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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Envisioner" data-source="post: 7938120" data-attributes="member: 6749263">As the three wild-dwellers proceed across the fields behind the roadside sign, warning of a Deadly Something Shackled Ahead, they begin to notice a distinct absence of large wildlife in the area.  There are still small birds aplenty, flitting twitchily about in search of edible seeds or the like, and you spot the occasional prairie vole popping its head up out of a burrow, giving a quick look around, and then frantically dashing toward another hole it can vanish into.  But no deer, no goats, not even a jackrabbit.The walk takes several minutes, and the trio is beginning to consider heading back to the road, when they crest a low rise and behold a shallow depression in the land, about a hundred feet across, bounded on one side by a thirty-foot cliff (just barely invisible from before topping the lower ridge opposite it, upon which you now stand), and on the other side by a twenty-foot-wide pond.  About five feet away from the pond shore, you see a large boulder that was clearly quarried away from the rocky escarpment and dragged to its current position; the intermittent rays of the sun glint periodically off something metallic on or near the big rock.  There's also a dark object, difficult to identify at this distance, lying right next to the boulder, and an odd shifting effect in the air around and above it, vaguely resembling heat haze - or a cloud of swarming insects.******The guard captain, who eventually gets around to mentioning that his name is Garwynn, considers Robyn's offer.  "Yesterday I would have gladly taken you up on that; our healers have struggled mightily to get anyone with minor injuries up and about.  At this point, however, almost everyone who can be patched up has been; unless you have the capacity to regrow missing limbs, I doubt you could do very much more than is already being done.  And, given how we were infiltrated, folks are in a rather paranoid mood with regard to strangers right now; you saw how the guards reacted when you got here.  I'm perceptive enough to be satisfied with the two of you for now, particularly thanks to the prophetess I mentioned, who vouched for you specifically (not by name, of course, but she said that a tiefling would arrive along with a 'helfer' like myself, and even implied that you might have a moon-symbol like that on your shield).  But our healers are feeling especially protective, and any time that you saved them by helping out, you'd likely first have to waste by taking them away from their patient long enough to become certain that you're not assassins come to finish the job, or some similarly neurotic fantasy.  Probably better just to stay out of their way for the moment, until the people start feeling safe again."Irony?  I'll agree to that easily enough.  From what little sense we've been able to get out of our handful of prisoners, this cult fancies itself the chosen of dragonkind; not all of the actual dragons seem to share this opinion, though.  The timing is bizarre, but then, we have a Temple of Mystra here in town, which survived miraculously unscathed while half the buildings around it were demolished entirely; Fate is a real thing, or so we've had good reason to believe."  Finishing his little tirade (he does seem to enjoy the sound of his own voice, though you can hardly blame him for that, as it is a rather musical and resonant one), the Captain looks at Dumos's letter with what seems a calculatedly noncommittal expression, at least at first.</blockquote>

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