Year 1 - Spring - Second Month
You see Or'Thark and Taldrihullier off on their first hunt, confident in their abilities. Bears should be nothing to them. Then, turning north, you begin your own trek. Your map serves only as a rough guide; for the most part you are just orienting yourself north to the best of your abilities and hoping to come out at the cliffs. This works well when you can see the sky, but the forest compresses down on you as you move towards the center. The canopy thickens to the point of blocking out the sky, and you feel a strong sense of being trapped. Even more terrifying however are the spots where the forest is cleared away. It helps you correct for any drifting in your path, but the clearings aren't accidental. The huge swaths of fallen trees are paths, torn down by something massive. The first trail you pass is clearly old, with the forest already hard at work to reclaim it's own, but gradually it gets newer. The torn up ground is fresh, with only a few of the fastest growing bushes and trees even beginning to shoot up new stalks. Here you don't take the time to check the sky; you sprint the 40 meters to cover on the otherside of clearing, your heart pounding harder than is warranted by the run.
Then, almost without warning, you are staring down at the ocean. The forest spills over the cliff, vines reaching down from secure footholds at the top, and roots bursting from the layers of rocks. You settle yourselves into a small cave, very close to the top of the cliff, accessible only by climbing down the vines. Fortunately this is an easy feat for both you and Mirrelp. You spend your days here trying to improve your map. You note the positions of caves with activity, some of it small bats, others birds with wingspans several times your height. Once you see, at a distance, something come from a cave near the base of the cliff and rapidly scale the entire face. On a couple of occasions it threw itself upwards meters at a time.
Mirrelp was similarly busy. The entrance to your cave was soon decorated with all sorts of herbs and mushrooms drying in the sun and salty ocean air. She explains to you what each is, and what it does, but most of the words are meaningless to you. Soon, it is time to go back though, and the new herbs simply become weight on your back. The trip back is uneventful except for one difference, the forest has grown over the trails so as to completely obscure them. Your estimates on their age was off, if the forest could grow back so quickly. At most, they were made over the course of a few days.
Common Herbs/Mushrooms (Organized by effect, for lack of individual importance; dry weight)
400 g herbs for the cleaning of wounds
200 g herbs for the dissipation of fevers
200 g herbs for the numbing of pain
100 g herbs for giving energy
50 g herbs for calming stomachs
Uncommon Herbs/Mushrooms
5 g Vampyre's Retort (poison which quickly thickens then solidifies blood)
5 g Ferret's Tail (strong irritant/sensitizer)
5 g Stalker's Vine (taken in advance, reduces odors produced)
3 g Verena's Rest (promotes sleep, toxic at high doses)
2 g
30 g of herbs and mushrooms of unknown species/effect
From the other team the report is good. They took down four bears, providing more than enough meat to survive on, perhaps even enough spare to sell, as well as four good pelts. You notice that Taldrihullier seems to defer to Or'Thark, but it's much harder to read the orc.
What will you do next month? ((I'll work on an actual map for you guys))
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Topic: Woodsmen - Year 1 - Spring - Second Month (Design/SG) (Read 1654 times)