Zorlon - Levdia

[Switch]

"Hmm... I have a suggestion... how about I help guard the kids, since I have some skill with a sword, Lurel, you could help build the walls... no doubt your earth magic would come in handy. And Midge, you could probably be of use helping Ari with the pottery. How does that sound?"

 

Ford looks to the three for their approval.

 

(OOC: By the way, what's a Heidal? Sorry, memory like a siv at the moment!)

[Malchik]

"A more serious cloud has formed over the village of Heidal in the Lakelands and it too has been evacuated.  There were a number of very sick children who the villagers were going to abandon.  I and Varna, the woman who tends them, have led them, with some difficulty, to a safe place in a clearing in the forest.  The Held has also moved there.  I must stay here and do what I can to counteract the magic."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

Ford is directed to an area at some remove from the Held settlement. Heidal had been the centre of production of a highly addictive narcotic The herb (cheweed - pronounced Kayweed) has excellent medicinal qualities if used in the right way but is easily abused. The children never used the narcotic but were born seriously damaged because the parents had. The parents will long since have died from the abuse. The children, some thirty of them, are in a pitiful state drooling, mumbling uncontrollably with wild expressions clearly not far off being brain dead. The woman in charge is called Varna. She is tending to a child who is screaming uncontrollably. A one-eyed girl is walking around distractedly talking of 'Dark Portals'. She seems a little more coherent than the others. Some ten 'sixteen year old boys', members of the Held, are standing guard around the area.

 

One of the guards, the muttering girl and Varna all look up at you questioningly as you approach but all are in different directions. You can only visit them one at a time.

 

Lurel finds the fence-builders taking a break. There are about fifty here all seemingly alike. One smiles.

 

"We can always do with an extra pair of hands. Did Indril send you?"

 

The voice is male. He and several companions laugh at the mention of her name.

[Switch]

Ford looks around at all the kids.

 

'Geez... what happened to these guys?'

 

He waves to Varna, and raises his voice slightly so he can be heard over the child.

 

"Er, hello. I'm here for guard duty... Indril sent me."

[Malchik]

Varna comes across to you.

 

"Hello - you look to be about sixteen - are you? I find it so difficult with these others. Actually I'm not sure we need more guards. Nor do I know what exactly is being guarded. I rather think the Held are more worried about these poor creatures getting out than anything getting in. I don't know why I keep them alive except to hope that for some there may be a little happiness. I need to feed them a tiny drop of the drug each day. Without it their suffering is unbearable. The whole stock was destroyed, you know, by a boy called Tiemmo but he had the compassion to see that enough was spared for me. I guard it well I assure you."

 

 

She looks about, a little distracted. "And then there is Vreli..." She points to the muttering girl. "In all the years I have looked after the children, watching them die in their hundreds, not one has ever got better. Vreli was so bad she had gouged out her own eye but it seems to me that she is getting better. I do not understand it but if the miracle can work for one perhaps it can for the others. Except..."

 

She looks sadly at the screaming child. "Wrenn is dying. He will not last more than an hour at most. I know the signs. Perhaps you and Moppitt could dig a grave for me?"

 

Moppitt is apparently the alert guard who, Varna informs you, really is a sixteen-year-old boy.

[ThetaOrionis01]

Lurel grins. "Well, yes, you could say that Indril sent me... does she send along lots of helpers, then? My name's Lurel."

 

He looks at the work that has been done so far.

 

"So, what's the plan? Earth wall and wooden fence on top? Looks like hard work, anyway."

 

'It should be easy enough to raise a wall of earth... the question is, though, how the Held will react to magic. I'd rather start digging than find myself as a target for some superstitious bowmen hostile to magic!'

[Malchik]

"Well, we're having a rest just now. Sit and talk, why don't you? Have a sausage."

 

You are offered a cold sausage.

 

"Indril doesn't send helpers. It's just that she 'sends' people everywhere away from her. She's got nothing to do, see. She don't like people watching her sitting there doing nothing day in day out!"

 

After another laugh with his friends he adds. "She was our best hunter but now she's half blind. Too stubborn to admit it. We look young, you see. But we aren't - necessarily. I'm thirty-four by the way. Pity she's so crabby!"

[ThetaOrionis01]

"Thanks." Lurel accepts the sausage, and takes a bite.

 

"It must be very hard for Indril, though, to come to terms with her failing eye-sight, and not being able to hunt any more," Lurel says conversationally. "I'd never have guessed you were thirty-four - you all look so young." He shrugs. "But then you shouldn't judge people by their appearance anyway."

 

He looks around. "Are you expecting to be attacked, or is the wall just to be on the safe side? Thail told us that you couldn't stay in your village."

[Malchik]

"We've never been attacked before but we knew that part of the forest well. We don't know this bit so it's a precautionary measure. And Indril wants to see everyone busy. Pity we can't keep her busy. Then maybe she'd stay off our backs!"

[ThetaOrionis01]

"Have any of your healers tried to help Indril?" Lurel asks. "Maybe something could be done to improve her vision."

 

He takes another bite of sausage.

 

"What happened to your village? Thail didn't tell us much, really, but I'm sure she must have had her reasons."

 

He looks around again. "Though this does look like a good place."

[Switch]

Ford replies to her question.

 

"No, I'm 15, but a normal human."

 

He sighs sadly.

 

"That's terrible. At least there's hope for Vreli... can't anything at all be done for Wrenn?"

 

(OOC: He is 15... right? Or have I got that wrong as well? :D)