Nia will lurk on the outskirts of town and try to spot a friendly face. She has met Gegren at his forge, so will lurk in those environs. Nia’s goal is to get more information about the anomaly. While she wants to investigate it, if there are people in town who know more about it, she would prefer to venture out with as much information as she can. If she encounters a known person, she will ask them: “What do you know about the light from over the hills?” “Has anyone gone to investigate it? And where are these people now?” [OOC: I’ll assume Nia has run into Dax and Arsal while out in the countryside, but is unlikely to know where to find them. If Nia sees Gegren at the forge, she will try to make the connection between the smith she remembers and the new form he inhabits now. Likely she would not know him if she passed him in the street. It is too hot for chainmail, so she will be dressed in a sleeveless tunic and summer leggings. Her bow and shield are on her back and her mail and other gear is stuffed in a bag. She is visibly armed with a sword and dagger. Townsfolk give Nia the creeps, so she will definitely be in ‘lurk mode’ unless she sees Gegren, Dax, or Arsal.] On Wed, Jul 2, 2025 at 12:55 PM bss via Emerald Flame < emerald-flame@lists.incorporeal.org> wrote:
On one particular unseasonably warm autumn evening, you have all found yourselves --- coincidentally or not --- in the village of Locke, where the chatter of the town is still the anomalous event "out past the hills". The blue glow is not strong enough to overpower the lamp lights --- a recent technological improvement, by Locke's standards --- that line the major streets of the village, creating a strange, sickly combination of yellow and blue light that helps cut the small point of civilization out of the wilderness.
You may have found yourself in one of the few inns, taking in the local fare while listening to exaggerated and drunken tales of courage and heroism regarding the site of the pillar and the laments of those who have been working to rebuild broken structures and machines and settle the consistently distressed livestock, or perhaps you have spent more time out on the street and at the edges of the village, where you get a chance to observe the muted and limited response from the volunteer guard of Locke. If you have a family or friends here, they too find their idle time consumed by talk of the event, as nothing much else of note happens here usually, at least to this degree.
The night is like every other night, otherwise. Quiet and calm, most folk retired to their homes or passing time at the bar. Locke feels at times like a forgotten stop in the march of technology --- not quite skipped over, but much behind --- and yet you can see pieces of magitech here and there --- the lamp lights most notably, but occasionally a minor machine or enchantment in the streets and establishments, an improved tool that has ever-so-slightly started modernizing the otherwise rural farming life out in the wilds of Mystvil. The smell is that of fresh earth and the air after a thunderstorm, pulling your thoughts back to where you are --- and where you are not.
[Pausing here to allow for folks to advance and/or establish connections with one another. Don't forget that the character tool will have given you some seeds for how you know someone else on the adventure, which you can solidify and embellish on to your heart's content. And as a reminder, post within this thread be replying to it, until there is a major scene change, and please bottom post (i.e. the text you are replying to quoted above your text) when at all possible.]
-- bss (Brian S. Stephan) | https://bss.zone/ | GPG: 0x80895FCB_______________________________________________ Emerald Flame mailing list -- emerald-flame@lists.incorporeal.org To unsubscribe send an email to emerald-flame-leave@lists.incorporeal.org
