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| Action Id: 2882 | Crisis: | Participants: Norwood, Natalia, Faye, Cristoph, Amari and Cullen | |
| Status: Resolved | Submitted: Dec. 3, 2018, 8:54 p.m. | Public: True | GM: Apostate |
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Military Resources: 150 |
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Action by Norwood
You have drafted a new action (#2882): Following @action 2878, a precursor to @action 2881, and a part of plot "House Durant #54", Norwood leads a scouting group. They start in Artshall then sweep their way up through Duskshire and then into Keaton's Shadowood. They're on the lookout for anything that Jael's storytellings have managed to stir up. They'll stick away from the main roads and sweep through the forests mainly.
Their primary objective will be to uncover anything they can find about House Redire on the hope that the stories being spread will have encourage them to come out. They'll have numbers enough to move quickly, but also enough to prove to be a deterrent against being attacked by any annoying House Durand or simple Bandit types.
This group has no plan to engage if at all possible, but seeks to learn what they can and then report back to Cristoph.
Action by Faye
Faye comes along on this mission to see if she can provide any assistance with her perceptive skills. While scouting isn't precisely her forte, she has a few wilderness and survival skills as well as some experience hunting, which may be useful. If nothing else, she can help keep the party fed along the way. She has an eye for detail and good investigative instincts, and along the way she keeps watch for any trace of House Redire. While she isn't looking for trouble, she has her crossbow and isn't afraid to use it if any aggressive forces attack their party, shav or otherwise.
Action by Amari
Amari is going to stick like glue to Norwood, to the point he'll maybe wonder why he ever thought it a good idea to bring her along. The way she'll watch him and seem to take notes on his behavior, actions and decisions may be mildly unsettling, as if she's trying to learn his manners and mindset in order to vanish him in the wood, stick on a fake beard and take his place with no one the wiser.
Less frighteningly, she'll also smile a fair amount, be cheerful and sing on occasion as she rides along atop her faithful old horse, Clopsy. It might all help morale if the scouts start feeling down, or scared. The Shadowood is pretty spooky and full of dangers after all, but she has lived there and knows her way around, roughly, and is familiar with some of the shavs and how to speak their lingo, and not infuriate them in the process.
Above all, she's perceptive. She'll keep her eyes and ears open, alert to danger and any hint of House Redire the party might stumble across.
Action by Cullen
Scouting in the woods? Now this is something Cullen excels at. During most of the mission, he'll remain on elk back with the rest of the group, looking for signs of House Redire. However, any time they face any dense woods or terrain generally impassable on horseback, he'll use his masterful talent for tracking and moving about the forest, living off the land and counting on his physical hardiness to get him through while slithering through the most difficult of terrain, then report back to the party.
Action by Natalia
Natalia will be accompanying the scouts, with dogs and Podraig (Sis is being left at home). She will step up diplomatically wherever possible if people are encountered, encouraging non-violent resolution to any encounters the group might have. She will assist in translating, and lean on Podraig for general basic information about the people they run into where it pertains to the Shadowood.
Action by Cristoph
Travel the countryside trying to hear whispers of a lost house? Cristoph is there. He has a strong sword arm to wield if the group gets in trouble, but largely he attempts to remain discreet. If something comes up during the Artshall portion of their tour, he'll chat with the locals and smooth things over. But with Natalia there? He's not expecting to need to step in all that much there either.
Result
It's slow, methodical work, going through the Shadowood, a huge stretch of land that it's easy for even the most seasoned of scouts to become lost in, and one could spend years in it and only grow familiar with a tiny portion of it. Full of valleys and near impenetrable stretches, it's no wonder that Abandoned tribes go for decades before contact with the houses of the Compact, and it's been all but impossible to flush raiders out. Against that, Amari is able to help keep up morale, as otherwise scouts would start to become despirited as they go over area after area, looking for anything.
Faye is the first one to find anyone living in the woods, the small Woodscutter family that's been living isolated for years in an exceedingly hard to find cabin. Though they haven't had much to do with most of civilization, they aren't truly Abandoned but they are still technically sworn to House Keaton. They are obviously terrified and loathe to speak of what they've seen recently in the Shadowood, but Natalia is able to relax them, and the oldest daughter Henrietta speaks of how a few days past they heard terrifying howling in the woods, like a great hound but it was so loud it shook their cabin, and then snarls. Very distantly, they could hear screams and the sound of battle, and some strange buzzing sound, roughly from the direction of Old Hound Creek.
Even with directions, it takes the better part of a day to find Old Hound Creek, with Cullen being the first one to find the trail through wood so thick near every step has to be climbed or cleared. When the scouts follow Cullen's directions and lead Norwood and Cristoph to the creek, it's hard to piece together with what they are seeing.
The creek is still running red with blood, and what might have been humans have been completely torn apart. Armor that might have been platemail has been totally destroyed, chewed into pieces no larger than a hand, and the best preserved corpse is hanging from a tree's branches about fifty feet in the air, half impaled upon the branches that knocked off part of the tree from what might have been an impact of impossible force. That corpse clearly shows a surcoat bearing the sigil of House Durand much like the others whom they've fought before. Piles of thousands and thousands of stomped and torn apart centipedes litter the ground, and most oddly there are giant tuffs of fur scattered around, some about as large as a man's chest.
There's no tracks leading from the carnage, though Norwood is the first to notice that there's no normal wood ambience there at all. No birds, no bugs, nothing.