Chapter 1 Part 1: (ADVENTURE) Everybody's Working For The Festival Of The Sacred Elk

[Admin]

There's a few precious hours of freedom even after the sun hits its zenith - long enough that an adventurer may think that Aelora has forgotten about them and that fifth period will be study hall after all - but sooner or later a weather-toned elf with a well-used longbow shows up at the guard tower, and from there gathers the rest of the group together. Kicking and screaming, if necessary. She's higher-level than you, don't try it.

"I'm sure you're familiar with goblinkind," she says, without much introduction. "There are a few groups - you could call them tribes, or clans, but they're not so uniform nor so well-organised - that operate around Irrelonde. None are friendly, but most of them aren't hostile. They'll steal what they can and I wouldn't let a child too far away from the village when they're roving, but they won't raid. Some of them quite like the Festival, if only for the lights and the colours and the noise. They'll set off firecrackers to match our own display; it's almost friendship. And some of them, after an old tradition of ours - not one anyone really practices any more - will hide surprises in the plains and the woods. Little jack-in-the-boxes that spring up and then burn away, or mechanisms that make ungodly loud noises when stepped on. Pranks, really, but harmless. Sometimes even gifts - crude jewelry, or half-skinned dead animals. Sometimes we respond in kind, it's like half-diplomacy. But some of the meaner groups take advantage of that, and they'll set their own pranks around, which tend to be explosive or acidic or just shoot out blades. It's rarely enough to do any real damage to an adult who's actively looking out for them, but the people who find them aren't always actively looking... and they're not always adults. So we'd like you to explore a few areas we've marked out on these maps. Find what sort of surprises there are around there, and if they're dangerous, disarm them. If you find any of the goblins setting dangerous traps, send them on their way. You can kill if you have to, but please don't start a fight if there doesn't need to be one. We have a mostly peaceable existence here."

[twigcollins]

Cly looks up from where she's been weaving a flower crown and nods. It's not quite dancing on a bar for tips in wet chain mail, but if it means everyone can have a good time then it's worth doing.

[Flidget Jerome]

Vlie has the marked air of a rat who wants to get this all over with so they can go back to . . . whatever it was that actually brought them to Irrelonde. It certainly wasn't for the sake of child-proofing the local woods because gods forbid anyone be expected to watch-over their offspring properly anymore.

Vlie sniffs. Parents these days.

[soranokumo]

Sayahi listens intently to the instructions for their duty of the day. All right, so basically going to look for "presents," most of which should be presents but some of which might not be.

That should be fine. That should be easy. She's actually more concerned about whether she should bother attempting to earn a little more coin that evening by playing in one of the inns (would her kind of music be welcomed here?! Then again people always have the taste for the exotic, if she's learned anything about people from her time in the pleasure district).

But then she glances over at her current companions. Yes, this... this should work.

[Admin]

With most of her conscripts in order, the ranger sets out her battleplan. Sayahi, Cly, and Vlie are to take one area, with Foxglove and Speedwell set to another. She mentions another group, and that depending on how the work goes, she might send others to the areas as reinforcements. With that, it's off to the races.

The area Sayahi, Cly, and Vlie are assigned to is mostly tall grass. (There are no Pokemon in the tall grass.) It's bordered on the north edge by the Sacred Forest, although Aelora did suggest that the group should look through the outskirts of the forest if possible. On the west edge, there's a slow river fed from the forest, babbling off south into the distance, perhaps all the way to the sea. The southern and eastern borders are fairly arbitrary and difficult to determine. If you reach the road to Carragan, you've gone too far.

(MECHANICS: If you're doing anything besides searching for explosive presents, let me know.

If you just want to get to the search, let me know how you intend to go about it. That'll determine the skill you roll. Perception, Survival, and Knowledge (nature) are all possibilities.)

[twigcollins]

Cly would like to take this opportunity to transform into her full kitsune form, the better to be hidden-ish in tall grass and also possibly sniff out unpleasant surprises.

[Sponsored content]