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