The Fall of Plaguestone

It has been three days since you left Elidir, climbing into the back of one of Bort Bargith’s wagons bound for the faraway Andoran capital of Almas. The smiling caravan master cut your travel cost to only a handful of coppers, so long as you promised to protect the wagons should any trouble arise. Fortunately, your journey through the hinterlands of Isger has been quiet, even if the ride itself has been far from comfortable.

As you broke camp this morning, Bort announced you should arrive at the town of Etran’s Folly by nightfall, and he promised a comfortable bed for the night as a reward for a long day’s travel. The caravan’s teamsters shared a chuckle between them, trading knowing glances and subtle nods, but soon enough you are on the road again, the wagon bouncing and creaking along the uneven trail.

The caravan's one-eared chef, introduced to you so far simply as Cookie, bustles around the back of the large wagon, chopping vegetables and tending to the heavy iron tub bolted to the back and stoking the bed of coals inside while humming tunelessly to himself.

As she walks alongside the wagon, Tessik is playfully flipping a silver coin and catching it. It seems mostly she just wants to keep her hands busy. She is in the middle of telling a story to those walking beside her. "So my little brother hid the cat as fast as he could before my dad came in. Problem is cats don't like to stay still when you put them somewhere they didn't choose to be. So as my dad walked into the room, the cat was trying to get out of the box. And suddenly my dad gets hit in the head with a box falling off the shelf and the cat is clawing all over him. I don't know what I love more: the face he made when the cat crawled into his shirt, or the fact that he actually let us keep it."

Similarly keeping pace with the wagon, Alma is only-half listening as she fiddles with a blade of grass, fruitlessly trying to make it produce a satisfactory whistle. She sighs and gives up, tossing her failed whistle to the side. "Are we there yet?" she asks no one in particular, knowing full well the answer to that question is "no".

Kunzang sits in the wagon, fiddling about with his alchemy equipment and basically ignoring everything else. What a jerk.

Lilia, a bedraggled young woman dressed in tattered clothes, has hardly said anything all trip, save for giving her name when asked and thanking the cook when food's served, which she always tears into voraciously. Nonetheless, even as she flips through an old merchant's ledger she carries with her while walking, her eyes occasionally dart to Tessik through the story and she smirks at the funnier parts as the only hints she's listening.

"I find 'are we there yet?' to be a question rarely worth asking. The answer is most often no for one, and for two it ignores the importance of the journey. If you get bored and just start asking to be done you start missing all the little wonders along the way," Tessik states. She scoops up a few blades of grass alongside the road and begins using one to make a whistling sound. She hands another blade to Alma. "Come on, I'll show you how."

"I could've sworn I had -" Alma huffs indignantly before trying the whistle again, this time successfully producing the desired sound. She sighs, relaxing herself a bit. "Thank you. One day I'll get it down..." Her attention turns to a ladybug idly whizzing by. "Don't get me wrong, I'm partial to the little wonders. I just appreciate them best with no other goal in mind. When I have a place to be I can't help but feel like transit is wasting time.

...Sorry, I'm rambling again, aren't I?"

"Maybe a bit, but it doesn't bother me," Tessik replies. "As for me, I don't get too worked up about getting where I'm going. But then all I ever want to do is travel. What bores me is being in one place for too long."

Alma nods. "That I can relate to. I do always like having somewhere to return, though. An anchor I can always come back to when I'm done. Granted, I realize I'm fortunate in that regard..."

The warm, early-autumn day rolls lazily along, as do acres of wooded Isgeri countryside. Late afternoon, the wagon driver, a perpetually-scowling human man called Keldaran, calls back, "Plaguestone's a half hour dead ahead, y'all, pack it in."

"Hum! About time. Pleasantly surprised we had no interruptions along the way." As soon as the words left Alma's mouth, her hand nervously goes to her glaive. "Wait. I didn't just jinx it, did I? Damn..." She nervously chuckles, suddenly acutely aware of her presence and desperately hoping for someone to start a new conversation.

Although he'd been silent and withdrawn for most of the day, now Kunzang finally looks up and speaks, replying to Alma: "In my experience, it's bad luck to say something like 'so far, so good'..."

At the worried comments, Lilia’s hand falls to the dogslicer she wears at her hip and slides her ledger book into her pack. ”The horse isn’t dead until you hear it scream,” she comments, looking around nervously.

"I dunno. Sometimes things just work out," Tessik says, trying to calm the suspicious mood going around. "It doesn't hurt to be wary, but not everything is a trap."

No sooner are the words out of Tessik's mouth than a chorus of long, mournful howls echo from the woods around the caravan. "Gods damn it," Keldaran curses as a pack of mangy-looking wolves come padding out of the treeline. "Doesn't have to be a trap to be a problem!'

Tessik sighs and draws her bow. "I don't mind being wrong, but this feels almost like a pointed jab from the universe."

Alma raises her glaive. "Technically this can still be a trap... If we walked into the hunting form of the pack... You know what, never mind."