Devarus' brows go up, but when he first opens his mouth to voice some protest, the half-drow catches himself. "... If... that is your wish, sir." He bows his head briefly. "Perhaps come the morning, we can even be of some further service to you in this endeavor, so that you may return home sooner than later. As mentioned before, your last message has drawn quite bit of concern."  At that, Devarus looks to the rest of the party, gauging their own reactions before returning to whatever meal had been presented to the group during the interim.

Elsara attempts to dine as well as can be expected. She keeps a polite demeanour, but is a little worried for this now found lord. Given she spent most of her time around dragonborn, rather than elves, her eating habits are a little different than most of her kind. "So, Lord Vladimir, that is an interested item you have there." She nods to the aforementioned staff she sensed on their way in. "A family heirloom, perhaps?"

"That?" Vlad says looking at the staff, "That was a gift from an Arch druid of the forest. I can't use it myself so I have kept it here."

Val raises an eyebrow 

“An archdruid? “ he asks “Where I could find him? Can I see it?” He asks pointing to the staff.

Vladimir says, "I don't know where you can find him. He's probably around somewhere in the forest. As for the staff, sure! You can see it. Let's finish eating first though."

"Mister Val is also a practiser of the druidic arts, so it would be lovely for him to be able to get to know about the local area a bit better." Elsara explains to Vladimir. "But yes, perhaps between courses." She resists tapping her knife on the plate whilst finishing a mouthful, but will enjoy the food.

Val is going to stand up when he hears their host saying "of course" but then he stops in the middle of the motion when pointed to the food, that he hasn't touched yet. He smiles thanking Elsara for taking care of the oddities of good manners and he, by force of habit, sniffs his plate, smelling it before starting to eat it. 

Vlad continues. He doesn't seem to eat very much. "A druid you say? That is quite interesting. I wish I could help but unfortunately there is not much I can tell you about the forest, except for what is in the immediate vicinity of my home."

"Well" says Val tasting some of the food " We uesd to prefer the deep of the woods than villages or cities. Where did you met this arch-druid? Do you remember his, or her, name?" asks Val

Vlad seems to get deep in thought at that. He says, "Now that you mention it... I had been mistaken. Forgive me, it's been quite a few hundred years since I met them. It was an arch druid and I had referred to them with male pronouns before but..." He tries to focus, holding the tips of his fingers to his forehead as he remembers the old memories, "The more I think about it... the more I believe they might have been female. It was in the start of Late Autumn. There was a particularly bad, off-season mana storm* at the time, the druid came to my house for shelter as they said they were away from their hut, deeper in the forest. I let them spend the night here and as thanks, they gave me the staff. Their name was... Bastille, I think. They were a high elf."

*You all would know what a Manastorm is as it's a natural weather phenomenon that happens often in Late Autumn:
Due to the position of planet relative to the stars during Autumn and Late Autumn, the natural magical energy that is everywhere in the universe and that allows casters of all kinds to cast spells, to flare up and become more active than usual. This increased activity normally has no effect on any caster when casting spells. However what this does do is cause some types of clouds to soak up the excess unstable magic. In Autumn the clouds sometimes begin glowing brightly in phenomenon known as Mana Flares. These Mana Flares don't interfere with spell casting but it does cause a great amount of light, usually enough to make it hard to see. It is also reported that Mana Flares can cause illumination like day light at dead of night if it happens during that time.

Mana Storms happen in Late Autumn when the natural magical energy become even more volatile. The clouds absorbing too much of this magical energy causes discharges of raw magic. In the most common cases, Casters report having their spells go haywire not unlike Wild Magic Sorcerers. In more severe cases, spell effects are manifested in the clouds themselves, which can range from harmless effects like that of Healing Word, annoying but manageable effects like that of Darkness to very dangerous like those of Magic Missile or Animate Dead. In the worst recorded instance of such a Mana Storm, the effect that was manifested was that of Meteor Swarm which caused widespread damage to life and property.

(Does Val recognizes that name? . Mana storm.. cool stuff!! ) 

Roll History with Prof. for being Druid to see if Val recognizes the name.

(  Druidic history: 7 )

Edit; No idea hahaha.

((Seems like Val's master did not do a good job in teaching the historical side of things :P)

(Just in case there's a historical significance to the name, since Elsara is a well read young lady.)

History: 25 (second roll if needed for disadvantage: 15)

"Wow...I've been quite lucky and not had to experience any particularly bad manastorms." Elsara replies, her more secluded upbringing mean that outdoors wasn't as big an influence as it was on many other people. "Is there any particularly nice ones any of you have experienced?"

Elsara: For everyone who isn't a druid the check to figure out who Bastille is would have been Arcana for reasons that will become evident later. Still I think her modifier for Arcana is the same if not higher. Even if it was nat19+INT she would have succeeded the Arcana check.

Elsara racks her brain trying to figure out who the "Archdruid" is. She thinks back to all the texts she's read. She realizes that Bastille is not exactly a historical figure but there were obscure mentions of her in random books. Finally the most information about her that Elsara had was pieced together from various books on magic and magical history.

Vlad didn't seem like he was lying so he either remembered wrong or he was lied to. Bastille was not an Archdruid at all but a Witch. Witches are like anti-druids. Where druids get their power from worship, respect and understanding of mother nature or their close relation to nature gods, witches use powerful arcane magics to bend the power of nature to their will. Their powers can best be described as "If a druid casted wizard spells instead of druid spells". Witches are usually female but can also be male as well. Male witches are also called "Witches". Witches aren't inherently evil, they are however isolationist. They usually live alone deep in the wilderness in towers or cabins or other kinds of structures. It is unheard of for witches to work together in groups. Some witches travel around the world to hone their magic and gather artifacts. Witches play by their own rules and do not care about authority and laws, thus they are almost universally chaotic. Some times witches can be neutral but a lawful witch, though possible in theory, has not been documented yet. Because of their chaotic nature, a general rule of thumb for any adventurer who encounters one is to avoid her if possible and stay on their good side at all costs if avoidance is not possible. Some druids often band together to hunt down witches as their practices go against almost everything a druid stands for. Once a witch is killed, their spell book is burnt and their potions and magical artifacts are used by the druid band that took the witch down. Artifacts created or owned by a witch are considered great prizes and a sign of honor for any druid that has got them by any means.

As for Bastille, she is a Great Witch which is a very powerful witch. Though her exact age is unknown, she would at the minimum, be 2000 years old. In terms of how old she looks because like druids, sufficiently powerful witches also age very slowly, she looks to be in her early 400s (due to being high elf). Her exact whereabouts are unknown but she had been seen in various places to interact with various people through out the years. She isn't immedietly hostile but she does have very little patience for people bothering her. If she gets too annoyed with someone, it will end poorly for the person. She is slim, flat-chested and has long blue hair and purple eyes. The unusual color of the eyes and the hair are due to her magic. She usually dresses in all white and carries a wooden staff that she uses to cast her spells.

@Party: Feel free to make up any experience you have had with mana storms.

Devarus appears content to watch and listen to ongoing conversation. He is however still careful to avoid looking Vlad's way too long and even goes to some lengths to avoid even scraping his plate during the meal. At some point during the meal though his eyes wandered over to the maid, if she was still about. It started out as simply curiosity, and still remained that way to some extent as he took her measure; wondering idly if her posture or reaction to the ongoing conversation might reveal some combat training or odd discomfort.

Insight: 3.

Elsara nods to the story given by Vlad, but refraining from blurting out the misinformation for the time being. She feels it would be a bit of a faux pas to correct the lord in his house about something like this, but she will be informing Val about it later on.

"Oh, I did read about a animation manastorm that happened about a century and a half ago, where a rural town had every one of its tools and pottery come to life. Luckily no casualties, but there are fun tales about some sort of faction war between the buckets and the brooms." Elsara mentions as an anecdote

Vlad reminisces, "Well most Manastorms just mess with magic so it's not too crazy but I do remember one time where Faerie Fire was manifested and everyone was glowing for the next few hours."

"I remember that once all the Silver River were running upwards after a manastorm. The fish were, therefor, headed in the wrong direction as they were confused trying to go upstream to lay their eggs..." remembers Val.