Crouching down next to the child, the over one hundred years old elven eyes fill up with tears, but Caramir holds them in - "A life filled with potential, but a candle snuffed out... It doesn't make any sense, these bees are usually not aggressive" - he pushes the girl's hair gently back, then stands up.
Methodically, he searches the area and the girl for clues on the attack.
He then picks up the girl in his arms - "She must be taken to her parents - I am not the best with words... Someone else should give them these dire news, but I will carry her" - he states with a grim tone.
Larrieux responds to the elf. I will tell her parents.. He rubs the child's head. My guess is the poor little thing saw the hive and hoped for some honey. She probably was too much a novice to understand the danger.
"Move out!" - Caramir warns - "The bees are swarming" - then begins his dash.
:/ sigh
Karl, is standing next to mak, is slow to react as the bees swarm out.
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Before he knows it, Mak is at the back of the line engulfed by bees. They are everything he sees, they are in his clothes, they are in his mouth, they wash over his hands and...
Mak takes 11 damage but manages to stay on his feet - barely.
He looks like he is about to collapse. Dots of black stingers pimple his skin from head to toe.
Karl feels the bees sting and tries to fall back.
"They are not giving chase, but they shouldn't be this territorial" - Caramir pipes in, stopping the dash with the girl in his arms.
Larrieux responds to the elf. I will tell her parents.. He rubs the child's head. My guess is the poor little thing saw the hive and hoped for some honey. She probably was too much a novice to understand the danger.
"Thank you Larrieux" - the elf nods, then turns to Makirut and Karl - "Are you ok friends?" - he approaches them, inspecting the stings.
"Thank you Larrieux"
Larrieux nods to the elf, embarrassed by his show of softness. Changing the mood quickly, he speaks to his companions who were too slow to avoid the bees.
So...Do you gentlemen require divine healing?
Larrieux says a little prayer to the lord of commerce and healing blasts forth from his hands, surrounding his friends.
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As the healing washes over him, karl feels the pain of the stings fade away.
thanks a lot, baron. That was most helpful. Amazing, the pain has gone away.
This is obviously the first time karl has been healed.
The newcomer walks into the Felled Ogre and witnesses a lively scene. Larrieux is sitting in a corner with an attractive barmaid in his lap. He is shirtless and has his head tilted all the way back. The barmaid pours a full pint of strong ale in his mouth. Unable to handle the speed of the pour, ale streams off his cheeks and chin. As the mug empties, the barmaid throws the mugs across the room. It shatters on the wall. The man sits up straight and belches loudly. The crowd cheers. Larrieux yells out "Another!" to the crowd's pleasure.
He stops and points at you. "I know you!" The barmaid covers his mouth with her hand. She appears drunk too. "Shhhhh! You don't know him Larrieux. You're drunk!" She slurs her words. Larrieux moves her hand. "I never forget a man who can out drink me!" He motions to you "Come hither old friend. Ceinwynn has a friend!" A shy, attractive female dwarf waves coyly.
He pauses to down most of the mug in a long draft, swishing the last contemplatively. "This one of yours, then -- you must have been practicing since last I saw you? Yes, yes, a pleasure to meet you," the last while distractedly patting the dwarven lass on the knee, "But tell me, friend, what have you been doing with yourself these last years? And, shall I get us another round, or just myself?"
Larrieux returns the hearty shake. "A merchant guard believe it or not. That was until I met this fine lass! I can't seem to leave her bed!" He motions to the bartender. "You heard my friend. Another round!" Larrieux lifts the barmaid off his leg and slides a chair over to the Dwarf. "It has been awhile since we have discussed theology! Have you come to revere the lord of the coin yet?!"
Larrieux nods at Mak. "My pleasure. If you require more healing later, please let me know." He falls in line with the group, keeping an eye out for trouble.
As the group returns.
"What happened?"
you don't know that mak. But do bees act like that usually. And the dog, and the bear. I wonder if these people have insulted a powerful spirit.
"As for the theology, your Sefagreth is indeed respectable, but I find it a fine line between ruling over coin and being ruled by it. These days I find myself most drawn to the harp--I find it most satisfying to put my hammer and shield between harm and those undeserving of it."
The cleric chuckles at the dwarf's response. "You always were a softy at heart Morti! As for me, give me coin. It rules the world!" He takes another draw from his ale. "I am headed to Endhome in the morning. I would love to have your company along the way. We could prosthelytize each other! I met a ranger who offered to be a guide." He pulls Ceinwynn back in his lap. "One more night together Mi Amore! We better make it a memorable one!"
"I can take second watch. Though I still would like to know what happened."
I'll take the last watch.
you don't know that mak. But do bees act like that usually. And the dog, and the bear. I wonder if these people have insulted a powerful spirit.
"What do you mean 'insulted a powerful spirit' Karl?" - Caramir raises an eyebrow - "This was but a child, a speck of life - how could she have insulted anyone or anything?" - he shakes his head in frustration.
"I hope you can agree to stay in the area for a little longer friends" - he adds - "If it is something in the water, food, or anything else that is changing the animal behaviour so, I would like to find out, and offer some respite to these people"
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"Wouldn't you think they should scarper, ranger? Mak throws a hand over his shoulder.
"Look around, they are scared and with no sane flyer to lead their spirit. If these people can be forgotten by the gods, then perhaps we can forget their hash thorpe as well." his brow furrows.
"What can the effort here earn us?" He gestures to his still-swollen face. "Lo' dig what it has earned me! Here we are off the pad - cut off in some shaddy mudtown."
Makirut breathes.
And now I have to remember the look of that dead, poor sally for the rest of my life.
"Look, all my scavoir says these people don't need help. They ought to leave this wretched place... But I'll not leave it without you culls. Even if this village hushes us, I'm no sam bamish. If you boys want trouble, most assuredly we may find trouble here."
I don't mean the child insulted the spirit, but the village. It's in the old stories. I'm just thinking a loud on this.
Shaking his head. "What bad luck. I'm glad to see all of you made it back. The loss of a child will not be forgotten. I wish I could say my time here had yielded some answers. Showing interest in the talk of stories, What are these old stories of which you speak?"
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"I never give your average human story much thought.
One old folk tale goes like this." Mak adjusts his weight, leaning up against a support timber. "But if you ask me, it's all superstitious hogwash. Still.."
In the raw times, before the northmen came down and bent the world to their steel. The spirit of the peoples and the lands of Weymarch were untamed when entered into them a traveler from afar.
He was a Searcher, a seeker of truth and enlightenment from a distant land. He was close to the end of his mighty realization when he came upon a village one morning. It was a sickly and rough little place. As they say in the valley, "The day is short and mean" in such a place.
The paupers who lived there were disturbed by the stranger's appearance when he came into their dwelling place. A few brave of them barraged him with flights of stinging questions and sharp judgements. "Who are you? Why Came Ye here? What is wrong with you?"
They wasted his day away with these questions and with time it was dark, and as now, the night was dangerous in those days now forgotten. For this was before the time of Muir and Sefagreth. The villagers who were ignorant acted raw and unshaped.
This man, this traveler so close to enlightenment became enraged when the villagers forsook him and scorned him and left him without room or board for the night.
So, he moved on through the night, and he went quietly and without aid through the perilous unformed country.
But the rage that burned within him would not be sated.
He who had come so close to ultimate kindness could not remove the unkind village from his heart, and when the time came to return home, his countrymen rejected him. He had failed in his mission.
So it was that he returned to the village that plagued his soul.
By all the artifice and cunning native to his homeland he worked for a week on the village's border. He chopped away at the underbrush and fired staves to char-hardened points. He hewed at the ground and wove many nets of vine to hold earth. He hoisted the earth up into the air and anointed his body with water from the purest fey-kept stream he had crossed in his travels.
He did all this and then he used his work of artifice to end his own life on the doorstep of the village. His machine was of such cunning that it promptly buried him deep in earth, then fell apart. It left no trace.
In seven days, the village was gone. The beasts of the wild seized upon it. The forest rejected the miserable pustule of those ungrateful living. As a body uses its puss and ichor to purify, so the forest swept the village clean by beast and by fire.
One day, a young man who had left the village to seek his fortune, returned empty handed to an empty clearing, and a grove of young pine where the traveler had died. Lost and with the sun setting, he made camp, confused that after all his travels his home was not to be found.
This young man met the wandering soul of the suicide, and was presented with a token by the wronged ghost. It was a silver charm of the far-walker's native land. The young man received a terse apology from the ghost, and on the next day he left his village again. If you can call such a thing a village after that.