((Deuce: Yep, if you want a pole, there's a pole.))
With little fanfare, the expedition is equipped and underway before the sun has even cleared the horizon.
Traveling with Bedan the farmer, you skirt the edges of tumultuous Lake Östrel and move eastward into the Burning Hills. The land is hilly and rugged, downright steep in places, and the fall season has tinted everything yellow and brown. Occasionally, glancing through the copses of bare trees that grow on the hilltops, you can see a fleeting glimpse of a deer or fox or hare. But there are no people in these parts, none who live here and none but you who travel through this place.
A few hours past midday, you begin to understand just why this land is so abandoned: on the next hilltop ahead, you can just see the burned-out husk of a farmstead house, blackened and barely standing. When this structure comes into view, Bedan stops in his tracks, shivers visibly, and looks reluctant to take another step.
