New Blood, Bad Blood
New Blood, Bad Blood is an interim arc with an influx of new members and an undercurrent of hard feelings, betrayals, and fighting between members as well as a peek at the conflict of w-dueck's past life. There are a couple of different groups of significant events that happen through out the arc.
Arrival of New Members and Return of Lurkers
Iffy and Azuma, moderators at the Refuge, return after a long hiatus and join in the goings on while Master Ackrovan, and Pestilence (BloodMoon) join the refuge and start contributing to the community.
Master Ackrovan
Ackrovan shows up first, coming in on a ragged boat in the middle of a storm. Within his first few hours on the Isle, he manages to get into a scuffle with Nioca, be captured by Syla and Aryll, and get thrown into the dungeons. w-dueck lets him out after a short interrogation but puts a Restraining Bracelet on him to make sure that he can't hurt anyone else while he stays. He is given a room and his equipment back. Ackrovan leaves briefly to go to Tesara Post to have his equipment fixed up.
Azuma
Azuma comes out of lurking, intent only on fixing a broken camera he has up in the Spam Forum that lets him keep an eye on things. He unfortunately falls into a plot hole and must wait for rescue. Pestilence helps him out and he gets into an argument with Iffy then disappears back to his home on the Spam Plane. His newly installed camera gets knocked out of place again so he must return and is cornered by w-dueck who asks him to stick around the Refuge more often and help out. Azuma, after mentally communicating to his sword, finally agrees.
Pestilence
Pestilence shows up as a new member. His eagerness to help is quickly given power as a mod and he jumps into his duties. When going to fix the plot hole, he finds Azuma in it and helps him out only to watch him disappear just as quickly
Iffy
Iffy comes back from lurking just in time to get in a little tussle with Azuma. As he wonders about all the strange things happening at the Refuge, he tries to integrate back into it.
Arrival of The Stranger
As part of Nioca's ongoing struggle with the VRP, The Stranger makes an appearance forcing his way into the Refuge's business. He's a user of black magic and has more knowledge and power than all of the Refugi combined. Basically, whatever the Stranger wants, the Stranger gets. His presence is not appreciated though his talents are exploited none-the-less.
Stillborn
To negotiate the trade for oil at the end of The Flames of War arc, Jewels agrees to mate with Prince Darius of the Water Plane. However, within the first day of conception, Jewels was hit with a poisoned dart from a VRP assassin. Her body began to reject the baby so she asked Nalyd to attempt to accelerate it's growth before it was lost. Nalyd was successful but had ulterior motives for the baby, so he effectively paralyzed the child and told Jewels it was stillborn.
Nalyd soon disappears from the refuge with the child who dies for real in transport to The Roost, a place where Nalyd once had a great shaping lab. Nalyd manages to revive the infant and hopes to carry out his experiments on it in the near future. His plans are thwarted, though, when Iffy stumbles upon him. The conflict continues to take shape in the Destruction of the VRP plot arc where Iffy tells Jewels her baby isn't dead. Thinking that Nalyd must have revived the child for her, she hurries to the location feeling elated. Of course, Nalyd had no intention of ever giving the child back to Jewels and in a desperate act, shapes the child to manhood without any equipment before falling into a deep sleep.
Jewels managed to reach Nalyd and her son, who now looks to be in his twenties. Nalyd had poured so much essence and energy into her child that the raw power left his touch grating to the senses, and his voice sounding like a legion all talking at the same time. The full measure of Stillborn's power is, as of yet, unknown to even himself.
Jewels' Loss of Emotion
When Nalyd shaped a living antidote for the poison in Jewels' body, he was not entirely sure what kind of elemental she is. Not having time to really find out, he makes his guesses and successfully neutralizes the toxins, but his antidote had unexpected side effects. It suppressed the Dryad half of her DNA as well, thinking it as foreign to her as the poison had been. Jewels' emotions are controlled by her Dryad half except for her anger so with this personality shift, she spurns w-dueck and tries to gain vengeance on Nioca for all the deaths he caused by storming into the fire plane in the Flames of War arc. During the assault, Nioca counters with a mental attack forcing all his perceived atrocities of her kind into her mind. w-dueck stops the fight before anyone dies but reveals to Nioca that the 'demon' is Jewels. His hatred of her kind supersedes the friendship they shared and promise of family he had given her.
w-dueck is relentless in finding a way to cure Jewels, though, and turns to The Stranger who expels the would be antidote from Jewels' system and she returns to normal, or as normal as Jewels can be. Jewels promises Nioca she'll find a way to prove to him that the living fire are not the destruction bent monsters he thinks they are even though in her own mind she has come to see herself as one from his mental attack.
The Proposal
For whatever reason, out of the blue, w-dueck asks Jewels to marry him. The first time he is interrupted by her getting shot by a poisoned dart as well as Kaylas admitting his own feelings for Jewels. The second time he asks her is right after Nalyd's antidote has been removed, but Jewels balks making excuses and trying to convince w-dueck that he doesn't really want to marry her since Nioca's mental attack has left her unable to love herself. Tensions between all three continue on into the Destruction of the VRP arc.
w-dueck's reunion with his past
I'll cover me on this. --W-dueck 00:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Admin Tower Explosion / w-dueck's Departure
Nioca, needing a power source for his spell, tapped into the Refuge's main power supply. The resulting draw on power caused the Admin Tower's reactor to explode. This resulted in w-dueck's obvious displeasure and he immediately put the Isle into lockdown, allowing only Admins to pass through. He then called out Nioca, who used skillful rhetoric (not much was needed, seeing as w-dueck wasn't thinking that clearly at the time, for obvious reasons) to place the blame on The Stranger and the VRP. w-dueck then departed via SSMT to his home plane of Corellia to raise a private army to wage war on the VRP. Thus begins the Destruction of the VRP arc.
