Tagaern - sitting with Floki at Butterwick’s, enjoying an ale together. This young ranger seemed comfortable enough, but it seemed to me he preferred to be out in the wilds. I could understand that myself, having lived off the land when required. This troupe of Richter’s Holdings seemed to have plenty of connections and business to do. Truth be told, it was lost on me. A pretty girl named Nida apparently had a close enough connection to Sig that the whole group had agreed to start scheming how to get a certain cargo out of Dowry while waiting on other business, the selling of gunpowder to the local ruler…how ironic should the guns be turned against us should the scheme not play out. But for whatever cause here I was. At least for now things felt right. Being a sell sword back home felt completely aimless and I hated it. Or maybe it was myself that I hated.
I broke the silence and said, “This place Dowry and Northern Pallidorn is so different from Gefora and the southern lands.”
“Oh?” Floki seemed a little surprised, accustomed by this point to drinking with less talk.
“Oh yes. Materune is this sprawling city that goes back to the ancient days and first tribes. The animals and life there more adapted to the long heat of summer. The plains have these great herds of y’bar with great horns and standing this high,” I gestured with my arm broadly, trying to convey the curved round shape.
“Sounds much like a variety of the mule deer perhaps here,” Floki acknowledged.
I considered that then pressed to the matter I wondered more, “Though I’ve seen the legendary Titan at a distance, I have not seen such giants before as we did yesterday. Those are not common, are they?”
Floki took a drink and shook his head, “Oh no, they aren’t common here on the plains and moors. They weren’t from here. They actually came from another land far away, travelling here by Ether Tree. The caves we travelled to must have had one inside."
I tried to wrap my mind around it. I offered, “Then you mean like an Ethesia Token? Magic transporting you an instant hundreds upon hundreds of miles, operated by mages?”
“Sort of,” Floki responded. “But not quite the same. Our group has used one before…you actually walk into the tree and when you do then you can be transported to a different place by stepping through facing one direction as opposed to another.”
My mind reeled. An engineered thing or a natural thing, I wondered.
“And judging by the collars that we found on the orcs,” Floki continued. “It would seem that they were using the orcs as slaves."
This seemed to intrigue my companion and I wondered if it worried him in the same manner as it did me. It seemed as if this singular route connecting Dowery to Hlofreden had become the target of these things. Could they have been sent as a sophisticated reconnaissance in force patrol to scout and disrupt the area? And that one giant that shot the enormous lance-like arrows truly looked to have a sophisticated set of armor and weapon, not the type of hobbled together implements of simpletons or barbarians. If there was a force sending such a party out, I wondered how long it would be before the next party was dispatched and how long before these northern city states realized they needed to react. Still, it seemed as though Floki wasn’t overly concerned, or perhaps that was just his calm nature I wondered.
