Year XXXX June 20

Nothing has changed with the clan. Sven's wounds finally scarred over but he keeps wearing the bandages to cover them and he will not tell me why. Ever since I let Sven finish a book for me, I've been thinking about how to test my theory on pumpkins given this new knowledge. Endermen can see us apparently but they have a hard time knowing if we are there thanks to pumpkins but, in the case of Sven, they can choose not to attack.

I took it upon myself to strike out on my own one night as we passed a village so big it might as well have been a city. From where I was perched in a tree (long story) I could see a truly massive church, a library bigger than any I have seen, and some kind of beacon, an apothecary, and a university. When I told Sven about it, he and Tiny had insisted on coming with me. My first thought was to keep them with their families but without an Enderman on hand; there is no reasonable way to find Effar again.

Therefore, I find myself here the City of Old Stargrain renting a room for a week with plenty of food to eat, people to talk to, books to read, and an Enderman sprawled to at the foot of my bed. There is an Iron golem or three here that patrol but on the third floor, my two Endermen friends are safe. I am still on an Ender schedule of sleeping during the day and being active at night, which suits me perfectly since the tasks I had to complete are awkward.

I spent my first day in Stargrain gathering ingredients for potions and supplies for my return to the clan. The second and third days blurred as I poured over books on herbology and botany to learn all I could about pumpkins. The fourth and fifth day I made potions to strip a pumpkin down to its parts to see if I could identify one or a handful of things about the squash that keeps humans from anchoring and was thankful to have Tiny with me. That, along with a villager with an odd talent to keep Endermen from getting mad no matter how long she looks at them proved invaluable to my limited research.

The rest of the week, I tested everything I separated out of those pumpkins and combined them into powders, pastes and elixirs to see if I can get the same effect as a pumpkin to no avail. Both Tiny and Sven felt provoked by my gaze and only calmed when I used a potion of Invisibility or when Sonya distracted them with a large sweet ball she gives her young patients for behaving in her office. I must learn how to make these useful potions but getting ingredients for them will be hard, regardless I found it necessary to purchase a brewing stand of my own so I can brew on the go..

I must note that I'm not trained in this line of work, but I submitted a package containing all my work to date to the Council so their trained alchemists can work out the reason pumpkins halts the aggressive tendencies of Endermen. My limited research has lead me to the conclusion that it isn't the pumpkin itself that keeps them passive but an effect it has that requires further testing.

I will have to see if there is any way I can identify what Endermen call Anchoring because I have noticed anomalies. Some items I've seen Endermen pick up when they first immigrated to this world are untouchable to new arrivals, yet the second generations of these specially empowered Enders are capable of picking up almost any kind of block even if they are the same age as a less capable peer. I have not noticed those in Effars' clan losing the ability to pick up what they have always carried but every time we pick up some stragglers, they seem amazed to see what they consider an 'untouchable' block being carried around with ease.

I think Bina might be one of the Enders that are limited in what they can pick up, she has only picked up natural blocks and manufactured ones fall to the ground the moment she tries to pick them up. It is an interesting effect but unnerving at the same time, cobblestone really shouldn't behave like gravel.

Henri Lemark