Closed Death by the pond

[Shadow]

Date: 25th of Winter, 124

About twenty five miles off of a side pathway that leads to Græntún, there is a small village. It used to be a bustling little place where an elf once ran a saolite farm. Nearly everyone worked on that farm, but it stopped being a worthwhile endeavor so the farming stopped. The town lost much of its population since the farm shut down several years ago.

The town was never given a name and is referred to as 'where the farm was' to locals. It's a tiny place with many buildings falling into disrepair. Its current purpose is to act as a resting spot for travelers. It has a large inn which the locals are determined to keep in good shape. There are merchants who can sell the bare essentials, and even an old veterinarian who can take a look at your horse if it's acting funny.

There's only one problem: there's something wrong with the town. Travelers and residents have been getting sick more and more often. People have died in a trend that might be alarming if anybody cared about these people. Sadly, it is not a big enough issue yet and is expected to solve itself.

Rumors have started to spread which may attract the attention of those with a little too much free time on their hands or those who just happened to be passing by. There are a dozen dead who have piled up in the last week and the services of a ferrier would be appreciated. And there's a problem ~~ somewhere.

Townspeople will blame the water which doesn't taste quite right. There is a well and a pond where people get their water from that players may investigate.

____________________​

OOC:

Notes and Expectations:

[*]Post in any order

[*]I request that you post within 48 hours and skip those who do not have time to post in this time frame. If things are going slowly I'll move things along.

[*]I will be trying out a dice rolling for success rates affected by rp quality and relevant skills.

For this round:

[*]You may arrive and figure out everything I've mentioned so far by talking to NPCs. Based on what you do I will roll some dice to figure out which direction to take this thread. These are some examples to get you started, but you don't have to do them.

• Psychology (DC 10): Get a sense of the villagers' fears and motivations
• Medical (DC 12): Identify symptoms of poisoning or illness
• Fieldcraft (DC 14): Observe the environment for signs of contamination near the water sources

 

[Kage]

​

Kage, or rather Galinn, as he'd been practicing calling himself in his recently transfigured form, was a dozen miles or so away from Græntún. She was hunting to become more accustomed to her new body in preparation for another short trip to Jian. It was best to do that sort of thing in secluded areas where it would be less of an embarrassment to wear this skin.

Galinn wore some leather armor as it would likely take a while for her full armor set to be completed. Her bow, however, was made of whisper yew. So were the arrows in her hip quiver for that matter. She walked stealthily between trees as she tried to get a good shot at a small bear. When she saw her chance, she pulled back an arrow and shot it.

The sound of thunder cracked from her bow as the arrow launched and pierced right through the bear's heart. She frowned slightly, feeling like it was almost too easy to kill things with her new equipment. She walked over to the bear and grabbed it by the back of the neck and dragged it with her. She fetched her arrow along the way and then happened upon a small little town.

Galinn drug the bear over to some merchants and tried to barter. Not because she needed any of the garbage they had to offer, but to get back in practice of interacting with faelnir as a non-aeld'norai.

Throughout her conversations, she learned of a strange rumor. There was supposedly something wrong with the water around here. Interesting. She talked to every merchant she could, including the inn keepers. She was looking for anything that might hint as to why they thought the water was bad. People said it tasted off, but she wasn't going to go drinking tainted water on purpose.

When she ran out of people to talk to she would go to the well and look inside it. This was the sort of problem that was easier to ignore than to address. He would have to report it – perhaps someone more qualified would be able to deduce what was wrong.

[I guess I'm trying to use espionage to pick up on anything you didn't mention]

359

 

[Velho]

༺༉❁ 25th of Winter, 125 of the third age ❁༉༻

Though Velho was, by the standard of many Æld'Norai, a busy person, not all of his time was subsumed by his business. Among the ferriers, he'd heard chatter about a village whose name he'd only known as the Ælf's who'd once ran it. For all he'd previously understood, it had become an utterly unremarkable rest stop for primarily Fælnir, though the odd wandering Ælf would stay there from time to time for reasons unique to each.

For folks of his station, however, the word of such a place normally would never cross the radar of any much less their lips, and thus Velho was well intrigued by the rumors. Scourges that the ferriers truly were, their curiosity was twofold: one, the piling dead would need to be dealt with lest a tangle of ghosts begin to plague the area, and Ælheim was no home to any of the undead aside from the Wisps…and some special circumstances. Two: given the nature of Banes, many ferriers were intrigued by all things which plagued and poisoned, Velho being among that number.

After discussing it with a few others, it was decided that Velho go alongside the most local Græntúnian ferrier, Svæin fyn'Kjær Efthimios. Such a remote area had only recently been assigned one, rare as Blights are. And even among the Blighted, Scourges maintain the lowest head count overall due to the sacrifices required to become one. The man was young for an Æld'Norai, still adapting to his new abilities and their drawbacks, and therefore his Absentian Spell Reserves could easily be overwhelmed if the death count resulted in a large number of lingering ghosts. Furthermore, the ferriers as a collective saw this as, potentially, a good learning exercise for the man, even if Velho's ultimate motivation in overseeing this excursion was selfish curiosity. Still, he thought, satisfying one's selfish desires in a manner that aids the collective is a net positive.

Nevertheless, the two of them arrived via portal near the village's primary entrance. The coruscant doorway might attract the attention of villagers, as the effervescent magic and the emergence of two rather haggard looking Æld'Norai was certainly an oddity for any who bore witness. Even so, the two men who emerged would not acknowledge gawkers unless they were interacted with directly.

Seeing no need to waste Spell Reserves at this point, the two of them would enter the village, albeit slowly– Velho required the use of a cane, one elaborately crafted of rich, dark wood and headed by a sculpture in the shape of a spider. The Ælf appeared more physically able, though in time, he too would wither; the physical drawbacks of Scourge increased as one's Absentian Spell Reserves expanded, and the younger of the two was but only an apprentice of the craft. That, and Velho had bolstered the other man physically the week before using Devorare.

Velho would say something to his companion and the two of them would split up. The younger of the two, Efthimios, was intent on finding and speaking to whichever of the villagers appeared to be in charge, and his demands for information were blunt, asking after everything they thus far knew. He expected the Faelnir to comply, as was required of them.

The elder of the two, on the other hand, went directly to wherever it was that the currently sick folks were housed. At first, he'd look over the plagued in a cursory and only visual fashion, trying to glean what he could utilizing his magical knowledge pooled from all of his Arcana alongside his medical knowledge to make his initial assessment.

•════════════════════• Dice Rolls ❀​

"Vicissitude Request: [3d20] Roll: [7, 7, 1] Result: 15" as seen in the Discord.

The third roll I'm discarding because I realized that neither Velho nor the little NPC I'm using have Fieldcraft, but still, that's 7s for Medicine and Psychology. At the same time, though, I am very much hoping my PC's skills & status result in modifiers that help push those results up a bit, haha!