Vol. VIII: – The Heart Still Beats
Dated: 15 August 2025
“Some quests live on in whispers, some in obsessions. Audrey’s heart has been beating for over a decade.”
🧩 Audrey: The Heart of Corruption
Audrey, known as The Heart of Corruption, is a demonic, tentacled mass hidden deep within Kumala. When players feed her—via troops, caravans, or diplomats—she spreads corruption into the surrounding tiles. With enough sacrifices, Audrey begins visibly beating, a state required to progress her quest.
The mystery, unsolved for over ten years, is as layered as it is dangerous. The steps (as best pieced together by past attempts):
- Use a fully researched “Quest City” and send an advanced spy to a Gypsy Fortune Teller. With the right fortune, the quest may trigger.
- The Old Crone soon appears, demanding five tentacles of each race, delivered to Duraz Karag. Tentacles drop randomly from sacrifices at temples (about a 5% chance per mission).
- Audrey must be woken and continuously fed while she beats. In 2014, stopping too soon failed to advance the storyline.
- If successful, the Old Crone returns again: Audrey will attack on the next new moon. Tentacles surge around the city, fog rolls in, and nearby tiles must be defended.
- The final task? Still undiscovered.
The prize for success, the Elven Spirit Bow, remains one of the strongest race-specific rewards in Illyriad. But with the crafting rework looming, it may be rebalanced before the quest is ever truly solved.
⚔️ Titans, Thieves, and Landclaims
Mergers continue, but the week’s sharpest spotlight falls on SMA:
- Attacking inside VAST’s landclaim.
- Thieving from at least one SkB exo’d city.
No doubt other alliances are up to their own tricks, but these were the examples confirmed.
As one anonymous reporter put it:
“SMA won’t just gain dragons, they’ll gain new enemies too.”
📊 Tournament Update (14th Aug)
- Total Troop Casualties: 41,945,416
- Average Per Day: 2,996,101
Top 10 Alliances by Occupation Time:
- The Pirate Kings [YARR!] – 201d 18h 30m
- Shraps Mem Academy [SMA] – 152d 16h 40m
- Skeleton Boar [SkB] – 146d 7h 16m
- Fairy Road Authority [Roads] – 142d 10h 52m
- The Colonist Empire [TCol] – 68d 10h 34m
- The Dragon’s Forest [TDF] – 46d 16h 1m
- Dwarven Lords [Dlord] – 46d 3h 2m
- The Atreides Bunch [Bunch] – 34d 54m
- Murder of Crows [mCrow] – 30d 12h 42m
- Maelstrom [VortX] – 27d 2h 49m
Halfway Report (via Facebook update):
- After a lull, casualties spiked again yesterday to ~3.5M.
- TDF vs Dlord: separated by just over a day’s worth of occupation — the difference between 2 dragons (6th) and 1 dragon (7th).
- VortX vs H?: VortX overtook H? the day before and now holds about a 1.5-day buffer. This matters: 10th is the final dragon prize spot.
The second half of August promises more blood.
🐐 Trivia Night Shenanigans
Tuesday Trivia (21:00) had a guest host this week: the one and only Orcimedes. For non-Orcs, he was… challenging to understand. At some point, goats became cattle. It was chaos, but it was fun.
🌊 Whispers from the Broken Lands
Word is spreading of an upcoming change to BL in September. Whispers captured in chat logs suggest something stirring:
[14:20]<TheDragonPooper2> I didn’t want to disclose this… but I am the head of this great initiative. With the help of Remy, Chaos, and myself, we are going to accomplish great things for BL
Later that evening:
[21:48]<Remy> my rats are the finest seafarers this side of the bitter sea
[21:48]<Remy> and thats lore accurate
[21:49]<Remy> “Small, seemingly unorganized teams of pirates and road agents, sometimes referred to by locals as “ratbeards,” are also known to waylay and rob traders and passersby ranging through the region and seeking to develop trade routes between Eyepool and Dyadin.”
Pirates, rats, and something brewing beyond the Bitter Sea.
🪶 Sign-off
Some say Audrey’s heart beats louder with every failed sacrifice. Others whisper that the ratbeards are already gathering fleets in the fog. Whether the dragons will be won by strength, by treachery, or by something unseen… well, that’s for you to decide.
Until Next Week,
The Whispering Scribe
The Quilly 