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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lars Frehse" data-source="post: 718470" data-attributes="member: 1674">Southwards- part 3The crows stayed with them as they sailed down the Eni. At nights, they didn't dare going ashore and stayed on their boat instead, and at that time they sometimes saw strange eyes among the rocks of the blood steppes looking back at them, and they were weary of every distorted shadow, of which they were many.The days weren't any more pleasant. While a cloud of crows moved south with them, always staying far out of range of their bows or any of their spells, the shores looked even more hostile than imagination made them look at night. The wheather changed to a steady drizzle and a constant wind down the Eni made them shiver, even though it was the month of Hedrot, which was usually known for it's scorching heat.On the third day, as they had left half of their river journey behind, they were attacked by a pair of Cathedral beetles. The pony-sized pests hovered over the river, as they sprayed the boat and everyone in it with an acid which they sprayed out of their behinds and then attacked with their scythe like mandibles. The friends killed the beasts, and it turned out to be the only time they were attackes on the trip down the river Eni.Eventually, the Kelders retreated from their left and the land opened up to pleasant fields. They had reached Lageni, and at last there were signs of civilizations again: first, there was a bleak fortress over which the banners of the Black Dragoons were proudly flying in the wind, and then they saw farms, fishermen, windmills and other indications that they had reached Lageni.They went ashore in small backwater called Kulomi and payed an old crone to keep an eye on their boat while they were gone. The village was too small to get any horses there, and the villagers were too poor to maintain any store that the friends could have needed to replace some equipment that got damaged during the attack of the Cathedralbeetles.From the moment they set foot on Lageni soil, they noticed that they were eyed suspiciously. None of them, not even the humans, looked like the locals, who were mostly olive skinned and slender, and Trepat and Ben were looked upon with open fear and hatred by a lot of the locals, while Torn, to his surprise, wasn't being payed any special attention to at all- if anything, he seemed to be the one who received the least resentment of all of them.For Torn, this was a completely new experience. Ever since he was a kid, he remembered vendors eyeing him suspiciously when he was glancing at their wares, women speeding up in alleys, when he went on a stroll at night, and millions of other occasions in which prejudice and fear towards his species formed the behavior of ordinary people towards him, Torn. Since he had never experienced anything else, he eventually started noticing all the little slights he was exposed to in his daily life, but now, the roles were reversed: now his friends were the unwanted, those who could not be trusted, and he was treated with indifference. And for him, indifference was all he had ever wanted.In fact, within the Calastian empire, foreigners and non humans were all treated with mistrust. Dwarves and elves were considered not much better than titanspawn, and halflings were viewed as a failed experiment by some demented titans, and they should best be used as slaves. On top of all that, the people of Lageni considered everybody from Durrover a grumpy buffoon and a dwarf in human form, and since it was obvious that Niklas was a Durroverian, he was hit by the full force of the local's spite. Jan was treated little better, since his fair skin, blue eyes and red beard clearly showed that he was a foreigner, so that he too was treated like a subhuman form of life, even though he hid his holy symbol of Corean, knowing that he would achieve little by openly displaying it.This left Torn. Fortunately for him, King Virduk of Calastia had realized early on that if he gave a home to the half orcs within his realm, he could easily gain fierce warriors who would be bound to him by the bonds of gratitude and obedience. So, as the decades went by, the people of all parts of the empire got used to the sight of well fed and well armed halforcs. For Torn that meant that this time, it wasn't him who raised suspicions, but his friends.Since they had no horses, they had to walk to Durm, and seeing no reason to stay in Kulomi any moment longer then necessary, they left on the same day on which they had arrived. The dusty road was flanked by fields on both sides, and it meandered eastwards, around small hills and ponds.As far as the weather and the crops were concerned, it looked just like in Durrover, but soon, they noticed differences. The peasants were often haggard, as if they didn't get to eat much of their own harvest and they lived in small structures. Every now and then, they saw splendid mansions owned by the noblemen- whereas the peasants were much poorer here than at home, the noblemen seemed to live a much richer life in contrast.They camped on the road side and got going again by the first light of morning- they didn't want to attract too much attention to their attention here, and walked on. The march was rather dull. The rainclouds had disappeared in their back with the Eni and they were now bathed in sunlight.As the shadows they threw ahead of them grew longer and longer, and they reached yet another hill to climb, their dull boredom was suddenly interrupted. There, on the road up on the hill, there was a man staggering towards them and constantly glancing over his shoulder as if he were running from something.As he came down, the heroes saw that he had been badly treated: his face was battered and bruised and his body was covered in minor wounds. Jan ran forward, intent on helping the man, and suddenly he saw something that made him almost stop dead in his tracks: the tattered rags the man was wearing had clearly once been the uniform of a Lageni soldier!Now, seeing help coming, the man limped forward a few steps, while he was grinning madly and waving at the fiends, but then his tortured body didn’t stand it anymore, and he collapsed.Immediately, Jan was over him, and channeling the healing powers that Madriel lent to the followers of Corean, he healed the man. As some of his wounds closed, he started awake and rasped: „Quickly! You’ve got to get off the road! If they see you with me...“Jan, surprised by the urgency of his patient, was about to ask who the strange man was talking about, as the answer was presented to him. Hearing hooves, he glanced up and saw twenty soldiers on war horses coming over the hill. Recognizing the black plate mail, Jan instantly saw that they were lead by a broad shouldered man with a shaven beard and an arrogant smirk who was wearing the black plate mail of the Black Dragoons.Still resting the fugitive’s head in his lap, Jan looked up as the Black Dragoon rode right up to him, until he was towering over him. Still smirking, the Dragoon said: „My name is Colonel Gihjan. The man you have here is a wanted fugitive from Duke Traviak’s justice. May I assume that you have stopped him here with the intent of turning him over?“</blockquote>

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