The Balance of Power and Political Intrigue - Bonus Chapter for "Blue-Eyed" Brother, 1125

As the "Situation Report on the Filthy Swamp" was posted to the forums, several factions under Murphy that were connected to the Filthy Swamp incident began to stir.

There was no need to say much about Hogg. His Smugglers' Woodland was the faction most closely connected to the Filthy Swamp.

After Bloodclaw Chieftain had squeezed one last bit of profit out of Plague Town, he cut off all contact with them. He had also begun sharing all the intelligence he had gathered about the swamp with the students who had been active in the area for a long time, at rock-bottom prices—practically giving it away.

As it happened, the students had gotten incredibly lucky this time.

When they had captured the corpse witch Bella earlier, they had been certain that some major hidden storyline was waiting in the Filthy Swamp. So they had decisively made Smugglers' Woodland the temporary headquarters of their guild, the "Scarlet Beasts." Now that the storyline had begun, these brave students became the first player faction under Transia to set foot in the swamp.

They had been preparing for this storyline all along. No longer rushing in and relying on luck, they used what they had learned over this period to steadily gather the supplies they would need to operate in the swamp for an extended time.

They had even stockpiled more than a dozen crates of alchemical potions to ward off mosquito bites. And when they decided to make their move, every student with a psionicist class had at least one Command Rod on them, regardless of level or rank.

As the students' leader, Leading Pigeon had also earned the game's first "Friend of Bloodclaw" achievement.

As the first person to raise the Bloodclaw Clan's reputation to Exalted, Good Pigeon received a gift from Chieftain