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Treasure of Traveler's Hill [Torchbearer] - Narration
It's a spring day in the Westlands - gray rags of cloud sweep across the sky, spitting down brief bursts of rain and sleet, interspersed with warming shafts of watery sunlight. Skogenby is this morning's memory - goodbyes, caudled ale, a last breakfast sitting on a bench by a hearth in the Cloven Stump's common room. You forded the White Horse River just north of Skogenby and traipsed up the Old Skogenby Road into woodcutter country. After the ford, the road was no longer graveled or dragged - after an hour of walking, the road's two ruts merged into one. Now, after your midday break, the road is reduced to a brambly game trail leading uncertainly northwest. You haven't seen a person since the mid-morning, a charcoal-burner and his apprentice gawking at the three of you from atop their stack of timber-baulks. You have a map - sort of - consisting of a blot representing Skogenby, a line scrawled to indicate the road, a couple Xs for landmarks, and a circle where Traveler's Hill is supposed to be. Gavan the smith's apprentice produced this document for you, based on what he'd overheard from Osbjörn Smith talking to the crazy old peasant who brought in the ship-fitting.
The alders and osiers around nod in the breeze, green swelling at the tips of their branches. Somewhere nearby a wood-thrush essays a tentative whistle. The sun's slipping down the western sky - you've five, maybe six hours until dark and your "road" has more or less disappeared.
What do you do?
The alders and osiers around nod in the breeze, green swelling at the tips of their branches. Somewhere nearby a wood-thrush essays a tentative whistle. The sun's slipping down the western sky - you've five, maybe six hours until dark and your "road" has more or less disappeared.
What do you do?
Comments
It took Helevand an extra moment to cross the ford, he'd never crossed this far in all his scavenging. He eyes Hrolfr, hoping he didn't notice the trepidation. Still a bit star struck that a dwarf who has delved the depths of Dvrgard would take him, a mere scavenger, on to help seek out treasures. Of course his brother had said, "Absolutely not! We are a family of weavers, not foolish, gold-eyed dreamers." But it was not much of a challenge to sneak out of the home of one suffering Blight. They sleep so sound despite the horror delivered from nightmares. Helevand skulked along and was gone before daybreak. And just like that he's in the hills on a real adventure.
The new leaves on the trees belie the danger here. Yes, ages ago when the young heroes marched the world and kept us safe. But that was a different time. The fate of this road, now a brambly trail, tell him that much. It almost seems to indicate that he does not belong here, that none of them do.
He points to one the X's on the map.
"Maybe we locate one of these first?"
What is the landmark closest to the road?
"... Fair enough. Erm."
Looking around, and my eyes light on likely tree, old and tall.
"Right. Here son, get yerself up that tree and see what ye can see. I think we've already passed this mark, here - not that ye could see it through these blasted woods. But ye might be able to make one o' the others, or even - gods be merciful - see the hill from here. It weren't supposed to be too long a trek."
"Just - what trail? There is no trail! The thrice-damn'd trail started running out a league and half ago, and now as I see it there's nothing but maybes and might-bes, and all we've got to mark our way is a petrified giant's heart. Somewhere. Hrm. A common basaltic chalk bed intrusion, I'll wager."
"... But please, as you like, carry on. I doubt ye'll find any kind o' trail, but if ye come 'cross any sign of Old Wat's passing, it might help our weaver's son here make our bearings."
Goats. Evil-eyed beasts. What kind of fool would follow a goat?
He listens to them bicker as he removes his backpack and sets down his polearm.
Just like when he was a youth, he leaps up the tree, grabs ahold of a high branch and works his way to its heights, with hopes of spying the landmarks.
#DiceRoller( 7d6 )
And there, at the edge of vision -- is that silvery scrawl the Willowbend River? Is that - is that a tendril of smoke, tugged by the wind? Could that odd bald lump be Traveler's Hill? It must be! Can't be more than a league and a half, two leagues at the most.
On the climb down, the map you took up with you for reference slips from your grasp - the playful breeze sweeps it up and carries it off into the treetops.
Of the two standing barn/cottage complexes, the one farthest up on the east side of the road has a steady thread of smoke coming from the smoke-hole in the eaves. The westerly survivor looks pretty vacant - the door's gone or hanging open inside, the thatch hanging in tufts, the wattle walls cracked and the whitewash peeling in scabrous chunks. Not that the easterly one looks a whole lot better! None of these farmsteads have been maintained worth dog squat - even the seemingly-occupied one. The hedgerows are weedy and ragged, the gardens overgrown with thistles and dock. But you do hear the signs of rural life - a lowing, sad-sounding ox, a bluster of chicken-squawking, a pack of dogs somewhere out in the fields, barking their fool heads off. You can smell charcoal-smoke, kitchen midden, shit, and a wet green smell from the Willowbend.
And - of course - there's the Hill. At the east end of the occupied farmstead, out where the hedgerows that define the property bounds sort of fuzz out into random unkempt meadow-turning-forest, there's this hill, a hundred feet high if it's an inch, maybe three times that in length. The flat coppery evening sun pierces the clouds to gild the hilltop, where ditches and runnels mar the south face of the hill - the coppices at the top half torn out, a jumble of stumps at the bottom. Seeing it here on the bottom-lands, it's perfectly clear that it's no natural hill.
So what's going on?
If there be no objections, I go stumping down the knoll, with a sharp eye out for man or dog.
Helevand, you've heard the dogs giving voice in the fields and hedges. They do sound like brutes - none of the belling of a coney-hunter, but big deep hoarse barks. Mastiffs or wolf-hounds I shouldn't doubt. And this fellow looks formidable, crazy, or both.
I stand relaxed and steady, the earth firm beneath my feet and my crossbow easy in my gauntlets. I look up a little, into the man's eyes, peering squint-eyed back at his glare.
"We're only travelers, Man. I am Hro
"Ah, that Wat, are ye? Osbjörn Smith was talking about yerself, the other day. Said he rooked ye fair in purchasing a bit o' ... o' bronze or some such. Goes to what they say, eh? Ye cannae trust a Scylding."
I shake my head in sympathy.
"Ye come to me and my lady Wealhþeow next time ye make yer way to Skogenby. As a wise man, ye know ye can trust a dwarf in matters of craft or appraisal. Ah, but now ye ask the business of myself and these lads. Well. As it happens, we heard tales of bandits and wolves here north o' the king's tax, and we thought we might root around a little, and see if we could earn a piece o' the duke's bounties."
I offer a gruff nod of that sort as is close as a dwarf gets to bowing, and - after a moment - turn and stump off, aiming to give the structures a look over. While we be in no desperate circumstance, I want to settle our camp before we go nosing about the hill and countryside. Always have a ready camp to fall back to, that's what I say.
To you others, Robin and Helevand: "Let's three have a look-see, eh? What looks likely to ye?"
There be that westerly hovel what still has summat of a roof, so we'll take a look and see how like the place is to collapse down on us. If I make it as unstable, I'm full willing to settle us into the collapsed building over there, and craft a bit of my own roof. Hells, I'd trust it the better, if 'twere the work o' me own hands.
Of course I share these thoughts with you lads, in long and rambling discourse.