AAR [4M]: Community Service (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

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Anoush
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Re: AAR [4M]: Community Service (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by Anoush » Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:34 pm

Keel's Journal:

[A letter from Kun'da'lin Iceclaw, found among her parents' effects at the troll moot; written in Sperethiel.]

A couple of months ago, I passed through the village of Odhapur, south of the Throal Mountains, nestled in the foothills. At the time, my main thought was “What an unhappy town!” No one seemed happy, or to be thriving. The soil wasn’t great for crops, yet their was a source of fresh water and the village was situated near the major trade routes. So there was potential.

I met one old elven couple — Ivaren and Aurae — who were struggling to keep their farm going, and my thoughts kept returning to them, wondering if I could do something to help. So, on a pleasant spring day, I decided to make the trip to Odhapur and see if I could help. I had no real plans, just a desire to be useful.

I went straight to the elves’ farm and offered my services, promising a couple of week’s service. I helped repair fences, clear new acreage, plant some fields, and performed many more odd jobs. I learned that the couple’s son had left the village a number of years ago, looking for better opportunities.

Ivaren had been coughing a lot recently, but he refused to rest. Aurae told me that he’d been coughing for about 5 weeks at that point, with the fits getting worse and worse. In the village, I went looking for an herbalist or healer of some kind, and instead discovered that other adepts had come to Odhapur for a variety of reasons. Caesar, the human Illusionist, was there learning how to produce liquor from locally grown beets. Z’mokki, the t’skrang Thief, was there visiting a friend who’d lost his left leg in a mining accident. And Orlam and Orfen were there, both Elementalists, one human and the other elven, gathering information from the village’s sage.

Orfen has a reputation for the healing arts, so I had him examine Pa (by this time, they considered me a long-lost daughter, I think). But Orfen couldn’t uncover anything definitive, but did her best to help him.

The main talk in the village was about a group of trolls who’d settled nearby, higher in the mountains, and were raising a special kind of large sheep. A lot of the villagers were out-spoken against the trolls, even though they’d never seen them let along talked to them. I could almost feel the town slipping into despair.

We talked to a local tracker, an ex-Throal military ork Named Ogala Bukhal. She gave us directions to find the troll moot. So Caesar and I made the trek up to visit the trolls. Between Caesar’s silver tongue and my knowledge of trollish culture, we hoped to find some common ground.

The route was steep in places, but altogether it was a pleasant couple hours walk in the cool mountain air. At the moot, we first found some grazing lands and a lot of very, very big sheep. I don’t know much about sheep, but these seemed to have a different kind of wool (hair?) that others I’ve seen and they were much larger, and had huge, curling horns. A couple of young trolls were there, armed with slings, to protect the sheep from predators. They directed us to the moot center, and we met the troll chief, Mogrin Velhalt. He was a practical man; the first we glimpsed of him was when he was helping birth a lamb.

Caesar took the lead in the conversation. Boy, that guy can talk! He was the epitome of neighborly, inviting the trolls to a party at the village. In return he learned that the trolls had just left their kaer a few months ago. The land here is ideal for raising their sheep. The only problem with the site was that the markets where they hoped to sell their wool were far away. I saw a sample of their woolen products — a mitten — and indeed, the wool was silky soft. I imagine there’d be quite a market for this in Throal.

That set both Caesar and I to thinking: the village produces bricks which they ship, via the nearby trade route, to Kampung Gajah and other places. Why couldn’t the trolls use the same route?

When inviting them to the party (which so far as I knew only existed as yet in Caesar’s imagination), we learned that next week is a feast day for the trolls. They were hesitant about sharing that holiday with the village, but Caesar overcame all their objections. The trolls even planned on bringing food (roast mutton?) with them so that villagers would be spared the expense of feeding an entire troll moot. There were about 150 trolls in the moot, and Mogrin promised that most would be at the party.

We returned to Odhapur and got caught up with the other adepts. More people were sick, not just Pa. The main symptoms seemed to be coughing and insomnia. Orfen speculated that the problem wasn’t getting better because the patients couldn’t get enough rest to let their bodies recover. Made sense to me. In fact, Orfen explained that because so few could recover, the result was that a larger and large number of people were sick. The local healer was getting overwhelmed.

We wondered if something external was stopping the sick people from getting sleep. So, we got sleeping draughts for three of the sick, and watched 3 others. One of the sick people that we watched was Pa. Apart from a restless, mostly sleepless, night, we noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

We repeated this procedure the following night. But this time, Caesar heard a strange hum, and then saw a shadowy figure creep into the window. It looked like weird 3’ tall monkey, with an oversized head and long fingers. This monkey put his fingers on the temples of one of the sick people for about one minute. Then moved off. Caesar saw no astral imprint for the creature. He cast an ephemeral bolt at it and the creature disappeared. In the morning, we investigated the inside of the cottage. We found a dry, desicated cocoon high in the rafter, about the size of a 40 pound dog. There were still a few strands of silk attached, fibrous and moist. Above it, we noticed that the thatch roof had been disturbed. Perhaps that was how the creature that made the cocoon originally got in and out?

On the third night, there was no disturbance; all the sick were much calmer. Pa felt much better in the morning, too.

Surveying the village, we found a cocoon in the cottage of each of the sick people. All were old and dry, none were freshly made.

To track down the creature who was crafting the cocoons, we talking to Ogala again. She quickly found some odd tracks that led from the cottages into the nearby woods. We found areas with silken strands and empty cocoons, and then some full cocoons. As we approached the full cocoons, we heard a humming and the cocoons started to open. Large silkworms of some kind emerged from the cocoons and attacked! When they bit you, they stayed attached, sucking your blood, or something. After a brief battle, the remaining monkeys — kreescra, we learned later — ran off. We patched ourselves up, including poison antidotes just in case.

The Elementalists put their heads together and talked to the villlage sage. Their conclusion was that the silkworms and the monkeys work together. The worms “soften” the victims’ minds, and are serving the monkeys.

All the sick villagers recovered in short order and were healthy for the party/feast day celebration. We did our. best to make it a success with assorted preparations. I cut steps into the steepest parts of the route leading between the village and the troll moot. Others helped with getting food ready. Caesar made sure there was more than adequate supply of beet-shine on hand. All of us talked to lots of villagers to boost their morale and enthusiasm. Others planned skits and musical performances. The party was such a success that both the villagers and the trolls vowed to do it again next year.

Even better, we helped establish communications between the two communities. I’ll check back in a few months, but I think we’ve planted enough seeds that they’ll be working together and trading in no time.


That’s all for now. All my love,
Keel

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