When Hamuul Runetotem next met up with the party, it was in privacy between himself, them, Tonga Runetotem and Nara Wildmane.
Gan Jedi and Zachariah Hallowhold did not waste time trying to interrogate the situation, to dig as deep into it as they could so they could all understand the brevity of it. Hamuul confided with them his fear of the Nightmare -- a twisted corruption of the Dream -- having taken hold of the elves down there.
Most alarming of it all was the identity of the leader of the elves; the venerable Archdruid Naralex, a man Hamuul himself had met on more than a few occasions, though the tauren would never have guessed him to have such an involvement. The Archdruid's request of the party was to head back out in to the Barrens once again, seek out the caves that the visions showed them, and delve down inside. He wanted for them to uncover the truth of what was going on with the elves, and deal with it if possible.
Nara and Tonga requested to come along together with the party, which they accepted.
As a means to quickly return to The Crossroads, Hamuul provided the party with a token of favour from a forsaken mage by the name Birgitte Cranston, one out of The Pools of Vision Magi keeping residence at the Pools of Vision at the city's Spirit Rise. Seeking out a mage for a teleportation spell was a costly ordeal, but with this token in hand the party could make such a trip at the Archdruid's cost.
One stop along the way to seek out these mages was for Zachariah Hallowhold to find a jewelcrafter who could sell him a gem for a certain magical ritual. This led the party to a shop known as Cloudchaser Jewelcrafting, whose proprietor Nahari Cloudchaser could provide ... to an extent. She told them of troubles the Cloudchasers had been recently having with their supply of diamonds from Mulgore, which she had yet to be able to understand the cause of.
The party made note of it for themselves, perhaps this was something they could investigate? Nahari was definitely interested in providing a reward if there was a problem and they could help to resolve it.
Eventually after, they reached the Spirit Rise, and from there the Pools of Vision.
The place was a busy, sprawling reach of impromptu structures and stalls leading in to the pools themselves, taking on the appearance of a market of arcane and occult origin -- with all the forsaken there, and some others too, all there to better understand the powers of the pools and how it could help the forsaken in their plight. In order to find their way around, the party sook out some of the locals for directions; one such turned out to be Thurston Xane, exactly one of the mages they had been looking for, and a close friend of Birgitte.
While they were also there, the party decided to take a look for themselves into the Pools of Vision, to see what they could see:
- Gan Jedi saw what he interpreted as a vision of the future, putting him face to face with Bwonsamdi within the death god's own realm.
- Zachariah Hallowhold saw a vision of himself passing the crystals he had found in Hillsbrad on to a person trustworthy enough to keep the crystals in hand, though later still he also saw himself looking upon more ghoulish creatures inflicted with the crystals.
- Kelrith Shalith saw a vision of his own son. Though he could not make out the circumstances, he could recognise the person in the vision for who he was.
- Turuk Thunderhoof saw a vision of a large vale somewhere in Kalimdor, its land scarred with Elemental Fire running rampant.
When the party later reconvened with the forsaken mages, they were all set and ready to teleport the party. They joined together all of them, Nara and Tonga included, and let themselves together with their mounts be whisked off to The Crossroads.
They spent the night over there at The Crossroads, to ready themselves for what the future would hold. During their downtime, Gan took a visit by a local blacksmith run by the orcs Hraq and Nargal, who could tell the troll that they had seen Unknown some two months ago. The Mok'Nathal said he was headed westward to Stonetalon, perhaps to Sun Rock Retreat, though more than that they did not know.