VEYL: First Campaign Thread

The two guards look down at Cork as she approaches, then they look at each other, then Rory.  

"Goblins."  One says.  

"Ankle biters."  The other nods.  

There's a second where they examine each other.  Are they going to laugh?  Is there further commentary?  

They both look back down at Cork, sizing her...up?  Down?  

Then one of them shrugs, turns, and makes a 'follow me' motion with his hand.  He's silent the whole way down the corridor they arrived down.  Past mess halls full of troops eating.  Past make-shift armories where soldiers oiled and sharpened blades and fletched arrows.  Past arcane workshops where wizards and their ilk worked on contraptions of this and that design.  And then they were exiting from the rear of Kaelor's field headquarters, and into a hastily constructed stable where grooms were busy taking care of the horses stabled there.  

The guard doesn't have much to say.  Like Kaelor, he looks haggard and tired, as though the weight of untold battles was slowly weighing him down, much like it was weighing down the warlord he followed.  

They follow the guard down the muddy path between stalls where animal waste and spilled water and who knows what else has turned the fine dust of the Sere Marches into filth.  It sticks to boots, sops up around ankles (and in the case of some of our shorter folken, even deeper than that), and just generally stinks and makes things unpleasant.  

Eventually, he steps up to a groom, and they mutter some words between each other.  For anyone listening, it becomes clear they're not hiding anything as much as they're just....disinterested.  The groom finally nods, the guard departs without so much as a 'f*ck you', and then props his hands on his hips.  

"Eh, so, you lot are here for the cart?  Torp says you is, aye?" , all five feet of his scrawny human body blocking the way forward.  "Ah, well, he says the General sends you, so ain't for me to judge now isit?"  

He stars down the muddy thoroughfare, and you all see he is barefooted as he plods along without a care in the world.  

"Aye, well, these here two 'orses are Golly..."  He points to one, "...and Gillpy."  He points to the other.  Both horses are big and strong and already lashed to a cart.  "Ih, I done checked yer cargo, yeah.  All set, everything nailed up nice and tight for your journey, and strapped in too where it shouldn't jostle and shift about.  Tried to make it flat as I could, so you can sleep on it if you need to.  Also stored about two weeks worth of food in there for the lot of ye, and a couple casks of water, and oats for the 'orses."  

He nods in approval at his own work.  

"Eh, ah, what's now can I do for ye more?"  

Harper looked at the cart. He looked at the mud around his ankles. He looked at the cart again.

Without a word he found the wheel spoke, hauled himself up, and settled onto the flatbed. He kicked his boots against the back of the cart once flinging what had accumulated there into the mud behind him, narrowly missing Rory, before settling in with his back against the cargo and his journal already open. He did not apologize