[CLOSED] OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS

[katabasis]

WHO: Marcus, Julius, Tsenka, Silver, Matthias
WHAT: Hunting apostates
WHEN: Sometime in Harvestmere
WHERE: Somewhere in Wildervale
NOTES: OOC Info

Despite what the words 'isolationist mages' might imply, it's difficult for any group of people to completely fall off the map—particularly, when they've arranged to leave behind a forwarding address. Returning to the abandoned homestead the group once occupied reveals a concealed cipher, a message written in some old field code from the days of the Mage-Templar war, which points them roughly in the right direction. With that context in mind, little rumors picked up on the road or in public houses while moving in it take on new life.

A woman traveling with children who neither look like her or one another could be refugees from anywhere, or it could be a mage passing through with a number of young charges. A stranger who owns no land appears with a set of tools for repair, stays for two days until the job is done, and then disappears again. A ghost story about screams heard coming out of some dark wood, recounted in a tiny tavern by a shepherd fresh from fields which lie at the edge of the trees, might be a particularly over-embellished tale of an animal's wail or it might be someone's clever idea of discouraging anyone from traveling certain wooded paths.

Indeed, given a few hours travel through that dark wood during daylight hours and the group will eventually catch sight of a cluster of scraggly buildings in various states of salvage through the trees.

Comments

after dinner.

[hornswoggle]

The roaming pairs have not escaped John's notice.

For the moment, John is still very much misplaced. Unknown to members of their own company, unidentified to the members of this village, he is existing on the edges of this entire venture. Whether that will be permitted to continue depends on circumstance, and while John doesn't necessarily forsee anything that will force his hand, he is aware of Marcus sitting alone, aware that what has caught John's attention must have registered to him as well.

Marcus might not know everyone here, but his people are among them. That changes things.

"How are you finding all of it?" is perhaps a more familiar question than John is allowed.

[luaithre]

If it's familiar, this question, it's also deceptively complex, and it's this latter thing that has Marcus pause over it. There's a short answer, like, 'good', which is the kind of answer he's given to some of the strangers who had come to him, asking after his comfort, his opinion. it's not a falsehood, only reductive. These citizens of Greenhollow are not clamouring for his approval, exactly, but—

Well, perhaps they are, and not just from him. He can sense it, that shared determination to make a thing work. Has felt it before. This isn't a thing he can articulate, exactly.

He looks to John, a subtle acknowledgment for company.

"Ambitious," he offers. "In its way. You?"

[hornswoggle]

Ambitious is a good descriptor.

Is it not so different than what he and Flint imagined once? Nascere, whole and unfettered. Governing itself while they wrought change from its shores.

"I'm trying to decide if it's sustainable," John says, which is a roundabout answer. "But I don't see a way of asking them without insulting someone in the process."

Tsenka and Marcus are welcomed, and Matthias is very clearly a mage, but John comes to them as a normal man. A cripple, even. There is a way to ask questions, surely, but he'd need more time to garner good will in the process. To be clear that he asks out of genuine interest, and not out of some manner of suspicion or accusation.

But Marcus, for better or worse, knows John well enough to see the reasoning behind the question.