventurers, and before long a veritable armada of privately-owned sailing ships was quartering the high seas in the search for new places, new faces and, of course, new gold. What lands will be unearthed by our intrepid explorers? Keep an eye on the tides for the news!

A closed-door conference between the major banks of Akanbar has led to a very significant change in the Akanbarian currency. From using a system based on gold coins alone, the economy of the land will now turn on three different values of coin: copper, silver and gold, ten copper being equivalent to one silver and ten silver being equivalent to one gold.

To the great annoyance of many people, the old gold currency was deemed to have only the worth of the new copper. But there are no free lunches where gold is concerned, and because prices were adjusted to have copper as a base, no one’s assets were really devalued. The new currency has certainly made buying and selling a more attractive process, what with three different colours of money now available for the pocket-conscious to admire.

In other news, the weather is persistently foul, a phenomenon which scholars and diviners have linked to the magically-created auras around the two moons. There is word of apocalyptic prophecies in the Elysium Observatory, strange visions in the Demon Tower of Golgonath and unrest among the spirits in the Grove of the Druids in Ysallyra. Will any intrepid adventurer find a solution to this situation? Stay tuned for more news!