[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

through the woods.

[luaithre]

Many, if not all of them, had noted it: something past a tree line that apparently requires a dedicated rotation of infrequent patrols. Questions, so far, have been only adjacent, confirming information like, they had indeed seen all of Greenhollow thus far built, save for some of the farm buildings to the south; no, there were no other roads leading in save for the one they'd have travelled; and an inconsistency about the way they watch and defend their borders that had at first not included these pairings, and then did.

There's a world where they could choose to leave it well enough alone, but in that world, it doesn't matter that a community of southern mages are attempting to build themselves some small slice of society. Here, where the future of southern mages is as manipulable as clay, it very well might.

Knowing they'd need light to see by, it's early dawn when a few of their party break off out from the lodgings they'd been given, leaving quietly undetected. Even at this early hour, there'd been a couple of villagers in need of distraction, and so their focus was drawn into conversation with Marcus and Julius, speaking quietly over the remaining, maintained fire.

Dew clings to tall grass and bows leaves in the trees, a faint Harvestmere mist scattered around their ankles as Matthias, Silver, and Tsenka, cloaked in the deep shadows of a lingering night, make for that path they had spied.

The path—and it is a path, decently well traversed—is littered in fallen leaves, uneven beneath their feet, but easily navigable as Greenhollow disappears behind them. For a while, the sound of their passage is all they can hear, before another noise joins in.

Something like weeping. Keening, but human. And up ahead, the shape of a build, a modest-sized structure dark between the trees. Lamplight, a shadow, someone pacing, and likely not the source of these drifting, broken sobs.