| Stress | Economic 0/5 | Morale 0/5 | Property 0/4 | Military 0/5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fate Points | 1/3 Refresh | 0 Bonus | ||
| Parager | (-3,3) | Swamp, no particular river |
Litoria speaks with a handpicked group of Pathfinders as the flotilla departs on the first day of Spring. The morning has dawned bright and crisp, and all are excited to get moving again. All but the 15 elves gathered here on a low muddy rise in the swamp.
“Mais, you know it pains us to leave y’all behind,” she grasps the shoulder of the eldest among them, “mais we got’ have a safe place to come home.”
Prosalirus Prosaliridae, an elder among the river elves, and a highly skilled pathfinder, nods seriously and returns the gesture.
“You can count on us,” he responds in unaccented Low Draconic. “We know the importance of this task.”
Litoria gives Prosalirus a brief hug, which he returns. Then she hops astride Sauver, and waits as each of the gathered pathfinders give the young hippo a pat for good luck.
As the last raft passes by, she departs into the water. The pathfinders give a farewell salute, and Prosalirus slaps his giggin’ stick against the water with a final great splash.
The flotilla moves onward. A safe winter quarters will be secured. All is as it should be.
Economic: When the flotilla arrives in the Burning Maar, they’re not exactly thrilled to be there. The lake stinks and they’re constantly on guard for accidental fires catching any of the rafts or the flammable cargo they’ve hauled upstream with them. It’s uncomfortable and for once nobody actually wants to get in the water.
They hurry to float the lumber shipment up to Surt so they can turn around and get out of this awful pond as soon as possible. While making the hand off, Staurois asks the local fire elves what they’ve named the river that leads to them. In trade, they request a load of volcanic ash to deliver back to Fort Alfyr to help with their concrete needs during their renovations. Smilisca begs a barrel of charcoal into the deal, for use in making long-burning incense. Acris quickly realizes that this means he will be doing a lot more sticky, smelly work in the next few months.
Using the Merchants trapping of Trade to offload this lumber with the fire elves, they roll 2 Ability and 1 Proficiency dice: 2 advantage, 3 successes, 0 triumphs.
Political: Leaving the coast in their wake, Staurois is tempted to relax the watch and let their eternal guard against Sea Elf spies slip. And then he is reminded, this time by one of the erstwhile spyhunters themselves, that just having elves keep extra watch on the flotilla helped prevent it from being caught entirely off-guard by the flood. Not wanting to risk that again, Staurois requests that his volunteer Eyes stay alert to any possible danger. At some point they should probably start actually codifying the role somehow. The same group of elves is always the ones volunteering for it.
Using the Cloak and Dagger trapping of Espionage to be alert for anything out of place, the Eyes roll 1 Ability and 1 Boost die: 2 advantage, 1 successes, 0 triumphs.
Military: The discomfort in the Maar has the flotilla on edge. To calm their moods, Staurois asks Litoria to see if she can convince the Angry Alligators to do something to make the river elves feel safe. Litoria interprets this as a command to expand their military power. With the Veteran Crocodilians in need of ranged support, she starts asking around to recruit new volunteers and veterans alike to serve a ranged support role in the division. Litoria attempts to recruit the most nimble of the river elves she can locate.
Using the Drill trapping of Military Science, Litoria rolls 2 Ability dice to recruit some level 3 Archerfish into the Angry Alligators division: 2 advantage, 1 successes, 0 triumphs.
Mental: After banging her head against the problem for months, Eina comes to a startling revelation. When attempting to foresee the future, the exact wording and language used absolutely matters. And she’s not really interested in the weather, she’s interested in whether or not there will be weather conditions that could make their voyage dangerous. In River Sylvan, that is a question about the weather, but in Low Draconic or Elven it’s a question about climate.
Armed with this reframing, and the idea of narrowing it to provide no detail outside of whether or not the river will be safe to travel, Eina begins on the task again. Using the Magic trapping of Spirituality, she rolls 1 Proficiency and 1 Boost die: 1 advantage, 0 successes, 0 triumphs.
Frustrated, and in full knowledge that there is a refresh point burning a hole in their Fate pool, Eina takes another shot at this: 0 advantage, 2 successes, 0 triumphs. That looks better.
Economic - Well, despite some of the ah, differences of opinion between your two peoples the trade goes down just fine. The fire elves seem downright hungry for the lumber you bring them. Your shipment is unloaded in a matter of days, and for a higher price than you expected. In return, the fire elves give you an… actually absolutely staggering amount of high quality volcanic ash. When mixed properly it could make a quite large amount of construction material, for which the blade elves are quite hungry. Nice!
Partager has traded the lumber shipment for a construction grade ash shipment. In addition, trade contacts are made and your next trade with the fire elves will have a boost die.
Oh, and by the way it’s the “Burning Wolf” river.
Typical.
Political: Finally starting to become an organized group, the Eyes in the Dark take to the waters in the Maar to prevent interlopers. According to the fire elves, strange things have been afoot. While many think that they may be exaggerating, well, it’s the Eyes job to take that kind of thing seriously now. This is the first major trade in the history of this new flotilla, and you’re not going to let some looky loo mess it up.
Several days into the trade, the Eyes find something. Concealed in the smoky, rocky shore of the Maar about ten miles from Surt the Eyes find the remains of a campsite. Far from abandoned, it appears to have been deliberately concealed and then the evidence of it destroyed. Still, telltale signs such as discoloration from tents and the outlines of boot prints are still visible.
Litoria is called in to examine the site, as whoever hid the evidence did a good job. Litoria estimates the camp held 6-10 people, probably humanoids of some kind but the footprints are destroyed enough that it’s hard to tell. The camp was torn down recently, within about 6 months.
As she examines the site, hidden under a rocky outcrop, Litoria finds something the mysterious occupants missed: A pawprint. It appears to be from a wolf. A big wolf, of a size she hasn’t seen since the war, as big as a dire wolf.
Military: Congratulations! Your first unit of Archerfish is successfully recruited. With things finally starting to reach something of a stable position, many elves are having their confidence return to them. These Archerfish are mostly younger recruits, with few having seen any real action in the war. They’re new, but they’ve got confidence and there are enough veterans that they have an idea what combat will be like. They should do just fine.
Magic: Congratulations! Eina and her helpers have successfully created the River Augury spell!
This ritual will give you information on a planned river route. By outlining a single settlement’s planned route, this spell will give you one of 4 answers relating to the climate specifically: Weal for good results, Woe for bad results, Weal and Woe for a mix of both, and Nothing for the weather not having any huge impact. It cannot predict events not influenced by climate.
River Augury looks one year into the future and has a %85 chance of an accurate result. If an inaccurate result is made, it will always respond with “Nothing.” If a fate point is spent in the casting of this ritual, it is %100 accurate. Multiple castings of this spell on the same river within the same year give the same results.
This spell may be improved by further magic research.
Over the last year, Eina's persistence and optimism has collected a small group of helpers around her. Many of them are the elves who lost the most during the war. Her brand of enthusiasm seems comforting to these elves.
Eina really pushed her small circle of helpers hard to complete the research on this ritual. Nation scale divine magic isn't done by one person, and her helpers had to learn quite a bit as they went. They are all quite satisfied with their work, but also quite exhausted and Eina is falling behind on some of the day to day religious duties around the flotilla. Mental tasks on the Spirituality skill next turn will take a setback die.
On the upswing however, while some of Eina's volunteers were driven away by the intense devotion she asked of them this season most of them stayed. Several of them are now expressing interest in formally becoming clergy of Calestros.
Misc 1: Well, you seem to have made a positive impact on someone in Surt. One Barrabus Leafstorm, one of those most pushing the effort behind the trading, has apparently decided to take a nice vacation on the flotilla for the next turn. Well, family is family!
Misc 2: There is one more surprise for the river elves this turn. Late in the season, as the date of the potluck draws close, Staurois wakes up suddenly at the crack of dawn. Unsure what woke him, gets up and heads to the back of the raft.
There he finds Nyctibatrachus violently puking her guts out into the live well. In between the heaving, she looks at him and smiles.
After storming Eina's raft to wake her, her divinations confirm what they hope but haven't dared to speak aloud. Ny is pregnant.
“Home” is simply a word. For the river elves, it’s something of a loaded one. The river elves were stripped of their home not by an enemy, but by an ally. After years of violence and hardship, after so many lives and so much of their culture sacrificed, Lock denied them the one thing that they had been fighting for. With so much lost and nothing to show for it, that word has conjured only pain for some time - until recently. After so much struggle and so much triumph, the river elves are starting to use it again. This may not be the rivers of old, but it is home.
You are refugees no more.
For completing your first turn and forging a new home for the river elves, you are rewarded with one skill point to distribute wherever you would like. In addition, you receive one refresh point which may at this time be exchanged for a stunt of your choosing.
Representing their more settled nature, and the work they’ve put into creating their homes, the river elves spend their first earned skill point on increasing the Development skill, and spend the refresh point to create the Elf Express stunt.
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