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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2017 21:34:32 GMT -5
Feeling wealthy and adventurous with all her new loot and gear, Rithaleya entered the woods west of Innorsford province once more, leaving the Alliance and its mysteries behind for a time, while she began her travels to Kel'Alee, a city she was only vaguely aware of but knew of as an excellent place to spend money, and according to rumour, also the place where she was conceived.
She'd had a hard time navigating the woods before, and had more or less wandered her way out after losing contact with the others. Not that she'd really wanted to find the rest of the scouts again, nor did they want her to find them. It had been a few days, and hopefully, they'd all moved on by now. If not, they'd be as likely to invite her back as to rob her, she suspected. She didn't feel it was worth worrying about. She knew they couldn't get rid of her that easily.
The parched, sunny conditions were an annoyance, so she spent as little time as possible out on the plains. Tree cover made it easier to keep going, more so than the road did. There were plenty of small streams to find, even when days were the hottest, and the forest made it easy to relax. The sounds of the animals, or lack thereof, always gave warning if there was trouble she needed to be aware of.
It was by a stream, under an old oak, that she decided to make camp her first night back out in the wild. She remembered the place, since she'd been on the other side of the tree when she'd caught and looted a hunter here, on her last 'foraging expedition', before she followed the trail back to Innorsford. She felt confident that any human survivors would just assume elves were elves, and wouldn't remember the one with the sling had darker hair than the others.
Their camp was still made, though there was even less left of it than before. She didn't need, and didn't have much, no bedroll, no blanket. A fresh mat of forest litter was enough for a bed, a cup made from torn bark was enough to drink from, and she'd brought enough rations to keep herself fed. After a quick bath in the stream, she slept in her hunter's garb, her armour piled on top of her sword and axe, under the tree's roots in front of her.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2017 18:55:17 GMT -5
Rithaleya's first night back out on the road proved uneventful, and gave her no cause to regret her decision not to sleep in her armour... or to leave her sword and axe buried underneath it. It was easier to wear it all than to keep it in her pack, though, so she ate a cold breakfast and prepared herself the same as she'd done the day before.
Now that she was back in the woods, and not out under the open sky, it was easier to stay focused on hunting game, rather than avoiding monsters. Whenever she heard something moving through the trees, as she continued to travel, she readied her bow, began stalking, and took aim. Even one squirrel or other small animal provided enough meat to sustain a single Half-Elkagr travelling alone, so long as she gathered enough carrots, or other foods available in the dry season. When she wasn't eating rations, she could always clean her food and start a fire to make it safe to eat, even without boiling--since she hadn't brought a pot with her.
She had to be careful with her bow an arrow, though, she found. The salamander scales weren't the quietest or easiest clothing to move around in, the helmet's cheek guards blocked her vision and it covered her ears, and the power of her new, magically enchanted bow put her at risk of destroying any small game that she fired upon. At first, she had her regrets about selling off her old hunting bow, but after her first badly-charred meal, she devised a way to blunt her arrowheads by tangling grass and weeds over them, before firing. This seemed to absorb and disperse the effects enough to give her good, clean kills that left her targets edible.
Into the afternoon, when Rithaleya grew weary, and with Kel'Alee still many miles ahead, she settled down on an outcropping overlooking the trail to the east, and made her camp there. Once again, she stored most of her belongings in a hollow, this time within the rock. As an added precaution, she strung up lines adorned with pieces of wood that would set up a sort of alarm if anything interfered with her business before the rising sun shone in from across the trail, and encouraged her to be on her way. This campsite didn't have water, but it was elevated and free of the brush, which was a comfort in unfamiliar territory. The stone was hard, but she looked forward to having a bed at an inn the next day, if she kept up her pace.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2017 19:59:19 GMT -5
Rithaleya was woken many times during the night, not by monsters or other creatures disturbing her camp, but the more distant noise generated by some great army that was travelling back along the road the other way. Cruinthians, she guessed. They were too rowdy to be elven, in her opinion, and from what she knew, there shouldn't have been a tenth as many elves in the whole province as there were around just two of three of this army's campfires.
She hadn't expected to find such a force so close to Kel'Alee, but fortunately enough, they were just now headed off to bother someone else with their axes, fires, and drinking songs. It had something to do with 'the alliance', she gathered from some of the shouts and roars. She wanted to stay well out of it, and laid low. She'd done her travelling earlier, and her fire had burned out long before it had gotten dark, so she seemed to be out of danger... so long as no foragers thought they might find something interesting in the rocks she had taken for shelter.
When the sun rose, Rithaleya saw men tending to their horses on the trail, so she rolled down from the bed she'd made and curled up in the hollow below with her gear, until two long hours had passed, and all the commotion had died away. She was hungry by then, but it still seemed dangerous to be seen, so packed up her armour, dressed in her hunting garb, and slunk away through the undergrowth to keep on moving toward Kel'Alee, until many minutes had passed, with no signs of movement on the trail. A half hour after that, she donned her armour again. It no longer seemed dangerous to be mistaken for someone proficient at fighting.
After that, the trip was uneventful. She didn't stop to gather food again, saving time to climb up the mountain, where the weather, to her relief, was growing unseasonably pleasant. It was getting dark by the time she arrived on the outskirts of Kel'Alee, which didn't seem to have been too adversely effected by the presence of so many soldiers the previous day. It was a magnificent site to see, though too much for Rithaleya to take in.
She'd never seen the Empire's great cities, or any great cities at all, though she had seen a few magnificent mansions in her time (even if she'd spent most of her visits around the stables and practice yards). Rithaleya was used to living rough, and as much as she liked food and comfort, there was a limit to how much culture and refinement she could put up with. The city gave her more than enough ways to spend her money without passing within its walls, and exploring the deeper nuances of how to spend everything, as her mother surely had done decades earlier, could wait for another day.
With the right horse and a full purse, perhaps this past week would be the last she had to spend dodging around in the wilderness, trying not to get jumped or caught while sleeping on rocks and dirt. She'd been doing it for so long that it was hard to imagine anything different, but as her last night had reminded her, however comfortable she grew with it, it was still dangerous, and her luck would run out sometime. Her luck at the haunted farm, with Fyrra, had given her a way out, and now, here she was in Kel'Alee, ready to take that chance. She sought out the stables.
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Post by Azuloth on Jun 25, 2017 19:54:55 GMT -5
Quest Complete Reward
Camping II +3 Stat points
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