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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sparky" data-source="post: 1708282" data-attributes="member: 13681">The Tale of the Undead's UmbraThe story unfolds and captures listeners and tellers alike in a spell as ancient as voice itself...  ********************* Outside the sky is dark, deepening as the sun’s glow vanishes in the west. Stars flicker, thickening as the night darkens. The moon is a slim sliver of a thing… ‘Ymaerh’s toenail clipping’ someone called it. Nobody remembers who… Two day’s to the north and west is Thean. And two unthinkable, unsleeping days east across an out flung arm of the Haddacc is Groen Keep, where for varying reasons, you all answered the clarion call of adventure. Pressed with unexplained urgency and the promise of coin in Thean when the scholar and his assistant arrived safely you made the hair-raising trek across the Twilight Hills to the nearest village. Even now, safe within Killith and the Oaken Horn, the Haddacc glimmers in the distance, emitting an eerie light and tugging your bodies and minds with relentless dream-wrought hands. Memories of the Twilight Hills are fading… as they do… and the warmth and pleasure at being alive and well and safe, for now, spills out into the cheery common room...  The Tale of the Undead's Umbra  A fire crackles merrily in the hearth and the smoke smells just like autumn. The innkeeper bustles about the small common room, busting at the seams to have ‘Real Honest To Goodness Adventurers’ to serve his arguably famous hot, spiced cider to. "And after two harrowing days crossing the Haddacc - it is a marvel they are on their feet! Isn’t it Sharra?"  He grins as his wife bustles over Elial and Mustafah, seeing to the wounds they won in fighting to Killith, "Oh shush, you, you’ve gone and made this handsome one all shy," she grins and plucks the chin of a brightly garbed, slip of a young man, who leans around the plump woman’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of the scholar’s fair assistant. The girl is tall for her age, and trim. Her long reddish-blonde hair is caught into a loose braid that hangs far down her back. She wears a rather remarkably ill-fitting set of leather armor, and worries its buckles and catches with long, fine-boned fingers. She bites her lip as she watches the man dressed in rough field clothes before her pace back and forth, glancing between him and the dubious characters sent to escort the two of them to Thean. The man is holding a one-sided argument with no apparent adversary. His thinning hair is pale and strands in wild wisps that do little to give him any more respectability. She sighs and studies her hands, momentarily still, in her lap. This is the ‘scholar’ you were meant to see to Thean. His assistant looks up and catches Mustafah’s glance – she looks down quickly and then back at the man pacing anxiously before the fire.  Stumbin, stands in the corner and has repeatedly refused succor of any kind. He remains standing by what must be the grace of his goddess alone. “A Warden of the Dark Gate is ever-vigilant!” is all anyone can get him to say.  His ‘vigilant’ gaze is vaguely focused in the direction of their charges… particularly the assistant, though when he catches his gaze wandering to her he shakes himself back to attention. He had a rough time coming across the Haddacc.  “Well, I’m done with you two,” Sharra clucks, standing and shaking her head as she gathers the billows of her skirts and her kit of herbs and salves that she affectionately calls her knitting basket, “Amazing that you all made it with little more than scratches. A rest in our good beds should have the lot of you fit as fiddles come the morning.” She nods her head and bobs a slight curtsy in parting, humming as she disappears into the kitchens. The innkeep himself yawns mightily. It seems he’s up past his bed time. He picks up an empty plate from one of the tables and bids goodnight to the last of many villagers that tramped through the common room ‘ta see the ‘Venturers.’  Across the room a shout - “Yes!” the scholar rushes over to the dark table that dominates the center of the room. The innkeep yelps and leaps out of the scruffy man’s way as the rapidly muttering man picks up mugs and hands them to Hella and Elial and Slate and anyone else who will let him pile them into their hands. He traces the grains of the wood, leaning down over the table his face so close his breath fogs its gleaming surface. “Yes, of course!” He turns to address everyone, fists balled in excitement. He grabs Slate’s collar in both fists, “Of course, my boy, how could I not have seen it before?” He hops around the common room spinning. Give me Spot and Listen Checks please.</blockquote>

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