Finding the Way
Season of Rushing Waters
As the light begins to fade under the cover of the trees your eyes ache less and see more. The reds, blues, and yellows of the small colorful bones that grow among the stones where the ground is firmer, the mottled backs of scuttling lizards that almost remind you of home, at least until a white winged shadow swoops in to have one for its lunch. Upon those wings a new light shines, a softer silver veil you dare to follow up, and there you see it like a silver coin pressed against the false ceiling.
Somal, an echo of a word unspoken comes to mind.
Mina places a hand on your shoulder, just barely as though she was afraid you would shake it off. "That is the moon. That is the place where those... messages came from."
"It looks very far," you manage, but in truth it didn't even look
real. The idea that you could influence something so distant seems almost unimaginable, and yet the feeling of its cold light nourishing you is undeniable.
"They say the stars are dew cast from Desna's hair, but the moon is her lantern," Mina continues. "It leads sailors to port and lovers to each other's arms."
"As confusing as this place is, no wonder you get lost," you laugh.
A short sharp wail interrupts the thought. Mina had not wanted to give the baby a use-name even though thinking of it as one of a group of innumerable interchangeable beings feels uncomfortable. As Cob pulls out the rattle he had made out of bones from Gorok's latest kill the infant starts to make odd little clicking noises somewhere between a burbling stream and a glow-beetle trying not to get eaten. Henceforth he shall be called Click in your head at least.
Things would be going a lot easier if Click could partake of all the colors of light that dance in the flame and come down out of the hollow 'sky'. Alas, he has to make due with bone broth, and he does not enjoy bone broth. Where were they even taking him? It is not like the blood-drinking monsters would be able to feed him even if they did not see him as food for some reason. Clumsy fliers that they were, the things were not that much faster than the six of you are afoot.
***
Sleeping through the next time of scorching light you make your way again through the cool night hours onto truer and surer ground until the trees do not have to straddle streams of muddy water on stilts but can instead grip the the rich soil firmly. At least it seems rich to you, filled with colonies of tiny worms and insects at most barely the size of your hand, as Cob calls them 'boring'. Mina just mutters something about being glad to see something normal sized. She calls the land here sour too, unfit for farming, then, as though some mischievous fate had wished to prove her wrong, you see the walls of an old habitation: crumbling brick walls made out of... mud. Who builds a house out of mud on mud?
As it turns out the answer is 'someone quite unlucky'. Among all the riotous life in the shadow of the wall rusted bits of metal have been left to lie, signs of a battle not long past.
You start collecting metal.
"Come on, we found the road!" Mina says as she points to... well, the best as you can describe it is as if someone had tried to make a tunnel without the walls. Straight as an arrow carved north to south parallel to the ragged lines of the forest is a line of stones that had been
once carefully fitted.
The rest of the night is spent following the road north until in the distance you can see the lights of a 'farm' that still had come people in it.
"I should go ask them, well..." Mina laughs. "Well
everything. Where we are, what moon it is, and directions to a temple hopefully."
"We'll come with you in case they mark their... dirt with blood." The expression sounds better with 'stone' as it was meant to be said, but Mina gets the gist of it.
"Iruxi would not be welcomed, not if we are in Cheliax as I fear we might be, and goblins..." She throws Cob an apologetic look. "Well... they are not really welcome anywhere."
What do you do?
[] Send Mina alone, the rest of you can wait beyond the sight of the Burnlander's weak eyes, hidden in a stand of sweet smelling trees (40 ft distance to the front door, half cover)
[] Go with her, keep your hood up
[] Go as a group, bribe or intimidate your way to getting the information
[] Write in
OOC: No rolls in this one, just a bit of a character focused update to balance out all the combat we have had recently. Now the question is how do you deal with your first Burnlander encounter (no, the mutant mosquitos did not count
).
