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ECR, I switched my temper and my charm scores in order to better reflect the backstory changes are as follows

Temper; 11 base 4 (8)
Determination 14,

Charm; 9 base 3 (6)
Animal handling 9 , Resist persuasion 9

Overall its a very small change since I had put animal handling under both.

Simon_Jester wrote:"Shapeshifter? ... How worried should I be?"

"Not worried. I have spent years learning to control my form, and the benefits outweigh the risks. I will not endanger innocents or you all."

Alfred clutches his maul a bit but decides it is a bad idea to try to attack a shapeshifter.

It looks like someone's being quite intelligent with the mist; using a relatively little power to get a major effect, by getting the river mist to rise- prodding nature into doing it's thing rather than doing something completely unnatural. The lights are more interesting- they're obviously unnatural, and they can only be so far from the caster. You're about three miles away, and there are some people ahead on the road.

Yes on the change- the plan is that at the end of the first "session"- when I give XP, probably when you get him there, everybody will get an opportunity to tweak their character.

Ahead moving away from us, or ahead moving toward us?

There are about twenty of them, looks like an extended family- three generations on the move. Except they're not actually moving much, they're looking at the mist and debating whether or not it's worth taking the risk or trying to find another way. You can overhear bits of it- still day, not much background noise;

The eldest, the patriarch appears to be saying 'Ay, take it from me, there're fae folk somewhere in that cloud. Our wizards were never so subtle. We might miss them, but they won't miss us- what are they at? Spreading panic, of course- panicked people make stupid moves.
I'm long past it, you've never done anything more aggressive than dig a turnip-'

A younger man's voice, 'I can fight, grandad.'

'Ay, and you want to, which is what worries me. At best, three to defend twenty? If we have to fight we're lost, it's about looking dangerous enough they let us past, and-' the eighty year old retired soldier spots you, and calls out 'Ah, hello, there; are you planning to go to the ford?'

Rohal takes a position at the back left of the group, letting the more social members greet the travelers.

"Aye, good sir. I could not help but overhear that you are having trouble with fae folk in that cloud."

Larric pitches his voice loudly, to be overheard by the travelers as well as his own party. "Sir Alfred, I wouldn't jump to conclusions about who made that fog. The mist... that could happen anyway this time of year, I'd wager. I doubt we need fear it more than any honest fog. Now, the lights in the fog- those we might do well to steer clear of, and to bristle a bit so they steer clear of us, yes."

Turning to the grandfather, he asks "Or is the ford right by those lights?"

Most likely had spare clothes and something to improvise a gag with in his pack, so he offered those up when asked. He's being quiet and just observing, working out what he can about who is around him for when it comes handy. The mist has him a bit nervous, but he's learned that panicking only makes things worse.

'Well behaved mist? Starting two miles upstream and ending a mile downstream of the ford? I'm not senile yet, my curse that I lived to see such times with open eyes, but there are moments when I do wonder about the young folk these days.' He doesn't mean it seriously.
'We're travelling north looking for a safe place to- it was bad enough when Baron Omphraye was in charge, but to keep his law he had to at least take the part to be a lawful man; now with so many of the men whose fathers I knew in my youth gone, and only the worst left...is that Radulf the Hangman behind you on that rope?'

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:'We're travelling north looking for a safe place to- it was bad enough when Baron Omphraye was in charge, but to keep his law he had to at least take the part to be a lawful man; now with so many of the men whose fathers I knew in my youth gone, and only the worst left...is that Radulf the Hangman behind you on that rope?'

Asked point blank by someone who clearly recognizes Radulf, and who plainly doesn't admire him- Larric answers the question, elliptically, with a slight shrug and a restrained spread of the hands.

"Times like this, if you give a man enough of the wrong rope, the only one he hangs is himself."

Alfred mutters to himself, "Our friend smells something wrong with the fog and I hear mentions of fae in there. There are not many conclusions to draw." Namely, those other conclusions would be that it is magic fog, but the old man is wrong.

There is an obvious way to find out; walk into the fringes of it and tell it to go away. Someone trained in defying hostile magic, it might part for them- but it would also make whoever does it a target, the being on the other end could sense that being done.

Panzersharkcat wrote:Alfred mutters to himself, "Our friend smells something wrong with the fog and I hear mentions of fae in there. There are not many conclusions to draw.

"It could be elvish tricks, and there's a bit of trickery to it, I don't deny. But there's more than one lot of tricksters abroad- so which one is it? That's where jumping to conclusions could cost..."

"True. Until we find out what's in there, I would prefer to avoid it if possible." He pauses in contemplation.

(OOC: I really need to start drawing a map for my own reference.)

Out of his depth with talk of magic fog the mercenary starts wishing he had learned more of the art of defending against unwanted spells. However that seems to take too much faith in the unwavering dogma of the knight, and the pragmatic mind he possess just didn't take to that sort of technique. He has thoughts on what mental techniques might help are there, but he's never had someone to practice with and it's not something to test on the battlefield. Still, with times being as they are it might be worth the time and coin to hire a mage to help him perfect his technique.

"We can't get through to the ford without going through the fog. Remember those carters, though- they must have come this way just a few hours ago; they made it through all right. I'm inclined to chance it, or at least see if we can negotiate passage with whoever's doing this."

Looking to the travelers Bryan asks, "Do you have an idea when this mist and these lights started? It might give the magically inclined among us a little more to work with on cracking this issue."

Freak Fog & Strange lights.
Suppressing his natural urge to head in the opposit direction as fast as possible, william will stick with the larger body of people.

on a side note:

(OOC: It was dirt, not shit, that Alfred was smearing on him. Alfred would not deliberately smear shit on his own hands.)

- not spent any time with along side the royal marines then. Fancy a game of Freckles..... (if you have to ask you do not want to know).

How that actually advances the plot, I really don't want to try and work it in either...although it has to be said that knowing that the bootnecks are the (apparently very direct) descendants of the people of the dark ages does make a few things fall into place.

Flung, or splattered, crap as a weapon in the class war, immune system pitted against immune system...tell you what, roll Radulf in the dust a few times and call it a done deal, OK?

The mist is cover, camouflage, psychological warfare. It's the things that are making it and using it for cover that are worth being worried about. One of the travellers- a young woman with a bow, who looks as if she said she was ready to defend her family without thinking about what that might involve and whose kid brother keeps trying to take it off her- says 'We passed a woodcart, they said the mist was just rising as they came through.'

ECR: That's what I was getting at- the mist is itself no more dangerous than any other fog bank.

Those lights we see- how close are they, exactly, to the location of the ford?

Mind turning things over a bit the mercenary decides that there can only be two options with the timing of the fog: one that it's meant to delay them getting their man safely inside of the city, the other that the fog conceals some ambush. If it was really meant to terrorize the citizens there are much more direct ways of going about it, that and it appearing not too long before they got there. Anybody could have slipped away from the three way battle before they did and with a hard ride made it in time to set such a trap.

Still not sure if they should stay or go he looks to Larric and Rohal and says, "The timing of this fog suggests it was meant for us. If somebody rode hard away from that battle they would have had time to get here in advance enough to set this up. My only question is if it's meant to keep us outside, or act as an ambush as we pass through? The other question I have is, how much would this take out of somebody and how much they could have left to hit us with as we move through?"

Most of those questions, you're simply not going to find answers to by asking each other; the last part, though, as a general rule of thumb- I don't think any of you have enough grasp of theory of magic to actually know for sure, but anyone who's seen a wizard do much knows that the more intricate a use of magic is, the harder it is to 'throw'- really complicated effects usually have to be hands on- and the more power they have, the further they can project, the more of the world they can reach through.

The glows in the fog are fairly simple in themselves, but they're also indistinct enough to give little away, and certainly not to illuminate their casters; they're also quite far apart, which suggests more than one, maybe three or four average to good, which may indeed be elves at work- or one really good wizard, which if it was meant for you is more likely.

As Larric can tell, through having the same kind of power and knowing a little about it, it was done very economically- which means that he, she or they are likely quite talented and had a lot to begin with, and still have most of it in hand.


The old man gets down off the wagon, and his family are shouting at him- Grandfather, no, you can't do this, variations along that theme.
'It doesn't much matter where I leave my bones, and if they go for me you know not to go that way.' He starts off towards the mist, but three of them grab him and try to hold him back. He's old; they succeed.

Before Grandpappy Refugee went dramatic on us, Larric was trying to answer Bryan's questions as best he could- or at least address them, not the same thing.

He took a deep breath. "These aren't the only strange lights seen in this neck of the woods lately. This might be for the men of Caer Edric, not for us; we're jumping to conclusions again, I think."

"Fog would seem to work better to hide someone before they leap out at you than as a wall to stop you... but it would work just as well to keep anyone from getting too close to the lights, keep them cooped up in their fort and feeling the cabin fever."

"And as for power, erm. I truly don't know. For the marauders-" Larric shivered in memory, and that's a reference to the Twentieth Cataphract, the "Striking Phoenix" regiment that's ravaged much of Kuquan, which has heavy magical support- "something like this would be an afterthought, an easy thing I'm sure... but then, someone with that kind of magic wouldn't need to be subtle about dealing with the likes of us. On the other hand it could be a tremendous job of work for some forest witch, the likes of which she could only manage once a week if that... and who wouldn't be much of a danger to us at all. Let me think..."

Larric tries to probe the patterns of force and distortions in the air ahead once again, to see if there are any signs of what, to him, would look like particularly great (or particularly small) power... and gets the answer, it seems, because ECR wrote a post in response to SLAcker while I was composing this.

"Somewhere in between, I'd think. Whoever did this didn't want to pour too much of themselves into it, saving energy for something else- which means having the wit to do a proper job without exhausting himself." He nods respectfully, with a tilt of the head in the direction of the nearest cluster of lights. "And those lights... see how far apart they are? It's always harder to do things at a distance, that's either three or four ordinary wizards, maybe- or one good one."



Then drama happens. Larric looks around, at the struggling old man, and at the armed men he's traveling with- one a knight, even. He feels a certain impatience with them- thinking but not saying 'come on then, what are you waiting for?' Perhaps being a bit uncharacteristically stubborn, but from his point of view there wasn't much reason to come along on this trip at all if people didn't want to see it through.

"Hmm. This has the air of trickery to me, yes... I'm not sure the trick is on us at all, and I'm not sure it's as much a menace as some here. But even if it is, either we give up on the whole thing as a bad job, or we'll have to see what's behind it sooner or later. We can cross here, or we can go down to Seldayne, and it's, what, seven leagues out of our way if we go to the next crossing? If they're laying for us here, they can cross the river easily enough and be waiting on the other side when we get back to the north bank. And then we're right back where we started..."

"...Or do you all want to go back to Coroghan on account of some light and fog?"